Jeune Street

The Washington Post has an interesting look at how people fill in that little ‘religious views’ box on Facebook:

Of its 250 million users worldwide, Facebook says more than 150 million people choose to write something in the religious views box.

Amid the endless trivialities of social networking sites — the quotes from Monty Python, the Stephen Colbert for Prez groups, the goofy-but-calculatingly-attractive profile pics — the tiny box has become a surprisingly meaningful pit stop for philosophical inquiry.

Millions have plumbed their innermost thoughts, struggling to sum up their beliefs in roughly 10 words or less. For many, it has led to age-old questions about purpose, the existence of the divine and the meaning of life itself.

It’s no surprise that “Christian” and “Islam” are the top religious views, but “Jedi” also makes it into the top 10. Lots of people use the space to articulate something coded or ambiguous about their spiritual orientation. A friend of mine from Junior High now has the following sentence in his box: “i am not the least bit interested in making my personal relationship with Christ into mere religion.” I guess the take-away is that people continue to respond to the religious prompt, but in highly individualized and personal ways. That says a lot about the condition of society and the failure of religious communities to articulate beliefs within a plausible and coherent world view. If everyone’s religion comes along with an asterix, what’s the unifying story that keeps these communities together?