Your condescending comparison to Cassandra and Giselle, how exactly have they critically examined their beliefs?
Cassandra knows she's not a flawless arbiter of what is right or true, that there is no way to be sure one is doing the Maker's work and that one must keep searching -- and she suspects the Seekers lost their way because they stopped searching. Giselle is very frank about how the Chant has been meddled with in the name of power-play and politics, and she's also able to explain her faith in different ways and on different levels. Considering the fact that Leliana gets a lot more lines in Origins and Inquisition combined yet never shows any signs of critically engaging with what she believes in while those two who get significantly less screen time do, I hardly think it's a stretch to see her as someone whose faith is purely a matter of emotion, of wanting acceptance and purpose, because that is all she has ever shown me.
At any rate, you keep ignoring my point with your talk about "objective truth". I have specifically stated that I'm not looking at this from my perspective as a RL atheist, but from the POV of the Andrastian faith as we know it. What I expect from Leliana is not the presentation of "objective truth", it is the demonstration of a willingness to at least try to reconcile her own need for unconditional love with what the commonly accepted religious canon of her faith says. Back in Origins, there's a conversation between her and Wynne in which the latter points out that Leliana's beliefs contradict the Chantry's teachings, and Leliana just handwaves it away. She's gotta do better than that if she want do lead this religion. After all, if she can contradict the Chant on a whim, anyone can do the same and proclaim it to be the Maker's will. Might as well throw the whole thing out altogether, it would be more honest.
As for Leliana putting herself on the same level as Andraste, she never claimed to be a prophet. Considering the PC plays an Inquisitor under the title Herald of Andraste and used that posturing to gather an army, that's kind of the pot calling the kettle black don't you think?
She claims to have received signs and dreams, which is pretty much the same as claiming to be a prophet. And guess what? The fact that the whole "Herald" business is so casually accepted by everyone around us except by a few antagonistic outsiders is one of my biggest disappointments with the entire game's story. I really wish we had been able to deeply engage with the matter, struggle with it, see the same struggle reflected in our companions, advisors, and followers, in the people who depend on us but are afraid to follow a heretic yet also afraid of insulting us. It could have made so many waves in so many situations, for good or ill. Instead it's little more than a hollow ego-stroke on top of a mountain of wasted potential.
I don't know how one can accuse Leliana on charges of tyranny. Her whole platform is based on encouraging good and not dictating it. Barring her hardened ending where she uses assassins, she is the least militaristic divine and has no army to bludgeon anyone to accept her beliefs.
Leliana is Leliana. The "hardened" version is not a different person, it's just the other side of the same coin -- a coin which has been flipped often enough to leave me extremely dubious of her ability to remain "softened" this time around. In fact, the "hardened" side is pretty much the "default" side in this game since you need to sway her away from it and that is easy to mess up. "Softened" Leliana is not a tyrant, but she has the very strong potential to become one, and the knowledge, skills and connections too.
Also who are you to dictate what is canonical to the Chant of the Light? Even the current Chant of the Light is a bunch of revised and edited bullshit used to sway the masses for political expediency with various interpretations by various cults.
... which has been part of my point all along, you know.
And it is still no excuse for picking and choosing based on one's own fancy, especially not for someone who wants to be a religious leader.
You state that being religious isn't about what a person wants but to do the Maker's will. Well what if the Maker wants you to think for yourself?
I'm surprised you managed to copy-paste that big quote and still miss several key aspects of it. Punishment, making this world reflect his glory, the admonishment to master one's own desires, honoring at a distance, the failure of acting on pitiful instinct and looking to the Maker to fulfill our needs and not his. All that directly flies in the face of following one's own emotions and of proclaiming direct divine inspiration, both of which Leliana keeps doing.
I want to like her vision for her faith, but for the nth time: I also want to see her engage with what said faith actually says instead of waving away anything that does not suit her, with no explanation or examination that we ever see.