Joseph Campbell, who was a religious scholar, made the following distinction between a personal God and an impersonal god.

A personal God is one who is thought to listen to the prayers of individuals and answers those prayers at least some of the time. Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religions pray to a personal God.

Those religious belief systems that pay homage to impersonal gods include: pre-Columbian American Indians, Buddhists, Hindu, Chinese regional religions, and deists. (Many of the founding fathers of the United States were deists, who believed in the Watchmaker god. He created the universe, wound it up, and the universe has been running without divine interference ever since.) Impersonal gods are generally manifestations of nature rather than the master of it. A Hindu, for example, might pray for rain or a good harvest more to paying homage to nature than expecting an overt well-defined answer.