How about making a parallel for religion with language that goes like this: Languages - Language - dialect - idiolect Religions - Religion - Religious Sect - idiogen The point is, for example, that that attack on religion always characterises it as monolithic or sectarian which it isn't. All religious people have an unpredictable personal variant on religious belief too. And what you say and your private opinions are similar probably to many other Christians and Muslims. For example, the "idiogen" of a Muslim woman will probably be idealistic and hopeful about the future of women in Islam in a way that her religion as a whole or her particular religious sect would not approve of. So she keeps it to herself. She values her community above her idiogen. Talk to most Christians, of course, and you will find that each person, no matter what their church says, often has quite a rich and individualistic spiritual life. Most Catholic women, I believe, expect that at some point th