more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/05/rupertmurdoch.newscorporationLo, Murdoch did bring the good news and stored up riches on earth
David Teather The Guardian, Wednesday December 5 2007
Rupert Murdoch is out to prove that you can serve God and mammon after all. The media tycoon's Fox Entertainment has bought beliefnet, the largest online faith and spirituality network.
The site is a portal that includes interviews with celebrities and politicians, social networking tools, blogs, inspirational stories, sacred text searches and views from teachers and preachers. Discussion boards carry topics such as "Can inter-faith dating work?" and "Extreme abstinence". Beliefnet was founded in 1999 and the company claims to have 3 million unique visitors a month and nearly 11 million subscribers to a daily email newsletter. Beliefnet provides content across a broad range of faiths. For the undecided, it offers Belief-O-Matic, a questionnaire that helps to find which religion best defines people. One question seeks to establish the reader's view of God; is there only one God (corporeal or incorporeal), a supreme force or multiple gods? Another poses a question about the origins of life - the six options include a literal interpretation of Genesis, that God created the earth in seven days; a non-literal interpretation; and Darwin's world view of evolution.
Murdoch has described himself as a "practising Christian" who goes to church "quite a bit". He has been evangelical about the internet since buying MySpace for $580m (£330m) in 2005.