The author provides a mega-review of the history of religious life through the ages, and then expands a thesis that community life is at the heart of the evolution of religious life. She draws on efforts to establish community in other faith traditions and looks to contemporary networking movements and organizational models as possible scenarios for how religious life might emerge in the future. Among the younger generations of consecrated women today, her view of the future is offered through defining characteristics that will be the hallmarks of religious life in the 21st century.