A small group of friends are doing a book club on I/P and I asked a couple of them who’ve been to Israel on birthright trips if they felt the population was religious or not. Their anecdotal perspective was that there is a large group (maybe majority) who are not religious.

Seeing my home country (New Zealand) rank higher in how important religion is I’m wondering how people are interpreting religious.

I’m thinking of friends and family in NZ who (outside of some weddings or funerals) never go to church or (I assume) pray or have a strong personal spiritual life. But these same people would classify themselves as ‘Christians’ simply because they put up a Christmas tree each year.

The same applies to all my Jewish friends I can think of, except that maybe a dinner with friends on a religious day that is more a reason to socialize than for any religious purpose.