There could hardly be a greater contrast than New Yorker Hakeem Jeffries’ glide into leadership of the U.S. House Democratic minority and that of California Republican Kevin McCarthy’s agonizing 15-ballot crawl to barely become House Speaker in the worst such Capitol Hill fuss since the Civil War.
Jeffries, of course, wins news renown as Congress’s first African-American party leader. But here’s a factoid has gotten little media notice. Yes, this is a religion angle.
By coincidence, both party leaders are now Baptists, a faith that outside the South has generally been underrepresented among the political elite. Catholics (think Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Paul Ryan) monopolized the speaker and minority leader posts for much of the 21st.Century.
There would be good feature potential in comparing the two Baptists’ congregations.
Though Jeffries has an Arabic first name (meaning “wise”), he’s a lifelong worshiper at Cornerstone Baptist Church, a prominent African-American congregation in Brooklyn. Senior Pastor Lawrence Aker III and his wife Cynthia have the distinction of holding diverse divinity degrees from both “evangelical” Dallas Theological Seminary and “mainline” Yale.
McCarthy’s congregation is the equally well-known Valley Baptist Church in his hometown of Bakersfield. Senior Pastor Roger Spradlin, who trained at Criswell College, has served Valley since 1983 and now leads a team of eight clergy. This is a typical white evangelical fellowship and affiliated with the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, which Spradlin has served as chairman of the national executive committee.
Speaking of religion on Capitol Hill, reporters will want to keep on file the official religious affiliations of all 534 members of the incoming House and Senate (with one vacancy due to death) accessible by clicking here. The handy list is compiled every two years by the Pew Research Center from information the legislators themselves file with CQ Roll Call.
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