“I don’t want to see any religious people in public office because they’re working for another boss.”—–Frank Zappa
The 114th Congress began session on Tuesday with the swearing in of the new 58 members of the House and the 13 new members of the Senate along with all those returning, 534 in all, less the one seat of the Convict Grimm of New York who resigned his seat after pleading guilty to tax evasion last week. Along with traditional welcoming of all the freshmen was the fanfare all the Congressional firsts. The 114th Congress has more women serving than any other previous at 104. Among them are the youngest woman to serve in Congress, the 30-year-old Elise Stefanik of New York and the first ever black woman Republican, Mia Love of Utah. Some 96 members of recognized racial minorities will be serving in this Congress, around 18%. In spite of all these noted records and the complexion of Congressional body being slightly more diverse than the last one, it still falls far short of the actual demographics of the nation.
And then there are the demographics of religious representation.
The 114th Congress is still very top heavy in terms of the number of professed Christians serving in it, in fact the Christian majority has increased by 1.4% over the 113th. Christians of various denominations now comprise 92.6% of House members and 88% of the Senate. The percent of American adults who identified themselves as Christian in 2013 was 73%. With few exceptions nearly every Christian denomination in the general population is overrepresented in this Congress. This also goes for the Jewish population. Sadly, there is no member of the 114th Congress who identifies as atheist or agnostic or who at least possesses the intestinal fortitude to admit to such publicly. These options comprise a sizable portion of the “Unaffiliated” category in the general population of the nation and seem to be trending upward with every new religious poll.
With a decided conservative Republican majority now in charge on Capitol Hill we can likely expect to see more policy decisions based on Christian doctrine. I do hope I am wrong but that said, not all of it would be a bad thing if so much of the message of the Gospels of the King James Version New Testament were not cherry picked to justify greed and intolerance as has been past tendencies. Many of these religious legislators were elected with the support of their fundamentalist base and are being counted on to deliver policy consistent with religious teachings. All eyes are on the GOP to produce results this session and many believe they can write their own ticket and in many areas that may be true. In doing so however they risk alienating that ever growing segment of the population who identify as “unaffiliated.” At 20% of the population, that isn’t enough voters to matter, yet. All the same it would behoove all our leaders who took their oath today and those who are already serving to remember that they put their left hand on a religious text, raised their right arm to a square and swore to uphold the Constitution, not the other way around!
Congratulations to all who swore that oath on Tuesday and I wish them all to have a collaborative and productive term!