Type of site | Lifestyle, spirituality |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Owner | BN Media Associates |
Launched | December 28, 1999 |
Current status | Active |
Beliefnet is a Christian lifestyle website featuring editorial content related to the topics of inspiration, spirituality, health, wellness, love and family, news, and entertainment.
Launched in 1999 by Steven Waldman and Robert Nylen, Beliefnet filled a gap in the religious and inspirational content available online. In 2007, Beliefnet was acquired by the Fox Entertainment Group, [1] with a strategy of being integrated into other Fox-owned faith-based entities. This strategy was short-lived and ultimately evolved, again with the sale of Beliefnet in 2010, to BN Media, LLC, an entity that includes the investors behind Affinity4 and Cross Bridge. [2]
In September 2016, Patheos.com was added to the family of brands. [3] In 2021, BN Media LLC announced that the company would be doing business as Radiant. [4] Under Radiant, Beliefnet was rebranded from interfaith/independent to an explicitly Christian website. [5]
Beliefnet provides users with Christian inspirational material and lifestyle coaching. They feature stories, quizzes, recipes, and other resources related to spirituality, inspiration, health and wellness, love and family, and news and entertainment. Beliefnet has also introduced concentrated mini-sections to answer the demand for more genre-specific content, like its Apron Strings section with resources for moms, as well as its Women's Health section. It provides basic information on some additional, non-Christian faiths including Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, among others.
The meaning of spirituality has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape of man", oriented at "the image of God" as exemplified by the founders and sacred texts of the religions of the world. The term was used within early Christianity to refer to a life oriented toward the Holy Spirit and broadened during the Late Middle Ages to include mental aspects of life.
The Toronto Blessing, a term coined by British newspapers, refers to the Christian revival and associated phenomena that began in January 1994 at the Toronto Airport Vineyard church (TAV), which was renamed in 1996 to Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (TACF) and then later in 2010 renamed to Catch the Fire Toronto. It is categorized as a neo-charismatic Evangelical Christian church and is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The revival impacted charismatic Christian culture through an increase in popularity and international reach and intensified criticism and denominational disputes. Criticism primarily centered around disagreements about charismatic doctrine, the Latter Rain Movement, and whether or not the physical manifestations people experienced were in line with biblical doctrine or were actually heretical practices.
Interfaith marriage, sometimes called a "mixed marriage", is marriage between spouses professing different religions. Although interfaith marriages are often established as civil marriages, in some instances they may be established as a religious marriage. This depends on religious doctrine of each of the two parties' religions; some prohibit interfaith marriage, and among others there are varying degrees of permissibility.
Religions are represented on the Internet in many ways. There are sites which attempt to cover all religions, traditions, and faiths, such as Patheos, Religious Tolerance, and Beliefnet. There are also sites that are specific to a religious tradition. Many sites are discussion groups, others host theological debates, and some provide advice concerning religious doctrine. Some sites aim to provide a religious experience facilitating prayer, meditation, or virtual pilgrimages. People also leverage search engines to investigate aspects of religion. Some religious websites are translated into several languages. For example, JW.ORG features content in over 1,000 languages.
Denis M. MacEoin was a British academic, scholar and writer with a focus on Persian, Arabic and Islamic studies. He authored several academic books and articles, as well as many pieces of journalism. Since 2014 he published a number of essays on current events with a Middle Eastern focus at the Gatestone Institute, of which he was a Senior Fellow. He was a Senior Editor from 2009 to 2010 at Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the American think tank Middle East Forum, where he was also a Fellow.
Religious tourism, spiritual tourism, sacred tourism, or faith tourism, is a type of tourism with two main subtypes: pilgrimage, meaning travel for religious or spiritual purposes, and the viewing of religious monuments and artefacts, a branch of sightseeing.
A nature religion is a religious movement that believes nature and the natural world is an embodiment of divinity, sacredness or spiritual power. Nature religions include indigenous religions practiced in various parts of the world by cultures who consider the environment to be imbued with spirits and other sacred entities. It also includes modern Pagan faiths, which are primarily concentrated in Europe and North America.
Joseph E.B. Lumbard is an American Muslim scholar of Islamic studies and associate professor of Quranic studies at the College of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. He is the author, editor, and translator of several scholarly books and many articles on Islamic philosophy, Sufism, and Quranic studies.
Interfaith marriages are recognized between Muslims and Non-Muslim "People of the Book". According to the traditional interpretation of Islamic law (sharīʿa), a Muslim man is allowed to marry a Christian or Jewish woman but this ruling doesn't apply to women who belong to other Non-Muslim religious groups, whereas a Muslim woman is not allowed to marry a Non-Muslim man of any Non-Muslim religious group.
Gerd Lüdemann was a German biblical scholar and historian. He taught first Jewish Christianity and Gnosticism at McMaster University, Canada (1977–1979) and then New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School, U.S.A. (1979–1982). In 1983, he was appointed to the chair in New Testament Studies in the Evangelical Theological Faculty at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and taught New Testament until 1999. In the same year, his chair in “New Testament” was renamed “History and Literature of Early Christianity” in the Institute for Special Research at the University. Thus, he was removed from the professorship to train future Protestant pastors and stayed in the new department until his retirement in 2011.
Ralph Wilbur Hood Jr. is an American psychologist. He serves as Leroy A. Martin Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he specializes in the psychology of religion.
Affinity4 is an American for-profit company that raises funds for nonprofit organizations through an affinity marketing partnership. Based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Affinity4 has raised nearly $100 million for charities and ministries such as Feed the Children, Focus on the Family, and the American Center for Law & Justice.
Patheos is a non-denominational, non-partisan online media company providing information and commentary from various religious and nonreligious perspectives.
Postmodern religion is any type of religion that is influenced by postmodernism and postmodern philosophies. Examples of religions that may be interpreted using postmodern philosophy include Postmodern Christianity, Postmodern Neopaganism, and Postmodern Buddhism. Postmodern religion is not an attempt to banish religion from the public sphere; rather, it is a philosophical approach to religion that critically considers orthodox assumptions. Postmodern religious systems of thought view realities as plural, subjective, and dependent on the individual's worldview. Postmodern interpretations of religion acknowledge and value a multiplicity of diverse interpretations of truth, being, and ways of seeing. There is a rejection of sharp distinctions and global or dominant metanarratives in postmodern religion, and this reflects one of the core principles of postmodern philosophy. A postmodern interpretation of religion emphasises the key point that religious truth is highly individualistic, subjective, and resides within the individual.
Ronald Henry Nixon, later known as Sri Krishna Prem, was a British spiritual aspirant who went to India in the early 20th century. Together with his spiritual teacher Sri Yashoda Mai, he founded an ashram at Mirtola, near Almora, India. He was one of the first Europeans to pursue Vaishnavite Hinduism, and was highly regarded, with many Indian disciples. Later, according to the account of his foremost disciple Sri Madhava Ashish, Krishna Prem transcended the dogmas and practices of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition into which he had been initiated and affirmed a universal spiritual path shorn of "orthodoxy" and blind traditionalism.
The World Religions and Spirituality Project publishes academic profiles of new and established religious movements, archive material related to some groups, and articles that provide context for the profiles. It is referenced by scholars, journalists, and human rights groups to provide a scholarly representation of threatened communities.
Digital religion is the practice of religion in the digital world, and the academic study of such religious practice.
Caner Dagli is a Circassian-American Islamic scholar and associate professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Gurus of Modern Yoga is an edited 2014 collection of essays on some of the gurus (leaders) of modern yoga by the yoga scholars Mark Singleton and Ellen Goldberg.
Adnan Aslan is a Turkish Islamic scholar.