North Dakota State Rep. Brandon Prichard is an unabashed Christian nationalist who wants to see, among other things, his fellow state legislators “put into code that Jesus Christ is King and dedicate their state to Him.”
Give this outlook, it is no surprise to see that Prichard is outraged that voters in Ohio approved a constitutional amendment yesterday that protects reproductive rights.
In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, many states moved to severely restrict or completely outlaw access to abortion, while other states took steps to protect access to reproductive healthcare. In Ohio, reproductive rights advocates moved to amend the state constitution to protect abortion rights by placing the issue before voters in yesterday’s election.
Aware that they would likely lose if the issue was left to the voters, Ohio Republicans and their allies sought to game the state’s election system by breaking their own rules to call an earlier election in August for a referendum that would have made it harder for Ohio voters to amend the constitution in the November election. That effort failed and on Tuesday, voters overwhelmingly chose to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution.
In the wake of the election, Prichard posted a tweet urging the government in Ohio to simply “ignore the results of the election” because “direct democracy should not exist.”
In this case, “direct democracy,” as Prichard snidely termed it, simply means “voting.”
Citizens of Ohio went to the polls in a legitimate election and, by a wide majority, voted to amend the state constitution to protect reproductive rights. That is how elections work. But because this result conflicts with Prichard’s far-right political agenda, he is openly calling for the will of the people to be ignored so that his own Christian nationalist worldview can be imposed on the voters.
This type of authoritarianism is a core component of Christian nationalism, as its proponents seek not to participate as equal members of a diverse political society but rather to gain control of the levers of political and cultural power and then use those positions to impose their religious worldview on the nation.
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