I recently wrote to Professor Hutton with just this question and he was kind enough to reply in this manner:
Thelema certainly could be considered a
religion. I did not put it into the frame when I wrote "Triumph" because it
hardly existed in Britain, and certainly did not as a coherent tradition.
Subsequently I learned more about it, and put the question to adherents of
it whether it was a religious system, and got a sharp division of opinion
leading to a total absence of conclusion.
Given that Thelemites themselves (myself included) cannot decide whether Thelema is actually a religion or not it would seem that the question of it being a British, or English, religion is moot.
It has been a very interesting and informative thread though and I hope that there are more discussions of this quality here in the future.
David G Mattichak
author of A Comment on the Verses of the Book of the Law
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