Interest in ‘Ordo Amoris’ Surges to All-Time High After JD Vance Interview

Searches for “ordo amoris” have surged after an interview in which Vice President J.D. Vance advised Americans to research the term in connection with immigration policy.

The term, first used by the early Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo and later developed by the German philosopher Max Scheler, suggested an approach for prioritizing relationships. Vance referenced it in a Jan. 29 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, saying:

“There’s this old school — and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way, you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and your own country. And then, after that, you can … prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country. They care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society. And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is a simple concept: America First. It doesn’t mean that you hate anybody else. It means that you have leadership … that puts the interests of American citizens first.

Jack Posobiec highlighted the quote on X, prompting Yale Professor Rory Stewart to opine in a tweet, “A bizarre take on John 15:12-13. Less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love.”

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Vance responded to Stewart in a Jan. 30 comment. “Just Google ‘ordo amoris,'” he advised. “Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?”

As of Sunday, Google Search Trends showed interest in the term from its users had reached an all-time high, achieving a maximum score of 100 — more than 30 times higher than the last time it surged in July 2007, when it peaked at a score of 3. (Google does not report raw search volume, but instead uses the 1-100 scale as a measure of relative interest over time.)

Google Search Trends indicated that interest in Max Scheler had also risen to a level higher than at least any other point in the last year. It was not yet providing an estimate for more extended periods of time.

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Social-media users, meanwhile, began widely sharing an associated image from a 2019 study led by Northwestern University Professor Adam Waytz and published in the journal Nature, which found “core psychological differences” in the way conservatives express compassion compared to liberals. Specifically, the study found liberals expressed “greater moral concern toward friends relative to family,” as well as more concern for “the world relative to the nation.”

Waytz and his co-authors expressed their findings using a heat map illustrating how each group valued people and things ranging from their immediate family to “all natural things in the universe, including inert entities such as rocks.”

Advocates of immigration-law enforcement have long used the image to explain ideological differences on immigration policy, a phenomenon that increased in the aftermath of Vance’s comments.

The rise of interest in ordo amoris elicited amusement among those already familiar with the concept. “Is ordo amoris going to trend now? I love this timeline,” Rachel Bovard wrote in a message on X. Mark Hemingway wrote in a separate post on the platform, “J.D. Vance is right on the theological merits, but even if he wasn’t—he’s just rope-a-doped a bunch of people into stating that concern for illegal immigrants should compete with your family’s needs.”

You can watch the Vance-Hannity interview that sparked the dialogue on ordo amoris above.