Invoking the name of Jesus in a business publication

A blog post that I put out yesterday titled “The Accountant’s ‘Come to Jesus Moment’” had the 2nd highest number of views on its first day of publication.  I did not do anything different to promote it. In fact, yesterday I had less time than usual to cross post in the usual media (LinkedIn, G+, FB). I assume that the title had some drawing power and so I wonder why.  Was it the usage of the single word ‘Jesus’ (a word of importance to many but still not seen often in business publications) or the use of the cliché phrase ‘come to Jesus moment’ or perhaps the odd combination of the word ‘Accountant’ with the cliché that was enough to trigger a click-through?

I have not, to my knowledge, used the word Jesus before in the title of any of my thousands of articles and blog posts.  The closest I ever came was a post on LinkedIn titled “A dark day for Christianity” that drew 111 readers (not many) but 10 ‘thumbs up’ and 10 comments (which is more than usual). I also noted that this was one of the only times that I ever deleted a crude and inappropriate reader comment on a post from an overzealous Christian advocate. So we know, without doubt, that some readers are passionate about faith, but is the name of the Son of God alone enough to trigger reader interest?

So this blog post today is purely an experiment. Is invoking the name of Jesus in a business publication enough to raise readership? I’m doing this on a Saturday, a day with lower average business readership of blog posts. I will retrace the same promotion steps that I took yesterday. I suspect that by tomorrow morning I will have my answer.