I don’t know where I read it but IIRC religion is being used as a simple answer to very difficult and possibly uncomfortable questions: why are we here and what is our purpose?
It is fairly easy to believe that something, a god, created us instead of that the existence of humanity was just a fluke, a stroke of luck enabling us to evolve were we are now because it is just easier to grasp even if it is proven. That we evolved from simple beings into more complex organisms instead of just “being created”. Evolution creates so many quite difficult questions that it is easier to understand and believe that someone just wanted us to exist.
When someone is believing in a religion they also always have some form of " it won’t be over" scenario like when you die, there is nothing truly “the end”. You just won’t vanish and this can be terrifying for many because the following question could be, what sense does it make to live at all when our existence is just so insignificant in comparison to everything else?
So, in short, it is an easy too to make sense of things that almost everyone can understand it.
Unfortunately, things like this can and will be abused.
It goes even beyond that.
With a dedicated app, you go into the store and install it and then you have it in your apps that you then can place everywhere.
With a website, you need to have the browser, navigate to that website each time. And yes, you could put a link to that website on your home screen as well but not many user are probably aware of that being an option.
I know that but I still would prefer a dedicated app because it is easier to manage and use more features of my phone. For example, I just tried it on my android phone and the link to a website always opened a new tab in my Firefox.
Then I can manage the notifications of that app depending on what I want it to notify me about.
I can’t do that specifically for a single app or website in a browser.
On the other hand, I also wouldn’t want to miss a website because I am not always on my phone and, in some cases, it is way more annoying to do something over the phone because I am just not used to it (like writing this comment). Doing that over a website version that I can access on my PC is much easier and convenient.