Categories for specific religious groups (e.g., Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism) and approaches to spirituality and religion (e.g., Atheism, Pantheism, New Age) are listed together at the top, while categories for general religious and spiritual topics are listed together below. This separation is not intended either to favor or slight either classification, but merely to make it easier to find subcategories in this large list. Also, some separate religions may be grouped together (e.g., Pagan, Esoteric and Occult) for organizational and navigational simplicity.

As yet another way to make navigation easier, alternate names for subcategories are given in the alphabet bar (A, B, C, ...) as @links, giving alternate paths to the subcategory. (For example, the Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/M/Mormon@ link points to the Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/Christianity/Denominations/Latter-day_Saints category.) If you do not see the name for the religious category you are looking for, or don't know how it might be classified, look in the alphabet bar.

Editing in the Religion and Spirituality categories can be unusually sensitive. Editors must list sites objectively, regardless of their personal opinions of the sites' messages. That can be hard, since for many people their religion is at the core of their worldview. If an editor feels uncomfortable making an editing decision for a particular site, the editor must ask a co-editor or higher-level editor to edit the listing. Editors who often find themselves in this situation are encouraged to move their editing activities to categories they are more comfortable with.

Repeating this, because it is important. Even though we recognize that an editor's religious beliefs may be of utmost importance to them, the Directory has to be unbiased and objective, and its editing rules must be adhered to. If an editor cannot edit a category objectively, they should not be editing it.

Conversely, some religions may claim that other religions are subsumed within them--that these other religions are manifestations of their religion. However, the members of the "subsumed" religion feel that they are part of a separate religion, and not part of the "greater" religion.

Open Directory does not affirm or deny any religion or belief system. It classifies and compiles websites. The resulting categorization endeavors to reflect common, mutually agreable views; however, there will be cases in which the majority of the followers of a particular belief system will feel that their religion or other religions are misclassified. In matters such as this, it is impossible to please everyone.

For handling such situations our guidelines are:

A. The Heresy Guideline

For classification purposes Open Directory focuses on primarily on similarity, not on differences. If a religious group claims to be part of a larger group, and substantially follows what the larger group does, then Open Directory classifies them as part of the larger group. This is regardless of whether members of the larger group accept or reject the variant group.

B. The Overreaching Guideline

If a group claims to incorporate another group, but if the other group claims to be separate, and if the other group follows practices that are substantively different from those of the group saying that they subsume the other group, then the groups are separate.

C. The Unexceptional Differences Guideline

If a group claims to be separate from another group yet they follow substantially the same practices and have a substantial historical connection, then they are classified as part of the other group.

At times following these guidelines may cause two or more groups that strong oppositions to each other to be listed in the same category. For Open Directory classification purposes the disagreements between these groups are less important than the similarities between them. For example, if Religion X has a schism resulting in two groups openly and strongly hostile to each other, Open Directory classifies them both in Religion X because their similarity in this regard is more important than their religious differences.