Which Religious Groups Are Most — And Least — Likely to Get Tattoos?
(ANALYSIS) When I was in college, I did a lot of things that I’m glad I stopped doing once I earned my bachelor’s degree. For instance, one time I bleached my hair platinum blonde. It was such a dumb thing to do because the person applying the dye didn’t have much experience.
She left it on too long, and it chemically burned my scalp. I had huge chunks of skin falling off for a week afterward.
And to top it off, I just looked completely ridiculous.
There was also a time when I seriously considered getting a tattoo. I’m not even sure what I was going to have permanently marked on my skin, but I’m certain it would have been some type of Christian symbol. Several of my good friends made the trip to the tattoo parlor and came back with fresh ink, but for some reason, I didn’t go with them. I count that as part of God’s providence, for what it’s worth. I’m really glad I never got a tattoo.
What’s interesting is that at my Christian college, there was a fairly positive attitude toward tattoos. That was certainly not the case in my deeply evangelical environment back home. I was thinking about that contrast recently while scrolling through some of the new additions to the repository at the Association of Religion Data Archives.
In July 2023, the Pew Research Center fielded a questionnaire that included a comprehensive set of questions about tattoos.
One relationship I wanted to explore was between religion and tattoos. My assumption was that religious folks — especially those from more conservative backgrounds — wouldn’t feel very positively about tattoos. But it’s also clear that the overall stigma around tattoos has faded tremendously over the last couple of decades.
For instance, Pew asked: “Over the past 20 or so years, do you think society has become more accepting or less accepting of people with tattoos, or has it stayed about the same?”
You can read the rest of Ryan Burge’s post on Substack.
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.