Censuses and surveys represent a two-edged sword. They are both a technology of governance for national and former colonial administrations and a tool of
recognition for the minoritized. In this article, I discuss the history of censuses and
surveys in a Danish context, arguing that the regional and local history of registration is crucial for understanding how and why religious identity becomes visible and
important as a measure for the population. Applying the case of a national survey on
religiosity in relation to the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in 2020, I ask how
religion comes alive through the strategic use of artificial ideal types aimed at mapping
a religious mainstream. Surveys introduce a distance to messy religious reality, thereby
reducing complexity and richness. Yet this distance also allows the researcher to ask
new questions that go beyond the immediate religious experience.