Speaking as someone who grew up steeped in Catholicism, and who recently re-embraced that: YES. Yes, religion is a culture. It's part of many cultures and sub-cultures that make up my identity, but of course it's a culture. It has norms, values, rituals, shared stories, shared language, music, art...what is that if it's not a culture? Some religions have more of that than others, and almost all have varying levels to which a person participates in/is influenced by that culture, same as any other type of culture, and like all cultures, it overlaps others (the German-influenced Catholicism of my childhood is probably very different from what someone in an Irish-Catholic parish/diocese/city will have experience) but of course it's a culture.
And in this case, it has strong parallels to whiteness, in that there is a very strong default that people only really recognize in its absence. Most Americans, unless they are specifically part of a different religious culture, experience a kind of foundational Christianity (often specifically Protestant Christianity, but that's kind of splitting hairs). There's the holidays (and I know, secular Christmas, pagan roots, except it's really not if you are specifically religiously outside of it), there's an enormous influence over Western literature (try teaching James Joyce to people who've never read the Bible; it's a gas) and music and art. But it's the default, the norm, the unmarked form, so a lot of things that are Christian in origin have been flattened into what we call "mainstream" culture. Which is very much like what's happened to a lot of {insert European region}-American culture with regard to whiteness.
no subject
Speaking as someone who grew up steeped in Catholicism, and who recently re-embraced that: YES. Yes, religion is a culture. It's part of many cultures and sub-cultures that make up my identity, but of course it's a culture. It has norms, values, rituals, shared stories, shared language, music, art...what is that if it's not a culture? Some religions have more of that than others, and almost all have varying levels to which a person participates in/is influenced by that culture, same as any other type of culture, and like all cultures, it overlaps others (the German-influenced Catholicism of my childhood is probably very different from what someone in an Irish-Catholic parish/diocese/city will have experience) but of course it's a culture.
And in this case, it has strong parallels to whiteness, in that there is a very strong default that people only really recognize in its absence. Most Americans, unless they are specifically part of a different religious culture, experience a kind of foundational Christianity (often specifically Protestant Christianity, but that's kind of splitting hairs). There's the holidays (and I know, secular Christmas, pagan roots, except it's really not if you are specifically religiously outside of it), there's an enormous influence over Western literature (try teaching James Joyce to people who've never read the Bible; it's a gas) and music and art. But it's the default, the norm, the unmarked form, so a lot of things that are Christian in origin have been flattened into what we call "mainstream" culture. Which is very much like what's happened to a lot of {insert European region}-American culture with regard to whiteness.