AP ImagesNicole Shanahan Nicole Shanahan, the former running mate of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced last week that she was baptized in January after “accepting Jesus as [her] Savior.”
After years of searching for peace through Eastern religions, personal-development programs, and even Judaism, the 39-year-old wrote on X last Tuesday:
When I said “yes” to accepting Jesus as my Savior, I felt something I could hardly put into words. It was like being wrapped in a warm cocoon while becoming a grounded, weighted, immovable obelisk.
Sensing Spiritual Warfare
According to Shanahan, her decision to accept Christ was the result of both external events and the prayers of faithful Christians.
Those external events included what she called “a heart-wrenching loss” her family suffered in September and her experience as a major financial backer of Kennedy’s presidential campaign and, ultimately, his running mate. Shanahan declined to elaborate on the family tragedy for the time being. But she was very clear about how her political experience — a campaign in which the Democratic Party employed every dirty trick in the book to keep Kennedy off the ballot and the media continued lying about the MAGA movement — helped lead her to Christ:
Learning just how far some will go to inflict atrocities on innocent Americans has shocked me awake. Other unexplainable events have also forced me to reconsider whether we are waging a war not merely with flesh and blood but with spiritual forces.
Many people shy away from acknowledging the reality of spiritual warfare. But anyone who has seen addiction up close [Shanahan’s father was an alcoholic] or lived through deep trauma and witnessed how evil takes hold in this world knows that the battle of good versus evil isn’t just theoretical — it’s real and all around us.
Demons certainly exist, and Jesus is our covenant with God to fight them.
Masseur Appeal
After her 2023 divorce from her second husband, Shanahan began getting massages from a “Mayan-Mexican immigrant” named Ade, she recounted. Worried because she was “thin, fragile, totally worn down, and in anguish,” Ade, a Christian, quietly prayed for her during their sessions, not telling her about the prayers until “months later.”
“One day,” she penned,
it finally hit me that his prayers were doing more to heal me than the deep tissue massage ever could. As we were wrapping a session, I asked, “Hey Ade, do you know anyone who can help keep ‘bad energy’ away from people? Basically an exorcism.” Ade looked at me, paused, and simply said, “Yes — when you are ready.”
In the weeks following our family’s loss, I saw Ade again, and as he had so many times before, he prayed for me. But this time was different. I bowed my head, let the tears fall, and begged God’s help.
Kindred Soul-winner
Seeing that Shanahan was ready, Ade put her in touch with a fellow Christian named Diane. A septuagenarian grandmother, Diane is also the lead chaplain of the country’s fifth-largest jail. They met the next day, January 19.
It helped that Diane “is a woman of mixed race from Oakland,” she noted. Shanahan hails from the same city and is of German, Irish, and Chinese descent. More importantly, Diane is “a deeply faithful soul who helped guide me closer to Jesus,” Shanahan wrote.
Shanahan recalled that Diane led her through “verse after verse” in her (Diane’s) “worn and well-loved Bible” with “laser precision.” The outcome:
The pain of life sometimes can consume your entire reality, and the injustice, the loss, and the extreme nature of it all can feel genuinely unbearable. The weight of the world, perpetuated by greed, lies, and indifference, can often feel hopeless. Diane looked at me and said with absolute certainty that Jesus could save me — that His blood is able to wash away sins and defeat the darkness that haunts the innocent.
I think it took the pain of that moment, the desperate need for hope, and the unwavering intensity in Diane’s eyes to finally break through the last, most stubborn skeptic in me. When Diane asked if I wanted to be baptized, I didn’t hesitate — I said yes.
Jew for Jesus
Shanahan was, of course, well-acquainted with the concept of a Messiah, having converted to Judaism in 2014 while engaged to her first husband, a Jew. Not wanting to make a fleeting, emotional decision to convert, she spent a year studying at a San Francisco synagogue. And she “wrote a ten-page conversion statement,” which she described as “a deep dive into the Torah, guided by the wisdom of several teachers.”
Shanahan continued:
For over a decade, I identified as Jewish. But now, with the New Testament in my hands, I see the world’s spiritual pain in a way I never could before. It’s like a veil has been lifted, revealing a deeper understanding of the struggle between light and darkness.
Today, I am a Jew for Jesus.
Shanahan offered these words of encouragement:
For those who are searching, who feel the same longing I once did, I can only say this: keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Faith is not about having all the answers but about trusting in the One who does. And when you find Him, you will know you are finally home.
She closed with the Latin translation of Psalm 127:1:
Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
