Jesus: Twitter Is a Waste of Time

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Annoyed by non-believers micro-blogging their hourly moods, eating, and exercise habits?

Thank God, Gospelr just solved that messy societal problem for you. And what do you know, Christians are just as boring as everyone else.

A quick scan of Tweets on Gospelr, the Christian Twitter knockoff, reveals such minutiae as:

Adrian:

 

“I had an awesome night at the KPC men’s group here in Rogers.”

 

 

and

Jesustxtswithu:

 

“Checking out Gospelr, I must say glad to finally be able to “follow” people who Follow Him. Greetings <3.”

 

 

Jesustxtswithu’s sentiment is, of course, the ostensible reason for the site to exist. But the thing about following people who follow Jesus is that, much like people who don’t, they mostly post things like:

 

 

“I have a newly opened bag of coffee on my bookshelf at work. The aroma of the ground coffee is tempting me to brew another pot.”

 

 

Christians have always promoted sites dedicated to Christians and the “Christian lifestyle.” Faith-based Internet users can search and edit Christian Wikipedia, the Christian version of Wikipedia. There’s even Xianz, “the Faith Based MySpace.”

There’s an obvious reason for this. It actually makes a good deal of sense for Christian singles, for instance, wary of the pre-marital, homosexual, or just casual sex endorsed by many secular dating sites, to attempt to guide their dating life using Christian alternatives like ChristianCafe or ChristianMingle.

But does Twitter really need a Christian alternative? YouTube (hence ChristianTube)—makes more sense. But until BangR really does exist or boring Tweets become a sin, Christians are safe with secular Twitter.
—Daniel Luzer

GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

payment methods

GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate