A polydoxy is a religion whose fundamental principle is that every person is her or his own ultimate religious authority with the right, therefore, to accept and follow whichever religious beliefs and observances she or he thinks true and meaningful. Accordingly, members of the same polydox community (a religious community that subscribes to a polydoxy) may hold different views on such subjects as the meaning of the word God or the existence and nature of an afterlife. All members’ beliefs regarding the great subjects of religion are equally acceptable so far as the polydox community as a whole is concerned. (Members of a community that subscribes to an orthodox religion, by contrast, are all required to accept fundamentally the same religious beliefs and to follow basically the same ritual observances.) The fundamental principle of a polydoxy may be stated in terms of a covenant, the Freedom Covenant: Every member of a polydox community pledges to affirm the freedom of all other members in return for their pledges to affirm her or his own. Equally binding in a polydoxy is the corollary of the Covenant of Freedom: Every member’s freedom ends where the other members’ freedom begins.
A Religious Structure