Religion As Cultural Identity: What It Means For Jews, Catholics And Others
(ANALYSIS) There’s this idea that I’ve written about on a number of occasions — religion as a cultural identity.
When we’re asked, “Are you religious?” There are a number of different ways someone might justify an affirmative answer. It could be that they attend a house of worship regularly or pray frequently. It could be that they hold specific beliefs about Jesus Christ or Muhammad. Those would be behavior and belief measures of religion. But there’s a third dimension that often gets overlooked: Belonging.
Belonging is usually measured with a very straightforward question: What is your present religion, if any?
Respondents are typically shown a long list of options — Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, and so on — and asked to check a box. But two people can select the same affiliation for completely different reasons.
Take Judaism as an example. Some respondents who check the Jewish box attend synagogue regularly and observe holidays like Yom Kippur and Passover. Others indicate they are Jewish even though they haven’t practiced the faith since childhood. For them, Judaism functions more as a cultural or ethnic identity than a religious one. It’s not really about belief or behavior.
That distinction is hard to tease out in most surveys. Very few instruments follow up with something like, “Did you indicate you were Jewish because your mother is Jewish, or because you actively practice the religion?” But thanks to the Pew Religious Landscape Survey, we now have a way to parse “religious” versus “cultural” identification with much more precision.
Here’s how it works. The ARDA hosts the most recent Religious Landscape Survey, which was conducted in 2023 and 2024. It includes the standard religious affiliation question and sorts respondents into traditions like evangelical, Catholic, and the non-religious. But it also includes a follow-up sequence that asks: “Aside from religion, do you consider yourself to be any of the following in any way (for example, ethnically, culturally, or because of your family’s background)?”
In the case of Judaism, respondents can answer “yes” or “no” — but only if they were not already classified as Jewish in the initial affiliation question.
In other words, the survey is effectively saying: I know you said your present religion isn’t Judaism, but do you still consider yourself Jewish in some other way?
And this isn’t just done for Jews. The same follow-up question is asked for Catholics, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists.
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Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.