I am troubled by the notion that Christianity is a religion of ethics.
The presence of Christ in my life did not occur out of some ethical series of behaviors or any sense of goodness on my part. He is alive in me because he saved me from the oblivion of my self. I am bought by His blood, not by ethics. This seems to me to be a cosmological and not an epistological event. The only theory of knowledge necessary is to recognize the nature of reality, a simple and essentially primitive act.
The distinction may simply be between the experience of religion as a human construct and the experience of God. One need not, after all, be religious to know God.
But I will add by way of corroboration: To reduce Christianity to a religion of ethics is to miss the entire point of the Sacrifice of Christ and His Living Presence in our lives. And I agree that "One need not, after all, be religious to know God." Certainly Plato wasn't "religious" in any sense we readily recognize nowadays; but he sensed the divine Presence in his life. He identified it as Nous, "divine mind." What he couldn't do, before the coming of Christ, was draw the connection between "Mind" and the actual Person whose Mind was "present" in his own spiritual life.
Thank you ever so much for your beautiful essay/post!