The Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.
Vance does not explicitly mention Project 2025 in his foreword. He does, however, make clear that he is extremely close with Roberts [Kevin Roberts has been president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation since 2021 and is the architect of Project 2025] and that he sees him as a strong ally in a shared political project. The foreword opens with the parallels in their biographies: Both are from poor families and had difficult childhoods, both are Catholic, and both are now working in Washington, D.C., to remake the country. Over the three-page foreword, Vance singles out Roberts in the areas where the two most strongly align politically. First, he praises Roberts for his willingness to criticize corporations and break with the GOP’s free-market orthodoxy; then, for his strong emphasis on the family. “Roberts is articulating a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics,” Vance writes, by “recognizing that virtue and material progress go hand in hand.”
I don’t know that that’s an operational definition of Christianity. It seems to me that a great many people who don’t seem familiar with love or forgiveness, but who seen intimately familiar with avarice and greed, self-identify as Christians. You can say that they’re not, but I don’t think that’s how religion usually works.