Beliefnet Takeover: Tragedy or Business-As-Usual?

News Corporation, the media empire led by the infamous Rupert Murdoch, announced on Tuesday its purchase of Beliefnet:

Beliefnet, the largest online faith and spirituality destination, will become part of Fox Digital Media, spearheaded by President Dan Fawcett, which takes on an expanded role to support FEG’s vast cable, TV and film brands online, and drive FEG’s continued growth in the online market.

In short, Fox will now use Beliefnet to sell its products. Publisher’s Weekly notes that Fox owns the religious publishers Zondervan and HarperOne, and will use Beliefnet to push books from those publishers.

Beliefnet has been notably pluralistic in its approach, covering America’s religious diversity rather than promoting one particular faith. By contrast, Zondervan’s mission is “To be the leader in Christian communications meeting the needs of people with resources that glorify Jesus Christ and promote biblical principles.”

At a casual glance, this looks like tragedy. Beliefnet is a rare expresssion of religious pluralism on the mass scale, offering resources not only on Christianity, but also Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and other major religions. Beliefnet also has sections devoted to smaller traditions, such as New Thought and Zoroastrianism.

Another feature that makes Beliefnet rather unique is its emphasis on user-driven content. The Beliefnet forums allow adherents of each faith to engage in discussion with one another, and with newcomers.

Beliefnet appears to be a public square, and one that will likely disappear with the interference of Rupert Murdoch. As readers may remember from the controversy surrounding News Corp’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal, Murdoch has a history of buying relatively independent media outlets and then pushing them to offer biased coverage, sometimes based on his own personal vendettas.

But on closer inspection, it is clear that Beliefnet was already in the business of selling products. TheStreet.com notes that Beliefnet has been using its huge reach to advance strategic partnerships:

Beliefnet has around 3 million unique visitors each month and a daily email newsletter that reaches nearly 11 million subscribers. The company is not affiliated with any spiritual organization or movement, and it has partnered with Time Warner’s (TWX - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr - Rating) Time magazine, Yahoo! (YHOO - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr - Rating), and Chicken Soup for the Soul.

I also started to question whether Beliefnet has been truly committed to pluralism when I read Beliefnet founder Steve Waldman’s remarks on EthicsDaily.com:

Comparing the site to “The Simpsons,” a sister Fox property, Waldman said, “To look at the range of American spirituality, you can look at Beliefnet, or you can look at Apu (a Hindu), Krusty the Clown (a Jew), Lisa Simpson’s Buddhism or Ned Flander’s Christianity to get a sense of American faiths.”

Hmm…

The Beliefnet takeover illustrates that we can’t count on big corporations of any kind to create online spaces for independent and non-commercial exploration of religion. That falls to the independent web content writers, as well as their readers and commenters. We have the opportunity to provide alternative online spaces for religious exploration, where beliefs can be explored and debated with relatively low interference from commercial interests.

Update 12/7/2007 - Commenters responded with a mix of concern over the Beliefnet takeover and suspicion of whether any large institution can provide a space for exploring diverse religious viewpoints.

Ms. Theologian noted, “I totally agree. And while I do visit Beliefnet regularly, in recent years, I’ve found it too commercial, too product-pushy, and too Christian-centered.” Karbeth added, “It is disappointing to see a site that was presumably devoted to a form of community-building sell out. But not surprising. So onward, with sites like yours–alternative online spaces.”

Elena was thinking along the same lines; she wrote:

Large institutions of all kinds seem to evolve to homogeneity - whatever their claims to diversity. So it is up to every individual to “create online spaces… for religious exploration,” just as it was up to us, and our neighbor, before the web.

It also behooves us not to get pulled into the myth that bigger is better, or that the person on the spotlit stage necessarily has the greater insight than the woman sitting one chair over.

IME, the spiritual practices that open one to a sense of presence, or knowing, or whatever-you-call-it, are really very mundane, very daily, and very available to all… And create little whiz-bang for others to see.

And Miya reminds us that there is a uniquely Unitarian Universalist dimension to this story:

I think one thing that makes this question about the future of Beliefnet hit more “close to home” for us is that I would not be surprised if a non-trivial number of new UUs first encounter UUism through the Beliefnet “Belief-O-Matic” quiz. I had already started trying out a UU congregation when I took the quiz, but I can’t pretend it wasn’t meaningful for me in my early exploration to score something like 99.5% compatible with Unitarian Universalism. I just hope seekers don’t get deprived of content like this that truly promotes religious inquiry and self-discovery from a pluralist perspective.