c. 2008 Religion News Service

New Congress reflects overall U.S. religious landscape

WASHINGTON (RNS) The religious makeup of the incoming 111th Congress roughly matches the overall American religious landscape, with overrepresentation among Jews and Mormons, according to new analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Just over half (55 percent) of House and Senate members who will take office on Jan. 6 are Protestants, compared to 51 percent of the U.S. population. The second-largest group, Catholics, make up 30 percent of lawmakers, compared to 24 percent of all Americans.

Among Protestants, Baptists lead in the House and Senate, at 12 percent, followed by Methodists (11 percent), Presbyterians (8 percent), Episcopalians (7 percent) and Lutherans (4.5 percent).

Like the nation as a whole, the proportion of mainline Protestant members in Congress has fallen in recent decades. Methodists, for example, made up nearly one in five lawmakers in 1961. Episcopalians and Presbyterians have seen similar drops, while Lutherans have remained relatively steady.

Catholics, meanwhile, have grown from 19 percent in 1961 _ the same year John F. Kennedy took office as the nation’s first Catholic president _ to 30 percent today. Catholics make up a larger share of the Senate (37 percent) than the House (21 percent).

Jews make up 8.3 percent of the new Congress, compared to just 1.7 percent of the general population. Mormons, too, account for 2.6 percent of Congress but 1.7 percent of the general population.

The 111th Congress will see the return of two Muslims (Democrats Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Andre Carson of Indiana) and two Buddhists (Democrats Hank Johnson of Georgia and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii) who were all elected to the House during the 110th Congress.

The Pew analysis said no Hindu has ever been elected to Congress, although a Sikh, Rep. Dalip Singh Saund, represented California for three terms beginning in 1957. Only one member of Congress, Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., is a professing nonbeliever; five members did not specify a religious affiliation in data collected by Congressional Quarterly.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Survey detects changes in U.S. church life

(RNS) U.S. congregations have changed significantly in the last eight years, according to a new study, with them becoming more ethnically diverse, more technologically savvy and more informal in worship.

Predominantly white congregations reported greater racial and ethnic diversity between the first and second surveys of U.S. houses of worship by the National Congregations Study.

When the study was first conducted in 1998, 20 percent of churchgoers reported attending a church that was all white and non-Hispanic. In the second round, conducted in 2006-07, that figure had dipped to 14 percent.

The study also found that the percentage of congregations with no Asian members decreased in the same period from 59 percent to 50 percent, and the percentage of congregations with no Latino members dropped from 43 percent to 36 percent.

“We’re far from a color-blind society, in religion or anything else, but there is some movement in churches as well as elsewhere,” said Mark Chaves, professor of sociology, religion and divinity at Duke University and lead researcher on the project.

While researchers found that some congregations that were previously all-white now have a couple of minority families as members, Chaves said mostly black churches did not report a comparable change.

“If you look at predominantly black churches, we don’t find more whites or Latinos or Asians in them,” he said.

Other findings include:

_ The number of churches with Web sites increased from 17 percent in 1998 to 44 percent in 2006-07, and use of e-mail rose from 21 percent to 59 percent.

_ Drum use rose from 20 percent to 34 percent, while people raising their hands in praise during worship services increased from 45 percent to 57 percent.

_ The average age of the senior clergyperson in a church rose from 48 to 53. In 1998, 25 percent of the people in the average congregation were at least 60 years old; in 2006-07, 30 percent were.

The study was based on reports from leaders of 1,506 congregations and did not reflect the observations of independent survey takers.

“If there’s any overreporting or underreporting, because (of) its leaders’ reports, it ought to be the same in both times,” Chavez said.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Pope defends World Youth Day as more than `rock festival’

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI defended the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day as a “great feast of faith,” rejecting descriptions and criticisms of the popular annual event as a mere “rock festival.”

Benedict made his remarks on Monday (Dec. 22), during his Christmas address to the Roman Curia, the Catholic Church’s international government at the Vatican.

World Youth Day, established by Pope John Paul II in 1986, is celebrated on a diocesan level every year, and on an international scale every two or three years. The July 2008 gathering in Australia, attended by Benedict, drew more than 200,000 participants.

“Analyses in vogue tend to consider these days as a variant of modern youth culture, a sort of modified, ecclesiastical rock festival with the pope as the star,” Benedict said.

But religious worship lies at the center of all the celebrations, the pope said, noting that a “Way of the Cross” procession through the streets of Sydney was this year’s “culminating event.”

“Thus the pope is not the star around whom everything turns,” Benedict said. “He is totally and solely the vicar.”

The “joy” experienced by World Youth Day participants is “not comparable to the ecstasy of a rock festival” because it derives from the presence of God, he said.

Reviewing other events of the past year, Benedict recalled his trips to the United States and France, which he described as “days that irradiated luminosity.”

This year was the 40th anniversary of the controversial papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, which set forth the church’s prohibition of contraception. In Monday’s speech, Benedict stressed the document’s continuing relevance to contemporary questions of human sexuality.

Stating that the “nature of the human being as man and woman” is an “order of creation that must be respected,” the pope described the church’s affirmation of sex differences as a kind of nature conservation.

“(The church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. There needs to be something like an ecology of man,” the pope said. “The tropical forests deserve our protection, yes, but man as a creature no less so.”

He also said the church should reaffirm the definition of marriage as “the life-long bond between man and woman,” presumably in response to the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage, which the Catholic Church opposes.

_ Francis X. Rocca

Quote of the Day: Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson

(RNS) “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table, but we’re not talking about a discussion, we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.”

_ Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, who is openly gay, about President-elect Barack Obama inviting California megachurch pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration on Jan. 20. He was quoted by The New York Times.

KRE/CSW END RNS