Members of Congress are often accused of being out of touch with
average citizens, but an examination of the religious
affiliations of U.S. senators and representatives shows that, on
one very basic level, Congress looks much like the rest of the
country. Although a majority of the members of the new, 111th
Congress, which will be sworn in on Jan. 6, are Protestants,
Congress - like the nation as a whole - is much more religiously
diverse than it was 50 years ago. Indeed, a comparison of the
religious affiliations of the new Congress with religious
demographic information from the Pew Forum's recent U.S.
Religious Landscape Survey of over 35,000 American adults finds
that some smaller religious groups, notably Catholics, Jews and
Mormons, are better represented in Congress than they are in the
population as a whole. However, certain other smaller religious
groups, including Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus, still are
somewhat underrepresented in Congress relative to their share of
the U.S. population. The study