I'd have baked one

Karen Armstrong wants to be able to eat her cake and at the same time keep it whole, unbitten into, let alone chewed and swallowed. Religion, she argues, is misconceived when it is thought of as being about beliefs rather than about practices:

[R]eligion is something you do, and... you cannot understand the truths of faith unless you are committed to a transformative way of life that takes you beyond the prism of selfishness.

Religious narratives deal in myth, she says; they're 'a programme of action', 'a species of practical knowledge'. Let's leave aside that a person may lead a life going beyond selfishness without signing up to any religion, either belief- or practice-wise. But notice that little phrase 'truths of faith'. What are these now if religion is about practice rather than belief? Why still call them 'truths'? Because when all is said and done Armstrong is holding on to something of the usual referent of the word 'belief'. Thus:

Skilled practice in these disciplines ['yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle'] can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.

Practices, then, lead to 'intimations' of the transcendence we call God. But this latter, this transcendence, isn't itself a practice, and the affirmation that it is some sort of reality looks, willy-nilly, like involving belief. Likewise here:

When a mythical narrative was symbolically re-enacted, it brought to light within the practitioner something "true" about human life and the way our humanity worked, even if its insights, like those of art, could not be proven rationally.

Something true about human life that is called an 'insight' just does bring back beliefs about the world, however dependent these might be, for their acquisition, upon practices.

Armstrong's is a form of special pleading. No one would buy it were they to be told about the practices of dusting, roller-skating and blogging that these yield special insights which can't be expressed and rationally defended as propositions within a system of beliefs. (See also here.)