Most Christians would probably fit within the category cultural Christians. Their self-identification as "Christian" is more cultural and social than religious. These are people who might say that they were “born Christian.” They are often born into ethnically conscious families and are therefore baptized, married, and buried in a particular church -- but have little or no interest or concern about its teachings or the meanings of its practices. A relationship with God through Christ may be either non-existent or as a Refuge/Provider/Magician on an as-needed basis. Perhaps a code of etiquette is linked to their notion of Christianity. Cultural Christians serve on church councils, vestries, boards, and the like in the same spirit as they would perform any other volunteer service to a charitable organization.
Nevertheless, cultural Christians have an emotional commitment to their denominational or local church. Occasionally the emotions are of a love-hate quality. Among their primary concerns might be the social standing of a given denomination and the zip code of a specific congregation. When they attend Services (which might be weekly), it is out of habit or family obligation, not religious conviction. For them, being Christian is essentially a cultural identity and, selectively, a source of general human values; they may actually be quite secular or humanistic in their day-to-day thinking. Cultural Christians has analogous meanings among the categories cultural Catholics1, cultural Episcopalians, cultural Baptists, cultural Jews, cultural Buddhists, et al.
[1] In traditional Roman Catholic theology, such individuals have excommunicated themselves from the Church. In recent years the Roman Catholic clergy have not often taught clearly about this doctrine. Their silence has allowed cultural and nominal Catholics to believe that they are still “good Catholics.”
“Nominal Christians” – Christians in name only – is a subset of cultural Christians. They rarely, if at all, worship with a congregation. In addition, they have a negligible emotional attachment to God through Christ, a denomination or a local church.