Are Angels Non-Denominational?

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Tanya Carroll Richardson, author of Angel Insights and the new Angel Intuition.

“Did you tell them that angels work with everyone?” my husband asked.

I’d just gotten off the phone, wrapping up a radio interview to promote my latest book, Angel Intuition. “What?”

He sighed, visibly frustrated. “Did you tell them that angels are non-denominational? That they love everyone? Tanya, you have to say that right upfront. It’s the first thing you should tell people.”

He’s right. I used to take it for granted that folks knew angels were not Christian or Pagan or Buddhist or Muslim. As Lorna Byrne says, angels are not concerned with religion or particular spiritual traditions. They are concerned with you—helping you make the most of your human journey and fulfilling your destiny. Yet, if angels are a concept that doesn’t resonate with you, you’re not alone. I was never concerned with or attracted to angels until the day I actually saw one—a transparent figure that appeared in my bedroom with enormous feather wings.

Growing up, I was raised by a single mother who was an atheist. Or more accurately, an agnostic, which the dictionary describes as “a person who claims neither belief nor disbelief in God.” She once told me, “I think there’s something out there that’s bigger than us, but I’ve got no idea what it is.” And she wasn’t too concerned about it, either.

The apple could not have fallen farther from the tree, in my case. I was a very spiritual young person. In middle school I set up my own altar in the corner of my bedroom, complete with a cross, where I could kneel and pray. In high school I read about Wicca and created a new altar where I kept my tarot cards and incense. It was a solitary seeker’s journey.

Not being a part of a formal spiritual community was a real source of angst for me growing up. I was jealous of friends who were Catholic and got to enjoy all the ritual of that religion, or friends whose parents were Unitarian and got to study everyone from Thor to Ganesha. But now I feel it might have been part of Spirit’s plan for me that Mom was a blank slate in that department. I grew up with zero conceived notions about “God,” and so I made it up, and picked things up, as I went along—embracing Kabbalah, Buddhism, Paganism…and finally, angels.

I knew nothing—or very little—about the Bible when I saw an angel in my room that day ten years ago, and most people (including me at the time) associate angels with Christianity and the Bible. Yet angels are mentioned in many popular religious texts and are being more widely sought out by people who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.”

The pros of religion seem to be that it can give people comfort, community, faith, purpose, and a sense of something greater than themselves. The downside is that in some religious communities people are encouraged to trod a very narrow path, like a horse with spiritual blinders on. As someone who works with angels—guardian angels, helper angels and archangels—every day in intuitive sessions with clients, I can assure you that angels are, quite simply, beyond religion. They are also beyond judgment or expectation. Angels truly love you unconditionally.

My main concerns when writing Angel Intuition were to give people a look inside the life of a professional psychic and to teach readers how to better understand, utilize and improve their own intuition. But there’s plenty in this book about angels, too. It was inevitable! They have become such a big part of my life, and I hope they become a bigger part of your life as well.

Our thanks to Tanya for her guest post! For more from Tanya Carroll Richardson, read her article, “10 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Your Intuition .”