Is Allegorical Religion better than Fundamentalism?

[The Grand Nudger]

That's actually a good example, as there is a thing called religious humanism.  There's a term (terms, really) for the ideology underpinning christian belief as well, that has nothing to do with gods or religion on it's own.

But if it doesn’t fit the definition then it is a misnomer

It does fit the definition of a religion...chances are, you have additional and negatively weighted requirements for what you would consider a religion..such that, if you can't find those things wrong with it, it must not be a religion.  

I stress this all the time.  Religion isn't shitty, the shitty religions just put that little effort into the thing they swear is of utmost import. I think that's the most relevant aspect of religious failure to the op q. It's not now nor has it ever been impossible to create a religion of x - x defined as any collection of things religiously apprehended that any given person could find absolutely no quarrel with.

AKA, good fundamentals.

There's some question as to whether or not a good actor in a market full of bad actors could be competitive, maybe that's why the religions we're all familiar with are a sewer, but here again, it's a "the other guys are so shitty they'd rather see us dead" problem, not an issue of the potential for religious organization around a particular set of principles. Now, personally, I think there's something to that, but there are people who hold to religions of x that say otherwise and, really....it's hard to argue over the future with them. It may also be that we've spent so much time reforming our states, effort that would have otherwise been spent reforming our religions (and for all of the same reasons, to all of the same ends), that they just lag behind at present.