Discussions in pop philsophy about free will usually wind up more of a expose of the arguer's/writer's background, biases, and the phenomena he has oberserved the most in his life.
The OP, now departed, temporarily or permanently of his own choice, clearly had religious trauma and actually did not provide anything cognizable about the specific actions behind "being a religious person of religion X".
The perception of will is borne out of the human capacity to think.
But it is true that there are mechanistic forces in the universe that can operate regardless of "thinking". Hormones(predisone certainly activated behavior in my body that did not ever happen to me before), heavy metals, etc can all affect the "thinking" of man.
Man is best describe as semi-pliable in mind. He is conforming to a certain set of habits, strongly influence by hormones, food, and whatever sacred axioms he holds, but can in isolation, think and decide freely up to a point. But dare contradict the sacred axioms(which need not be religion, it can even be politics, worship of a mode of thought like science, etc), and man will resist thinking and acting in contradiction to those deeply held axioms.
The other matter is the colloquial and non-legal English tends to influence the speaker by focusing on the nouns and then automatically drawing inferences and presumptions based on the nouns. This can manifest in statements "being good at math" rather than saying "good at calucating" or "good at doing the act of calucating". Math is the noun, and the English speaker pays no attention to the actions of actually doing math.
Free will is a thing(a noun), but it is a concept involving humans doing or not doing actions, physical or mental. It could be considered...a partial synonym of cognition.