Natural Religion

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:

    “A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land. They must not yield wheat and potatoes, but must themselves be the unconstrained and natural harvest of their author’s lives.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.”
    —Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)