Politics may be at the center of public life, but it doesn’t make up the core of who we are.
Politics may be at the center of public life, but it doesn’t make up the core of who we are.
T hanks to the 24/7 news cycle and endless debating and sniping on social media, politics has become an ever-present background noise in our daily lives. Historian Anton Jäger calls this wider condition hyperpolitics: Political engagement runs high while the parties and civic institutions that once provided a basis for community and solidarity have weakened. But that political noise may obscure how Americans actually see themselves.
A new national Wheatley Institute survey of American adults finds that politics dominates public life but not Americans’ sense of self. We asked Americans about nine identities that might be central to their sense of self. They ranked political affiliation at the bottom. The list of identities included race, nationality, gender, politics, religion, family identities like son or daughter, mother or father, and divine creation or child of God. This finding is consistent with earlier research. A 2018 YouGov survey asked Americans to weigh parent, spouse, religion, and career as parts of their identity— and political party ranked last there, too.
Family mattered in our survey, as we expected. What surprised us is that seven in ten Americans named child of God or divine creation as an important part of who they are. This was not confined to a single faith — Christians, Jews, and Muslims all agreed.
Among both the religiously affiliated and the unaffiliated, politics sat at the bottom of the list, dead last for the religious and second to last for the unaffiliated. Being a Democrat or a Republican mattered less to people’s sense of self than being a parent, a spouse, or an American.
The identity that organizes our news cycles and campaigns is, by Americans’ own account, one of the least important things about who they are.
Americans’ private spiritual lives hold more surprises. Forty-three percent say they thank God multiple times a day, and three-quarters say they have witnessed a miracle at some point in their lives. About four in ten report reading the Bible in the past week. Even the “nones,” who make up nearly three in ten Americans in Pew’s latest survey and a large share of younger adults, complicate the story. In our survey, about a quarter of those who identify with no religion pray daily, and roughly half of the unaffiliated call themselves spiritual.
Our institutions are where our commitments to civic engagement in the face of our differences are tested. Houses of worship can address moral issues affecting congregants (for example, taking public stances on ballot measures) without making party affiliation a test of faith. Seventy-nine percent of Americans say churches should not endorse candidates, and 44 percent of regular attenders are unsure whether their clergy are mostly Republican, Democratic, or mixed.
Classrooms are another place where different convictions meet. Schools and universities should make a stronger case for open inquiry. Against a backdrop in which only 38 percent of Americans express confidence in higher education, including only 23 percent of Republicans, a 2026 major campus speech survey found that a majority of students opposed allowing each of six controversial speakers — three “liberal” and three “conservative” — to speak on campus. Universities should help students listen to, test, and understand ideas they disagree with.
It’s clear that party labels offer an incomplete picture of who we are as people. Pew has found that 28 percent of Americans view both parties unfavorably, up from 6 percent in 1994, and a record 45 percent identified as independents in 2025, the highest share Gallup has ever measured. And while many independents still align with a particular party in their voting patterns, a preference at the ballot box need not define a person.
And even when our ballot box preferences diverge, we’re really not that different from each other. Shared priorities often cross party lines. For example, the American Family Survey shows that, among parents of children under 18, 89 percent of Republicans and 86 percent of Democrats call raising children one of life’s greatest joys, even as they disagree over government’s role in supporting families. When we treat every conviction as a partisan signal, we miss the spiritually active, family-centered lives many Americans lead. Pluralism makes room for people to draw on those deeper commitments while recognizing that difference and national unity need not be opposites.
Americans are not blank slates waiting for campaigns, universities, or even churches to tell them who they are. Their convictions differ, overlap, and sometimes clash. Pluralism means taking those differences seriously while finding ways to share institutions and public life. Our data show that Americans are so much more than the political background noise that seems to define modern life — and we can bring our whole selves into shared institutions without asking others to leave theirs at the door.
Shima Baradaran Baughman is the Woodruff J. Deem Professor of Law at BYU Law School and Distinguished Fellow at the Wheatley Institute. Paul W. Lambert is the director of the Wheatley Institute Religion and Human Flourishing Initiative.