In my blog post 20 Facts About Me, I replied to a reader’s comment saying Quakerism was a thinker’s spirituality. A couple personal friends responded to me privately they feel Christianity was also a thinker’s religion, and that my comment was insulting. I wanted to write a blog to address that.

First, about being offensive. Very rarely am I trying to offend someone, and 99% of the time when someone says I did, I offer an apology.  If my thoughts do offend you, please feel welcome to approach me about it. I also hope everyone who reads this blog knows my intention with this particular post is not to be offensive, but to explain the world of religion from my point of view. You don’t have to agree with me. You’re welcome to debate with me. Just don’t walk away quiet and offended. That doesn’t help anyone.

I want to amend my statement that Quakerism is a thinker’s spirituality and change it to Quakerism is a spirituality of experiencing. I will get back to this in a few paragraphs.

I think there are religions in this world that are revealed religions. They have holy books and religious leaders, and you can go to a denominational church in one state and go to the same denominational church in another state and find them to be very similar in belief structure. There is a general consensus on what they believe as a group and their holy books explain to them what they believe and how the world works. I don’t consider revealed religions to be thinker’s religions. You don’t reason your way to explanations and outcomes, you decide how things work based on your holy books. You all believe in salvation almost the same exact way as other members in your religious denomination. You believe your religion was revealed as the one truth thousands of years ago, and since then that one truth has been taught to generation after generation. I also don’t believe revealed religions are a spirituality of experiencing. Again, you don’t come up with your conclusions based on experiences with the divine or with this world, you come to your conclusions based on revelations in a holy book. I’m not implying there’s anything wrong with revealed religions, either. It simply is what it is.

A thinker’s religion would be the Universal Unitarians. Reasoning to conclusions is big within the UU community. I’d also say Atheists and Agnostic are thinkers, even though I fully understand Atheism and Agnosticism are not religions or spirituality. I think they’ve come to their world view because they’ve put their own thought into it. No one told them to think this way and they’re not referring to other’s beliefs or publications to develop their views.

I think there are religions that one must have an experience to understand and relate, and this would be the kind of spiritual path Quakers and many Pagan paths would be a part of. There’s no holy books or religious leaders making the rules, explaining things, or guiding the way with sermons, etc, so they’re not a revealed religion. They can’t put everything into a neat package that doesn’t include their own personal experiences, so they’re not a thinker’s religion. Many people come to these spiritual paths for the one on one experiences they can have, and many remain on this path because they’ve had an experience that made something very real for them.

I’d love to hear other’s thoughts on this. Is there a 4th or 5th category that should be in this blog? Is my logic faulty in categorizing these different religions? Speak up! I’m always up for a solid intellectual discussion. They can be quite an experience for me. 🙂