A meaningless and fundamentally broken table

[james_davis_nicoll]

Everyone knows that the fraction of American Presidents who were Catholics is nothing as high as the number of Americans who are Catholics. Ever wonder which religions are over-represented amongst American Presidents?


Assuming this table can be taken at face value:

Religious affiliation of US Presidents in order of the degree to which their religion is over-represented amongst US Presidents if they had all been elected today and not in some past era when demographics were different:

Denomination        Number of      Percent of       Percent of              Ratio:
                    Presidents     Presidents       Current U.S. Pop.       % of Pres.
                                                                            to % of Pop. 

Dutch Reformed          2             4.8%             0.1%                   48.0 
Unitarian               4             9.5%             0.2%                   47.5 
Disciples of Christ     3             7.1%             0.4%                   17.8 
Episcopalian           11            26.2%             1.7%                   15.4 
Presbyterian           11            26.2%             2.8%                    9.4
Congregationalist       2             4.8%             0.6%                    8.0 
Quaker                  2             4.8%             0.7%                    6.9 
Jehovah's Witness       1             2.4%             0.6%                    4.0 
Methodist               5            11.9%             8.0%                    1.5 
Baptist                 4             9.5%             8.0%                    1.2 
Catholic                1             2.4%            24.5%                    0.1 

TOTAL                  42            100%            57.0%   

[Fixed to correct Eisenhower's affiliation, to correct some math errors and to take into account reader comments]

Oddly, all but one of these denominations is batting out of its league. I suppose that is a reflection of religious diveristy and the uneven distribution between sects of interest in and possibility of achieving higher office.

I expected more Quakers.

I have not verified the numbers I am using and since I spotted one error in the original there may well be others.

Comments

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

The reason Lutherans get grouped differently is that most protestants are either offshoots of the Reformed/Calvinist tradition (Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Christian Reformed, (in Canada) United Church, plus some at a further remove such as the Congregationalists) or of the antinomian/anabaptist radicals of the Reformation, who went beyond the Reformed churches (Baptists, Mennonites, etc.).

Lutheranism was the "first" and less radical protestantism (it retained far more of the traditional in both its theology and its rites, to such a degree that recent talks with Rome have resulted in a formulation of "justification by faith" which is acceptable to all parties (which would, indeed, make Luther a schismatic but not a heretic). (In fact, it's not acceptable to all parties because many Lutherans (missouri Synod, for example) are rather more radical than Luther was, but that's another matter.)

Middle-of-the-road Anglicans of the Seventeenth Century tended to group themselves with the Lutherans as against the Reformed types. (This is why Swift's Tale of A Tub makes the three allegorical figures Peter (Rome), Martin (Luther) and Jack (John Calvin), where Martin represents a via media in an Anglican sense. From outside, they looked more like a split between standard Calvinists with bishops and Arminian Calvinists (with bishops) as far as their theology went, until the Nineteenth Century brought the Oxford Movement along. Methodists are a spin-off of the Anglicans, with an Arminian Calvinist tinge but more populism.

In both the US and Canada, the mainstream Lutherans and the Anglicans/Episcopalians have formal intercommunion agreements which extend to things like sharing clergy, so you can consider them, for practical purposes, as occupying the same location in the spectrum.