My date with Mr. eHarmony

Neil Clark Warren is the Christian evangelical who runs Internet dating titan eHarmony. I'm a pagan feminist who's leery of the religious right. Would sparks fly?

By Rebecca Traister

Jun 10, 2005 | "We were scared," eHarmony founder Neil Clark Warren explained to me over the phone. The 70-year-old psychologist and Internet dating entrepreneur was trying to tell me why it had taken him a month to return my calls. "We thought you would categorize us in some religious way which we think is unfair."

I was a little surprised by Warren's candor and by his savvy. While I hadn't decided what I thought about eHarmony or its founder, I had heard a few disturbing things about them. I went into my research with as open a mind as possible for a confirmed secularist writing about a dating site that attracts a lot of Christians, and won't match gays or depressed people or anyone who's been married more than twice. Which is to say, I was curious but ready to disapprove. And my suspicions about the company increased the longer it took eHarmony to get back to me.

I seemed to be the exception, since Warren has granted recent interviews to publications such as the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. He's the public face of an Internet matchmaking company that has, in five years, become one of the industry's top five and that boasts the most marriages-per-coupling of any other site. All of its broadcast ads feature Warren, its waggly-browed founder, who promises to help you find the love of your life. In the ads, Warren comes off as either unctuous or avuncular, depending on your perspective, which might conceivably be skewed if you happen to be homosexual, in which case Warren will not help you find the love of your life. Unlike other dating sites that allow customers to browse for potential partners who appeal to them, eHarmony visitors fill out personality questionnaires and are matched with other users according to Warren's "29 dimensions" of compatibility.

Since it's not a secret that Warren is an evangelical Christian with strong ties to the conservative Christian community -- including a prior business relationship with Focus on the Family leader James Dobson -- I suspected that his views on social issues came straight from the Christian right, and the longer the company dodged my calls the more skeptical I got.

Eharmony, it turned out, had been equally skeptical of me. "Salon, I think, is known for being harsh," Warren said. "I wouldn't want you to make me sound bad because, for instance, I believe in God or I pray."

It's an issue Warren is sensitive about, especially right now, as he makes a break from Dobson's ministry. In late May, after Warren began to publicly distance himself from Focus on the Family, Dobson announced a formal separation of sorts on his radio program. It's a significant split; the conservative, evangelical community nourished Warren's nascent business, and now he appears to be leaving it behind for the secular world. Part of his reluctance to talk to a reporter who he guessed would press him on religious and social issues may well have had to do with the delicacy of his situation. Is he a moral man who has begun to question the narrowness of the Christian right, especially their position on gays? Or is he a savvy opportunist looking for a bigger market share? And if it means that he is opening himself up to a more nuanced and accepting worldview, does it really matter?

Finally, after increasingly aggressive phone calls to the site's outside publicity firm, here we were, talking at last. It was hard to believe that we would have many of Warren's 29 dimensions of compatibility to work with. I am a pagan, single 30-year-old feminist with strong suspicions about the ever-creeping tentacles of the religious right. Warren is a married psychologist grandpa with a divinity degree, a Californian by way of rural Iowa; he has three daughters, nine grandchildren and strong suspicions about the liberal press.

But we wound up talking for two hours straight. During the conversation, Warren grappled -- honestly, it seemed -- with his feelings about homosexuality, his pride in his multiracial workforce, his commitment to marriage, and his belief that I should really consider dating an Asian guy. I occasionally felt played, as if he was pulling out some shiny tricks to show a lefty reporter he isn't James Dobson. But I also thought we genuinely connected.

"My agenda is to try to do two things: to change the world and build a business," Warren told me. I had read similar statements from him before, and the saving the world part had always sounded scarily messianic. But in conversation, his tone was so earnest, so nakedly committed to lowering the divorce rate -- which he feels he can do through eHarmony -- that I felt I should congratulate him on his good intentions.

Next Page: Eharmony claims responsibility for 10,000 marriages

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