With a higher percentage of people dating outside of their faith and culture, those who prefer to say within their own 'kind' have turned to niche online dating services.
Unlike Match.com and eHarmony, sites such as JDate and ChristianMingle boast databases of people who feel similarly about marrying within the same group. Essentially, these sites weed out the obvious bad matches.
Sociologist Gerald Mendelsohn says the practice of choosing a romantic partner with a shared religion, culture, ethnicity and or nationality, is driving the demand for niche religious dating sites like ChristianMingle, JDate, which caters to Jewish singles, and Muslima, for Muslims. And as these sites become more popular, the dating industry rakes in higher revenues. According to a recent market research report, the dating service industry is expected to reach $2 billion this year, growing at 2.9 percent in revenue every year since 2008…
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JDate was founded in 1997 and was immediately a hit in the Jewish community. The site has 750,000 members worldwide and claims to be responsible for more Jewish marriages than all other websites combined. ChristianMingle boasts a 9 million membership base. The religious online dating community is further subdivided into sites such as CatholicMatch for Catholics, Jwed for orthodox Jews and LDSMingle for Mormons…
Matt Wolf, a member of JDate, says he prefers to be with someone Jewish, but he doesn't care whether or not they believe in God.
"It's a cultural thing as opposed to a very religious thing," said Wolf. "I just thought I want to raise my kids similarly to the way I was raised."
