New York, USA - Beliefnet.com, the multi-faith spirituality website that started in December 1999 and crashed into near-fatal bankruptcy by spring 2002, is soaring once more.
Behind the scenes, there's a rebuilt staff of 52 editors and technicians working in a remodeled Manhattan office. The site has been redesigned to keep up with the stampeding Web trends of videos and social networking.
New this fall: a raft of new interactive spirituality teaching, preaching and praying features, even puppets, the "Jovialites" telling corny religious jokes.
Already, the site is the Internet leader in the religion and spirituality category, with more than 3 million visitors in September, according to Web traffic measuring service comScore Media Metrix.
By comparison, the two leading Christian sites last month were Salem Web network (Crosswalk.com, Oneplace.com and Christianity.com), with nearly 1.9 million visitors, and the site for Christianity Today magazine, with 559,000 visitors, says Media Metrix.
"Beliefnet, like all of the Internet, taps into young people, who are more ecumenical," says Susan Harding, an anthropologist of religion at the University of California-Santa Cruz. "People today are not only church-hopping among denominations, they're searching across entire bodies of religious belief," she says. The Web in general works for these seekers.
And because Beliefnet offers a menu of everything from accessible theology to angel chatter to prayer circles, says Harding, "it fits a very broad definition of Christian and general spirituality. ... I find if I'm surfing any spiritual subject, Beliefnet is likely to have it."
Still, founder and CEO Steven Waldman, formerly a reporter for Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, is very sensitive to any hint that this might be a "mushy hybrid religion" site.
"That's a false assumption. We don't take the position that all faiths are equal. We never say 'interfaith,' we always say 'multi-faith.' We want to help people find a path that works for them," says Waldman, 43, a Jew married to a Christian and rearing their children to respect both traditions.
Today's Beliefnet is different from its early days; it focuses less on journalistic newsmaker interviews and puts more emphasis on the "self-help mission" and trend spotting, Waldman says. This year, it began a weekly trends column in Newsweek, called "Beliefwatch," with a Beliefnet logo on it.
But politics is not forgotten. Last month Beliefnet added the "God's Politics" blog by progressive Rev. Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, and introduced a new Washington bureau chief, David Kuo, former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and author of a controversial new book about the Bush administration and faith. The redesign keeps favorites such as the 20-question "Belief-O-Matic" quiz, where visitors can identify "what religion (if any) you practice ... or ought to consider."
New or coming soon:
•Preachers and Teachers: Visitors can pick from a menu of brief inspirational or explanatory video talks by clergy, scholars, writers and spiritual thinkers, from the Dalai Lama to Left Behind novelist Jerry Jenkins.
•More visitor-generated features such as "When You Come Home," a multimedia tribute to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, posted on Memorial Day, with photos submitted by site visitors.
•A new personals site pairing Beliefnet's Soulmatch relationships site with Yahoo Personals so visitors can search the Yahoo database for "spiritual and faith-based compatibility," and Beliefnet's advice, Waldman says.
The goal, says Beliefnet executive editor Elizabeth Sams, is to be "the centerpiece of where people share spirituality."
Believing in different categories
How do Beliefnet visitors categorize themselves? Thousands have taken the "Spiritual Type" self-quiz, one of the most popular on the site. The latest breakdown:
Hardcore Skeptic: .5%
Not spiritual or religious "but interested or you wouldn't be here!"
Spiritual Dabbler: 4.3%
Open to spiritual matters but far from impressed
Active Spiritual Seeker: 8.2%
Spiritual but turned off by organized religion
Spiritual Straddler: 13.6%
One foot in traditional religion, one in free-form spirituality
Old-fashioned Seeker: 19.8%
Happy with his/her religion but searching for the right expression of it
Questioning Believer: 21.4%
Have doubts about the particulars but not the Big Stuff
Confident Believer: 25.6%
Little doubt they've found the right path
Candidate for Clergy: 6.4%
Very informed and deeply committed