About Beliefnet

Our mission is to help people like you find, and walk, a spiritual path that will bring comfort, hope, clarity, strength, and happiness.

Whether you're exploring your own faith or other spiritual traditions, we provide you inspiring devotional tools, access to the best spiritual teachers and clergy in the world, thought-provoking commentary, and a supportive community.

Beliefnet is the largest spiritual web site. We are independent and not affiliated with any spiritual organization or movement. Our only agenda is to help you meet your spiritual needs.

About Our Advertisers
Beliefnet receives a significant percentage of its revenue from advertising. Like other media companies, we have to balance our need for happy advertisers with our commitment to editorial integrity.

For us, the formula is pretty simple: editorial decisions must not be dictated by advertisers. Our first responsibility is to our readers and we make our editorial decisions based on what we think users will want.

But that's not to say that we don't try to help our advertisers on the site. For instance, if our editors have decided that a book excerpt is a good one, we will sometimes notify advertisers that we are doing so, in part in the hope that they will advertise. If we are running a negative review of a book, we might let an advertiser know as well, in case they want to provide a countervailing viewpoint in ads. We also generally provide "Buy It" buttons next to books. Beliefnet does get a small fee from Amazon each time someone clicks to them from our site. But it is a tiny amount and we use these "buy it" buttons primarily as a service to users (who often want to know how to buy it), writers (whom we often don't pay very well and for whom this is an extra benefit), and for sponsors.

Political Advertising on Beliefnet
Beliefnet does not endorse political candidates or parties. We do accept political advertisements from political campaigns or issue groups and offer equal time to opposing campaigns that also wish to purchase advertising.

Beliefnet’s Founders
Beliefnet was founded in 1999 by Steven Waldman and Robert Nylen:

Steven Waldman conceived of the idea for Beliefnet in 1998 and teamed up with magazine publisher Robert Nylen to launch Beliefnet.com on December 28, 1999. Waldman was Editor-in-Chief for the first few years but when the company went bankrupt in 2002, he also took over as CEO and Chairman, leading it out of Chapter 11, through a period of rapid growth and a sale to News Corp in late 2007. He also served as Editor in Chief from 1999 until November 2009, when he retired from Beliefnet. During his tenure, Beliefnet became the leading spirituality website and won numerous editorial and web awards, including the National Magazine Award for General Excellence online.

He appeared frequently on TV and radio as an expert on religion in America, wrote a blog for Beliefnet and a column for Wall Street Journal Online. He is the author of Founding Faith: Politics, Providence and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America (Random House). He was named by Time magazine one of the nation's top "spiritual innovators."

Before starting Beliefnet, he was National Editor of US News & World Report, National Correspondent for Newsweek in the Washington bureau, an editor of the Washington Monthly and a reporter for States News Service. He also served as senior advisor to the CEO of the Corporation for National Service and authored The Bill about the passage of the AmeriCorps law.

Robert Nylen teamed up with Steven Waldman in 1999 to launch Beliefnet. He served as its first President and then in 2001 joined Beliefnet’s board of directors, on which he served until the company’s sale in December 2007. Before co-founding Beliefnet, he was a media consultant, entrepreneur, publisher, writer, and part-time college professor. He co-founded New England Monthly magazine, wrote for Look magazine, was an ad manager for U.S. News & World Report, and was vice president and associate publisher for Texas Monthly. He has contributed to The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Fortune, American Lawyer, American Benefactor, Folio, Adweek, and many other newspapers and magazines. In Vietnam, he earned two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star with V Device, and other awards. He died in December 2008, soon after completing his critically-acclaimed memoir, “Guts: Combat, Hell-raising, Cancer, Business Start-ups, and Undying Love: One American Guy's Reckless, Lucky Life.”