Anthroposophy- not a Dogmatic Religion.

The Anthroposophical Society should not be a dogmatic religion. Rudolf Steiner once said that if he returned and found that the Anthroposophical Society had become a dogmatic religion he would be its "bitterest enemy". I think the word "dogmatic" is the properly pejorative one, not religion.

Some characterize anthroposophy as a religion and it can hardly be argued against, because these days anything even vaguely spiritual (or not) can be registered as such. But it should never become a dogmatic religion. There must always be a freedom of thought- this is what can be emphasized to any critics.   

From the original statutes: 

The purpose of the Anthroposophical Society will be the furtherance of spiritual research; that of the School of Spiritual Science will be this research itself. A dogmatic stand in any field whatsoever is to be excluded from the Anthroposophical Society.

There is one major difference between anthroposophy and religion, and that is one has to be prepared in one's Budhi/Manas capabilities in order for it to be understood properly. Therefore proselytizing is out of the question - same with theosophy.

Of course, our brothers and sisters will hold to their various dogmas; and this is not much of a problem as long as we uphold a spirit of brotherhood and tolerance - that, and the knowledge that our individual dogmas are only "place holders" on our journey towards ever more clarity.

What is in a word?...everything and nothing. Dr. Steiner wouldn't have minded if the name of the society changed every week or two. The name is not so important- it's the substance behind that name.

“I have often been asked by people whether they would be able to join the Anthroposophical Society as they could not yet profess to the prescriptions of anthroposophy. I respond that it would be a sad state of affairs if a society in today’s context recruited members only from among those who profess what is prescribed here. That would be terrible. I always say that honest membership should involve only one thing: an interest in a society which in general terms seeks the path to the spiritual world. How that is done in specific terms is then the business of those who are members of the society, with individual contributions from all of them.

"I can understand very well why someone would not want to be a member of a society in which he had to subscribe to certain articles of faith. But if one says that anyone can be a member of this Society who has an interest in the cultivation of the spiritual life, then those who have such an interest will come.”

Rudolf Steiner, 1923
The Anthroposophic Movement

"And how can I achieve it? The one and only way is this: instead of taking an interest merely in my own way of thinking, and in what I consider right, I must develop a selfless interest in every opinion I encounter, however strongly I may hold it to be mistaken. The more a man prides himself on his own dogmatic opinions and is interested only in them, the further he removes himself, at this moment of world-evolution, from the Christ. The more he develops a social interest in the opinions of other men, even though he considers them erroneous — the more light he receives into his own thinking from the opinions of others — the more he does to fulfil in his inmost soul a saying of Christ, which to-day must be interpreted in the sense of the new Christ-language."
...

"“Through the fact of my birth I am a prejudiced person; only through being reborn into an all-embracing feeling of fellowship for the thoughts of all men shall I find in myself the impulse which is, in truth, the Christ Impulse. If I do not look on myself alone as the source of everything I think, but recognise myself, right down into the depths of my soul, as a member of the human community” — then, my dear friends, one way to the Christ lies open. This is the way which must to-day be characterised as the way to the Christ through thinking. Earnest self-training so that we gain a true perception for estimating the thoughts of others, and for correcting bias in ourselves — this we must take as one of life's serious tasks. For unless this task finds place among men, they will lose the way to the Christ. This to-day is the way through thinking."

http://wn.rsarchive.org/…/…/English/RSP1974/19190211p01.html

"And so it is that anthroposophy, at the moment when it wants to intervene in life, wants to be only generally human, wants to refrain from any dogmatism, wants in turn to take hold of life itself, wants to represent it [...].

And this difference between the anthroposophical movement and other movements should be made clear to the world: its comprehensiveness, its impartiality, its lack of prejudice, its freedom from dogma: that it merely wants to be a method of experimenting with the generally human and the general phenomena of the world [...].

And so one would actually like anthroposophy to have a different name every week, so that people could not get used to all that follows from a name." (Lit.:GA 259, p. 173f)