I’m reading The Soul of Christianity by Huston Smith. I found this helpful:
Religions have outsides and insides: they have outer, exoteric forms that house inner, esoteric cores. People differ on which of these stands out more clearly for them. For esoterics God is in the focal view, whereas for exoterics his created world is focal and God must be inferred from it. It follows that for exoterics this world is concrete and the celestial world is abstract, whereas for esoterics it is the other way around….Esoterics can understand exoterics and recognize their need for them, but the reverse does not hold. …Every where in history exoterics far outnumber esoterics and the religious institutions run mostly on the energy they provide.