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 is impossible to dissociate language from science or science from language, because every natural science always involves three things: the sequence of phenomena on which the science is based; the abstract concepts which call these phenomena to mind; and the words in which the concepts are expressed. To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality.”
—Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794)
“In the latter part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian of Dunstable, “Towns were directed to erect ‘a cage’ near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.” Society has relaxed a little from its strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the tighter in another.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)