A former vice presidential candidate in the 2024 presidential election has been baptized as a Christian after more than a decade of practicing Judaism.
In a post on X Tuesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vice presidential running mate for their independent campaign, attorney Nicole Shanahan, announced that she had been baptized as a Christian.
While Kennedy dropped out of the race and endorsed President Donald Trump in 2024, the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket still appeared on the ballot in several states and ultimately won more than 750,000 votes nationwide. This amounts to roughly 0.5% of the national popular vote total.
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Shanahan’s X post, titled “My Baptism Story,” recalls how one night in January, she “felt a heaviness settle over me, thick and suffocating, like the air before a storm” after waking up in the middle of the night to calm her young daughter who had experienced a “night terror.”
Shanahan — a 39-year-old patent attorney, Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur and ex-wife of Google founder Sergey Brin — detailed how the “heaviness” that engulfed her “pressed against my chest, not like a weight, but like a presence — something unseen yet undeniable.”
“At that moment, I could only think to bow my head, close my eyes, and offer a silent prayer to God,” she wrote.
Her journey into Christianity began four months earlier, in September 2024, after her family suffered a “heart-wrenching loss,” she said, declining to “speak about [it] in detail.” Shanahan encountered “a deeply faithful soul who helped guide me closer to Jesus” and “prayed with me after my loss.”
Shanahan met the woman, whom she identified as Diane Robinson, through her masseuse after she had asked the devout Christian massage therapist if he knew “anyone who can help keep ‘bad energy’ away from people.” She reached out to Robinson the morning after she experienced the burst of “heaviness,” telling her she wanted to get baptized.
The baptism was conducted by Robinson and her husband, Peter, in Shanahan’s backyard in Atherton, California, on Jan. 19, the day before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Both Robinsons had the words “bishop” and “apostle” listed under their names on Shanahan’s baptismal certificate, which she shared a picture of.
“During that meeting, Diane opened her worn and well-loved Bible — filled with highlights, underlines, and Post-it tabs. A book that had been studied and prayed over thousands of times. She moved through it with laser precision, guiding me to verse after verse as I struggled to read through my blurry tear-filled eyes,” Shanahan stated.
“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.”
While she’s always “believed in God,” Shanahan said that she never “fully grasped the reality of the devil.”
“Growing up with a father who seemed overcome by his demons, I try to avoid ‘bad energy,'” she said. “He was addicted to alcohol and would fall into manic rages, yelling profanities at the wall. He would scream, laugh, cry, and wail all in a single evening, alone downstairs in our home in Oakland. I was taught that my father was a ‘sick’ person, but I never seriously considered whether demons were real — until recently.”
Shanahan’s experience with running for office changed her perspective on life.
“Learning just how far some will go to inflict atrocities on innocent Americans has shocked me awake,” she wrote. “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,” she continued. “But anyone who has seen addiction up close 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.”
Stressing that demons “certainly exist,” she called Jesus “our covenant with God to fight them.” Shanahan likened her embrace of Jesus to “being wrapped in a warm cocoon while becoming a grounded, weighted, immovable obelisk.”
Shanahan’s history of spiritual practices includes “meditative prayer” and converting to Judaism in 2014, she explained.
“Now, my prayers are directed toward Jesus. He is the bridge between us and heaven — our Intercessor before the Divine Creator,” she stated.
“With the New Testament in my hands, I see the world’s spiritual pain in a way I never could before,” she asserted. “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’s post included a picture of her and her husband, Jacob, fully immersed in a swimming pool, along with the couple who baptized them. She delivered a message to “those who are searching, who feel the same longing I once did,” telling them to “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 vowed.
The final sentence of Shanahan’s post is a sentence reading “Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, in vanum laboraveunt qui aedificant eam,” which translates to “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
