News broke last week that GodTube, a free video-sharing Web site that rode YouTube’s coattails to popularity, set a record even its namesake never held: It was the Internet’s fastest-growing site in August. Sources pegged the number of unique visitors between 1.7 million and 5 million, an almost 1,000 percent growth since it started Aug. 8.

Yes, there has been Conservapedia, the Wikipedia alternative, and Famster and MyChurch, Christian spin-offs of Facebook and MySpace. But so far, this is the most successful Christian foray into “Web 2.0″ — a term for the outburst of online communities, social-networking sites and wikis that are remaking the Internet.

Chris Wyatt, GodTube’s CEO, said he hopes GodTube will help reverse the American church’s eroding importance. But when Fox News asked if GodTube is a “fair swap” for church, Wyatt responded, “We’re not a substitute for church. We’re just there for the millions of individuals who are seeking a new faith experience online.”

Early GodTube reviews were swift and swordlike. Critics like George Simpson are giving the site the third-degree. True, many videos are silly. (In one, apologist Ray Comfort debunks evolution using his famous banana example, pointing to evolution’s “non-slip surface.”)

Other Internet observers have wondered why it took Christians — who created alternative phonebooks, eHarmony and a plethora of faith-centered radio and TV stations and magazines — this long to capitalize on Web 2.0.

“Sure, denominations and sects have their own . . . web resources — some even run dynamic, regularly updated web portals,” wrote Barry Summerlin, a contributor to BloggingStocks. “But your web search for religion will mostly yield a lot of domain squatting . . . and last century’s web design.”

Summerlin points to some interesting data: While the number of Google search entries for “God” and “Jesus” barely eclipses those for “Britney Spears” in the past three years, the term “church” has routinely bested all three.