I've read a couple of comments on here recently something to the effect of, "Bloop used to be so cool but now the Christians are taking over . . ." I always felt like there weren't very many of us here, actually, so now I'm curious.

Are Christians a minority here, or are there a ton of us taking over the site? Or a little in between?

I think there are definitely more than there used to be.. but.. I know quite a few and they're pretty darn cool ;)

I'm not really sure, but they sure as shit were a lot more vocal, you know, "back in the day." If there are more Christians, they're staying out of public view.

Or maybe they're mingling more now with the rest of Bloop, so more people are aware of them as individuals, rather than as 'that weird Bible-thumping crowd' (which was probably easier to ignore/mock as a single entity). I believe a lot of that crowd are now also Bloop moms, so are likely to be integrating within that larger Bloop Mom group, and proselytising about both cloth diapers and God!

I just can't remember the last time I had a serious religious discussion in the public forum on Bloop. There was that recent RC entry, but I, and a few other people, just couldn't get over how badly it was written, so I kind of dwelled on that more than the actual content of the entry.

Speaking of drama in general, didn't Steve once say that when there's a major drama happening, it increases the site's traffic? Why doesn't he just enable the ads again, which were non-intrusive, and allow Dear Anonymous to open back up?

@LADY ANON: I honestly didn't ever find the religious debates here to be very thought-provoking. I think a major difficulty (true of quite a few small sites) is that the vocal Christians tended to be a very specific brand of American Christian with certain Conservative political beliefs, and their traditional way of 'debating' was simply to state that they were right and any Christian whose views/culture differed wasn't a real Christian. A shame really - I think different traditions of Christians can learn from each other, and can challenge each other's views in a positive way, but this really didn't happen here.

Oh, I've had *one* thought provoking religious debate during my entire time on Bloop. They just used to happen all the time. Now, they just don't.

Bloop Rants is showing some promise, though.

@ Avonlea@ITW: I don't think Christians are a minority here. Muslims are. =P

I guess this goes along with what I've been noticing. Those two comments I referenced in my OP weren't that accurate after all, I guess.

@ Giggle: Well, yes I'm sure Muslims are a minority also. But keep in mind that in my OP I wrote "a minority," not "the minority."

@ Winged Centaur: Very good idea.

@ Avonlea@ITW: Yeah, I got that. I know mentioning another religion was a bit irrelevant hence the =P. Anyway, among the people I know on here, Christians are a majority. I agree with the suggestion of making a poll. That way we won't be guessing only depending on the people we know. =]

@Avonlea To be fair, there are about 2 Muslims on Bloop, out of the, what 1000 active Bloopers! There are way more Christians than that - hundreds, I'd say, which is a very significant proportion! So I don't think that Bloop Christians can really be compared with Bloop Muslims!

@Puck who's the other Muslim? Juts honestly curious since I only knew of Majd. ^__^

I think Coral is Muslim. Haven't read her regularly for ages, but I'm pretty sure I remember her being Muslim. This is from a convo I had with her about 7 years ago, so my memory is a bit hazy, and I'll feel a bit daft if I've got it wrong, but somehow she sticks in my mind as the first Muslim I came across on Bloop. The second being Majd. And then no others. Gosh, both Coral and Majd were so young back then! ;D Little 14 year olds, both of them, and now they're both all grown up! (Gosh, I so feel like a Bloop elder! ;D)

@Lady Puck: I think I read Coral's diary a long time ago too. She used to live in Kuwait I don't know if she was a Muslim though.

The largest religion in the U.S. is Christian.

As long as Bloop doesn't turn into a Christians Only site then I'm not really bothered if there are a lot of Christians on this site. It's their choice if they want to flaunt their religion in their diaries -- as long as they don't shove it down our throats.

I've noticed way more Christians than anything else.

There are... a lot. Of "Christians". I tend to reserve the term for those who actually make an honest attempt at being Christ-like, though.

How odd - I thought there were far more back in the day. Or rather far more vocal 'You're going to hell!' or 'You're not a real Christian because you don't do X/Y/Z' types, who self-defined as Christians.

In reality, though, none of us can know how many Christians there are on Bloop. Just because someone doesn't write about God all the time doesn't automatically make them not a Christian. And also, just because someone does write about God all the time, that doesn't necessarily mean they are a Christian! Only God can really know how many Christians are on Bloop.

So it makes more sense to talk in terms of the proportion of people who write 'God blogs', I guess! ;D And it would make sense that they are probably less than half of Bloop. Which doesn't necessarily make them a minority - there are a variety of other things a person can be other than Christian, and a variety of other types of blog a person can write other than a 'God blog' (whether or not they are a Christian).

I've noticed groups of certain types of diary - the mommy diaries, the 'God blogs', the kinky sex diaries, the survey diaries. And some of these can overlap with each other.

There's quite a few Christians around bloop. There's just quite a few (myself included) who generally keep their beliefs to themselves. :)

There is an easy way to determine this. It should be made a poll. Then we'll know definitely. ;D

I haven't really noticed a large group of Christians. I see random entries but thats about it. I'm glad there isn't religion debates on the forums. If people have faith then good for them. There is nothing worse than having religion shoved in our faces.

I don't think Christians are a minority on bloop. They just like to think they're a minority so they can cry discrimination whenever it's convenient to them.

Most of my Christian friends have their bloop on FO, including me most of the time (depends on the entry). That probably sways the "Christian presence" quite a bit.

Yeah, I get the feeling that the main difference is that, back in the day, a lot of the American Christian crowd wanted to post stuff to proselytise to Bloop and to have a wide audience for their views, but nowadays they are more interested in hanging out with their friends. Which, to be honest, is a change that has happened on diary communities in general - people start out wanting a big audience, and being quite vocal with their views, and then they establish a group of friends and want to 'settle down' as it were, deepening those friendships.