BOB ABERNETHY, host: The new 113th Congress, which was sworn in Thursday (January 3), includes several religious firsts. Democrat Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is the first Hindu member of Congress. Mazie Hirono, also of Hawaii, is the first Buddhist senator, although she describes herself as non-practicing, and Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic representative from Arizona, is the first member of Congress to publicly describe her religion as “none.”

Joining me with more on the new Congress is our managing editor, Kim Lawton, Kim.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: There was another religious first this week as well. The new Hindu member of Congress was actually sworn in with the Bhagavad Gita, which is a sacred text for Hindus. Now members of Congress generally use a Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures, some use the Constitution. Some don’t use anything they just do an affirmation as opposed to swearing in, but this was the first time we know of that the Bhagavad Gita was used.

ABERNETHY: And there was no controversy about it. I remember a couple of years ago when a Muslim was sworn in. There was a huge controversy about his using the Quran. This time?

LAWTON: Well when Keith Ellison was elected and then sworn in in 2007 he did choose a Quran. Of course there are sensitivities with Muslims and so there was some controversy. He ended up using a Quran that was owned by Thomas Jefferson, which helped dampen some of that controversy.

ABERNETHY: Is this the most religiously diverse Congress there’s ever been?

LAWTON: It is considered the most diverse Congress ever. That sort of reflects the changes in American society. Although Congress hasn’t kept up with all the changes exactly in American society. Think about Protestants. Congress is still majority Protestant, about 56 percent.

ABERNETHY: But Protestants went, the number of Protestants went down a little bit, the number of Catholics went up.

LAWTON: Exactly, but for the first time ever Protestants are less than half of the country, but they still make up most of Congress. Catholics went up this time around as well. So they make up about 30 percent of Congress.

ABERNETHY: What about people who say they have no religion?

LAWTON: They’re the most unrepresented group right now in terms of religion in Congress. About 20 percent of the country say they have no religious affiliation. We did have one atheist member of Congress a few years ago. Pete Stark was the first person to say I’m an atheist. Kyrsten Sinema is the first person to say I have none when you know asked what’s your religion, but that doesn’t represent the number of people of America.

ABERNETHY: And quickly, does it make a difference?

LAWTON: Well you know that’s hard to quantify. For some people it’s an identification, but for some people it does affect how they think about issues, how they govern. Think about last year when Congressman Paul Ryan was doing the budget he tied it to his Catholic faith. Other members of Congress do that. But for some that’s a personal thing and politics is something different.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

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For more of our coverage of the 2012 Republican National Convention, visit our ONE NATION: RELIGION & POLITICS blog.

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KIM LAWTON, correspondent. In accepting the Republican nomination for president Thursday, Governor Mitt Romney talked more personally about his religion than he has so far on the campaign trail. Describing his background, Romney specifically mentioned his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

MITT ROMNEY (speaking at convention): We were Mormons and growing up in Michigan; that might have seemed unusual or out of place but I really don’t remember it that way. My friends cared more about what sports teams we followed than what church we went to.

LAWTON: In the 1980s, Romney was bishop for a Mormon congregation in suburban Boston. In the LDS tradition, a bishop is similar to a pastor. He oversaw other churches as well.

ROMNEY: We had remarkably vibrant and diverse congregations from all walks of life and many who were new to America. We prayed together, our kids played together and we always stood ready to help each other out in different ways. That’s how it is in America. We look to our communities, our faiths, our families for our joy, our support, in good times and bad.

LAWTON: Earlier in the evening, fellow church members talked at length about Romney’s devotion, his compassion, and his service. Grant Bennett succeeded Romney as pastor.

GRANT BENNETT (Church leader): Mitt didn’t discuss questions of theology. He found the definition of religion given by James in the New Testament to be a practical guide: “Pure religion is to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction.”

LAWTON: On Wednesday night, vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, a Roman Catholic, linked his own faith with Romney’s.

REP. PAUL RYAN: Our faiths come together in the same moral creed. We believe that in every life there is goodness; for every person, there is hope. Each one of us was made for a reason, bearing the image and likeness of the Lord of life.

LAWTON: Prior to this week, there had been few explicit references to Romney’s Mormonism from the campaign. And there has been intense debate about whether the topic should be addressed head on. According to the Pew Research Center, half of all Americans say it doesn’t bother them when politicians talk about how religious they are. Two-thirds of Americans say it is important to have a president with strong religious beliefs. And among Republicans, that number jumps to more than 80 percent.

Mark DeMoss is an evangelical and a close Romney advisor on faith issues. He says he’s been impressed by the depth of Romney’s religious beliefs.

MARK DEMOSS (Romney Advisor): This is a really rock-solid faith that I think guides this man when he wakes up until he goes to bed.

DeMOSS (in speech): I trust his character, his integrity, his moral compass. And finally I trust his values, for I’m fully convinced that they mirror my own values.

LAWTON: For the last six years, DeMoss has been trying to enlist other evangelicals to the Romney cause, including those who say they don’t want to vote for a Mormon because they don’t consider Mormons to be fellow Christians.

DeMOSS: The same people that will say that would have no problem letting a doctor of a different faith do open heart surgery on them, will fly on an airplane piloted by a pilot of a different faith and then suddenly say “But I can’t vote for a president of a different faith.”

LAWTON: Republicans need the enthusiastic support of evangelicals, who make up more than a quarter of the GOP coalition. Ralph Reed, president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, says it’s wrong to think that evangelicals would be upset because there are no Protestants on the GOP ticket.

RALPH REED (Faith & Freedom Coalition): They are very sophisticated. They understand that there are many candidates who are Jews, who are Mormons, who are Catholics who may not share their theology, who share their values, and they’ll vote for them and work for them and I think they’re going to do that for Ryan and Romney.

LAWTON: The Faith and Freedom Coalition held a high-profile rally to kick off the convention. Numerous speakers used religious issues to rally support for Romney.

NEWT GINGRICH (in speech): Unlike Barack Obama, he actually understands that the basis of our liberty is the grant from God, and that no government can come between God and man.

LAWTON: Reed outlined an ambitious strategy to target 17 million evangelicals who he says didn’t vote in the last presidential election.

REED (in speech): We going to mail them, we’re going to text them, we’re going to email them, we’re going to phone them, and if they haven’t voted by November 6, we’re going to get in the car and we’re going to drive to their house and we’re going to get them to the polls.

REED: In 2008, the Obama campaign and the left really out-hustled us and did so very badly. But not any more.

LAWTON: Another key group will be Catholics. In the last election, a slight majority of Catholics voted for President Obama. In most recent elections, the presidential candidate who won the most Catholic votes won the election. Many Catholics here at the convention said there’s a lot of pride in the fact that former altar boy Paul Ryan is the vice-presidential candidate. They say the Romney-Ryan ticket offers much that resonates with their community.

MAUREEN FERGUSON (The Catholic Association): There are certain core, fundamental issues to our faith and that is the right to life, the right to religious liberty to practice our faith free from government interference, and the defense of marriage and not the redefinition of marriage and family. These are core issues that are fundamental to our faith that we must consider as Catholics to be primary in terms of deciding for whom we’re going to vote.

LAWTON: There were several convention events to celebrate the party’s traditional stands on issues like abortion and gay marriage. But even the most socially conservative delegates acknowledged that economic issues will, and should, dominate this election.

MARGARET STOLDORF (Iowa Delegate): The moral fabric of our lives is intertwined with the economy, and I do not believe that we the people, the government needs to or feel compelled to support every living being.

RICHARD HAYES (Texas Delegate): We spend too much money, and it’s hurting us, and it’s hurting us not only personally but globally.

LAWTON: The Tea Party, which has significant religious support, had an active presence here. Various Tea Party affiliates held a unity rally at local evangelical megachurch.

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN: These concepts–taxed enough already, don’t spend more than what you take in and follow the Constitution–are now a part of the Republican Party platform thanks to the Tea Party.

LAWTON: Over the past several months, many in the moderate and liberal faith communities have raised concerns that cuts to social programs in Ryan’s proposed budget would hurt the poor. And some Catholics in particular, took issue with Ryan using Catholic social teaching to defend his plan. But former Ambassador to the Vatican and Catholics for Ryan co-chair Jim Nicholson defended Ryan.

AMB. JIM NICHOLSON (Catholics for Romney): I think Ryan shows a great of deal of compassion really, a real Catholic value, because of the things he wants to change so that there will be sustainability in these programs and help the people who really need it, so that we can afford it out there when our children and grandchildren are out there and some of them who will need help probably.

LAWTON: Still, many in the faith community continued issuing challenges to the Republicans’ economic plans. The progressive Jewish group Bend the Arc was in Tampa calling for the wealthy to pay more taxes.

ELLIE AXE (Bend the Arc): We’re representing a Jewish community that cares a lot about social and economic justice. And what that means for us right now is that we believe that the top two percent earners should pay their fair share in taxes.

LAWTON: Rev. Samuel Rodriguez is president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

REV. SAMUEL RODRIGUEZ (National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference): We can’t neglect the poor. Now I’m not referencing the idea of government dependency for the rest of your life. Neither am I an advocate of perpetual entitlement. But there is a responsibility the government must take, and that responsibility is to take care of those that can’t take care of themselves.

LAWTON: Rodriguez has not endorsed either candidate, but offered the benediction on Tuesday night.

RODRIGUEZ: “Believing that God is not done with America, and America is not done with God…”

LAWTON: Both political conventions traditionally open and close each session with prayer. This year, those prayers turned unusually controversial after Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the US Catholic bishops, agreed to pray at the RNC. He later said he would also be praying at the DNC. Rodriguez says religious leaders shouldn’t shy away from appearing at events like this.

RODRIGUEZ: Our job is to contextualize a prophetic witness, to speak from truth, biblical truth, higher truth, spiritual truth. That transcends politics. With that being said, I think it’s fine if we can speak with integrity to both political parties addressing both platforms as it pertains to the concerns and the values that we hold near and dear.

LAWTON: While most of the faith-based rallying this week was Christian, Republican Jews also pledged to make more inroads in their heavily Democratic community. They say President Obama is particularly vulnerable on his policies toward Israel.

MATT BROOKS (Republican Jewish Coalition): For a segment of the Jewish community, that is a real problem and one of the reasons why we’re seeing a real deterioration of support in the Jewish community for President Obama.

LAWTON: In a tight election, outreach to every group becomes vital. But amid all the mobilization strategies, some said the larger religion story coming out of this convention should not get lost.

RODRIGUEZ: Here we are, America demonstrating to the world that we could have a Mormon president, with a Catholic vice-president, with strong evangelical support. How about that? You know you never could have written that story 20, 30, 40 years ago. But it conveys a message that religious pluralism trumps religious totalitarianism. And this is what makes America great.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton in Tampa.

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KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor and Guest Host): Campaign 2012 heated up this week after Governor Mitt Romney selected Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate. Ryan is a Roman Catholic, and with Vice-President Joe Biden on the Democratic side this is the first time that both parties have Catholics on the ticket. Ryan agrees with his church’s opposition to abortion and gay marriage, but he has generated debate in some Catholic circles for his economic views. As chief author of the Republican budget plan, Ryan supports funding cuts for many social programs. Some Catholics, including bishops, argued that would hurt the poor. Ryan’s response:

Rep. Paul Ryan (speaking April 26, 2012 at Georgetown University): “As a Catholic in public life, my own personal thinking on these issues has been guided by my understanding of the church’s social teaching. Simply put, I do not believe that the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government.”

Joining me with more on this is Kevin Eckstrom, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service. Kevin, a lot of Catholics disagreed with how Paul Ryan applied his Catholic faith to his budget plan.

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor-in-Chief, Religion News Service): Right, and what’s interesting is Paul Ryan has been on the Catholic radar screen for a long time, and you know when the nuns on the bus went out this summer to advocate for social justice, it wasn’t a mistake that they actually stopped at his congressional office in Wisconsin. It’s interesting, because the church for the last couple of years has really put a priority on the life issues, abortion and gay marriage, and they’ve said that Joe Biden and Barack Obama are completely wrong on this issue. But in recent months, as the budget becomes a bigger issue and more in the news, they’ve really put an emphasis on the economic stuff, and they have been very pointed in their criticism of not only the Republican plan but also Paul Ryan, who was the architect of that plan. So it will interesting to watch the sort of church’s divided loyalties on this one.

LAWTON: And I have heard some Catholics say that faithful Catholics can indeed disagree on some of the economic issues. Paul Ryan talks about the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which is not one we hear a lot in politics, but this notion that all decisions should be made at the most local level and action should be taken at the most local level possible. He uses that to justify his opposition to what he calls big government, and there are Catholics who agree with that interpretation even though others say that’s a misreading of Catholic teaching.

ECKSTROM: Right, and what the bishops are saying and what a lot of Catholics are saying is that’s fine. If you want us to do it on the local level, we’ll do that. We’ll run the soup kitchens and we’ll run the adoption clinics or whatever, but we need the government’s help to do that and don’t make it worse for us by throwing people off of, you know, making their economic conditions worse that they’re going to need more services, because there’s only so much that we can do, so if you’re going to do this fine, but don’t sacrifice the poor at the expense of the rich.

LAWTON: And some church leaders have called abortion the paramount issue and, of course, Joe Biden, while he says he’s personally opposed to abortion, certainly does favor abortion rights. And in a way the two of them, Ryan and Biden, reflect the divisions in the Catholic voters as well among these different ideological perspectives.

ECKSTROM: Right, and, you know, this is a pocketbook election. It’s all going to be about the economy and jobs and it will really come down to, you know, what people’s priorities are. I don’t know that a lot of people are going to be voting on abortion and gay marriage but a lot of people will be voting on the economy, and if they look at Ryan and say I think he’s going to possibly make it worse or he’s going to cut my Medicare benefits, among Catholics in key states like Florida, Ohio, that could have a big enough difference to actually make a difference.

LAWTON: And, indeed, Catholics have been swinging back and forth overall, showing how deeply divided they are, and in fact they voted, the majority of Catholics have voted with the one who actually won the presidency, so it will be interesting to watch.

Kevin Eckstrom, thanks as always.

ECKSTROM: Thank you.

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