I was interviewed this week for an article today on ChristianMingle.com. I previously published a blog article on the precarious line between false advertising and faith-based pitches at the company. My favorite fact from Paul Farhi’s article below is that ChristianMingle is an outgrowth of a Jewish dating site that has now branched out into other faiths and made a killing by bringing the goyim together.
The CEO of Spark Network is Greg Liberman who like the founders is Jewish. The company made a fortune with Jdating for Jews and now has 28 dating sites including Adventist Singles Connection, BlackSingles, DeafSingles Connection and CatholicMingle “as well as sites for Mormons, older people, plus-size women (and the men who like them), single parents and military personnel.”
We previously discussed the controversial pitch that Christian’s could use it to “Find God’s Match for You.” That makes it sound a lot like promising a divine dating experience — something promised in bars with less of a direct implication to God. It is a bit like Yenta if she had a computer and no scruples. (There does not yet appear to be an AtheistMingle.com to “Find That Faithless Match for You.”)
What is clear is that the 29th site is not likely to be FTC-Mingle — a site for FTC lawyers seeking mates. The Federal Trade Commission is tasked to prohibit “unfair and deceptive acts or practices in commerce.” The question is whether the “advertisement . . . is misleading in a material respect” which can include consideration of “representations made or suggested by statement, word, design, device, sound, or any combination thereof, but also the extent to which the advertisement fails to reveal facts material in the light of such representations or material with respect to consequences which may result from the use of the commodity to which the advertisement relates under the conditions prescribed in said advertisement, or under such conditions as are customary or usual.” As I mention in the article below, the company is probably saved by the verb “find” suggesting that the company will only help in a process or pursuit of “God’s choice” rather than certify that the guy waiting at the coffee shop is God’s approved mate.
The company is a for-profit business but it can still claim some free exercise, faith-based protections. After all, churches have been known to sound “blessed clothes” and other items for “donations” and even promise that Jesus will cure cancer and other illnesses.
Notably, one of the competitors of ChristianMingle is ChristianCafe.com, which has ties to Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian group founded by James Dobson. ChristianCafe is also making considerable money on mingling the faithful. However, they balk at the advertising promises of ChristianMingle and insist, as Same Moorcroft told the Post, “We don’t claim to have a pipeline direct to God,.”
Of course, the Bible is not exactly a testament to God’s ability to find you a good mate. First, Old Testament figures were often polygamists who simply married all eligible woman of interest rather than winnow them down to just one divine choice. Abraham had three wives (Genesis 16:1, 16:3, 25:1), Moses is believed to have had two wives (Exodus 2:21, 18:1-6; Numbers 12:1), and David is believed to have had 18 wives (1 Samuel 18:27, 25:39-44; 2 Samuel 3:3, 3:4-5, 5:13, 12:7-8, 12:24, 16:21-23).
God’s choices often went to taking mistresses or additional wives:
50.49. In the Old Testament, Genesis 16:1-11 suggests Abram’s taking of a second wife is directly acknowledged and supported by God:
1 NOW Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar.
2 And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.
3 And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.
4 And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived: and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.
5 And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes: the LORD judge between me and thee.
6 But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.
7 And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur.
8 And he said, Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.
9 And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.
10 And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.
11 And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.
David’s plural marriages however, paled in comparison to King Solomon, another central biblical figure. As described in 1 Kings 11:1-4:
1 BUT king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites;
2 Of the nations concerning which the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love.
3 And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart.
4 For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.
Of course, in the New Testament, Jesus was single and had limited if any dating experience. Nevertheless, selling faith-based dating has proven divine for these companies and their executives making tens of millions of dollars off the romantic religious single set.
It is said “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” 1 Timothy 6:9-10 In some cases, however, money attracted some to faith and the faithful at sites like ChristianMingle.com.
Source: Washington Post
I laugh at men posting they are divorced when actually still married and also want you to know honesty is very important to them.
chat met onbekenden
I also laugh everytime I see it. If in fact this is G-d’s match for you you will find him/her no matter where you are (if you believe G-d has a match for you or does that kind of thing.)
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pete,
I thought church was for comparing wardrobes? 😉
Yes, I also find the advertising of Christian Mingle very concerning. You can tell they aren’t authentically Christian owned and operated, like http://www.ChristianCrush.com, because Scripture is taken out of context and used inappropriately.
Yes, I also find the advertising of Christian Mingle very concerning. You can tell they aren’t authentically Christian owned and operated, like http;//www.ChristianCrush.com, because Scripture is taken out of context and used inappropriately.
kirk
still having growing pains?
Oh come on Johnathon it is just another internet dating site. No need to get your knickers in a knot. Lets worry about things that really matter.
These dating sites all make claims of success and the like in one way or another because that is what the people that use them want to hear. No sensible intelligent person takes any of the claims of these sites seriously. If you do you are truly naive and a fool and probably have a 27 point IQ.
I really don’t know why society has to spend so much of its resources looking after the totally stupid and ignorant. It used not to and things were just fine then.
It seems to me that Sparks network has done a great job in market segmentation so rather than having one site that caters for all it has specialty sites catering for different groups. In fact it is runnng 28 different sites.
It is a business to make money out of you pure and simple and that should be blatantly obvious to anyone using one of these sites. If you want to contact someone via one of these commercial sites you have to pay for it and it is an excellent business opportunity if you ask me.
Internet dating sites essentially don’t find people for you. You have to do that yourself. Men just use these sites looking for attractive women. Women mostly use them to find money and prospects with an attractive man attached. Ha Ha.
Again anyone with half a brain should know that the chances of meeting someone via these sites where the interest between parties is mutual and then ongoing is VERY LOW. For the vast majority of people these sites will never work for them. (I wonder what their plan E is). It is literally scraping the bottom of the barrel of opportunity or their plan D being kicked in. For those that find success it is nothing other than pure luck and chance working for them. Statistically, meet 70 people and you might find one or two you really like. Whether they will like you is another matter.
ChristianMingle
i thought that’s what church was for
talk about deceptive advertising:
“One: Push low-interest-rate madness that makes putting money in a bank’s saving account more or less the equivalent of stuffing cash in your mattress and encourages people to turn to higher risk stock market speculation, or, worse, to take comfort in the “increasing equity” in their houses. It also makes Wall Street drunk from cheap credit so that they make horrific gambles using 30-1 leverage.
Two: When the completely foreseeable crash comes, use the public funds that are mostly taxed from the middle class or borrowed in their name in order to rescue Wall Street, especially the riskiest “players.” That way, the people who made the most money during the boom years will get to stay afloat while those didn’t make that kind of money will see what net worth they had vanish into smoke.
Three: Then sit back and watch Wall Street use the money you looted from the middle class and transferred to them to buy up depressed assets in the recession, such as housing. Now, the people who led us into the crash, made the crash happen, and promised we were doing fine, basically become the landlords for the Americans they impoverished.
Do you get the picture?
When I saw the headline, “America Meet Your New Slumlord: Wall Street” at Zero Hedge, I have to admit I was not impressed. Frankly, I think “slumlords” are usually people who provide a service to other people who don’t have enough money to live in a better neighborhood but who don’t want to live I a cardboard box on the street. But, normally, I don’t think of slumlords as people who are given money from the pocket of their tenants so that they have more money to invest in real estate and their potential tenants can no longer afford a home.
That is exactly what is going on here. In fact, it gets even worse according to the Bloomberg article linked by Zero Hedge (and emphasized by the article there).
“‘While leverage is currently limited, potential financing options include secured credit lines, lending syndicates, high-yield debt, government sponsored enterprise-provided financing, and securitization,’ Jade Rahmani, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. in New York, wrote in a note yesterday.”
You have to appreciate the diabolical irony of it all. The cheap credit blew up a bubble in real estate, partially because the new money was directed there by Bush’s as well as Clinton’s policies of getting everyone out of renting and into a home that they owned. Now, that policy has destroyed itself and the people who can no longer afford a home are being taxed and indebted so that a new class of landlord is empowered to become their slumlord tenants.
We were told Wall Street had to be saved in order to save Main Street. Now we see the truth beginning to become clear: The government bailed out Wall Street at Main Streets expense so that Wall Street can now buy out Main Street and then rent it back to us.”
laughing my ass off.
it is written that every one will try to cash in on my name. even some lending institutions have done that even though they do not have any church affiliation. also says that the church will lie and I will leave no way out for the antichrists. the question is why would they lie and say GOD wouldn’t do or say what the PROPHET is doing. the catholic church said that they wanted the PROPHET returned to heaven and the congregation agreed with the priest. why did THE BIBLE say that the churches would lie?
I do not endorse christian mingle at all, but feel free to start am atheist single dot com. because you cant explain the big bang with out explaining God by accident. bwahahahahaha. because christian mingle said that I run their computers and not yours. but, GOD is energy just like the soul, and it is in your yellow masses that should not function at all. so if you had a computer and no electricity it would not send energy through a solid object and the brain is classified as a solid object.
if you want to drive a blind man crazy, put him in around room and tell him to go piss in the corner. because that is what was done and left no way out for the churches, shrinks, police officers, judges, politicians, etc…
THE BIBLE says that judgement would be more lenient on the atheist because they are following common sense. they have “reason” at this time to believe they have no soul.
(in order to push the shrinks in the wrong direction…) because shrinks can’t read anything in parentheses they can’t read that they will screw it no matter what they do. bwahahahahaha, bwahahahahaha, bwaaaaahahahahahaaaa! and, an are key, is brought to you by the book of wars and whores before the world got to over populated.
if you want to drive an atheist crazy tell them to have the president close down all the religious institutions because they are destroying world. then tell the president GOD said to do it.
an atheist has a soul weather they believe it or not, and they are stuck with it solely speaking. bwahahahahaha!
Forget the ads according to reviews of these sights on the web the reall issue here is how they bill and bill and bill. It would take god to get you out their billing cycle. And stories of bate and switch abound. Hardly what Jesus would have done!
Excuse me, but “atheist.mingle” wouldn’t be for faithless partners; it would be for faithful partners who did not believe in a supreme being.
“Find God’s Match for You”
The people who sell – and buy – this tripe are the same hucksters and suckers involved in the “prosperity gospel”.
Bron,
Nope. Wasn’t me.
SemenMingle.com is an on-line off the shelf service for those who can not get pregnant from the male end of the equation. You choose a photo of prospective daddy (which is the name of another related site) and send a fee. Sperm jar (after paying the SpermBank) arrives from FedEx along with a turkey baster. You can learn all about it at ItAintCheap.com or look in the ads in the New York Times under Banking.
If you are a dog and live in Miami come around the marina near del shores and enjoy CanineMingle every evening. No humans need apply.
Claiming God’s intervention as being the reason Jane Met Jerry on a website is a stretch. (I would say it had more to do with the some SQL data query such as the following)
SELECT Male
FROM Male_Subscribers_Paid
WHERE Age >= 45 AND Salary_Level >= 100000 AND Saved_by_Jesus = TRUE
SORT BY Salary_Level
Divine intervention? Thank the divine DataBase Administrator in the sky. For he has the FOREIGN_KEY to the Logic Gate of Heaven.