TUSCALOOSA | In all the brouhaha stirred up by Virginia Republican U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode over the first Muslim ever elected to Congress using a Koran in his private swearing-in ceremony next month (the official swearing-ins are done sans holy books of any kind), little attention has been paid to the fact that on Nov. 7 the first two Buddhists to ever serve in Congress were also elected.

Not only that, one of them is a southerner, Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat from our neighboring state of Georgia, who took out the inflammatory and confrontational former Rep. Cynthia McKinney in last year’s primary and coasted to victory in the general election in his heavily black, Democratic district in and around Atlanta. The other Buddhist elected in November was Rep. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, a state which probably has more Buddhists than any other.

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