JD Vance Wants Love to Stay in Line — But Love Refuses

Vance fundamentally misrepresents “ordo amoris.” The Gospel calls for radical love, not a chain of command.

JD Vance recently got folks talking about love — the right kind of love, in the right order, according to the right priorities. Ordo amoris, he called it. A structured, sensible way of keeping love in its place, like arranging books on a shelf: God, family, country. Somewhere down the line, if there’s room, Vance might get to those pushed to the edges of society — often by policies he endorses.

People like to think love is soft, like a fuzzy blanket or a Hallmark movie. But real love? Holy love? Holy love makes a scene. Holy love turns over tables, gets arrested, and doesn’t know when to shut up. Holy love doesn’t wait for permission.

If you’ve ever been to a wedding, you’ve probably heard Paul’s famous words from 1 Corinthians 13: Love is patient, love is kind. It’s one of those passages that people slap onto decorative throw pillows. But in its original context, it was anything but sentimental. Paul wasn’t talking about romance. He was talking to a church community that was a hot mess — bickering, jealous, power-hungry. And what did he tell them?

That love is the most powerful thing we have. That nothing else matters if we do not have love. Not power. Not knowledge. Not even faith.

Love That Risks Everything

The Latin word for love, caritas, is where we get “charity.” But before you start thinking about Christmas donation drives and feel-good fundraisers, understand that caritas isn’t just generosity — it’s self-giving, take-the-shirt-off-your-back, invite-the-outcast-to-dinner kind of love. It’s the love that got Jesus killed.

Paul was writing about a love that kneels down in the dirt with the despised. A love that flips the script. A love that makes the powerful nervous.

Because love — real love — does not comfort the comfortable. Love does not reinforce what is already known. Love does not say, “Stay where you are, it is enough.”

Nope.

Love moves. Love agitates. Love upends.

And love — especially when it shows up as mercy — is often met with outrage.

When Mercy Becomes Controversial

A few weeks ago, Bishop Mariann Budde stood at the pulpit of the National Cathedral and preached about mercy. She spoke about the dangers of contempt, about how leaders stir up hatred, pit people against each other, and mock the idea that kindness has any place in public life. Then she ended with this plea:

“Mr. President, in the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”

You’d think she had cursed in church.

The backlash was swift and furious. Trump called her “nasty.” His allies condemned her sermon as “distorted.” This reaction reveals a deep truth: Mercy is dangerous for those whose only understanding of grace is transactional. If love is a commodity, something to be earned, then extending it freely — especially to those deemed unworthy — is a direct threat to the structures of dominance and subjugation that uphold their power. Because, for people who believe in an economy of punishment, mercy is a threat. For those who crave hierarchy, radical equality feels like an attack.

Read my reflection for Broadview Magazine on the backlash to Bishop Budde’s words.

When people talk about ordo amoris, about loving in the right order, they’re not wrong. Of course, we care for our families, our communities. But love isn’t some tidy, hierarchical to-do list where you check off the people closest to you before considering the rest of the world. Love, when it’s holy, when it’s worth a damn, moves outward. It refuses to stop at borders or political convenience.

And this is what Vance doesn’t get. He wants to talk about prioritizing those nearest to us, but he skips over the part where the places most in need right now — places desperate for care, for stability — are in crisis precisely because powerful nations like the United States have spent centuries treating them like a buffet to be raided. And now, after generations of taking and taking, the U.S. is cutting what little aid it was offering, as if to say, Well, that’s not our problem anymore.

But love doesn’t work that way. Love sees what’s broken and says, Okay, let’s roll up our sleeves. Let’s fix this.

Love, when it’s rightly ordered, always leads us back to each other.

What Love Demands

When love calls us to stand up for justice, it is almost never convenient. It is uncomfortable. It is awkward. It is tempting to say:

“But I am just one person….”

“But what can I do?”

“But this isn’t my fight.”

Love does not let us off the hook.

Love gets in the way of danger.

Love makes itself public.

Love as Resistance

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who stood against the Nazis, once wrote:

“We are not simply to bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice. We are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

It is one thing to tend to the broken. That, too, is love. But Bonhoeffer knew that mercy is not enough if we do not challenge the systems that necessitate mercy in the first place.

Love is not only helping those crushed by the machine — it is also daring to stop the machine itself.

Many churches in Bonhoeffer’s time kept quiet, choosing survival over faithfulness. And we are not so far removed from that moment in history. Here we are:

• When politicians openly call for mass deportations,
• When trans rights are being stripped away state by state,
• When migrants die at national borders
• When white Christian nationalism rises unchecked.

Are we just bandaging wounds, or are we willing to put a spoke in the wheel?

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

The world will tell us that love is not enough. That love is weak. That love will not change anything.

But they are wrong.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Holy love drives a spoke into the wheel and builds sanctuary in a time of exile. Holy love refuses to be neat, polite, and convenient.

Because the kind of love that changes the world? It doesn’t check the rulebook first. It jumps the fence and crashes the party.

Indeed, faith, hope, and love remain.

And the greatest of these is love.

Hi! 👋🏼 I’m Rev. Bri-anne.

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