Thinking about five faith-voter takeaways from news about the 2023 election results

Voters across the country cast ballots to elect a governor in Kentucky, decide legislative control in Virginia and determine whether the Ohio state constitution should be changed to enshrine the right to have an abortion.

These were all races and issues that faith voters cared about, even though off-year elections get less attention in the U.S. than presidential and midterm congressional ones. Nonetheless, both Republicans and Democrats are using this week’s results to give them an inkling of trends that could affect next year’s races, including the 2024 presidential election.

The vote comes as former President Donald Trump has pulled ahead of President Joe Biden in five swing states with a year left until the election. When Biden won in 2020, he had pitched himself as the man who could defeat then-President Trump.

In the six battleground states where the 2024 election is likely to be decided, Biden only leads in Wisconsin, according to a new New York Times and Siena College poll. But the White House saw Tuesday’s results as a promising sign heading into next year.

Trump, who is mired in a series of criminal and civil court cases, is up in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Michigan — potential victories that would hand him the 270 electoral votes needed for him to return to the White House.

Despite the polling, it was a very good night for Democrats across several states and a number of issues, including the expansion of abortion rights in states Trump had previously won and that many religious conservatives saw as their home turf.

Here are five things we learned from this year’s results and what they mean to faith voters:

1. Abortion access in Ohio

Ohioans voted on a referendum to protect abortion access until 23 weeks of pregnancy. The ballot measure in Ohio, a red state, was approved — marking the seventh straight victory for abortion rights in state referendums since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Ohio was the only state to consider a statewide abortion rights question this election cycle.

Book bans: Are these fights about a Christian nationalist plot or something else entirely?

Ever since the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted takeover of the U.S. Capitol, journalists have been trying to find some kind of national nexus for “White Christian nationalism.”

The term, which I’m putting in quotes because its meaning is all over the map, needed a locale.

About two months ago, national media thought they had one: tiny Bonners Ferry, Idaho, where there was a dust-up between a local library and a cadre of locals who wanted certain books banned. That the locale was — in the popular imagination — is Ground Zero for conservative crazies, was no surprise.

A CNN story made the case for the book burners being newcomers with an agenda:

And who are these newcomers she speaks of? Well, we reached out to a number of the people pushing the recall and demanding that books be banned. None of them would talk to us.
But they have made their feelings known at library board meetings. “Things need to change,” one man told the board at a meeting in late August. “Otherwise, you bring curses upon yourselves. Period. From the Most High.”

Definitely a religion angle there.

And at a meeting in July, Donna Capurso, a local realtor, said this: “My job is to protect our kids from sexual deviants, who will be drawn to our library if inappropriate sexual material is on our library shelves.” Capurso is an occasional contributor to a website called Redoubt News, which caters to a growing group here in northern Idaho of self-described, “God-Fearing, Liberty-Loving Patriots.”
“The American Redoubt” is a term coined in 2011 by a Christian survivalist. The idea is that Christian patriots should retreat here from modern America to live their truth and defend themselves. The Redoubt is a large chunk of land encompassing all of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming as well as eastern slivers of Washington and Oregon.

What’s curious now is that the right-wing banned books movement (as opposed to Big Tech leaders who fight the sales of conservative books) has spread around the country — with some extra PR poured on the flames during the recent Banned Books Week.