The Monk Life Project is a 30-day ordination program designed to provide practitioners with a foundation for meditative practice and monastic life. Based in Thailand at the International Forest Monastery in Chiang Mai, it’s specifically tailored for international participants. The training is delivered by English-speaking monks. “The project aims to make ordaining as a Buddhist […]
1) Christian women have become prominent social media influencers, and some are drawing large offline followings. Such is the case with Angela Halili and Arielle Reitsma and their popular show Girls Gone Bible. Launched in 2023 in the form of a weekly podcast show, it has since gained more than 20 million listens and nearly […]
1) Baptize America is a new movement that seeks to encourage revival by holding baptism events for adult converts to Christianity. The movement was first founded as Baptize California by Pastor Mark Francey of the non-denominational Oceans Church in Orange County in 2023 and has since expanded nationwide. The movement draws on more than 650 […]
Supposedly “the healthiest human on the planet” and “the most biologically measured person in history,” Bryan Johnson now intends to sell his startup, Blueprint (launched in 2021), and to focus on founding a new Don’t Die religion. After selling his web payments company, Braintree, for $800 million in 2013, Johnson split both from his wife […]
The 4 a.m. Club, the brainchild of self-proclaimed psychic Gia Prism, may be the closest thing to QAnon among progressive and left-leaning people. The club is a confederation of spiritually inclined women who all claim to have woken up suddenly around 4 a.m. on November 6 with a sinking feeling that Donald Trump had won […]
Following the publication of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals: Renewing the Instruments of the Anglican Communion last December by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO), Anglicans are discussing the possibility of moving toward a polycentric model, highlighting “the growing influence of the global South in the Communion,” with the Church of England “less […]
Pope Francis has appointed Sister Simona Brambilla as the first woman prefect of a dicastery, reflecting the increasing presence of women in the management if not the ministry of the Catholic Church. Brambilla will head the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, becoming the first woman to hold this position. […]
Muslim and Jewish exchanges and encounters have multiplied in Berlin and in the state of Brandenburg in recent years. Numerous projects of cultural and religious rapprochement and understanding have been most evident in the large city of Berlin, where there has been a “remarkable” growth of encounters between Muslim and Jewish artists and actors as […]
Albania is planning to create the world’s smallest, Vatican-style sovereign state within its capital city, Tirana. This proposed 27-acre enclave, about the size of five New York City blocks, would be called the Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order and would serve as a symbol of religious tolerance and moderate Islam. The initiative is being […]
1) Rather than leaving organized religion, some evangelicals who no longer feel comfortable in a conservative subculture are finding new spiritual homes in more progressive evangelical churches, such as Churchome, a non-denominational megachurch in Seattle. Members of the church speak about their uneasiness with mainstream American evangelicalism and how Churchome is doing it differently. Churchome […]
