Beyonding: Spirituality, Ritual, and Space in the Metaverse
Kim Grinfeder, William Scott Green, Denis Hector · Management, change, strategy and positive leadership · 2025
Abstract This chapter reviews the fundamental ways the metaverse—and its components of virtual reality and artificial intelligence—is reshaping the human experience of community, space, and spirituality. It then uses the evidence from multiple offerings of our course, Religion and Sacred Space in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality, to analyze how students used these technologies to devise new collective and individual spiritual experiences through the creation of rituals and sacred spaces in the metaverse. The chapter concludes with suggestions for how these new technologies can generate and enable novel educational practices and creative forms and expressions of space, spirituality, and community.