To Understand JD Vance, You Need to Meet the "TheoBros"

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These extremely online young Christian men want to end the 19th Amendment, restore public flogging, and make America white again.

And they see JD Vance as their path forward.

On July 15, during his big speech at the RNC, Vance portrayed a vision of America that resonated deeply with Trump voters. “America is not just an idea,” he said solemnly. “It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”

To many viewers at home, this seemed like the stuff of a boilerplate, patriotic stump speech. But the words “shared history” lit up a far-right evangelical corner of social media.

Vance was embracing one of their most cherished beliefs: America should belong to Christians and, more specifically, white ones.

“The American nation is an actual historical people,” says Stephen Wolfe, the author of the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism, “not just a hodgepodge of various ethnicities, but actually a place of settlement and rootedness.”

For this group of evangelical leaders, Vance, a 40-year-old former Marine who waxes rapturous about masculinity and women’s revered role as mothers, was the perfect tribune to spread their gospel of patriarchal Christian nationalism.

For years, graying, khaki-clad evangelists have faithfully made the rounds at conservative events. However, as Wolfe writes in his book, these “men in wrinkled, short-sleeve golf shirts, sitting plump in their seats” are yesterday’s Christians who embody an ineffective boomer approach to taking over the United States for Jesus.

In their place, a group of young pastors hope to spearhead a Christian nationalist glow-up as as they eagerly await a “Christian prince” to rule America.

These often bearded thirty- and fortysomethings have suits that actually fit. They are extremely online, constantly posting on myriad platforms, broadcasting their YouTube shows from mancaves, and convening an endless stream of conferences for like-minded followers.

Let’s call them, as one scholar said, the TheoBros. So, to understand JD Vance, you've got to get to know the TheoBros.

Find Kiera's full report on the web of Vance and the TheoBros here

#ChristianNationalism #Influencers #JDVance #TheoBros

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