On a Mission from God

This morning I read an interesting article in Time that I thought I’d rant about today. The article discusses religion in America, and cites some important new research from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life about the number of people who change faiths over the course of their lives.

But for we digophiles, the most important takeaway is about how MANY Americans identify with a faith – any faith. A total of 4% of the US population calls itself Atheist or Agnostic. Note to my Bay Area readers: that’s 4% not 40%. Here, let me make it more plain. Check out this pie chart offering a simplified version of the Pew data:















Get the figures by denomination here in a handy dandy pdf.

Those who know me have heard my arguments about the merits of addressing people of faith in certain marketing plans. Net net, when we talk about religious people, we’re not talking about people who put their hands in a sack of rattlesnakes to prove their faith. We’re talking about 8+ out of 10 people you see on the street. In other words, mainstream America.

So it’s only natural that a social network called FaithBase is in the soup now. FaithBase, one of the specialty sites from Community Connect (they of BlackPlanet, Mi Gente, AsianAve, and GLEE fame) grew over 2000% between Q2 and Q4 2007 (off an admittedly small starting base.)



One of the interesting twists in this community is the focus on finding local connections – this makes sense given the idea of fellowship through going to church.

I joined and had a little wander on the site. And naturally the members do look like 8 out of 10 people I see on the train every morning, The pics are, of course, a bit different from what you’ll find in a random walk through MySpace. I clicked on an app that randomly selects photos by gender and age and was given 24 pictures of women. NOT ONE low cut halter top in the bunch.





















Lord knows what I’d get if it served up 24 photos from a mainstream network. ;-)

Interestingly, this is an 18+ community, which may slow it’s viral growth, but will also keep it out of the pedophile hunt headlines. This seems a wise move given the need to maintain a squeaky clean image and the potential for pedophiles to use a common faith as an entry point for their exploitation goals.

FaithBase is still small by leading social site standards, but it’ll be interesting to see how it does.

And let’s not forget that colossus eHarmony has its roots in the Christian community. It has since branched out, but for years devout Christians were its bread and butter.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.