Many contemporary transformational processes currently affecting European societies revolve around questions of national and cultural identity. To provide an inside perspective, this talk explores the role of language and religion in constructing collective identities among ethnic and/or religious minority faith communities. Drawing on ethnographic research in Manchester, UK, on German-speaking Protestants, Vietnamese-speaking Catholics, and two Reform Jewish congregations, religion and language are shown to be both the subjects and the means of negotiating personal and collective belonging. Findings include the significance of linguistic and religious-cultural resources in negotiating the meanings of religiosity and of ethnic/national identity against the backdrop of migration-related pluralism, and in exercising, contesting and (re)defining institutional power structures. This approach offers a flexible understanding of social cohesion which captures the central role that religion continues to play on the personal and collective level of many communities while acknowledging the heterogeneity of contemporary European societies.