There’s a lot of buzz right now about the lack of a clear political consensus from leaders in the evangelical community. I’ve been tracking the evangelical endorsements on my blog and they run from curious to curiouser. Fundamentalist Baptist Bob Jones III for Mormon Mitt Romney? The Charismatic Pat Robertson for liberal Rudy Giuliani? As Bob Schieffer said on Face The Nation last Sunday, “God only knows” what drives some of these decisions.

But this caught my attention today. The Southern Baptist Convention claims a membership of over 16 million (and don’t forget that doesn’t include younger children). That’s larger than the population of every state except California, Texas, New York, or Florida. It’s bigger than the smaller fourteen states combined. If the Southern Baptist Convention were a state, it would have twenty-two Congressmen — and twenty-four electoral votes.

Why is that significant?

I just thought it was remarkable that when former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee picked up endorsements from three past presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention last weekend, nobody in the mainstream media seemed to notice — not CNN, not Reuters, not Fox News, nor the three major networks.

UPDATE: Fixed a math error; I underestimated the congressional delegation of the theoretical Commonwealth of Southern Baptists.