When the new Democratic majority was elected in November, it was hailed not only for the promise of change it represented, but also the improved diversity of its makeup. The nation seemed excited to have a female Speaker of the House, as well as more black and Hispanic representatives than ever before.

Yet, all the Democrats have done since riding a political wave of optimism into power is pass a “symbolic” nonbinding resolution in the House opposing the planned troop increase. This lackluster effort has not only dampened the once high hopes of ending the war in Iraq—which is the predominant reason they were elected—but it’s also stripped away the luster of diversity, showing that greater race and gender participation has done little to change the prevailing philosophy in Washington.

The reason for such a staid political dogma may have more to do with Christians, the most homogeneous group within Congress. There’s no doubt this statistic is a fitting reflection of the 85 percent of Americans who identify themselves as such, but it doesn’t explain how they’ve managed to ignore Christianity’s most basic tenant of nonviolence—a fact Gandhi once characterized by saying, “Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

A full century earlier our own founding father Thomas Jefferson pondered the same dilemma, when he wrote that the Christian Church had distorted the teachings of its founder so greatly that it had rendered “one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.” Jefferson went on to write his own version of the Bible, cutting out all miracles, including the virgin birth and resurrection—fabrications he felt the church had inserted to unite people under one belief and strengthen its political power.

While Jefferson despised organized religion—having coined the famous constitutional term “separation between church and state”—he greatly admired the teachings of Jesus. In a letter to John Adams he went so far as to call them “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

His finished product, titled the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, sat unpublished until Congress commissioned copies in 1904. It then became a tradition until the late 1950’s to distribute the book to all newly elected members.

Jefferson’s rendering of Christian morality may not have penetrated the minds of 20th century politicians like he would have hoped—consider the segregationist Strom Thurmond, who likely received a copy at his 1954 inauguration—but that’s no reason our current Congress shouldn’t be given the ultimate morality check.

As the Russian novelist and Christian philosopher Leo Tolstoy noted, “The man who is at a lower level but is moving onward toward perfection… is more fully carrying out Christ’s teaching, than the man on a much higher level of morality who is not moving onward toward perfection.”

In short, we can always do better. Our limitations and mistakes are not the end of us, so long as we aim to turn things around. There’s little doubt the Iraq war will go down as one of the worst mistakes—if not the worst, as Al Gore and many others have said—in this country’s history, but we can still prevent further damage and loss of life.

It starts with reminding our representatives that ending the war is more important than posturing for the next election. We may never get the 90 percent of Christians that inhabit Congress to follow the most basic morals of their faith, but we can kick them where it counts—so to speak.

New York Senator and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has already taken heat for her recent refusal to admit she was wrong in voting for the war in 2002. She even taunted a crowd by saying, “If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from.”

That’s a bluff worth calling; otherwise, we’ll keep electing politicians who value majority control over morality control. As Thomas Jefferson himself once said, “Political interest can never be separated in the long run from moral right.”