Catholicism

Even Vance’s relatively recent conversion to Catholicism is tied up in this.

Under Document 19, five “official” religions—Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism—were permitted, but only through tightly controlled state associations.

Catholicism is the faith I was baptized in, the one I embraced as a teen and that’s the bedrock for my moral code of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

In the novel, Jake often questions his Catholicism but still enters churches when the weight of the world catches up with him.

His journey — from a nominal Protestant upbringing through atheism, to converting to Catholicism in 2019 — and frequent appeals to “Christian values” position him firmly with the GOP’s religious-right base.