Doctrine

We can observe from human history that the religions that stick around are those that are well documented. Usually having some sort of recorded text or scripture sacred to the focus and wisdom of that faith tradition.

Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, all have sacred texts. I do not know about Hindu's, or other eastern faiths, but it holds true for most.

The story of Enigen and Menew illustrates both the benefits and pit-traps of this. It goes something like this;

Enigen was a giant, which was one of the first people in Celtic Mythology, one day he beheld three rays of light, and contained within the three rays was all the wisdom and knowledge of the universe. He then took three rowan staves and inscribed the staves with the divine knowledge he had invoked. When others beheld the staves, they misunderstood, and worshiped the staves themselves as divine. This upset Enigen greatly, so much so that he burst and died.

So the first part of the story gives us an example of divine inspiration, knowledge invoked or discovered external to the individual. It also illustrates the mistake people make with sacred texts, instead of focusing on what they teach the texts are held up as holy and infallible. For example, Christians make this mistake with the Holy Bible, worshiping the book itself in addition to the God. The book itself is present and treated with reverence. "The bible says…" is a phrase you will often hear from certain Christian groups. I have been reading the bible and studying it for years. It has never said anything to me. It is a book that contains text, of which gives us a testimony to the life and deeds of Jesus. Or, if you will, it is the cradle of Christ, giving Christians the information they need to follow his example. It is unfortunate that the book itself often gets worshiped, as false idol, and the greater lesson of how to live in community and be a good neighbor gets overlooked, among many other things.

But there is hope as the story continues. Menew discovers the staves (text), a year and a day later. Menew is a man, like us (men and women), and he studies these three staves, learns their language and re-discovered their wisdom. He then shares this discovery and also the teachings of wisdom to others, and the legacy of Enigen lives on, a blessing to the people (Celtic).

This is the example of evoking, of discovery from within one's self through study and contemplation. The gospel here (a shameful turn of phrase, 'gospel' means "good news") is that Menew rediscovers the wisdom and begins to share with others. Good things come from this and the mistake of worshiping the text as an idol is avoided. The wisdom lives on.

So with any faith tradition documentation is usually required for the tradition to endure. Documentation also presents the opportunity for the words themselves to become a subject of worship, when the words should be a continued source of wisdom and a guide on how to live as a community.

Another side-effect that I often mention is that when a religious or philosophical group hold such texts as to be complete and infallible they divide themselves from others, those that do not hold the text or scripture in such high regard. While we can site many good things that have come from such examples in human history we can also point to them as a source of division. I think people naturally want to belong to something special, even in cultures of people that are similar in ethnic and religious make up people find criteria to differentiate a select group within the larger population that is different in some way, be it good in their sight or bad. This part of our nature can be exploited by the concept of orthodoxy, taking the tendency to differentiate to a new extreme. Instead of merely asserting something like, "We are a bit different and feel our way is better", adding orthodoxy to this resolves to, "We are right and all others are wrong" and while this might be a bit of a reduction, it has been historically asserted that 'others' adopt the orthodoxy or face some terrible fate in the future at the hands of some divine judgement. We are right, you are wrong, convert or suffer the judgement... When stated like that how can it not drive a wedge?
How is this relevant to doctrine? I am making the assertion that those groups that hold what they believe as a complete and infallible text do this, sometimes unwittingly, all the while thinking that they are serving a greater good. The "Greater Good" can be a scary and powerful tool of manipulation historically convincing otherwise good people to do bad things. I am not making the claim that such religious and philosophical groups are intentionally driving division in the world (with some exceptions found in extremism), on the contrary, I think that they believe they are trying to unite it to bring about some peaceful reality. Rather the unintentional consequence of their orthodoxy is that of divisive speech and sometimes action.
If instead, these groups consistently viewed the other groups or philosophies as different and perhaps even valid paths of establishing and maintaining a relationship or connection with the divine then the world just might be a bit more peaceful.
In their open letter, A common Word, <http://www.acommonword.com/> Muslim leaders in America brilliantly observe that well over half the world's population is either Christian or Muslim and that if the two faiths cannot have peace then the world cannot have peace. Who can argue with that?
I think one of the aspects of these religions, and some others, is that they disagree on who will be judged as good and righteous on the Day of Judgement. That's really it after all, who is right will be clear on that day so you better be on the right side! What if we did away with that sort of thinking? If we instead concluded that there might never be such an apocalypse then this source of division might melt away. In another post on Rescue Theology I argue other pit-traps of apocalyptic thinking, but I did not touch on this one. In that post I essentially try and illustrate how we might behave differently if God one day tweeted to all Abrahamic/Apocalyptic faiths, "I'm cancelling the Apocalypse, you humans need to sort this all out on your own", or in other words; God's not going to come fix things for us, it is our mess and we need to clean it up.
In my profession (my day job) we have an acronym, GYAT, or "Get Your Act Together", which what I think the peoples of the world need to do and the sooner we realize that it falls on us and this world will not be renewed for us by some divine parent that will also settle our differences and tell us who's right and who is wrong, then the sooner we can start fixing what is broken.

Update:
I thought it worth pointing out, that though monotheistic religion has been the source for some divisive attitudes, Jesus does instruct us to not only love our neighbors as ourselves but also our enemies. That would include people that you think adhere to the "wrong" religion as either a neighbor or (hopefully not) an enemy.