Religion gives us the structures that weld the habits and disciplines of the soul into one integrated whole.

Those same structures can also, however, smother the very spirit they intend to shape. We can get caught in the structures and the forms that are the basilica of religion. We can be overcome, even repulsed, by the power of God incarnated in ecclesiastical pomp.

We can make the mistake of thinking that God and religion are synonyms and make religion God. We can, as the general semanticists teach us, mistake the way for the thing and the thing for the way.