Event: Faithby

Communion:Finding My Way Back to Faithby jd vanceharpercollins, 304 pages, $35 In the sixth book of his Confessions, St. Augustine relates a story about an encounter he had on the streets of Milan with a seriously intoxicated man. Augustine was being carried on a litter to witness a speech by the emperor, which he himself had composed. Mindful that his own career ambitions had brought him to this high point, he looked with disdain on the pathetic drunk. Then it hit him: Tomorrow morning that man will be sober, but I will still be drunk on worldly ambition. The episode proved to be a turning point on Augustine’s spiritual itinerary. I thought of this scene often as I read through JD Vance’s spiritual autobiography, for the story he is telling has a fundamentally Augustinian arc. Like the great African Church Father, JD Vance is a man from the backwoods, far from the centers of power. Anyone who has read the first installment of his autobiography Hillbilly Elegy knows how his early years were marked by economic instability, lots of family dysfunction, and little prospect of rising in the world. But also like Augustine, this kid from the provinces possessed a fierce ambition to find success. And so, he made his way out of hillbilly country to the military, then to great achievement at Ohio State University, and finally to triumph at Yale Law School. And then came the moment of Augustinian perception: Though his lust for success had brought him to the heights, he realized he didn’t particularly like the law and certainly didn’t want to practice it. He was a success addict, or rather, an approval addict, and his heart was still utterly restless. It was this emptiness that opened him to a reconsideration of the Christianity of his…