I know you got a lot of downvotes, but made me chuckle with the part about everyone just loving ruby CMSs. :)
Honestly though, I think it's a combination of a few things. First, Christians (and other religious people) are used to being bashed on HN and other similar sites, so I'm sure they (which includes me) would find it cool to see a positive post on religion and upvote it. Second, I'm sure some non-religious people thought it was a good piece of software and good work. And third, I'm sure some non-religious people felt good about themselves for upvoting this (as you mentioned in your comment).
Hey, point taken - agreed, I don't mean to belittle the work in any way. The dedication to stick with a project that long (and do a nice job on it) is something I definitely admire. I haven't run the software or browsed the code, so I can't speak to the technical merits of it, but again , it looks great. And I don't think we should underestimate the enormous amount of time and effort it takes to make something like this.
However, I don't think a little bit of self/community introspection about its popularity would hurt. Might learn an important lesson or two.
Broadly, I haven't figured out when criticism/cynicism (if you want to call it that) is or is not beneficial. You and I would probably concur that modern culture is all to quick to tear down the good and pure with cynic blasts. Yet criticism at even seemingly happy things, like the upvoting of this post, can be beneficial.
We are techies here, we know someone could pack WordPress with a couple of plugins, stamp some theme and call it ChurchPress and it would be way faster, safer and more extensible than this. So yeah, 640 points do seems a bit ridiculous, and is going to reach 1000 without doubt, meaning hn crowd find this article just as relevant as snowden prime revelations.
I disagree and further would be concerned that a comment like this says more about you professionally than it does about the software we're discussing, somewhere in the vein of "Stack Overflow? Weekend Project".
It's important to note that what to put into a project like this (ie, requirements) is at least as important as the technical aspects. Part of the reason for the massive upvotes is the software has most of the right features for the job, which is actually quite rare in this arena.
Honestly though, I think it's a combination of a few things. First, Christians (and other religious people) are used to being bashed on HN and other similar sites, so I'm sure they (which includes me) would find it cool to see a positive post on religion and upvote it. Second, I'm sure some non-religious people thought it was a good piece of software and good work. And third, I'm sure some non-religious people felt good about themselves for upvoting this (as you mentioned in your comment).