imageDan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor, reports

Take a guess: What Facebook page has a more highly engaged audience than any other? Justin Bieber’s? Kim Kardashian’s? Manchester United football club’s?

No, it’s Jesus Daily, a page that had 8.4 million “Likes” and belongs to a North Carolina-based diet doctor.

. . . The [New York] Times notes that Jesus Daily is hardly the only wildly popular religious page and that the page speaks to a trend of people connecting with their faith outside of traditional religious institutions:

What is new is that millions of people are also turning to Facebook pages, like the Jesus Daily, created by people unaffiliated with a religious leader or a specific house of worship. With 8.2 million fans, the Jesus Daily counted 3.4 million interactions last week, compared with about 630,000 interactions among Justin Bieber’s 35 million fans, the AllFacebook.com analysis shows. The Bible Facebook page, run by the United Bible Societies in Reading, England, has eight million fans and also beat Mr. Bieber with about a million interactions.

Amid pages for Lady Gaga, Texas Hold’em Poker and Manchester United, Joyce Meyer Ministries is in the top 20, along with another page devoted to Jesus Christ, and the Spanish-language page Dios Es Bueno, or God Is Great.

. . . Your thoughts?

Thoughts? Yes, if we could only get that much attention for the Shroud of Turin. But at least we are getting over 1000 visitors a day viewing more than 2000 pages.  See Jesus’ Facebook fans are ‘most engaged’ – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs