The Ninety-Second Congress: A Religious Census

NEWS

When the Ninety-second Congress convenes next month it will have 116 Roman Catholic members, the most in the nation’s history. According to CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S religious census of the new Congress, Roman Catholics gained five since the Ninety-first Congress, the largest jump since at least 1958 (the year of the first CT survey). Catholics are far ahead of the Methodists, whose eighty-six congressmen are the second-largest contingent.

Other major religious groups will maintain about the same representation, except for the Jews, who lost five and now have fourteen, and the Methodists, down four. The Methodists will again have the most senators, twenty, though this is three fewer than the number taking office in 1968.

For the first time since the CT census began, three congressmen this year said flatly they have no religious affiliation. Those who said they are “Protestant” but did not give a more specific response increased from twelve to sixteen between 1968 and 1970.

Two groups lost two representatives since the Ninety-first Congress: the Baptists, fifty-three to fifty-one; and the United Church of Christ (which includes Congregationalists), twenty-nine to twenty-seven. Presbyterians (eighty-three), Unitarian-Universalists (eight), Churches of Christ (seven), Greek Orthodox (four), and the Society of Friends (four) each gained one since the last election. The Episcopalians (sixty-six) lost one—gaining three senators but losing four representatives.

Remaining unchanged are Lutherans, fourteen; Christian Church (Disciples), thirteen; Latter-day Saints (Mormons), ten; Christian Scientists, five; Evangelical Free Church, two; and Seventh-day Adventists, Apostolic Christians, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Evangelical Covenant, and Schwenkfelder, one each.

The Brethren in Christ Church regained its only member in recent years, J. Edward Roush (D.-Ind.), who has returned to the House after last serving in the Ninetieth Congress. And the Reformed Church in America has had none since the death of Senator Everett Dirksen (R.-Ill.).

States in which a heavy proportion of the representation in Congress is Catholic include Massachusetts (eleven of fourteen), New Jersey (ten of seventeen), and Rhode Island (three of four). Two of the four congressmen in both New Mexico and Montana are Catholic, and in Connecticut four of eight are.

In Nebraska, four of five are Presbyterians. The only state where all are of the same religious affiliation is Utah; the four congressmen (as well as the governor) are Mormons.

In gubernatorial contests, the Baptists lost three while the Presbyterians and Jews each had a net gain of two. Three governors now classify themselves simply as “Protestant”; two years ago, one did. The Methodists lead with ten.

Women In Congress

There will be more Roman Catholic congresswomen in the Ninety-second Congress than women from any other religious faith, according to the new religious census made by CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Female members of the House will include four Catholics, two United Church of Christ, two who responded “Protestant,” and one each from the Methodists, Christian Church (Disciples), Christian Scientists, and Jews.

The one woman senator, Margaret Chase Smith (R.-Me.), is a Methodist.

Clergy Score Poorly In Great Election Game

The box score in the Great Election Game stands: clergy, 2; laymen, 12. More clergymen than ever before in America sought congressional seats, but they fared poorly at the hands of the electorate.

One, however, became the first Roman Catholic priest to be elected a voting memberThe Reverend Gabriel Richard, a priest, was elected a non-votinpr member of Congress for one term in 1823 when Michigan was a territory. of Congress. The Reverend Robert F. Drinan, a Jesuit, won his race in Massachusetts with a bare plurality of the votes, receiving 62,091 to 59,925 for his Republican opponent, State Representative John A. S. McGlennon, while 45,460 votes went to Congressman Philip J. Philbin, who was defeated by Drinan in the Democratic primary and then ran as an independent.

In Rhode Island, Senator John O. Pastore (D.) easily defeated the Reverend John J. McLaughlin, S. J., 224,903 to 104,917. Since in both the Third Congressional District of Massachusetts and in the state of Rhode Island about two-thirds of the voters are Catholic, it appeared that a majority of Catholics had voted against the priests.

In Connecticut, United Church of Christ minister Joseph Duffey, who won the Democratic nomination to the U. S. Senate, lost to Representative Lowell Weicker, the Republican candidate, by 443,008 votes to 360,094. Senator Thomas J. Dodd, running as an independent, received 260,264 votes. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Representative Emilio Q. Daddario, who also lost, received 132,000 votes more than Duffey. The minister’s position as national president of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action was a major issue in the race.

A Catholic priest, the Reverend Robert Cornell, a Norbertine and Wisconsin Democrat, ran against another Catholic member of Congress—veteran Representative John W. Byrnes. Cornell lost by 10,000 votes.

Other clergy losers included United Methodist George McClain, running as a Liberal party candidate in Staten Island, New York, against Democratic incumbent Representative John Murphy; Episcopal priest Jay Wilkinson (son of the athletic great and former White House aide Bud Wilkinson), who was the Republican nominee in Oklahoma’s Fourth District; Richard Fullerton, a Nazarene evangelist bearing the GOP banner in Georgia’s Seventh District; Church of Christ minister Fred Casimir, nominated by California Republicans in the Thirty-first District; and Assembly of God pastor H. D. Shuemaker, a Republican running in Florida’s First District.

The Reverend Andrew Young of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who was a close associate of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the only black clergyman nominated for Congress. A United Church of Christ minister, Young was defeated in Georgia’s Fifth District.

Only one clergyman of the present Congress was reelected: the Reverend John H. Buchanan, Jr., a Southern Baptist first elected from Alabama as a Republican in 1964 when Senator Barry Goldwater carried that area of the South, has now been reelected to his fourth term in the House.

In Wisconsin, the Reverend Henry C. Schadeberg, who was pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church in Burlington, Wisconsin, when he entered politics in 1962, lost his seat for the second time. He was defeated in the 1964 Lyndon Johnson landslide, but regained his seat in 1966 and had held it for two more terms.

The political saga of the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, came to an end after twenty-six years when Charles Rangel, the state legislator who defeated him in the Democratic primary, was elected to his seat. The ailing Powell, reported suffering from malignancy of the lymph glands, was ruled off the ballot as an independent candidate.

Priest-lawyer John Danforth of Missouri almost pulled a political upset. An ordained Episcopal minister, Danforth—the first Republican candidate in twenty years to win statewide office when he was elected as Missouri’s attorney general—came within 37,000 votes of defeating veteran Senator W. Stuart Symington (D.). Danforth is an heir to the Ralston Purina fortune (his family are donors of well-heeled Danforth Foundation). He is believed to have a bright political future.

Among prominent laymen elected to Congress is attorney William J. Keating, a Republican of Cincinnati, and the younger (43) brother of Charles Keating, nationally known Catholic layman and attorney who heads Citizens for Decent Literature and as a member of the President’s Commission on Pornography submitted a blistering minority report. William Keating was elected to replace Representative Robert Taft, Jr. (R.), who won election to the Senate.

John H. Kemp, who as a pro football player for the Buffalo Bills (making $50,000 a year as quarterback) and other teams was active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, won the Republican House race from Buffalo.

Lamar Baker, an active Churches of Christ layman and a graduate of Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas, was elected by Republicans to fill the seat vacated by Representative William Brock, who won a seat in the Senate.

In the statehouses, new Democratic governors Reubin Askew of Florida and John West of South Carolina are both staunch Presbyterians. Askew, an elder, is a nonsmoking teetotaler who once said attending church was his favorite hobby. Republican Governor Linwood Holton (not elected this year) of Virginia is a Sunday-school-teaching Presbyterian elder.

The new governor of New Mexico, Democrat Bruce King, also teaches Sunday-school classes, and Democrat Jimmy Carter, Georgia’s choice for governor, is a Southern Baptist deacon.

The Trouble With Timothy

Classis Chicago North, an area ruling body of the Christian Reformed Church, rejected last month a 1970 national CRC directive to label a local church-school board’s policy of racial exclusion as “disobedience to Christ.”

The classis decided instead to write a pastoral letter to “implore” the board to stop excluding black children from Timothy Christian Grade School in Cicero, an all-white Chicago suburb.

Classis delegates did, however, acknowledge their “guilt and sorrow” for failure to conform to 1968 and 1969 declarations about Timothy.

Earlier, board members had said they were “unable, not unwilling.” to admit blacks because of intense racial hostility in Cicero. Both children and property would be in jeopardy, they maintained. Indeed, irate citizens stormed into a board meeting two years ago and made that point indelibly clear.

Timothy is three miles from Lawndale Christian Reformed Church, a CRC mission church with a black congregation. For five years Lawndale’s parents have tried to enroll their children at Timothy, but have had to settle for a twenty-five-mile bus trip to another CRC school in Des Plaines. And Timothy’s board members have balked at exhortations by CRC leaders to take a stand of courage in Cicero.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.