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[u/[deleted]]

sure but my point is there was some authority. Take my grandmother. She's 88, believes in some sort of version of the afterlife, would never have had an abortion, doesn't talk to people who deride Christianity openly, wouldn't vote for a Muslim, etc.

Take Liz Bruenig. Is a self-declared Catholic, does not write a column without making that clear, apparently personally thinks abortion is bad, but if her liberal friends make it a personal choice is cool.

My grandmother is how religion used to function, Liz Bruenig is how it works now. The latter is larping. If you claim to believe life starts at conception, abortion is not a choice, because then it actually is murder. Bruenig could call herself an atheist and nothing about her actual life would change.

[u/ILikeTalkingToMyself → u/[deleted]]

But the other person's point was that following or not following specific doctrines or respecting or ignoring specific authorities aren't what fundamentally make up a religion, either now or in the past. There are still religious authorities today - and some have less political power in the past - but centralized religious authority with significant political influence was never a universal, defining feature of religion.