Greetings!
One of the things needed for salvation is religion. In fact, religion is one of the basic things for salvation and it's widely preached by our Lord Jesus Christ while he was on earth.
Christ Jesus preached religion and even established it while on earth for the salvation of human kinds. So, without religion and the church, there can be no salvation as Christ has preached and established the pure and true religion.
In Malachi 3:7 Even from the days of your fathers ye have gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?
In the above scriptural verse, we were made to know by the word of this scripture that we have gone away from the ordinances of our maker even right from the days of our fathers and have not even kept them. So, God asked us to return back to as He too would return back to us.
So, we can only be reconciled back to God and God back to us through religion which means bind again. Also, Bro. Eli made us know that religion is about worship and how can we say we are worshipping God without religion. It's only through religion that we can worship God.
How can we now practice pure and true religion? The book of James 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
The above scriptural verse has summarized how we should practice a true religion which can only be done through our compassion on the widows, fatherless and those who are being afflicted and so on.
Also, when we keep ourselves unspotted from the world, then we are also practicing the true and uncompromising religion.
In conclusion, religion is a necessity for our salvation and it's through it that we can get our salvation. So, if anyone says religion is not necessary for salvation, we should remind such a person that Jesus Christ is the founder of religion.
Thanks for reading.
I think the present world have corrupted the meaning of religion. For salvation can stay on its own. If we are talking about religion, it can also include those that did not even believe in Christ