Natural religion might have the following meanings:
- In the modern study of religion it is used to refer to the notion that there is a spontaneous religious apprehension of the world common to all human beings, see:
- Urreligion
- origin of religion
- anthropology of religion
- As a reverent form of nature worship, embodied in a well-known quote from Frank Lloyd Wright: "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
- Referring to the religions of people prior to their Christianization.
Famous quotes containing the words natural and/or religion:
“It has no share in the leadership of thought: it does not even reflect its current. It does not create beauty: it apes fashion. It does not produce personal skill: our actors and actresses, with the exception of a few persons with natural gifts and graces, mostly miscultivated or half-cultivated, are simply the middle-class section of the residuum.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“It is visible then that it was not any Heathen Religion or other Idolatrous Superstition, that first put Man upon crossing his Appetites and subduing his dearest Inclinations, but the skilful Management of wary Politicians; and the nearer we search into human Nature, the more we shall be convinced, that the Moral Virtues are the Political Offspring which Flattery begot upon Pride.”
—Bernard De Mandeville (1670–1733)