Congress is more Christian and religious than the general public | Hacker News Reader

Congress is more Christian and religious than the general public

axios.com

35 pointsgmays41 comments

This is one case where self-reported figures clearly aren't trustworthy. Politicians would claim that they worship a dog turd on the side of the road if they think it would help them get elected.

Yes, that's it exactly. There has never been an atheist president, because people wouldn't vote for them. Politicians have to at least pretend to be Christian, because it gets them more votes. Apparently polls show people would sooner vote for a Muslim than an atheist, which I'm not sure that I believe.

>which I'm not sure that I believe.

It may seem where when you look at it from the inside, but looking at it from the outside it's like watching two casinos arguing who has best odds on their slots. Both groups have a huge shared culture and set of behaviors and end up arguing about minutia. Like fanboys in any culture, if you're on the inside, you'll be completely unable to see this.

Atheism, on the other hand, would be like saying that both casinos are a ripoff and you're not going to win anything by going to either one of them. Anyone that has bought into gambling is going to be very unhappy to hear you say that.

Which is likely a point of the article....

And if the majority of their constituents wanted a politician that worshipped a dog turd, I'd hope that they'd at least go through the motions!

> Less than 4% of Congress members say they're unaffiliated with religion or don't know. PRRI's survey says nearly 27% of the general public is unaffiliated.

THIS is the biggest disparity in the article. Not that X or Y faith or under or over represented, but that almost a full 1/3 of the country is non-religious, yet less than 5% of Congress matches that view point.

We need more openly atheist leaders.

We need leaders who lead. If they are openly anything, that should be incidental. I don't care if they are or are not openly atheist. It is irrelevant to have people who are openly atheists just for the sake of them being openly atheists or for the sake of saying that there is some proportion that is directly uniform or 1:1 with what you expect more broadly.

Adult general public.

What percentage of Americans have cheated on their partners? What percentage of elected officials openly declare they have cheated on their partners?

Openly being Atheist isn't going to bring you many extra votes, but it sure as hell is going to lose you some. There isn't a big atheist bloc who will refuse to vote for a milquetoast christian

Atheist as in "does not believe in any supernatural creator", fine. Atheist as in "has replaced $god with some gnostic belief system", no thanks. I do not believe in any gods but I actively disbelief in living human beings who claim to have secret knowledge of how the world came to be as it is and what needs to be done to rid ourselves of the yoke of the past so we can become like gods [1]. At least ancient @gods [2] do not have incentives to twist the narrative towards their own personal gain like living and breathing 'leaders' do.

[1] https://cynicaltheories.com/ contains a good overview of many of these "theorists" and "theories"

[1] Perl is the language of the @gods

Of course it is, because Republicans are overrepresented as a result of gerrymandering. It's also whiter, older, richer, more male, more straight/cis, etc., though this is less a Republican/gerrymandering problem and more a campaign finance/political culture problem.

Democrats in Congress are also more Christian and religious than the average American, or the average Democratic voter.

I am dubious of that explanation, because President Biden, the most prominent Democrat, self-identifies as Catholic. His office is un-affected by gerrymandering in the way that Congress would be.

Pelosi, now retired but an incredibly prominent Democrat, also self-idenfitied as Catholic. This was in one of the most openly hostile states towards Christians in the union. If there is one state where you would probably see an atheist bump, this would have been it.

This doesn't seem like something that gerrymandering or "those backwards bible-thumping GOP hicks" can explain away.

Yes and no. These are politicians who constantly use rhetoric about "reaching across the aisle" and courting votes from moderate Republicans. It tracks with all available information that the strategy is "more people will vote against you for being atheist, than being a Christian". Whether this is part of courting the GOP vote or not is unclear.

> His office is un-affected by gerrymandering in the way that Congress would be.

U.S. Presidents are elected by the electoral college, which is distorted from directly proportional representation of the overall national population.

For example, California has 55 electors for the president, over 18 times as many as Wyoming. But California has 67 times as many people living within its borders. Less-populous states are over-represented in the selection of the president.

It’s not really “gerrymandering” because state borders are mostly historical accidents rather than intentional electoral distortion. But intentional or not, there is distortion.

The issue isn't gerrymandering and votes (at least in this context), it's money and age. Politicians trump up their bible-thumping credentials because campaign donors are disproportionately old and old people are disproportionately religious, even in CA. I mean old people also vote more often but it's really the money that does the talking.

Given the state of politics in the US, this isn't much of a surprise. But it's also not a surprise mathematically.

In a nation where plurality voting is widespread, we could expect a 60% majority (the Christian population) to win 100% of the elections. The fact that we have any elected non-Christians is perhaps the unlikely part of this story... (surely due, in part, to an uneven distribution of religious representation across regions)

> In a nation where plurality voting is widespread, we could expect a 60% majority (the Christian population) to win 100% of the elections.

Only if the population was homogenously distributed (or all elections were in a single. at-large district) and the identity at issue was the central and decisive issue for every election.

Weird clickbait given that christians aren't even overrepresented by a factor of 2 in that link and Jewish people are overrepresented by a factor of over 3.

Considering that more than 50% of the general public are Christian, be overrepresented by a factor of two is a mathematical impossibility currently.

Yes, the much higher Christian population means it is inherently less egregious if your goal is to be outraged by proportion.

Do you get it?

I'm among the 26.8% (according to the article) of unaffiliated/non-believers. But I have only 3.7% representation. Christians are 65.4% of the general population but 90% of congress. Do you get it?

You have representation. Most of those congress critters are just lying about their affiliation anyhow.

The US isn't even close to the laws imposed by any even vaguely religious country like Iran or even Isr*l.

They might be lying about their true beliefs, but to uphold the ruse that they are Christian, will tend to vote in a way that preserves the ruse, and thus won't represent me as much as they otherwise would.

Second, please don't be pedantic about whether I have representation at all, unless you prefer everyone to fully qualify every statement to prevent pedantic responses. I thought it was pretty clear that I meant my in-group is underrepresented, and not that I literally don't have any representation in congress, nor that such representatives don't often vote in ways that align with my own interests.

Great way to fail statistics class to the point that your entire comment is highly suspect.

Going from 2% to 6% it a tiny number, going from 60% to 90% is a huge number.

That's quite possibly one of the most absurd comments you could have made.

In a majority voting population going from 2 people to 6 people out of 100 rarely tips the odds in one favor. Going from 60 to 90 people, well you can see that would give you a super majority.

Jewish people have wildly outsize influence, denying this is absurd.

Unaffiliated is 4% vs 25%, I don’t think it’s clickbaity to say that they are “more religious” because if that.

However, the article doesn’t mention how many congress members are religious “out of convenience”, in order to gain votes entirely, and not because they really believe in what they say they believe in.

Do these numbers seem way too high, or is it just me? 90% of congress is Christian? 64% of the public is Christian? Really?

There's a large number of the public who identify as Christian but who don't really attend church.

There's certainly room to talk about who the true Scotsmen are.

I once heard a quip during the 2016 primary that "evangelicals" are self-identified Christians who skip church to watch NASCAR - making the point that there's a sense of cultural Christianity, a sense of actual Christian practice, and perhaps also a sense of vague theism that has a Christian lean to it (some scholars call this Moralistic Therapeutic Deism).

Something like 30%-40% of Americans attend church in a regular manner (weekly, monthly, etc). 55% say they pray every day. Only about 13% of Evangelicals give 10% of their income away[1]. 40% are creationist, and another 33% fuse evolution and creationism[2].

These are markers that help you feel out what an actual number might be, though any evangelical preacher will tell you that it's not self-identification or any particular action that would save you (and thus make you a true Christian).

[1]: https://www.christianpost.com/news/only-13-of-evangelicals-t...

[2]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creati...

Sure, but how do the stats compare with actual voters as opposed to the general population. I'd bet that's a closer match.

There's a joke about voting and "faith in the system" in there somewhere . . .

I would be curious how this matches their age cohort, given the relatively recent aging of Congress relative to their constituency

About 90% of those in Congress say they practice some form of Christianity...

They say they practice.

Yes, most surveys around religion are based on self-reporting, not investigation. This is true of most "X% of Americans are Y" statistics.

How exactly are you going investigate if someone is genuinely a Christian? Please don't ask are they churchgoers.

And nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition.

Observation, the same way you find out if they are TRULY vegetarians, their indicated political party, or their indicated sexual orientation. Not saying that it's practical or not an invasion of privacy, but objectively that's how you verify. Otherwise you have to depend on self-reporting.

It doesn't matter how they practice, it matters how they vote.

Congress is more republican than the general public due to Americas electoral system.

Hilary Clinton had the majority vote yet lost from Trump.

It sounds bad, but it forces us not just focus on the huge coastal mega cities, but also on the mostly empty blue collar inland.

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