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"It's like going to a bar blindfolded and then going home with someone," says Parry Aftab, a New York lawyer and the executive director of Cyberangels.org, an Internet safety watchdog group.

Aftab is quick to stress the potential dangers of developing online relationships with strangers. "At Cyberangels, we handle about 600 cases of cyberstalking a day. There have been two deaths because of cyberstalking in the United States," she says. "I probably get ten rape reports a month. And it all happens because of a disconnect that makes people feel like they know a stranger intimately."

Respectable matchmaking services recognize these dangers and advise their users to proceed with caution. Christian sites feel an even greater urgency to create a safe environment for their members. eHarmony.com, for example, has made safety one of its distinctives.

Led by Neil Clark Warren, a clinical psychologist and best-selling author of How to Know If Someone Is Worth Pursuing in Two Dates or Less (Thomas Nelson), eHarmony claims to eliminate 20 percent of all applicants due to their questionable emotional stability. With the remaining pool, eHarmony uses an applicant's established list of "can't stands" and "must haves," and a patented set of 29 relational dimensions such as energy levels, intelligence quotient, and spiritual beliefs, to find a potential spouse. Warren's service looks for high levels of compatibility between individuals and offers no match if a strong one cannot be found.

Warren hopes eHarmony will bring a revolution in the way believers approach spouse selection. "In the church, we think that if we just pray to God, he'll bring the right person to us," he says. "We don't even try to understand the principles that govern the selection."

People pursued courtship and marriage differently in the first century, Warren explains, and the Bible provides few specific guidelines. What the Bible does provide, he says, is an admonition to use our God-created brains in the pursuit of a marriage relationship.

"Finding the right person is such a complex challenge in this society that most people can't do it," he says, citing recent divorce statistics. Warren believes his matchmaking formula can help to reverse those rising divorce rates.

Jenny, who tried eHarmony, isn't so sure. "The results of their personality profile didn't fit me at all," she says. "And I felt like I wasn't in control. It was like I was going to my pastor and saying, 'Okay. You find someone for me.'"

Still, Warren's highly structured approach has received nods from leaders such as James Dobson, who recently endorsed eHarmony on his Focus on the Family radio program. And other single Christians have praised the site: "We found a sense of peace in the realization that we had a blueprint for the type of deep, intimate, caring relationship we want to experience," wrote David, an eHarmony member from Seattle who apparently found his match.

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June 11 2001, Vol. 45, No. 8