Thanks for your response.

Not quite sure what you mean by your first sentence. What was it intended to be then?

If Protestantism is more true to the New Testament, then you presumably have to accept that the canon was established by the Catholic Church, and could have been otherwise. For me a problem with Protestantism is that it rejected the practices (and corruption) of the Church, but on the whole retained the core of the religion that it had created.

I agree with you totally that the core of religion/spirituality is that “the self yields fundamental authority to something that is above all of us”. But I think that this is necessarily a personal connection based on one's own experience or, as you put it, 'individualistic'. That was also Jung's point of view.

As you say “the basis of religion is authority”. For me and Jung, that is the problem. The church is not above all of us, merely a group of humans who believe they have access to a truth which they want to impose on others. The Bible is obviously an important text, but is nevertheless written by humans, some of whom have undoubtedly had profound spiritual experiences. This does not make them 'above all of us'; they remain nevertheless human beings.