The Congressional "Non-theist' is....
California's Pete Stark.
Debby and Dara both have good points in the comments of my last post.
Stark is a liberal from the Bay area who has held his seat for a long time and will have no trouble defending his seat. It's not as if he won in the Bible Belt. And it's true we're not going to have a Congress full of Santarians, Wiccans and Scientologists any time soon.
The goal here isn't to represent every religion in Congress... The goal, at least from my perspective, is a Congress in which officials are elected on policy preferences more than religion. In many districts, it's still impossible for someone other than a Christian to get elected, and that's a shame.
posted by Justin S. @ 3/12/2007 10:22:00 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
It's an admirable goal, but still, it's not likely to happen in our lifetimes. Heck, they still have issues with electing non-whites or non-males.
Certain political issues can directly relate to religious background. Some people might not vote for, say, an evangelical Christian, because his beliefs mostly likely affect his policy.
I agree that religion influence politics, but not all people with, say, an evangelical background necessarily vote like an evangelical all the time. I don't have the examples at my fingertips (I'm too lazy at the moment to google them), but there are Democrats in Congress that happen to be Southern Baptists, yet vote in ways I support. Is their policy preferences that matter to me, not their religion.
Perhaps I should say one whose religion is powerful enough to influence how they vote. There are certainly many variations of faith within a type of religion. Well, I'm sure you can catch my drift.
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