Why I Don't Read Beliefnet (Much) Anymore

By Tom Head Saturday, October 15, 2005 10:46 p.m. CDT

Beliefnet still has its moments, but mostly it alternates between schmaltzy and toxic.

I took a vacation from Beliefnet during the 2004 elections, after it declared George W. Bush one of the ten most inspiring people of 2003--just in time for the presidential campaign. Despite a user poll favoring gay New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, Beliefnet chose Archbishop Sean O'Malley as its #1 most-inspiring--most famous, at that point, for suggesting that Catholic Democrats should not receive communion. To Beliefnet's credit, they did at least have Robinson among the top ten--a gutsy gesture. But the persistent hand-wringing about how Kerry should have campaigned on his religious beliefs (which presumably include Matthew 6:5-6), as columnist after columnist gushed about Bush's self-aggrandizing displays of religiosity, were just too much. I saw a bias. I don't know whether a bias was actually there or not, but I felt that there was one.

Not that the site is all right-wing propaganda. The best thing about Beliefnet, by far, is the quiz section--and no matter how much you think you might hate the site for other reasons, it's probably worth visiting for that, at least. There's the deservedly famous Belief-O-Matic (which always rates me 100% Unitarian Universalist or Liberal Quaker) and the almost-as-good What Kind of Christian Are You? quiz (which I just took again, scoring 168--which sounds pretty close to whatever I scored last time).

But even the "What kind of Christian...?" quiz kind of sums up the problem with Beliefnet, because my score of 168 identifies me as a "Hillary Rodham Clinton Christian." Well, for starters, I'm sure my theological beliefs are substantially to the left of those Hillary expresses--I have never heard her publicly question any of the fundamental Christian doctrines in the way that I have. I think I'd be more of a Marcus Borg Christian. It doesn't really matter; most folks who take the quiz probably have no idea who Marcus Borg is. But why does it have to be a political figure?

Maybe it's because Beliefnet always straddles the uncomfortable tension between politics and religion. It's all about covering up what Richard John Neuhaus called "the naked public square"--political culture without the language of religion. So to prevent the public square from being arrested for indecent exposure, Great Thinkers on both sides of the political divide (but primarily on the right) offer to dress it in a wide range of clown suits.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the two official blogs, which are easily the worst part of Beliefnet. On the right, you have Charlotte "Loose Canon" Hays, who offers up these nuggets of wisdom on the first page alone (bracketed portions mine):

"Loose Canon [note the third-person usage -- ed.] commends the the Pro-Life Action League, which is trying to alert parents that this 'seemingly innocent self-esteem campaign' is helping to 'support the pro-abortion, pro-lesbian agenda of Girls Incorporated.'"
"...[T]he Vatican is quite right to exclude those gay candidates who attend gay pride marches from the priesthood..."
"Brit playwright Harold Pinter has just won [the Nobel Prize] for literature ... And also probably because he hates George Bush."
"A man who is part of the gay subculture is proclaiming that he rejects the teachings of the Church."
"Mr. Molloy [dean of an Episcopal cathedral; the official title would be "the Very Rev." -- ed.] is exactly where he belongs--in a church that consecrates homosexual bishops. And is on the verge of splitting because of it."
"[Retired Roman Catholic archbishop Hannan is] an old-fashioned Catholic bishop, the kind you don't much see nowadays, unfortunately ... I like that the archbishop has the robust faith to say these things--you don't hear them very often: ... 'We are responsible as citizens for the sexual attitude, disregard of family rights, drug addiction, the killing of 45 million unborn babies, the scandalous behavior of some priests -- so we have to understand that certainly the Lord has a right to chastisement. If you ask me if the Lord knew of [Hurricane Katrina], this was the greatest storm in the history of the nation.'"

Think that's rough? The liberal blogger, Jesse "Swami Uptown" Kornbluth, is arguably worse. From his blog, verbatim:

So if bird flu becomes a pandemic, let those who voted against Bush paint the letter 'D' in lamb's blood on their doors. And may the angel of death pass over their houses.

Is this cruel to the people who voted for Bush? I think not. He warned everyone--before each election--that we were making significant, life-or-death choices. And despite his fairly obvious intellectual, moral and career liabilities, tens of millions of people voted for him. And now they want to buy it all back? Sorry. As I always say, actions have consequences. He told you, people: life or death. And so many bought into his idea of a God who smites. And they chose death, thinking it was life.

Well, maybe it is.

Eternal life.
If this is spirituality, I'll take soulless materialism any day of the week.

Previous Commentsshow

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(Clever, Rex!) Todd, really good question on why secular humanism and Reform Judaism tend to go together so often in this quiz. I'm thinking, for some reason, of a study done during the early 1990s that determined that Episcopalians, Reform Jews, and Unitarians tended to agree on social issues--forming a liberal triad, as it were. And if secular humanists were included in the study, I suspect they'd be very close in line with that triad. Some other possibilities that come to mind: 1. Judaism has never been very concerned about pie-in-the-sky afterlife stuff. In the Hebrew Bible era, Sheol was Hades, where the shades of the dead walked. Moses (Deut 34) and other figures are eulogized as if they went to the grave and ain't coming back. Only two figures are described as "walking with God" at the time of their deaths: Elijah and Elisha. And most scholars believe that legends surrounding the two figures were conflated. But I'm rambling; the gist of it, anyway, is that Judaism tends to be more about this world than the next. 2. Reform Judaism can be very, very liberal. A huge number of Reform Jews (I don't know the exact percentage, but it's above one-third) are actually agnostic; of course that includes lapsed Reform Jews. 3. Reform Judaism and secular humanism are both organized around reason, with doctrine running second or not at all. So Reform Jews are liable to answer on the relevant questions that the universe came to be what it is as the result of natural processes, evil is the result of human failings rather than demons and such, etc. Another question that comes to mind is the Ju-Bu phenomenon: Jews are vastly overrepresented among American converts to Buddhism. There have been some semi-humorous looks at this (The Jew in the Lotus, A Jewish Mother in Shangri-La, etc.), but it's a really good question and I don't think it's gotten the kind of scholarly attention it probably deserves. There are some definite similarities between Judaism and Buddhism as it is practiced in the United States--both are concerned with right/skillful conduct, personal transformation, and becoming a better person. They're not very centered around Last Things, and where Last Things do become relevant the stakes tend to be lower than in other faiths (even the most Orthodox of Jews don't buy into exclusive salvation, and Buddhists believe people get more than one shot at Enlightenment). I wonder if that's part of the appeal. They're both very practical faiths. Which brings us back to #1, I reckon, because secular humanism is a pretty practical religion, too. Cheers, TH

Tom Head

Oct 18 2005

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