The Best Dating App Is Your Local Church
Nathanael Blake
It will take more than a new app to fix dating. But there is still money to be made from those looking for love, so Gina Cherelus of The New York Times reported on a fresh cohort of dating apps that are trying to restore what their predecessors destroyed. As the article explained, rather than endless scrolling, swiping, and chatting, these “restrictive new dating apps promise meaningful connection by encouraging — make that requiring — slow-paced, intentional dating.”
For example, Cerca is an app that creates “a dating ecosystem filled entirely with friends of friends, by compelling users to invite their contacts to join.” Consequently, “every profile a user encounters” will be “only one or two degrees removed from someone he or she already knows.” The app uses modern tech to recreate what is “fundamentally an old-school approach to vouching for and vetting prospective partners.” Some of the other new apps limit the number of profiles users see each day and push users to commit to dates, which may even be set up by the app at prescreened bars and restaurants.
These new apps are rational responses to how previous dating apps have made an already-difficult dating landscape into a wasteland. But even if these new products catch on, they are not sufficient substitutes for real community and the matchmaking and support it provides young men and women. Setting up dates via a network of shared contacts may offer a hint of accountability, but it’s nothing like that of a real community with shared values in which lives are connected across years and generations.
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https://thefederalist.com/2025/09/08/the-best-dating-app-is-your-local-church/
