Nice article, thanks! If I could just make a subtle comment about this line? It's interesting how common it is to presume that religious beliefs and systems of faith must be tethered irreducibly to a text or a collection of texts.

This is actually quite a recent notion we can mostly thank conservative American Protestants for. The idea started with Luther (sola scriptura) but found its apex centuries later.

But many religions (Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Progressive Christianity, Hinduism, etc, —to varying degrees) do not see textualism as definitional or even very important.

Jews, for example, don't seek to emulate the vengeful God of the Torah. Rabbinic discourse over centuries often holds up the stories in the Torah as cautionary tales. You can't boil contemporary Judaism out of the Torah. You won't find it there. You aren't supposed to.

Catholicism has developed doctrines and dogma that cannot be reconstructed by simply reading the Bible. You can't boil Catholicism out of the Bible. You're not supposed to. (Of course, Catholicism is a much more cruel religion than Judaism, and many Catholic doctrines are thoroughly despicable. But still, you can't boil them out of the Bible.)

Progressive Christianity is infinitely more decent and loving than Catholicism, but the same can be said. Progressive Christianity is not about ancient texts. It's not supposed to be.

I guess I probably belabor my point, but when I see people talking about how certain doctrines aren't found in ancient texts, I like to point out that that's not the standard many religious people use to define or talk about their beliefs.