Spend an hour on GodTube.com and you'll find that God is in the details of thousands of videos. He is benevolent. He is angry. He is forgiving. He is grief-stricken. He is ecstatic. He supports Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, too. He is there for Britney Spears, and He wants to save gay people from unholy desires.
Created in the image of YouTube, the Christian video-sharing site presents a God of unlimited dispositions. "A Letter from Hell," a fire-and-brimstone drama chronicling the fate of a teen drunken driving victim, suggests a judgmental God. "Little Girl and Psalm 23," a home video of a toddler reciting the song's sacred words, argues for a God who meets cute. In "That's My King!" the late preacher S.M. Lockridge's cadenced catalog of deific virtues, God is praised as all of the above - and more.
Whether through fear, treacle or old-school preaching, it is evangelist Chris Wyatt's ardent wish that GodTube will lead you to His flock. Salvation by video is precisely what Wyatt, a former TV producer, had in mind when he launched the site in August.
Converting visitors to Christianity is the "Number One goal" of the Web site, says Wyatt, a 39-year-old student at Dallas Theological Seminary. "And secondly, to re-energize the nominal Christian who may not go to church any more in an increasingly secular society."
Since the 1920s, when Aimee Semple McPherson preached radio sermons, savvy evangelists have adopted worldly new technologies to ensure their own eternity. With GodTube, Wyatt is harnessing the Internet's global reach to serve his faith in the same capacity as a missionary who shares Jesus with villagers in a far corner of the earth.
"It's the most efficient and widespread means of being able to spread the Gospel around the world," he says.
Based in Dallas, GodTube is projected to draw as many as 5 million unique viewers this month. By comparison, YouTube drew more than 200 million unique users worldwide in October, according to marketing research firm comScore.
Mostly teens, young adults and stay-at-home moms, visitors can surf the 45,000 videos uploaded so far on GodTube, from sermons to political endorsements to intelligent design manifestoes. Wyatt calls the site a forum to discuss faith "whether it is hardcore evangelical Christian or whether it is very liberal Christian. We want to be the Switzerland of Christianity, if you will."
