Communion by JD Vance review – a strange, poignant book about faith and the modern world

JD Vance’s Christian vision is thoughtful – but impossible to square with the political company he keepsAt the heart of this strange, perhaps rather poignant, book is the biblical question: “What must I do to be saved?” Not in the crude sense of how to secure a place in heaven, but as an urgent challenge to a whole repertoire of destructive assumptions and habits endorsed by the majority culture. Vance’s famous first book, Hillbilly Elegy, chronicled, among other things, the impact of substance abuse on generations of the rural poor. It is not too much of a stretch to see this book as a vision of the modern west through the lens of addiction and its generational effects. Except, this time, it is the norms and expectations of elite modernity that are as lethal for the ambitious young professional as fentanyl is for the less privileged.Vance offers a diagnosis that is not particularly original, but derives its force from the intensity of the personal questioning he undertook to