Religion News Service
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 11, 2006: (HPI note: This rather lengthy article is included in HPI for the informative snapshot it gives of the ever-changing American religious scene.)
The new US Congress will, for the first time, include a Muslim, two Buddhists, more Jews than Episcopalians, and the highest-ranking Mormon in congressional history. Roman Catholics remain the largest single faith group in Congress, accounting for 29 percent of all members of the House and Senate, followed by Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Jews and Episcopalians.
While Catholics in Congress are nearly 2-to-1 Democrats, the most lopsidedly Democratic groups are Jews and those not affiliated with any religion. Of the 43 Jewish members of Congress, there is only one Jewish Republican in the House and two in the Senate. The six religiously unaffiliated members of the House are all Democrats. The most Republican groups are the small band of Christian Scientists in the House (all five are Republican), and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (12 Republicans and three Democrats) — though the top-ranking Mormon in the history of Congress will be Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the incoming Democratic majority leader.
Baptists divide along partisan lines defined by race. Black Baptists, like all black members of Congress, are Democrats, while most white Baptists are Republicans. Notable exceptions include incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who will serve as president pro tem in the new Senate, making him third in succession to the presidency after the vice president and House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Albert Menendez, a writer and researcher, has been counting the religious affiliation of members of Congress since 1972. Menendez bases his count on how members of Congress identify themselves. When he did his first tally after the 1972 election, Congress was still much in the sway of a few mainline Christian faiths. At the time, just three mainline Protestant denominations — Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians — accounted for 43 percent of all members of Congress, including 51 senators. Come January, those three will account for just a fifth of Congress, including 32 senators. Still, all three — especially Episcopalians and Presbyterians — continue to be better represented on Capitol Hill than among the general population.
Evangelical Christians — a category that cuts across denominational lines — are underrepresented, according to Furman University political scientist James Guth, all the more so after this year’s defeat of Republican incumbents like Reps. John Hostettler of Indiana and Jim Ryun of Kansas.
But perhaps the most underrepresented group in Congress is the 14 percent of all American adults who, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by scholars at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, claim no religion at all. Only six members of Congress, all Democrats, identify themselves as religiously unaffiliated: Reps. John Tierney and John Olver of Massachusetts, Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Mark Udall of Colorado.
Meanwhile, Jews have continued to gain representation in Congress (8 percent in the new Congress) even as their share of the national population has waned (1.3 percent in 2001).
For Buddhists and Muslims, the 110th Congress represents their first congressional representation. The two Buddhist Democrats — Reps. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Hank Johnson of Georgia — both have avoided talking about their religion, saying it is an entirely private matter. A spokesman for Hirono, who came to Hawaii with her mother from Japan when she was 8, would only confirm that Hirono was raised in the tradition of her mother’s Jodo Shu Buddhism. A spokesman for Johnson would only confirm that he became a Buddhist some 30 years ago and is affiliated with Soka Gakkai International, an American Buddhist association. Like Johnson, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress, is a convert and African-American. Raised Catholic, he converted to Islam at age 19 while attending Wayne State University. “The election of this first Muslim is quite important symbolically,” said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. “It may very well be the harbinger of greater acceptance of Muslims in the future.”