There is however for most people a gulf between what they actually believe, that is what they really believe, and what they profess to believe. If they are conscious of this gulf we tend to think of them as hypocrites; if they are not conscious of it we have no word to describe them, since they cannot be called insincere, but the gulf manifests itself when they fail to live up to their professed enthusiasms. Again I want to emphasise that, in my opinion, there is no difference between religious beliefs and any other; they are both just sets of beliefs, which may or may not be true. But religious beliefs are, I think, easier to analyse, because they are more standardised, and are more constrained by a formal setting than are beliefs in other spheres of human activity. So I will discuss them.

Dogma may conveniently be described as beliefs which one does not believe in. An honest man puts into practice his real beliefs in an unassuming spontaneous way. The process is natural, and unselfconscious. He is said to be sincere, true to himself, being himself. There is not the split-mind that exists when a man puts into practice a code of behaviour outside himself to which he pays lip-service; such as is described by Bonhoeffer in his Ethics regarding the…