USA04 July, 20262 min read
Commonweal Essay Contrasts J. D. Vance’s 2019 Catholic Conversion With Ohio Upbringing
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Vance earned as much as $7.4 million in 2025 from Hillbilly Elegy royalties. Memoir's success boosted his national profile and drove a revival.
Vance’s Ohio and faith
A Commonweal Magazine essay by Paul V. Brock, dated July 6, 2026, recounts Brock’s life in Ohio, including Upper Sandusky’s population of approximately five thousand and his upbringing at St. Peter’s where he and his brother Bob were altar boys.
“Upper Sandusky had a population of approximately five thousand.”
Brock writes that he carried the Paschal Candle home and lit it in his bedroom, describing that for about thirty seconds it felt like he understood "the mystery of faith".
The same essay contrasts Brock’s account with J. D. Vance’s conversion to Catholicism in 2019, which Brock says arrived "already preloaded with enemies" and that he saw "no dark night of the soul" on the public record.
Brock also places Vance’s political rise in context, writing that Vance needed Appalachia to sell his story and that the narrative arc of Vance’s redemption "bends toward power."
Trump appeal and national decline
The Atlantic describes a July 4, 2016 essay by J. D. Vance that traced Donald Trump’s appeal to social decline and cultural trauma, and it quotes Vance writing, "During this election season," it appears that many Americans have reached for a new pain reliever."
The Atlantic then argues that Trump offered "an easy escape from the pain" while Vance said Trump’s promises were "the needle in America’s collective vein."
The Atlantic says the Trump presidency is "collapsing, cracking under the weight of its own choices" and points to tariff-driven price increases, gas prices that spiked from less than $3 to more than $4 a gallon during a 100-day war against Iran that America lost.
It also says the dismantling of USAID and the gutting of PEPFAR has, by credible estimates, already cost the lives of more than 25 million people, with projections of as many as 14 million more by 2030 if the cuts hold.
Vance’s finances and scrutiny
The Hill reports that Vice President Vance earned as much as $7.4 million in 2025, according to his latest financial disclosure report newly released by the Office of Government Ethics. The Hill says Vance made between $1 million and $5 million in domestic royalties from publisher HarperCollins, and it adds that Vance continued to hold between $250,001 and $500,000 in bitcoin.
MS NOW similarly frames the same Office of Government Ethics filing as showing that Vance’s domestic book royalties fell within the $1,001,000 to $5,000,000 range in 2025, compared with $50,001 to $100,000 a year earlier. MS NOW also states that Vance’s 17-page disclosure shows he earned less than $201 in his Coinbase account holding his cryptocurrency investments, and it notes the scale of the windfall against a portfolio that "barely moved."