"J. van Baardwijk" wrote: > > At 09:54 4-12-01 -0800, Jim Sharkey wrote: > > >Jeroen wrote: > > >If you are not Christian, your chances of getting a job in politics > > >seem to be considerably smaller; how many members of Congress and > > >the Senate do NOT call themselves Christians? And when was the last > > >time the US had a non-Christian (FREX, a Muslem) president? > > > >But isn't that a function of the population in the U.S. being predominantly > >Christian? You make it sound like some vast conspiracy to keep the other > >religions out of office. I'm curious as to what percentage of people in the > >U.S. are at least nominally Christian of their own accord. Assuming that > >percentage is sufficiently high, which I believe it most likely is, doesn't > >it follow that it's more likely that the people entering politics are going > >to be Christian statistically? > > True, but it also follows that a certain percentage of people entering > politics are not Christians. > > According to the CIA World Factbook 2001, 84% of the population is > Christian, 2% is Jewish, 4% follow an other religion, and 10% are not > religious. Is this reflected in Congress en Senate? Following these > statistics, 10 members of the Senate and 44 members of Congress should be > non-religious; 4 members of the Senate should be Muslem/Hindu/<whatever> > and 17 members of Congress should be Muslem/Hindu/<whatever>. > > Is that the actual situation?
I'm not sure - I've never seen data on the religion of our leaders (other than what they choose to tell us about, over and over and over again..) However, I'm not really super comfortable using population distribution as a litmus test for racism/intolerance/etc. In order to be elected, there are legal and social realities - you have to have been born here, a certain age, garner enough local support via primaries/parties, have enough money to run (and to be able to afford to serve - many of the local/state level positions that earn a person experience and credentials are underpayed or pay a token amount only.) Of course, I suppose one could then circle back and say that even if lack of racism/intolerence isn't the primary cause of lack of representation within the government, that they are then the cause of the lack of qualified or interested candidates within those populations. :/ What do you think? -j- -- "O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend, The brightest heaven of invention!"
