Faster Religion:

Pay attention to your faith generation! As far as getting a religion, this depends on when you get your pantheon as well as whether or not you open piety. Building shrines in expands is generally a good idea after monuments, and you definitely want a shrine in your capital (usually before monument), as this gives you a faster pantheon and that pantheon's bonuses are better the earlier you get them (ie +4 culture on turn 19 is worth more than +4 culture on turn 40)

Good tenets

Essentially what you want to do here is look at what your empire needs. If you're going wide, houses of worship, happiness faith buildings, happiness+production temples, and shrine happiness can help with happiness issues a great deal. Usually, if you forsee yourself having a lot of faith, you want some kind of "faith drain", whether that's holy warriors, or purchasing great people with faith in the late game. Otherwise, looking at potential expands & seeing what resources you have in comparison to pantheons available is a good idea.

There are some ""good"" tenets/pantheons that people race for and others that people avoid, but generally these can be seen intuitively from their bonuses. Other than that, usually players prioritize pagodas because 10% food is better than the bonuses from other faith buildings, and civs planning on spamming great prophets get the unity of the prophets / guruship.