Quote - I think that some of the conclusions being jumped to on both sides of the coin are...well, at best, demeaning.  People of faith are not inherently followers any more than atheists are inherently amoral.

There is part of the above statement that I find hard to understand. I thought (rightly or wrongly) that the essence of a religious faith was that you followed the teaching of some prophet (Mohamed, Jesus, Moses, etc), or the teaching of some some religious leader (Gandhi, Billy Graham, Kohmani, the Pope, etc), or some religious text (Bhavagad Gita, Torah, Qur'an, etc).

If people of religious faith are not inherently followers (and I'm not knocking being a follower of something), then what are they? I am not asking out of a desire to be argumentative, I really want to know. It has always seemed to me that being of a religious faith is synonymous with following some religious teaching. If I am mistaken, could someone please set me straight?