Sadly, the lack of representation of the nonreligious in Congress remains a problem in the newly convened 119th session.
A whopping 95 percent of lawmakers identify with a religious faith, 87 percent of them with Christianity — with only one self-identified as a humanist and three as “unaffiliated.”
“This overrepresentation by Christians and gross underrepresentation of atheists, agnostics and ‘nothing in particulars’ shows that we desperately need a separation between politics and church,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.
“The religiously unaffiliated are the single largest ‘denomination’ by religious identification, so it’s shocking that we make up less than 1 percent of Congress,” Gaylor adds. “It’s to the detriment of secular social policies that our views are not reflected.”
Religiously unaffiliated “Nones” today make up 28 percent of U.S. adults or nearly three in 10. Pew Research Center points out that while Christians make up 62 percent of all U.S. adults, federal lawmakers still overwhelmingly identify as belonging to that particular faith. The number of adult Americans identifying as Christian has dropped precipitously from the early 1960s, when nine in 10 were Christian.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation welcomes the addition of three religiously unaffiliated members of the House: incoming Reps. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., Emily Randall, D-Wash., and Abraham Hamadeh, R-Ariz. That self-identified “humanist” is, of course, Rep. Jared Huffman, co-founder of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, who is now the ranking Democrat on the House Interior Committee and a founder of the Stop Project 2025 House task force.
Pew statistics show that of the 461 Christians in the 199th Congress, 55 percent, or 295, are Protestant, compared to 40 percent of Protestants in the general population. Of these, Baptists make up 75 members, or 14 percent, of Congress, gaining eight seats since the 118th session. Only 11 percent of the U.S. population is Baptist.
Likewise, Catholics, at 20 percent of the population, are overrepresented in Congress at 28 percent. Only 14 members of Congress, all Democrats according to CQ Roll Call, identify with non-Christian religions. Jews, at 2 percent of the population, represent 6 percent of Congress with 32 members. Mormons, representing 1 percent of the population, make up 1.7 percent of Congress. Hinduism (represented by four members), Islam (four members) and Buddhism (three members), each of which make up 1 percent of the general population, are represented in Congress in roughly the same proportions. Unitarian Universalists, who belong to a creedless society that may include believers and nonbelievers, but who Pew puts at “zero” percent of the population, boast three members of Congress.
Pew reports that nearly all Republicans in Congress (265 out of 270, or 98 percent) identify as Christian. By comparison, about 75 percent of Democrats are Christian. Christians are overrepresented even in the Democratic Party as compared to the general population.
We need a Congress that truly reflects the fast-changing religious demographic of the United States.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters across the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash
