JS: "they can figure centrally in satisfying the sort of substantial human needs that people generally want religions to meet (e.g. long life, immortality, the end of suffering)

This is where the real problems start. One can talk in general terms about "supramundane realities" etc, but once one comes to the core of the matter - the quality of religious experience itself - such general terminology no longer suffices. Some religions had no interest in "long life" (indeed the early Christian martyrs seemed often to want a short one).  Some had only the vaguest notion, if any, of immortality (this seems to have been the case with early Judaism for example). And far from wanting an end to suffering, some religions - eg Christianity itself - saw suffering as a means of coming to know the "supramundane reality" (eg Christ, who was the "suffering servant").

Generally speaking I think philosophy - especially of the analytic variety - will always struggle trying to understand religion in any fundamental way. Religion is centrally about certain forms of human experience, not about concepts and the world of the intellect. 

DA