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5 facts about the religious makeup of the 116th Congress pewrsr.ch/2BZWI8X
1: "The religious composition of the new Congress is very different from that of the U.S. adult population."
2: "While Congress remains overwhelmingly Christian, the number of non-Christian members has risen to 63."
3: "The largest change in the new Congress comes in the “unspecified/other” Protestant category, which gained 16 seats."
4: "There are fewer Christians in the incoming freshman class than there are among incumbents."
5: "Both chambers of Congress have roughly similar shares of Christians and non-Christians."
Good information from Pew Research Center.
If you look at the charts, you can see that almost all the religious diversity is among Democrats, the notable exception is that almost all LDS (Mormons) are GOP.
This points toward something I've been talking about for years -- the Dems need to figure out a moral & spiritual civic language that articulates this diversity + openness that includes unaffiliated Americans.
Speaking "religion" in politics is NOT -- for Dems at least -- outreach to evangelicals. That's pretty much a failed strategy. This data, combined with general demographic data, proves the old saw "how do Dems appeal to evangelicals" is past its expiration date.
An emerging civic spiritual vocabulary needs to take account of this tweet:
While the Bible can still be a significant part of the wisdom texts that inform, shape civic faith, its language and moral insights need be in conversation with these other texts.
