New Congress displays America’s religious diversity

Posted: 1/05/07

New Congress displays America’s religious diversity

By Jonathan Tilove

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The new 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 all are 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 African-American 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.

Because 2006 was such a good year for Democrats, they have regained their commanding advantage among Catholics, which had slipped during an era of GOP dominance. In Pennsylvania alone, five new Democrats, all Catholics, were elected to Congress in November, including Bob Casey, who defeated Sen. Rick Santorum, a far more conservative Catholic.

In the new Congress, two-thirds of all Catholic members will be Democrats. By contrast, after big Republican gains in 1994, 44 percent of Catholic members of Congress were Republican, noted Albert Menendez, a writer and researcher who has been counting the religious affiliation of members of Congress since 1972.

“It’s a thankless task, but somebody’s got to do it,” said Menendez, 64, who lives in North Potomac, Md., and has published his counts and analysis first with Americans United for Separation of Church and State and more recently in Voice of Reason, the newsletter of Americans for Religious Liberty.

Menendez bases his count on how members of Congress identify themselves. When he did his first tally after the 1972 election, Congress still was much in the sway of a few mainline Christian faiths.

At the time, three mainline Protestant denominations—Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians—accounted for 43 percent of all members of Congress, including 51 senators.

As this Congress convenes, 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.

Through it all, Lutherans have maintained. Menendez said they were underrepresented relative to their population in 1972, with 16 members of Congress, and remain underrepresented today with 17. While their total numbers have held steady, their political allegiance has flipped from 2-to-1 Republican to 2-to-1 Democrat.

Evangelical Christians—a category that cuts across denominational lines—are even more underrepresented, said 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.

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).

But Jewish numbers in Congress also tend to fluctuate with Democratic fortunes. In a year in which Democrats did well in unexpected places, new Jewish members of Congress were elected from Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona and New Hampshire, as well as more familiar terrain like Florida and Wisconsin.