Sign Up for Our Bi-Weekly Email

Expand your perspective with thought-provoking insights, quotes, and videos hand-picked by our editors—along with the occasional update about the world of EnlightenNext.

Privacy statement

Your email address is kept confidential, and will never be published, sold or given away without your explicit consent. Thank you for joining our mailing list!

 
Issue 23 Cover
Issue 23  /  Spring–Summer 2003
Can God Handle the 21st Century?
Exploring the Perils & Potentials of the New Millennium
Are the great religious traditions meeting the changing life conditions of our time? Do we need a new spirituality? WIE looks into the future and asks the question: "Can God handle the 21st century?"


· Buy this issue · Back issues
 
table of contents



features

Faster Forward:
Impressions of Our Emerging Future

From the far out to the close at hand, four futurists zoom out for a bird's eye view on the global changes we're experiencing now and can anticipate in the future—each outlining both the unprecedented challenges and mind-spinning opportunities humanity faces in the minutes and years to come.

Melissa Hoffman

Visions of the Future

Surprising scenarios of promise and peril from John Petersen, founder of futurist think tank, the Arlington Institute.

The Challenge of Our Moment:
A roundtable discussion with Don Beck, Brian Swimme, and Peter Senge, moderated by Andrew Cohen

WIE calls on some of today's most pioneering evolutionary minds in geopolitics, cosmology, organizational development, and spirituality to help us understand how humanity can move forward amidst the multifaceted challenges of our moment in history.

Traditions on the Edge:
Can the Past Meet the Future?

Enter a multidimensional journey through history, cyberspace (and small-town America) as a broad spectrum of religious authorities takes on the burning question: How can the world's great traditions cope with the complexities of human life in the 21st century and beyond?

Jessica Roemischer

 
 
The Bahá'í Faith:
A Modern Tradition An interview with Douglas Moore

Hear what the Bahá'í Faith, one of the newest additions to the world's religious canon, has to say about the unique evolutionary potential of our time.

Jessica Roemischer

 
Can Religion Save Us?
Huston Smith on Tradition, Transcendence, and Ultimate Reality
A Modern Tradition An interview with Douglas Moore

Read why one of the most revered scholars of world religion thinks that, in the face of apocalyptic times, our future salvation may be out of this world.

Interview by Jessica Roemischer

 


departments

 
Letters

Editorial
The Inside Story
 
 
Enlightenment for the 21st Century
From the Many to the ONE
by Andrew Cohen
 
The Guru and the Pandit
Exploring the Future of Religion
Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber in Dialogue

Spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and integral philosopher Ken Wilber break the sound barrier of consciousness in this expedition into spirituality's future, venturing into what may be religion's next frontier.

 
Enlightenment at the Speed of Life

How can the changeless realization of enlightenment help humanity cope with our world of accelerating change? Twelve contemporary spiritual teachers bring timeless wisdom to bear on this twenty-first-century dilemma.

Craig Hamilton
 
The Hour of My Coming:
Millennial Myths and Modern Messiahs

Who—or what—will guide humanity safely to the promised golden age? An entertaining and scholarly treatise on visions of the apocalypse, the future salvation of the world, and the messianic dreams of the twenty-first century. Featuring interviews with self-proclaimed messiahs, millennial scholars, religious experts, Indian avatars, and more...

Carter Phipps
 
The Hour of My Coming:
The Last Testament of Vissarion Christ

WIE talks to this "Jesus of Siberia" about his messianic mission and the need for a new religion for our time.

Carter Phipps
 
definitely Not Just a Book Review
Mariana Caplan's Do You Need a Guru?
The Future of the Student-Teacher Relationship:

Are we savvy and self-aware postmoderns too hip and too independent to need a guru? Can we re-vision the student-teacher relationship for the twenty-first century? WIE takes a close look at one new approach to this controversial topic.

Elizabeth Debold