Holy Smoke: Christianity, culture wars and J.D. Vance, a conversation with James Orr

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

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Summary

James Orr was living the life of a young, high-flying lawyer when, after a few drinks at a New Year's Eve party, he asked for signs that God existed. The signs came; among other things, he narrowly avoided a fatal skiing accident. Now he is a passionate Christian and a conservative culture warrior who helped defeat an attempt to impose the tyranny of critical race theory on Cambridge University, where he is an associate professor of the philosophy of religion.

He's also an intellectual mentor to the vice president of the United States; Politico describes him as 'J.D. Vance's English philosopher king'. Dr Orr says Vance is 'extremely articulate, but he takes no prisoners'. As you'll hear in his conversation with Damian Thompson, that's an observation that could easily apply to the man the vice president calls his 'British Sherpa'.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis and unrivaled books and arts reviews.
0:06.2	Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online,
0:11.5	along with a free £20 £10,000 or waitrose voucher.
0:15.0	Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:29.2	Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast.
0:31.3	I'm Damien Thompson.
0:45.6	James Orr was living the life of a young, high-flying lawyer when, after a few drinks at a New Year's Eve party, he asked for signs that God existed.
0:56.2	The signs came. Among other things, he narrowly avoided a fatal skiing accident. Now he is a passionate Christian and a conservative cultural warrior who helped defeat an attempt to impose the tyranny of critical race theory
1:01.6	on Cambridge University, where he's an associate professor of the philosophy of religion.
1:07.9	He's also an intellectual mentor to the vice president of the United States. Politico describes him as
1:14.7	J.D. Vance's English philosopher king. Dr. Orr says Vance is extremely articulate, but he takes no prisoners.
1:24.3	As you will hear in this episode of Holy Smoke, that's an observation that could easily apply to the man the vice president calls his British Sherpa.
1:34.7	James, it's great to have you on the podcast. Your thought is so rich and complex that I wonder if we could start with something relatively straightforward,
1:47.1	which is your conversion story. And I've been reading Justin Bruelly's website. And here's this
1:54.5	wonderful description. Having graduated and embarked on a promising career in law, James was
1:59.1	nevertheless asking himself existential questions.
2:01.6	On New Year's Eve 2002, he prayed a skeptical and he admits fairly drunken prayer,
2:08.6	asking God if he was there to reveal himself.
2:11.6	Remarkably from the very next morning, and over the following two months,
2:15.6	James had experienced a number of very specific and unusual answers to his prayers. I'd like to ask you about that, not least because
2:24.3	I used to drink a lot and stopped completely, and that was a very important part of my life
2:30.1	story. I'm not saying you anything like I was. But tell me what happened. You'd already,
	...

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