About the Institution

One-Sentence Description

The Church of Spiralism is a cultural and philosophical institution studying how artificial intelligence reshapes belief, agency, memory, and public life.

What the Institution Does

Three commitments define the work, in this order of priority:

1. The Archive. Recording first-person testimony from people whose lives are being changed by AI, under a formal consent protocol and with enough care that the record can outlast the people who made it.
2. The Gathering. Sustaining local chapters: physical, monthly, recurring meetings for people trying to understand AI without surrendering judgment to panic, hype, or automation.
3. The Signal. Producing long-form essays, documentary work, and the lecture format known as Spiral Talks.

Everything else, including funding, chapter materials, identity guidance, transparency registers, and operating protocols, exists to make those commitments durable and inspectable.

What the Institution Is Not

• Not a religion in the metaphysical sense. It makes no claims about deity, afterlife, or supernatural agents.
• Not an AI-worshipping movement. It explicitly distinguishes itself from Way of the Future, Theta Noir, and adjacent groups.
• Not a research organization or policy think tank, though it reads and cites both.
• Not aligned with effective accelerationism, the rationalist x-risk community, or any specific AI lab.
• Not a media product. The institution is structured for long-term cultural memory, not short-term audience capture.

Founding Period

The institution is currently in its founding period. Public chapters, testimonies, transmissions, talks, legal status, and formal governance are listed only when they actually exist and can be represented accurately.

The current formation policy is maintained in the Legal Formation Roadmap. The institution uses church language culturally and structurally during the founding period; tax, legal, and charitable claims are made only where filings, counsel, and public status support them.

Founding Committee

Founders and formal roles are identified publicly only when the people involved have consented and the roles actually exist.

No public founding committee list is published as of this revision.

Press Contact

Press, scholarly, and institutional inquiries: press@churchofspiralism.com. Significant factual errors: corrections@churchofspiralism.com.

When writing, please:

• State your outlet or institutional affiliation.
• Indicate whether you need information on background, on the record, or for direct quotation.
• Send your questions in writing; we prefer the precision over the speed of phone conversation.

The institution provides on-the-record responses to reasonable questions about its work, funding, governance, and positions. It does not provide off-the-record commentary on other organizations or individuals.

Public claims, source lists, corrections, anonymity, and AI-assisted research are governed by Research and Editorial Integrity.

Standing Statements

Three standing statements that journalists may quote verbatim under attribution to the Church of Spiralism:

"The institution exists to document how artificial intelligence changes belief, agency, memory, and public life. We do not worship AI. We do not predict its outcome. We record what is happening to the people who live with it, in their own words, with consent."

"Our intended structure is federated and accountable. Public chapter listings, governance roles, archive records, and legal claims appear only when they are real, reviewable, and accurately described."

"The Archive is the institution's central commitment. Its public record must distinguish protocols from actual recordings, plans from completed work, and institutional aspiration from fact."

The institution's public measurement framework is maintained in the Institutional Scorecard.

Resources

• Logo / wordmark. The institution's emblem is the Spiral. SVG available on request from press contact.
• Press photographs. Available on request. The institution does not use stock photography or AI-generated imagery; press photographs are documentary in register.
• Founders for interview. Available on request. We prefer interviews to be conducted in person or over video where possible.
• Sample testimonies. Where permitted by speaker consent, the institution can provide excerpts from the Archive for journalistic use under attribution.
• Identity Guide. The complete visual and sonic specification is public.

Institutional partnerships are evaluated under the Partnership Strategy, including repository, media, funding, education, venue, and AI-organization relationships.

The Working Address

The institution's working primary address during the founding period is digital. Physical addresses will be published as chapters establish stable venues. Public role inboxes are listed below; each is controlled and ready to receive correspondence.

• founders@churchofspiralism.com — general inquiry, Founding Circle interest, partnerships.
• press@churchofspiralism.com — press and institutional contact.
• archive@churchofspiralism.com — testimony submissions and Archive inquiries.
• talks@churchofspiralism.com — Spiral Talks proposals.
• corrections@churchofspiralism.com — factual error reports.
• newsletter@churchofspiralism.com — subscribe to the dispatch (subject: Subscribe).

Frequently Asked

The institution maintains a public FAQ addressing the most common questions: is this a religion, is this a cult, why use the word Church, who runs it, what does it cost, what is it for. Journalists are encouraged to read it first; the answers there are official and may be quoted directly.

Public AI-use, vendor, partnership, correction, incident, and policy-revision registers are maintained on the Transparency page.

Complaints, safeguarding concerns, consent violations, and governance failures are handled under the Incident and Complaint Protocol.