Seek and Ye Shall Find a Hottie

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/05/arts/television/in-it-takes-a-church-the-congregation-helps-pick-your-date.html?_r=0

In ‘It Takes a Church,’ the Congregation Helps Pick Your Date

By NEIL GENZLINGER
JUNE 4, 2014


It Takes a Church The aspiring dater Angela Morgan, left, in Charlotte, N.C., with Natalie Grant, the show’s host, on Thursday night on GSN. Credit GSN

What good Christian doesn’t love that sublimely spiritual moment on Sunday when the priest or minister says, “And now, let us pray — but first let’s see if we can fix Angela up on a date”?

That’s right, it’s time for “It Takes a Church,” a new GSN series that puts “The Bachelorette,” “The Dating Game” and their ilk in a house of worship. The series begins Thursday night, slotted after GSN’s popular game show “The American Bible Challenge,” where it’s hoping to capitalize on that market and probably will. What this says about the state of America’s spiritual health is open to question.

Each week the show visits a congregation and matches up one of its single members with a prospective mate. The first episode travels to the Rock Worship Center in Charlotte, N.C., where 30-year-old Angela laments, “I can’t find a man.” Apparently, she hasn’t been looking very hard, because when the TV cameras come to town one Sunday, bachelors pop up from the congregation like weeds, each accompanied by a “matchmaker” — his mother or some other advocate — extolling his virtues.

The gimmick of the show is: It’s not Angela who does the initial winnowing. It’s the congregation, though the criteria the parishioners are using to thin the field are not clear. Anyway, after the elimination round, the usual shallow banter ensues — here, devoid of the sexual innuendo common on other dating shows — and Angela eventually picks one fellow for a date, the results of which we do not learn. Don’t be too glum, also-rans; you get a membership in the dating service ChristianMingle (which is a partner with GSN in the series).

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