{"id":960,"date":"2008-12-19T23:35:29","date_gmt":"2008-12-20T07:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=960"},"modified":"2008-12-19T23:38:44","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T07:38:44","slug":"the-duly-elected-representatives-of-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-duly-elected-representatives-of-the-people\/","title":{"rendered":"The duly elected representatives of the people"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum<\/a> points me to some interesting data from the Pew Forum On Religion & Public Life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"blog_pew_111th_congress_religion\"<\/p>\n

Here’s some specific denominational breakdowns….<\/p>\n

\"rel1\"<\/p>\n

And by party….<\/p>\n

\"rel2\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Remember that the Congressional Black Caucus is Democratic, and mostly Protestant. \u00a0So white Protestants are probably on the order of 30% of the congressional delegation. \u00a0Some of the differences between the general population and Congress are easy to explain; Jews are relatively high SES and those who run for Congress are high SES. \u00a0Similarly, mainine Protestant groups such as Episcopalians have historically been high SES, and likewise they are overrepresented in Congress. Mormon representation is always assured because of geographic concentration. \u00a0As Kevin observed, while 16.1% of Americans are not affiliated with a religion, no one in Congress will assent to this. \u00a0There is an atheist in Congress, Peter Stark<\/a>. But he is a Unitarian-Universalist, so he is affiliated with a religion, albeit a non-creedal one.<\/p>\n

Peter Stark’s case highlights the likelihood of what is going on, there are almost certainly other “cryptic atheists” in Congress, who take advantage of the conventional assumption by Americans that affiliation with a religion\u00a0connotes \u00a0theism. \u00a0Let’s look at the Pew data<\/a> on confidence in the existence of God by religious tradition:<\/p>\n

\"godtradition\"<\/p>\n

It seems very likely that many of the Jews in Congress are culturally and not religiously identified. A quick & dirty check in the GSS suggests that Jewish confidence in the existence of God tends to decrease with education.<\/p>\n

And now let’s look at confidence in existence of God by Protestant denomination:\"godprot\"<\/p>\n

I assume that a far higher proportion of those affiliated with mainline Protestant churches are theists than is the case among Jews. There is a structural emphasis on creed in Protestantism which is less prominent in Judaism. But, there are many more mainline Protestants than Jews in Congress, so it is likely that the majority of the cryptic athiests or agnostics are found within this group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum points me to some interesting data from the Pew Forum On Religion & Public Life. Here’s some specific denominational breakdowns….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[139,54,138],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":969,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions\/969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}