BELIEF-O-MATIC

: Beliefnet has a quiz thingy that queries you about morality and rates your level agreement with various faiths. Not surprisingly, I came out 100% Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant.

While I'm on the subject of belief and Beliefnet, that site has been in financial trouble for some time. It's even reportedly gone from 69 employees to just 12, and those 12 are running the site, posting content and cleaning out the johns while trying to keep their enterprise going. Question is, why is Beliefnet in trouble? Billions are believers in something, and Beliefnet tries to give all those billions some reason to check out their site. You can find horoscopes right alongside Biblical teaching, transcendental meditation next to Muslim musing. You can even subscribe to a newsletter billing itself as Best of Beliefnet, which I suppose amalgamates the top teachings from all the world's great religions into one convenient package.

And that's Beliefnet's problem. It starts to look like a sports page after a while--wanna check in on the Taoists? They're there. How about Judaism? Yup--they seem to be in a real barnburner over in the West Bank these days. It's like reading a spiritual box score, and that turns most real believers, regardless of faith, off. Beliefnet tries to be all things to all believers, never getting beyond the surface and realizing that not all faiths are compatible, and that earnest belief in any one faith demands excluding other faiths to some extent. That being the case, the true believers who should be Beliefnet's core audience don't trust Beliefnet as a kindred arena, or a place to find true religious insight.

Beliefnet is the place to point and click and stay on the surface. And that's why it won't succeed.