Talk:Christian Church/Archive 1

message: This article has undergone a lot of revisions including some significant deletions of others work and yet there is no discussion here. May I propose some discussion on this page?
--Mcorazao 05:50, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion? 

message: There's some severely POV dPaiscussion of the Roman Catholic Church here. I'm going to attempt to clean up a bit.
--Mcorazao 05:50, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roman Catholic references 

message: 125.237.2.158 added an almost entirely redundant section entitled "Differing Views Held". Is there a point to having this section? Can it just be removed.
--Mcorazao 05:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differing Views Held? 

message: User 87.197.187.216 added some unattributed "quotations" without explanation. I don't recognize the quotations and they seem to be just anti-organized-religion (or anti-Christian) rants. Even if they are real quotations from significant sources, without proper attribution to explain why they matter, they are inappropriate (it would be equally inappropriate to put in a quote that says "The Christian Church is the best thing invented" without explaining who said this and why that is significant).
For now I've treated this as vandalism. If this was intended as something other than that please rewrite.
--Mcorazao 21:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Serious opinions" 

message: Fantastic work thus far, Mcorazao!  Thanks for submitting this for peer review.  I've assessed this article (see above in the banner), and read through it.  You've done a remarkable job at laying down the foundation for a great article.  There are now two critical things lacking that I can see (neither of which require a terrible amount of work).
*Sources: You cite only 8 sources.  See WP:V for guidelines on unverified statements.  Basically all you need to do here is state where you got the information for all of your statements.  If it would be helpful, I could go through the article and put tags by the statements that need referencing.
*Images: This article has 3 good images, but most of the text is completely unaccompanied.  Good work with captions on the already existing images.  "Related Concepts" and "Divisions and Controversies" could both use at least one appropriate image to break up the text a bit.
--Nswinton
:Thanks. Yes, citation is something the article lacks. If you have time to mark the statements that you feel are particularly in need citation please do. Also I'll look for images. Some of that is fairly dry philosophical discussions so it wasn't immediately obvious what sort of images would be appropriate. I'll try to find something.
:Any more comments on
:* Scope - Is the scope of the article appropriate (i.e. appropriate for the title and appropriate in not unreasonably overlapping with other articles or not complementing other articles well)?
:* Neutrality - I've tried really hard to make this very neutral given that it attempts to cover a broad set of beliefs (there are a few bits taken from other articles that I want to neutralize more). Is there anything that sticks out as POV?
:--Mcorazao 17:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I've been busy these last several days.  About my previous comment, it looks like you've cleaned up the sourcing quite a bit with the merger.  Nice work.  Nswinton\talk 03:24, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer Review 

message: Minor issue but ...
I have the following sentence at the end of the history section.
:These developments in turn have led to Christianity's being the largest religion in the world today although the Christian Church lacks the unity it arguably once did.
The word "arguably" is generally considered a "weasel word" but I was trying to decide whether this usage qualifies or not. Obviously the last clause is not required although, given the topic, I believe this is a nice way to wrap up the section. In theory the word arguably could be removed but the sentence could be misconstrued to imply that the Christians were once perfectly unified which is, at best, POV (most historians would argue that it is false). So the word "arguably" is there simply there to soften this so it is not so much as an assertion as a commentary to sum up the points already demonstrated in the section.
Comment on the wording? Any better wording suggested?
--Mcorazao 01:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For starters, 'did' is wrong here; it implicitly points to 'unity' and 'did unity' makes no sense. 'Arguably' is unnecessary. If you want the last clause at all, just say "...the Christian Church lacks the unity it once had." I'd leave the clause out entirely; it takes away from the conclusion rather than adding to it. (IMO) -- BPMullins | Talk 03:26, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Seeking copyediting feedback: "arguably"

message: I was asked to give a review of this article.  What follows below are my thoughts on the article in its current revision.  I will watchlist this page if further discussion is desired.
# I am not sure about merging One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church with this article.  My reasoning would be that OHCAC is a very specific term, with a history of use and interpretation attached specifically to it.  It is analogous (though not an exact parallel) to merging Nicene Creed with Creed - both the general and the specific articles are needed.
# I wonder how much this article is duplicating material that ought to be on ecclesiology, church, or Ecclesia (church).
# The POV seems to me to be slanted, ever so slightly, toward non-Protestant perspectives.
# Some of the sources are troubling, and seem to me to fall short of the standard of Wikipedia:Reliable Sources.  (a) There is a favoring of non-print resources on the article, which means that for some there is no peer-review process, or they are self-published. (b) Many come from self-published and inherently POV sites, and are used to support claims that could be read as POV original research.
# The "History" section is so condensed as to not really provide any meaningful content. I think that it is a tangent to this article, and ought to be cut.
# The prose is not that great, it reads like a jigsaw puzzle with one section not necessarily matching or flowing into another.
I know that the above comments may come across as overly critical.  I read the article with an eye toward how it can be improved, which leads to a critical review.  Pastordavid 15:49, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Per talk page etiquette/guidelines, I would ask you to please not edit my comments, including breaking them up as you have above (I find it makes my comments harder to read and follow, as well as making it unclear who said what, and would prefer to not have my comments so edited).  I would ask that you please restore my comment, and see if there is another way to reply -- perhaps it would be best to start another section where we can discuss each point in detail.  Thank you.  Pastordavid 16:39, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Review 

message: I propose to replace the first paragraph of the article with the following paragraph.
* actual version: 
:The Christian Church is the universal institution embodying the Christian faith, the religion based on the worship of Jesus of Nazareth as the son of God. The concept as it was known beginning in 30-33 A.D.,expresses the idea that the followers of the religion can all be seen as part of one single group. Although today there is no single political entity recognized by the secular world as the unique Christian Church,Christian Denominations, Religious Facts, retrieved May 29, 2007; each of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches claims to be the unique church established by Jesus the Messiah.  Protestants would hold that the concept is justified by the notion that the Church is ultimately headed by Jesus Christ who acts as the unifying figure for all who claim to follow Him. The phrase "The Church" in its widest sense (as "the Body of Christ") has a similar breadth.
* proposed version: 
:The Christian Church is a religiously ambiguous and cultural-sociological term to refer to all religions based on the worship of Jesus of Nazareth as the son of God.  It is not a single religious institution, neither a single faith.  Today there is no single political entity recognized by the secular world as the unique Christian Church,Christian Denominations, Religious Facts, retrieved May 29, 2007  .  The Roman-Catholic Church, and the Orthodox churches claim to be the unique church established by Jesus the Messiah.  Protestants on the other hand would hold that the concept is justified by the notion that the Church is ultimately headed by Jesus Christ who acts as the unifying figure for all who claim to follow Him. The term means something quite different for each religious institution that sees itself as belonging to the Christian traditions.  The phrase The Church in its widest sense, as the Body of Christ has a similar breadth.
* ratio legis: 
:There exists no such single institution nor single faith.  It has some cultural-sociological value, but nothing more.  Each "christian" religeous institution had its own definitions and teachings concerning it's structure and it's believes.  This is quite fuzzy formulated in the actual version of the paragraph, and should be made more clearly, as it is difficult for non-christians to understand the finer differences. Stijn Calle 08:53, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Fact of Fiction?

message: it is uncommon that this article should begin by disambiguating the term even though it only deals with one of the meanings disambiguated. I propose the following:
*this article should be concerned with the Church in the theological sense (sum of all Christians, Bride of Christ etc.) Ecclesia (church) having the same scope belongs merged here.
*it should link to Church (building) and to Christian denominations in a disambiguation note
*it should reside at Church, while the disambig page currently there should be at Church (disambiguation)
the rationale is that "Christian Church" is redundant. "Church" is intrinsically a Christian term.
Yes, there is the Church of Satan and similar, but these are clear derivations / imitations building on the Christian meaning that can easily be delegated to the disambiguation page. Non-Christian communities are not usually described as "churches" (*Church of Islam, *Jewish Church, *Hindu Church etc.)  --dab (𒁳) 11:01, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I like this plan.  First step, let's merge Ecclesia (church) into this article.  Looks like it'll fit nicely in the Origins section.  Thoughts?  --JaGatalk 03:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Ecclesia (church) has been merged into this article. --JaGatalk 06:04, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: title / disambiguation