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:
“All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of the words by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The only human beings I have thoroughly admired and respected in the world have been those who carried the load of the world with a smile, and who, in the face of anxieties that would have knocked me clean out, never showed a tremor. Such men and women end by owning us, soul and body, and our allegiance can never be shaken. We are only too glad to be owned. Religion is nothing but this.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)