The sad truth about sharing religious content online

This article was first published in the State of Faith newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Monday night.

When I was in college, I helped lead a group called the Campus Activities Board. CAB, as members preferred to call it, hosted free or almost free events on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights with the twin goals of sparking friendships between participants and reducing underage drinking at our school.

There were many perks to being a CAB member. For one thing, I typically got to meet the famous comedians and actors we brought to campus. I also got free seats at movie showings.

The main downside was that members were required to (or at least strongly encouraged to) invite their Facebook friends to dozens of events each month in hopes of driving up attendance. My roommates and classmates would groan each time I sent out event notifications, begging me to leave them off the invite list next time.

I thought of my unpopular CAB marketing efforts this summer when I stumbled on some research about religion-related online behaviors.

Pew Research Center found that “17% of U.S. adults have unfollowed, unfriended, blocked or changed their settings to see less of someone on social media because of religious content the person posted or shared.”

As you might have guessed, atheist and agnostic adults are more likely than other Americans to distance themselves from religious content online. But more than 10% of members of all major faith groups admit to doing this, Pew found.

“Meanwhile, Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say they have blocked, unfriended or unfollowed someone due to religious content they posted (22% vs. 12%),” Pew reported.

I feel a bit silly admitting this, but the survey findings make me sad. Sure, some of the people of faith being unfollowed are probably being too intense or judgmental, but others are simply promoting one of their passions, like I was doing with my CAB events.

I take comfort knowing that very few Americans who share religious content online are aware that their activities are somewhat unpopular. Just 3% of U.S. adults “believe that they themselves have been unfollowed or blocked due to religious content,” Pew found.

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Term of the week: Fields of Faith

Fields of Faith is an annual event put on at schools across the country by students involved in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Participants meet on an athletic field at their campus to pray together, read the Bible and share stories about their belief in God.

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes reports that more than 2 million people have taken part in Fields of Faith events over the past two decades. “Every year across the country, and now internationally, hundreds of stadiums transform into places of hope and light during one fall evening for students to step up and refuel their faith,” the FCA website says.

This year, Fields of Faith took place on Oct. 11. You can find social media posts about it by checking the hashtag #FOF23.

What I’m reading...

As fighting between Israel and Hamas continues to escalate, I’ve been trying to fill in some gaps in my knowledge of the history of the area. Here are some explainers that have helped:

• The Gaza Strip and its history, explained from The Washington Post.

• A timeline of clashes between Palestinian militants and Israel from The New York Times.

• What is Hamas? from PBS.

Around $7 billion of government-provided Paycheck Protection Program funds went to religious organizations during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis of federal data from Christianity Today. The article noted that around one-third of U.S. churches received a share of that aid money.

In a recent piece for The New York Times’ Travel section, Anna Momigliano highlighted a group of Catholic buildings in the Italian Alps that contain nearly as much art as a museum. “Known as Sacri Monti, or Sacred Mounts, the group of nine pilgrimage stations in the Piedmont and Lombardy regions are recognized by UNESCO as a single World Heritage site,” she wrote.

Odds and ends

I am about to finish a very long book — “The Running Grave” by Robert Galbraith, the latest in the Cormoran Strike series — and am in desperate need of some shorter books that will help me change up my reading routine. What are your favorite short books?