Quantifying the Distance between Religions: A Survey Based, Data Driven Approach

Religion has long been recognised as a central dimension of culture, yet no dedicated framework exists to quantify the cultural distance between religions. Existing models, such as Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions, the GLOBE study, and Inglehart and Welzel’s cultural map, primarily focus on cross-national differences and treat religion as a single categorical variable. This study introduces a novel quantitative methodology for measuring cultural distance between religions by adapting the Cultural Fixation Index (CFST), originally derived from population genetics to cultural and behavioural survey data. Using data from the seven waves of the World Values Survey (1981-2022), religious groups were compared across selected value dimensions corresponding to Traditional versus Secular-Rational and Survival versus Self-Expression values. Responses were normalised, grouped by religion, and analysed to produce pairwise CFST values and a composite distance matrix representing inter-religious variation. The methodology accounts for both between-group and within-group variance, ensuring that intra-religious diversity is preserved in the calculation. The results demonstrate that the CFST approach can identify statistically meaningful distinctions between religions based on belief, practice, and value orientations. This provides a replicable and data-driven framework for quantifying religious and cultural differences, enabling future research in comparative religion, cultural evolution, and cross-cultural psychology.