Gradations of Religiousness or of Culture?

Pretty neat article at Zeek on a new collection of essays about radical Jewish culture by some of its most prominent "proponents".

One of the contributors said: "I resist religion, so often deployed as a club to beat others, as a fundamentalist intolerance. That is, I am secular not because I am a bad or lacking or ignorant Jew, but because I think religions as social practices are basically retrograde, exclusionary, controlling, and morally—if not politically—supercilious. I am a cultural Jew not by default, but by choice.”

My response was this: "I think my only qualm is that the distinction between religion and culture is eroding, and I don't understand why some Jews are so quick to distance themselves from even radical forms of "religious" Judaism. Even Reform, the biggest branch in America, can be seen as more cultural than "religious" since it isn't halakhically based. Because of this, and other reasons, I've always considered "secular" a misnomer, an empty signifier for Jews. I don't see the binary, I don't see secularism--only a fluid dynamic of religiousness."

And then I realized another key which works in either the defense of this statement or one that counters it: the Bible! Since the Tanakh's permanence hinges upon the community's opinion and canonization of it, does that make it cultural or religious? It depends on the individual Jew, and whether he or she believes those books are the word of God, or written due to His inspiration; therefore, I am lead to ask if we are revering a cultural artifact with varying degrees of religiousness, or a religious artifact with varying degrees of culturalness?

Maybe this is just a stupid conversation, and these terms are ultimately useless. I will say that Schopenhauer, and many who still place culture and religion within a conflicting binary (like the quote above), are clearly wrong: religion and culture interact in incredibly complex ways, and are perhaps one and the same.