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An overwhelming majority of the incoming members of Congress identify as Christians even as the number of Americans who do so has declined.<\/p>\n
Whenever the lower chamber of the 118th United States Congress is sworn in \u2014 which is pending the election of the next\u00a0House Speaker<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Christians will comprise 88% of voting members, according to Pew Research Center\u2019s latest\u00a0Faith on the Hill report<\/a>.<\/p>\n That number \u2014\u00a0unchanged\u00a0<\/a>from the 117th session \u2014 stands in stark contrast with the share of Christians in the\u00a0general U.S. population<\/a>, which, since 2007, has declined from 78% to its current level of 63%.<\/p>\n It also marks the second-highest percentage since 1979-\u201980, when 91% of members of the 96th Congress identified as Christian.<\/p>\n Digging a bit deeper into the data, the actual number of Christians at the start of the 2023-2024 session \u2014 469 in total \u2014 makes up the lowest number since Pew first started surveying the religious affiliation of the House and Senate for the 2009-2010 session. The number of Christians in Congress during the last eight sessions was above 470, according to Pew.<\/p>\n The number of lawmakers who do not identify as Christians remains at 65, a slight uptick from 64 in the 117th Congress. Of those, 33 are Jewish, three are Unitarian Universalist, another three are Muslim, along with two Hindus and two Buddhists.<\/p>\n While 29% of American adults are religiously unaffiliated, only one member \u2014 Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., \u2014 identifies as such. Sinema is also the\u00a0first openly bisexual<\/a>\u00a0U.S. Senator.<\/p>\n Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., identified as \u201chumanist,\u201d while another 20 members of Congress were categorized as having unknown religious affiliations.<\/p>\n Another sole member, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., identifies as a Messianic Jew. While Luna also publicly identifies as a Christian, it\u2019s not clear whether Pew counted her as \u201cChristian\u201d or \u201cOther.\u201d<\/p>\n While the vast majority (99%) of congressional Republicans identify as Christians, about 76% of Democrats do the same. But both parties have more identifying as Christian compared with 63% of U.S. adults in general.<\/p>\n Democrats are slightly more likely than Republicans to identify as Catholic (31% vs. 25%), while Republicans are far more likely to identify as Protestant by a margin of 69% to 44%.<\/p>\n Christians also dominate both the House and Senate, with similar Protestant majorities (57% and 56%, respectively) in each chamber.<\/p>\n Among those Protestants, Baptists hold 13% of the House, slightly larger than the 10% in the Senate. Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Lutherans, meanwhile, hold larger majorities in the Senate.<\/p>\n The number of Catholics in the House (28%) is slightly more than the Senate (26%). While the House has eight Orthodox Christians, the Senate has zero who identify as such.<\/p>\n The analysis by Pew Research Center was based on data from CQ Roll Call on the religious affiliations of members of Congress. While the CQ questionnaire asked members about their religious affiliation, if any, it did not attempt to measure their religious beliefs or practices.<\/p>\n As of Thursday night, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., lost an\u00a011th vote\u00a0<\/a>to become the Speaker of the House, having failed to dislodge the resistance from a sizable minority of Republican members. Republicans won a narrow majority of 222 seats in the House in the midterm elections last year.<\/p>\n Former President Donald Trump weighed in on the issue on\u00a0Truth Social\u00a0<\/a>Wednesday morning, expressing support for McCarthy and imploring Republican members to \u201cnot turn a great triumph into a giant & embarrassing defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n