Jill Biden’s wife Jill says that her husband’s third bid for the presidency has had a surprising side benefit: It has renewed her faith in God.
The former Second Lady, 68, opened up on Tuesday about her struggles with religion after she and the former vice president, 76, lost their son Beau to cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. She was speaking at a fundraiser in Atlanta hosted by a local breast cancer physician, reflecting on a prayer service she recently attended.
“For the first time in a long time, I felt like there was a path to recovering my faith. For all the things I expected to find on this campaign, a pathway back to my faith was not one of them,” the former second lady said, adding how “grateful” she was for the opportunity to meet everyday Americans, regardless of whether they supported her husband.
“People like you show up to events like this because you know that this matters,” she said. “You keep believing with all your hearts that all of our voices matter. And we deserve the same values in our leaders.”
Jill Biden’s memoir, published shortly before her husband entered the 2020 race, Where The Light Enters: Building A Family, Discovering Myself , prepared the ground for a rediscovery of her faith. “Where I once felt that peace that surpasses understanding, I now feel hollow silence,” she wrote. “One day, I hope I can salvage my faith.”
At a book event Jill Biden in Washington, D.C., in May she was still working her “way back to religion, faith, and prayer” after the death of the couple’s eldest son four years ago.
Jill Biden, an English community college professor, was raised agnostic, but took classes when she was 15 so she could join Abington Presbyterian Church near her childhood home in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Joe, by contrast, grew up Roman Catholic. The pair regularly attends Sunday Mass in Wilmington, Delaware.
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