Talk:Conservative Christianity

New article

I saw there was a category for liberal Christianity so I saw that a category for conservative Christianity would have some precedence.

I am very weak on some areas of historical knowledge and theology. For example, I could not name a Eastern Orthodox scholar at the present time if my life depended on it. Also, my knowledge of the time between Luther and Wesley is very weak in regards to the Protestants.

Sincerely, the gentleman who created the conservative Christianity category. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.205.191.56 (talk • contribs) 20:26, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

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I think the idea of the article is a good one. As for the suggestion someone made about merging this with "Christian right" - I think that idea is dead wrong. There's a distinct difference between theologically conservative christians, and politically conservative ones (although many people are often both). It's a misunderstanding of the word "conservative" to assume that one who is theologically conservative must therefore be politically conservative, or vice versa.

Scholars, Theologians and Writers

"Earlier Conservative Protestant scholars/theologians include ..."

Wouldn't they all have been considered mainstream Christians back then? Tcschenks 15:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

What are you adult people on ABOUT ???

BIBLE TRUTH IS SIMPlLE !!!

Jesus NEVER COMPLICATED HIS TEACHINGS !!!!

1.141.56.218 (talk) 08:20, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

That is probably true, Tschenks. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 17:08, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

The name

The word "conservative" can mean a lot of things, but using it to refer to the most radical parts of the American protestantism is a very serious abuse. They do not follow traditions of the mainstream Christian denominations, so in what is conservative about them ? If anyone, the Orthodox, the Eastern Churches and the Catholics should be refered to as "conservative Christianity". Taw 05:26, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I cannot see this as adequate grounds for disputing the article. The way Wikipedia defines conservative Christianity is correct in terms of its typical use in the English language. The language is a living breathing thing, so I hope you understand that "conservative Christian" is an abberation, an invention, technically unrealated to "conservative" and therefore possessing a definition of its own. Wikipedia's article adequately matches that definition. In a word: although "fundamentalist Christian" may be a more scientific application of original dictionary words, "conservative Christian" is "street" right now.

Also, I encourage you, as a fellow Christian, to consider that no church accurately "conserves" the original Christianity of Christ our Lord. The early Christian church lived communally And followed a brand of social engineering, so conservative (or liberal in its day) that it is totally foreign to our modern day. The church in the beginning was sheparded by the saints in Jeurusaelem. The early church didn't live its life by the "bible" (or the New testament, we know they used some old testament texts in their worship) but in fact by the directly recieved, or indirectly recieved word of Christ. What happened when the faith spread was that the church found its membership built from people that didn't really understand its beliefs. Oral traditions gradually killed off accuracy, and no printing method existed, so the writings of the early church were only available to the church leaders. This became even worse after the conversion of Constantine, as the people and the powerful of the Roman world rushed to join the faith. Indeed, the original Christianity is totally lost, and what we consider "conservative" Christianity, by the admission, I am sure, of conservative Christians, is an attempt to return to those original principles, not an attempt to conserve them. So I would encourage you not to place the "Orthodox, the Eastern Churches and the Catholics" on quite so high a pedastol in regards to their success in continuing the original Christian tradition with only their age as the basis for your argument. C.C. Powers, Jan 1. 2006

I have frankly very little idea of how the Church looked like in the first two centuries, but the Orthodox, the Eastern Churches, the Catholics and some of the protestants at least try to uphold its traditions, with only some minor changes and corrections. On the other hand, some of the churches reject the tradition as corrupt, and propose a return to the basics, like the Bible, and to the way the first Christians supposedly lived. Whether one sees conserving the church tradition (including whatever impurities that had accumulated in the meantime) or a return to the basics as more true to the teachings of Christ, it should be pretty clean that the former approach is conservative, and the latter is fundamentalist and not conservative at all. (And the third approach that ignores both the bible and the tradition to accept novelties like homosexual priests is neither conservative nor fundamentalist).

I fail to see what's conservative about those churches except for the association with American "conservative" politicians, and it's agains the usual meaning of the word "conservative". So I suggest we move this article to Fundamentalist Christianity or some other name that wouldn't imply them preserving what they reject. Taw 00:39, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

To elaborate on what I said:

"no church accurately "conserves" the original Christianity of Christ our Lord."

And this is historically proven. Strictly speaking, we don't even know what the early church was like. We have an idea, through the letters and of the apostles and the book, the acts of the apostles, as well as at least some traditional historical documents. We also make some guesses, based on what is (presumably) the word of Christ Jesus passed down to us through the four (translated, re-translated, edited and altered) gospels, whos authorship and authority can never be confirmed except though our faith in ability and will of the apostles and the servants and scribes of the early church, guided by the holy spirit, to carry out the will of God.

So what I was saying, in a word, was that no church preserves the "original tradition" as passed down to us by Jesus christ, and so no church is truly "conservative". In fact, the Catholic beliefs in scholastic theology are a direct and blameless diversion from that original tradition.

Never the less, I repeat my insistance that "Conservative Christianity" is an accurate title in keeping with the current use of the english language and the mission of Wikipedia. What I mean by this is that when people do a search for "Conservative Christianity" on wikipedia they want to hear about the Christianity that their friends and professors and newscasters tell them about when they are referring to conservative Christianity. Also, if it helps, there is already an article titled "Fundamentalist Christianity" on the Wikipedia Database.

However, after you remove your contest to the accuracy of the article, you could do reasearch to find out if any notable faction in the christian world agrees with your belief that no Christianity is truly conservative, and perhaps add it as a short trailer to the contents of the article.

Thank you for responding so promptly to my response, High Schools and Libraries everywhere in the country are shut down for Christmas Break, I don't really have anyhting better to do with my time. C.C. Powers, Jan 1. 2006

Taw, you are complaining about the lack of understanding of eastern and catholic traditions, yet you are showing little understanding of what fundamentalism is. To squish all the movements of this page into "fundamentalism" would be contrived, inaccurate and POV. While these groups mutually share some elements; other elements of fundamentalism are specifically rejected by non-fundamentalist members. Some of the problem may be that the article tends to be U.S.-centric. At any rate this reflects the general usage of the term "conservative" within the US. The article could be modified a bit to reflect that.

Another aspect is that the term "fundamentalist" is frequently a pejorative term (do I sense some of that in your remarks?) and NPOV requires that we not use the label on anyone who does not self-label accordingly. Pollinator 03:12, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

This page (and perhaps the overall name and purpose of the article) is very US-centric in associating conservative Christianity with conservative politics. One contrary example, British Evangelicals have always been conservative (except during the English Reformation, when there views were often, naturally, considered radical and heretical.) They came to describe themselves as 'conservative evangelicals' in the early 20th century in response to a movement that described itself as 'liberal evangelical'. Though the liberal evangelicals are rarely heard from, the conservative label still appears in statements of faith, and evangelicals still consider themselves conservative. Yet their politics have never been associated with the U.S. Right, and while being anti-abortion, have also been strong supporters of what some in the U.S. call liberal issues, such as welfare, civil and human rights and social justice. While all this is interesting, I don't propose adding it to the article, as it would make it even more confusing for the reader. If the U.S. bias can't be fixed, I would propose deleting the article altogether. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 22:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I believe many have a distorted view of the pre-Constantine Church. It was not a disorganized group of people who would spontaneously gather, it was what some would call an "institution." Read the writings of pre-Nicean church fathers and you see volumes written on condemning and excommunicating gnostics, Adoptionists, Montanists, and the list goes on. The fact is, there were already different "denominations" of Christianity before Constantine, but we can see a mainstream "denomination" throughout those three centuries that contained the majority of Christianity and held apostolic succession. It was a very dogmatic Church, and it was this "branch" of Christianity that the Roman Empire ultimately embraced (while at the same time other countries independent of Rome accepted this same "denomination," such as Ethiopia, Georgia, and Armenia). The 1st Council of Nicea did not meet to institutionalize a bunch of disorganized unrelated local churches, it met to officially exclude a heresy from the mainstream orthodox catholic Church (This Church had many titles such as Nicean, orthodox, catholic, apostolic, etc). I would definitely say the Church before and after Constantine was very conservative, but whether or not this fits the contemporary views of what we call "American Conservatism" is quite debatable. Especially when it comes to issues like war and capitalism, you find Church fathers accepting radical views on these matters. As for homosexuality and abortion, I think it is clear what the early church views on these matters were. Abortion is even condemned in the Didache, while homosexuality is both condemned in the Bible and in the writings of the fathers. But whether or not the early church would vote Democrat or Republican, I think we should refrain from trying to assign early Christianity a 20th century political party.

Taw, I completely agree, and I would go further. There really is no such thing as "traditional Christianity". Anyone who knows the first thing about Christian history understands that there was so much diversity in early Christianity that it makes modern Christian diversity (fundamentalists, liberal Methodist social activists, monks, Mormons, Appalachian snake handlers) pale by comparison. We need to some sort of notice or disclaimer about all the Jewish sects, gnostics, etc, and how the term "traditionalist" has been horribly misused by the public at large. We really need to clarify this. Jeffmm1 (talk) 03:49, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Tag

I have added the unsourced template. I have serious issues with the titling of this article, because I believe many of the cited 'conservative' thinkers and theologians would not identify as such but as 'orthodox', 'evangelical' or something else. I don't believe 'conservative' Christianity is a theological movement in the same way 'liberalism' is. The term is certainly in common parlace, especially in America, but that does not make it informed or correct. However I'm not a theologian and therefore don't feel comfortable 'fixing it'. Therefore I ask the assertions about 'Conservative Christianity' be sourced. Furthermore, I ask that all contributers to the talk page please sign your posts with four tildes.aliceinlampyland 17:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC).

Criticism

This section really needs an overhaul. For example, what is the basis for concluding Bono is a "liberal Christian"? I know he's a Christian, but I can just as easily associate him with conservative Christianity as with liberal. I think the original contributor was confusing politics and theology. Bono most likely is politically liberal, but that has no bearing on associating him with liberal Christianity. See the recent Rolling Stone interview for some discussion, for example, on his view of the Bible. 71.225.87.127 11:50, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

That's the problem with this article. It lumps people of various different theologies together when they ought not to be. Frankly I don't think it should exist at all, because there is no 'conservative' theological movement as such, but rather an evangelical movement, a neo-orthodox movement, a Pentecostal movement, and so forth. aliceinlampyland 17:27, 10 May 2006 (UTC).

the problem seems to be in differentiating between conservative christianity and right-wing conservative (if anyone could even agree on what that means). in reference to a conservative christian (conservative theologically not politically) I'd say it means in reference to biblical interpretation. Whether the bible is literally true etc etc Syzergy 19:04, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Some movements, such as the Evangelical movement and Fundamentalist do not tend to hold conservative views. It's odd infact the fact that especially the Fundamentalist movement was listed. The Fundamentalist movement has funamentalist views not conservative, hence the name.

So I agree this definition most definately needs to be revised.

The problem is though, most people think that Evangelical Christians are conservative, that's probably where the original author of this section got the idea from, however from first hand experience I would say that their views are much more the views of a fundamentalist!

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Phil2020 (talk • contribs) 12:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the latest comments of Phil2020 have me leaning even more towards proposing that the entire article be deleted. Liberal Christianity is not anti-conservative, but in response to it many conflicting conservative trands have emerged or been reinvigorated, from ritualism and anglo-catholicism to fundamentalism and the evangelical movement. In fact other progressive elements in society have also created conservative movements in Christianity, that is progressive elements ranging from new forms of Christian worship services, to new reproductive technologies. All these types of 'conservativism' are already quite well covered in Wikipedia, and seem to have nothing in common that could create an interesting encyclopedia article. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 11:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

• This article conflates two distinct topics: conservatism about religion (matters of doctrine, worship, and morals) with conservatism about politics and public policy. This title should become a disambiguation page, and any worthwhile material from here should be relocated to other pages.

As aliceinlumpyland points out, even within the domain of Protestant thought, there is no clear identity to the word "conservative", but various movements that are loosely characterized with the term. (likewise the same comment could describe liberal Christianity Pollinator 16:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC))

Fair point re "liberal Christianity", though FWIW the term "liberal religion" may be worth using to designate non-creedal, anti-authoritarian movements such as American Unitarianism. Chonak 14:19, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I would like to suggest the relocation of all the material about politics of Conservative Christianity to the article about the Christian Right. These are related, but distinct topics.

weslinder 08:07, 07 March 2007

The treatment of "conservative" Catholics is particularly confused. It starts by talking about political conservatism among Catholics, and then cites Opus Dei, although OD has no political line, and in Europe both left- and right-wing politicians can be found as members. Chonak 12:33, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree very much that the secion on Catholics is wholly confused, talking about American politics as if it were equatiable to religion. Also, the section on criticism just seems way off. I hate not to be specific, but the whole section sounds amaeturish. Some rewrites are in order. Lostcaesar 21:55, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I also have great reservations about the use of the word "conservative" in this context. It seems to invoke the idea of "right wing traditional values", but has no sense of tradition when it is applied to religion. It may be common parlance, but even in the US it is by no means well defined.

Further more, outside the US, the word "conservative" is more aligned to "unchanging traditions", and would refer to the Eastern Orothodox church, RC and so forth. The title is truly confusing and misleading, and is definitely not clear enough for an encyclopedia. Trishm 12:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Why is there not a "Criticism" section on the "Liberal Christianity" page? If this were truly balanced, I think there would be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.0.112.99 (talk) 12:41, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

i'm just here to say i removed the following paragraph from the section as it ends up being irrelevant to the article, is extremely biased-sounding and not even an actual reply to criticism, and doesn't have an ounce of factuality:

"Many conservative Christians respond to these charges by pointing out that Jesus helped the poor and the sick personally, just as they do. He did not raise the money from taxes and then have government deliver the aid. They may also call liberals hypocrites for talking about separation of church and state, until some bible reference seems to help in their leftist political ideology, even if that reading of helping your neighbour mentions nothing about government programs. " —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.206.97.34 (talk) 23:43, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

Why is there a section entitled "criticism" in this article at all? Should we add a Criticism section to the article on Liberal Christianity? Should articles on other forms of Christianity include a Criticism section, so that those who differ from the form of Christianity described can vent their dislike thereof? Should the article on Judaism include a Criticism section so that anti-Semites can attack Judaism, or or should the article on Islam include one so that non-Muslims can express their disbelief in Muhammad's status as a prophet or of Al Coran's status as scripture? Where does the incivility end? If I read an article on Liberal Christianity, I want it to tell me, in so far as is possible, what Liberal Christianity is or what, generally speaking, Liberal Christians believe, not what the attitude of others toward them is. As for the whether the term "Conservative" is proper, perhaps one of those "disambiguation" pages could specify different meanings for the expression, with an appropriate link to this article from the applicable specified meaning. Bro. Neal (talk) 18:28, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Citations?

The citations are all about interpretations of the bible. There is nothing there that talks about "Conservative Christianity".

Is this article purely a reaction to the article on "Liberal Christianity", whatever that is? Because from where I sit (outside the US), this article has no legs to stand on. Trishm 02:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion

I have proposed the article for deletion, based pretty much on the discussions above. Trishm 12:05, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Removed PROD, AFD if you want, but needs discussion before possible deletion. Paul foord 22:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, on the basis of the discussion it would have seemed to me a good reason NOT to send for deletion.DGG 00:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

The lack of citations was what led me to believe this was an article without much substance, but I would be equally happy to help bring the article up to scratch.

In my view, there are two sections to the article. One is the counter to Liberal Christianity, which is given the label here of Conservative Christianity, but would be more recognizable as Fundamentalism.

The second is about the Christian Right, e.g. Opus Dei and so forth. Where did the list of scholars come from? Is it the authors selection?

Hroðulf proposed a merge with Christian Right a while back. What are the thoughts? Would merges be beneficial? What merges would be considered? Do we have reliable sources to support the article?Trishm 13:42, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Fundamentalism is in no way the opposite of liberal Christianity today. Just as liberal Christianity has a number of different streams, so does conservative Christianity, and Fundamentalism is only one of them. You are mixing groups and subgroups. Pollinator 02:04, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I was looking for constructive comments, giving a summary of the discussion as I see it; I don't claim to be an expert on notions of what liberal and conservative refer to when applied to the religious sphere. In fact, my main issue with this article is that the notion of conservative Christianity is ill-defined to the point that this article would be a candidate for deletion. I think the proper process is AfD? However, I'm not on a crusade. If you can provide some non-original definition to Conservative Christianity that is more than a handwaving reference to the political usage in the US and UK, then that would make all the difference.Trishm 06:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merge

Conservative Christian redirects to Christian Right, and Hroðulf previously suggested this merge. Any thoughts from anyone?Trishm 23:07, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Definite NO. Not all conservative Christians are part of the Christian Right. Please stop trying to squish everything into boxes whether they fit or not. Pollinator 03:51, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I'm frustrating you - I'm not from your part of town. I actually think that the term "conservative christian" is trying to create a box that doesn't really fit when applied to religions. I can't figure out for the life of me what conservative Christian is meant to mean, even with this article. Outside the US, the word "conservative" in religion means traditional, as in orthodox or RC. Personally, I don't see how fundamentalist churches which developed in the last century can be considered traditional. If the word has been borrowed from US politics, then the meaning is even vaguer. If it doesn't mean either of those, then what does it mean?

But more to the point, can this article cite a source that defines "conservative christianity?"Trishm 10:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Oppose not the same thiong - Note the redirect at "Conservative Christian" has been to here since 25 December 2006, not Christian right. Paul foord 04:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

sorry? Everytime I try it, including just now, I get to "Christian Right".Trishm 10:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I've figured it out: lower case "christian" gets to "Christian right", upper case "Christian" to here.Trishm 10:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

NO Trishm, to me the Christian Right is more of a political group then a religious one. I am an orthodox (traditional) Anglican, and would be considered a member of the conservative Christianity. Conservative Christians are those who believe in the traditional doctrines, morals, and teachings of Christianity...not some political agenda. --Lord Balin 11:40, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

YES I would actually argue that Christian Right should merged into Conservative Christianity. In sociological terms (and I'm solely addressing the US context here) the Christian Right is a part of Conservative Christianity. I can't site anything off hand right now, but that's how sociologists figure things in my understanding. "Conservative Christianity" is the level of analysis just under "Christianity in the US" and the heading "Christian Right" would fall under the auspices of Conservative Christianity. Soulful scholar (talk) 05:29, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Strong No, the Christian Right is a political movement, and Conservative Christianity is a theological position, there is no connection other than many that consider themselves part of the Christian Right would also consider themselves Conservative Christians theologically. To put it another way this would be similar to saying that Wealthy American is synonymous to Republican.--N0nr3s (talk) 02:03, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

No, seconding "N0nr3s""the Christian Right is a political movement, and Conservative Christianity is a theological position" 67.183.157.148 (talk) 09:07, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Template

I can't get rid of the Christian template appearing twice on the right hand side. Can anyone fix it? It would be nice if we didn't have so much forced white space between some sections.

A word of encouragement: this is an extremely important article and deserves our best efforts. Let's get behind it and get those two Wiki criticisms ready to be removed. Afaprof01 17:50, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Differences between Conservative Christianity and Fundalmentalism

Christian Fundamentalism is not Conservative Christianity it is a reaction to liberal theology. When Fundamentalist in the US call themselves Conservatives they mean politically conservative. This article probably needs to explain that fundamentalism is a relatively new theological movement (less than 200 years old) and is distinct from Conservative Christianity. Maybe we should note examples of where Fundamentalist find themselves at variance with conservative/orthodox beliefs.--Riferimento 00:04, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Christian orthodoxy is liberal and fundamentalist; Roman Catholicism is liberal and not fundamentalist; Anglicanism is liberal and not fundamentalist (high church); Calvinism is conservative and not fundamentalist; Christian evangelicalism is conservative and fundamentalist. 67.183.157.148 (talk) 09:14, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Conservative Christianity and Liberal Christianity are not polar opposites

“It is often said that Conservative Christianity and Liberal Christianity are polar opposites,” this may be said but it is completely false. Fundamentalism and Liberal Christianity are polar opposites not Conservative Christianity. It should also be noted in this article that some traditional beliefs and practices are sometimes rejected by fundamentalist because they believe that they cannot be supported by literal interpretation. For example infant baptism is regularly rejected by fundamentalist but is a traditional conservative practice.--Riferimento 23:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

PoV

This article has massive POV issues, such as the 'Engagement in Society' section and is almost completely unreferenced. Shoddy work for such a controversial topic. Veesicle (Talk) (Contribs) 23:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree with the 'Engagement in Society' having POV issues, but other sections might. For instance, much of the 'Criticisms of Conservative Christiany' section portrays Jesus Christ's teachings as those of tolerance and social justice. I would argue that a good amount of Christians, myself included, would see Jesus Christ as teaching love and forgiveness, but not tolerance for sins. Besides which, social justice was not Christ's central message by any stretch of the imagination; most churches would teach that his message was something along the lines of, "You are sinners and will go to Hell for it, but I will die for you to have eternal life even though I haven't sinned." Even though the section seems quite biased, if citations are given for some of the less credible statements, it could stay as it is. Bonjour123 04:49, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Somehow I don't think you'd be content with a listing or of websites of the thousands of parachurch and denominational agencies that feed the hungry, heal the sick, provide water systems, etc. What kind of referencing do you seek? Why not provide it yourself? And what is POV about stating that Conservative Christians are highly involved in such services? There's nothing POV about facts. Pollinator 02:32, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

The social liberals accused the politically conservative in the US of being “ uncaring for the needs of society,” but neither are Christian groups. The politically conservative who happen to be Christian do in fact give extremely generously to non-profit organizations, possibly because they feel that while it is not governments responsibility to take care of the poor it is a Christian responsibility. In general all Christians give generously to the poor. This is a horrible paragraph that just reinforces the confusion between being a political conservative who happens to be a Christian as opposed to being religiously conservative. In addition with the possible exception of anecdotal evidence, I believe that it would be impossible to document any statement in that paragraph. --Riferimento 21:49, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

"Also, Christian lobby groups were, and are, involved in the anti drugs lobby. While the legislation of "controlled" substances would, as studies show, decrease drug related violence and crime. However, most governments around the world (such as Holland) are succumbing to the lobby of Christians to ban drugs from social life." The seems awfully POV, esp. the words "succumbing to the lobby of Christians"; also, the second sentence is pretty much incoherent, and what's with the scare quotes? Langelgjm 13:45, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

General beliefs

Belief in the Trinity and in the literal resurrection of Jesus (listed in the "General Beliefs" section) are standard Christian teachings, held by Christians across the political spectrum, not just conservatives. Also, Roman Catholics do not reject Biblical infallibility (although it might not be commonly referred to as such). 69.140.152.55 (talk) 17:45, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Catholics believe in the infallibility and the inerrancy of the Scriptures. N0nr3s is advicating his view of the Catholic Church, not stating Catholic belief. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.207.191.229 (talk) 17:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Limited geographic scope

Are there no conservative Christians outside the United States? Fishal (talk) 20:53, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Outside the United States we have a completely different definition of "conservative". Which pretty much prevents this article from ever achieving worldwide NPOV. Leushenko (talk) 23:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Conservative Christianity is very common outside of the States, what do you want? Do you assume that what is called traditional outside of the States differs significantly from what is considered traditional inside the States? If you believe there is significant differences in conservative theology try to find a citation, I think that what you will find is there is little information on the differences between what is considered conservative theology in the States and what is considered conservative in Europe, South America, Africa, or the Middle East. The reason this article is short is because it is really not that complex a subject. Please remember that Fundamentalism is not conservative theology nor traditional and is only slightly over 100 years old (in the Church a hundred years is a fad).N0nr3s (talk) 00:02, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Catholic monarchist

Catholic monarchist you are changing part of the article's content that has existed for over one year without complaint. It is not content that I am attach to or entered. But I have a problem with changing the content without a citation. Please note you are making the assertion that conservative Catholics accept the concept of biblical inerrancy; please provide a citation. I repeat I am not attached to these lines what I fear is one Catholic changing content because it disagrees with their personal view.--N0nr3s (talk) 13:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Catholic monarchist you have made the assertion on the “Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard” that Conservative Christianity is “being used by user N0nr3s to put forth his opinion of Catholic Teaching (on Biblical inerrancy) rather than the Catholic Church's stated position.” I may be wrong but it is my understanding that both teachings biblical inerrancy and biblical infallibility come from the protestant tradition. If you can cite the stated teaching that you referred to on the Noticeboard I would stop reverting your edits.

General beliefs

I cleaned up general beliefs a little bit (for example it was confusing trinity with hypostatic union). But... I still think the general direction of the section is wrong because the article makes these core beliefs of both conservative protestantism and conservative Catholicism. Really that entire development is fully protestant See for example Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy.

To give an important distinction catholic conservatism isn't joined with economic conservatism. Their poverty of Christ battles happened during the middle ages. Moreover they certainly wouldn't assert inerrancy as understood by a common reader (i.e. Sola scriptura). So frankly I think the section needs a much more substantial overhaul. jbolden1517^Talk 16:18, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Roman Catholic

The Roman Catholic church is not conservative, but liberal. Traditionalism is social conservatism, and while religion is social this must be written from a secular social perspective. The Roman Catholic church is socially conservative but theologically liberal--even progressive. The Puritan movement sought to reform (cut the rough progressive edges) the Roman Catholic church. From this movement we now have Lutheranism. The Puritan movement sought also to reform the Anglican church in a Calvinist manner--a theologically conservative & fundamentalist manner. 67.183.157.148 (talk) 09:03, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Globalise

See above #Limited geographic scope This article is very American centric. For example in the Church of England evangelical is linked to low church and has been for centuries, they are more likely to be in favour of, women bishops and disestablishment and as such are definitely not conservative or Conservative. The high church of the Church of England that tends to be the conservative branch indeed some of them are so conservative that they have a tendency to want to return the Church of England to the church of Rome. -- PBS (talk) 04:45, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The solution is probably not to try and "globalise" this, but rather to make the fact that this is a US-centric topic explicit, e.g. by moving the whole train-wreck to Conservative Christianity (United States). In a literal interpretation of the term, it is of course ridiculous to apply it to crackpot redneck Protestantism that is more or less made up on the go, when by contrast Eastern Christianity is incredibly conservative, to the point of re-enacting Christian liturgy as it stood in Late Antiquity, some 1,500 years ago. But of course the term "Conservative Christianity" does not refer to Christian traditions that are in fact conservative, with cultural continuity to the Roman Empire itself. It rather refers to US Christians who are also conservative (United States). This is a huge difference, and it is really pointless to try and treat these two topics under a single title. --dab (𒁳) 15:54, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps such a move would make sense, but what does that make the Roman Catholic Church in America? Is it not conservative? Perhaps a better idea is either to rename in to some other descriptive name that does not use the term Conservative (which after all has a Tory copyright) or delete the mongrel. -- PBS (talk) 13:44, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Aftermath of Articles for Deletion

I just wanted to post about the aftermath of the articles for deletion. Most of the discussion happened at pages other than this one:

Discussion with closing administrator

Note: the following was copied from User talk:Kudpung. I copied this because otherwise it will be lost in the user's talk page archives.

You closed the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conservative Christianity by saying keep as a disambiguation page. In my opinion, this was not a consensus at all. While many suggested disambiguation, it was far from everyone, and the correct closing should have been either keep (as is) or no consensus.

When I saw the disambiguation page, I was not aware of the AfD and was disambiguating links. There are a ton of links to Conservative Christianity and having a DAB page there is a big disambiguation problem. So I thought that changing it to an article was one of many items on the Wikipedia to-do list.

I bring this up since this was discussed at Talk:Christian conservatism where most users agreed that disambiguation didn't make sense, and a redirect might work better. I then tried to do the redirect and wound up in an edit war with another user. This other user disagreed with the disambig idea but was reverting to enforce you incorrect AfD close.

Please respond. Thanks, D O N D E groovily Talk to me 01:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

The result was 'keep' (as a DAB page). As this means the article/page has not been deleted, editors are free to carry out whatever action they feel necessary if it is reached by consensus decision on the article talk page. Edit warring is not a solution. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:17, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Essentially, you're saying that the disambiguation page is not to be considered a binding requirement and we can change it if we like? D O N D E groovily Talk to me 05:16, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

That is clearly what I said. Any additional comment by the closing admin is generally a recommendation only. Any AfD closure that is not 'delete' leaves the article free to be redirected, moved, edited, changed to/from a dab page, at will by any editor, preferably with a consensus on the article's talk page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:26, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Discussion at Christian conservatism

There was also discussion at Talk:Christian conservatism about this page, and pages with titles that mean the same thing. There it was decided that a redirect to Christian fundamentalism was acceptable. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 04:53, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Further discussion

Therefore, I'm redirecting this page to Christian fundamentalism. Feel free to continue discussion below. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 04:53, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

There is certainly no consensus to redirect - it's rather disingenuous to say that this was "decided" at Talk:Christian conservatism. I won't revert at this stage, since I'm already at 3 reverts, but I don't think you're doing the right thing here. StAnselm (talk) 06:52, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Fate of this page

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The result of the discussion was to Leave as disambiguation page. StAnselm (talk) 19:55, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Since the closing admin didn't consider a disambiguation page part of the consensus, the articles for deletion discussion was a simply keep that unfortunately didn't really resolve anything. I see three options here:

• Disambiguation page, the current state of the page. However, this option violates WP:DABCONCEPT, and the term Conservative Christianity is used often enough, that there would be a major problem with linking to the disambiguation page, and in its current state, it would be difficult for link disambiguaters to pick which of the many links is the correct one.
  • This option can be improved by including only Christian right and Christian fundamentalism on this disambiguation page, as 99% of links will refer to one of these two concepts.
• Restore the article, which many editor's object to due to the inherent vagueness of the term.
  • Shortening the article will probably deal with many of the objections voice at the AfD.
• Redirect to either Christian fundamentalism or Christian right. The problem with this is that neither the political terms (Christian right) nor the religious one (fundamentalism) are the clear topic intended by those who say Conservative Christianity. Again, it's back to the inherently ambiguous nature of the term.

I don't consider the current disambiguation page the result of a consensus, so I'd like to open a conversation here as to what should happen with this page. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 13:57, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

• Leave as disambiguation page: The term "conservative Christianity" is inherently ambiguous and can refer to any of several different religious or political movements, some of which have nothing to do with each other. It is by no means synonymous with either [Christian fundamentalism]] or Christian right, though they may overlap to some degree, so a redirect is unjustified. A big part of the problem has to do with what "conservative" means. There are several widely divergent definitions, religious, cultural and political, and any one of them can be intended by someone using the term "conservative Christianity". To a certain degree, the same can be said for "fundamentalism". "Christian Right" is aso applied to several completely unrelated movements, including US dominionism, and Austrian clerico-fascism, for example. In fact, there are large and imprtant swathes of what is called "consevative Christianity" that have zero overlap with either fundamentalism or the Christian Right, regardless of how they are defined. The ambiguity problem is most severe with "conservative Christianity", however, which effectively means nothing at all until the person speaking about it defines why they mean by it. Which, after all, a disambiguation page is designed to do. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 14:23, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
• Leave as disambiguation page - I agree with Dominus Vobisdu that there is no clear meaning of the term, and neither Christian right nor Christian fundamentalism would make good redirect targets. The article, on the other hand, was a mess trying to join various unrelated groups under the common banner of "conservative Christianity". Disambiguation seems the way to go. Huon (talk) 14:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
• Leave as disambiguation page - per the above, the term is vague with several possible meanings and articles; that is indeed the purpose of a dab page. Doc Tropics 14:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

• Leave as disambiguation page and say a few prayers that it will never be discussed again. Amen. History2007 (talk) 16:00, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

• Leave as disambiguation page for reasons discussed at the AfD, and the fact that none of the linked articles fully captures the range of concepts covered by the term – a classic reason for creating a disambiguation page. -- 202.124.75.224 (talk) 11:02, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Disambiguation troubles

• So disambiguation it is. This leaves the problem of links. There are a lot of pages that link here, and they all should be linking to articles rather than disambiguation pages. (As much as we know the term is ambiguous, most people don't.) I would like to see the disambiguation page drastically shortened for the benefit of link disambiguators. Otherwise, this will be a persistent problem, with "disambiuation needed" placed next to nearly every reference to this term. I suggest reduce the number of entries on this page drastically, perhaps to Christian fundamentalism and Christian right only, to make it easier to fix these dab links. Comments? D O N D E groovily Talk to me 22:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Fat chance. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 23:03, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Clarify? D O N D E groovily Talk to me 23:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I did, abundantly, in my answer above. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 23:06, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

That's why this was previously an article and why the DABConcept tag is at the top of the page. Football is also ambiguous, but an article was written about it because it's ambiguous. Upon finding a link to this page, how are people to know where to direct it? Most people can figure out whether the topic is politics or religion (right vs fundamentalism), but beyond that, I and most people don't have the knowledge to fix these properly. Meanwhile, there's probably more than 200 links to here.

The second problem is how to determine what belongs on this page. There's all kinds of Christian groups that are called "conservative." How do we know which to include and which to leave out? D O N D E groovily Talk to me 23:11, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand how you concluded that there should be only 2 items on the page, much less how you chose those two. Despite your explanation it seems quite arbitrary and potentially counter-productive. Surely the proper metric for inclusion would be whether or not an item needs a dab rather than how much work is involved in linking it? Doc Tropics 23:25, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

The difference between this and most disambigs is that most disambigs list concrete topics where the difference is obvious. The difference between Nut (fruit) and Nut (hardware) is obvious and concrete and everyone knows which is which. There's a lot of people names William Smith, but they're all different people and there's usually no doubt which is which. This is not true at all of Christian conservatism.

Secondly, this is not a list, it's a disambiguation page. We should not list every group that some people say are conservative. Instead, we need to consider what people actually mean when they use the term. This makes the inclusion criteria rather narrow. For example, when someone says "Christian conservative", I'm confident that they almost never mean Traditionalist Catholic, since they would call that a conservative Catholic instead. They aren't referring to conservativism in any specific country, so that strikes the British evangelicals from this page. So, in my view, when people say Christian Conservative, the mean the general concepts of fundamentalism or the right, and possibly confessing, and not any specific group.

Finally, I personally feel that this page falls under WP:DABCONCEPT, which states "a disambiguation page should not be created just because it is difficult to write an article on a topic that is broad, vague, abstract, or highly conceptual", meaning it would have an article. Obviously everyone else disagrees. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 23:37, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I do a fair bit of disambiguating, and have been particularly focusing on this page. With Craig Blomberg, I unlinked the term, with Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth (Southern Cone), I disambiguated to Confessing Movement, with Bellevue Baptist Church I disambiguated to Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence while with Orthodox Christian Reformed Churches in North America I disambiguated to Confessionalism (religion). So there is certainly a wide range of possibilities of what people might be looking for, and we need all these options to help disambiguators as well. However, I feel that many incoming links are not pointing to any of the items on the list. StAnselm (talk) 23:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

So, you can see how this would be so damn hard for a non-theologist, then? D O N D E groovily Talk to me 23:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

What (ambiguously) links here

If this page is to be a proper disambiguation, I think a useful place to start is to see what pages link to Conservative Christianity and what they probably intend. My rationale is that if someone intending to link to an idea linked here, then that idea is sometimes called "Conservative Christianity".

On 10 April 2012, the following pages linked to Conservative Christianity. Redirects and non-article pages are excluded. I've indicated what I think the links intended; other editors are invited to supply dissenting or concurring conclusions.

• Satanic ritual abuse - "a broad movement of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians" (per cited source Donner, Bottoms, & Najdowski 2009)
• Grace (Christianity) - explicitly contrasted with Liberal Christianity, ergo Christian fundamentalism, right?
• List of Christian movements - "a sub-division of the Judeo-Christian community that adhere to what many consider to be conservative religious values of the Christian faith". I don't know how this relates to / differs from fundamentalism or British Conservative Evangelicalism. Can someone else comment?
• Conservatism (disambiguation) - the (ambiguous?) concept of conservatism within Christianity
• Dogmatic theology - ?? Just listed under 'See also'
• Index of social and political philosophy articles - ?? A list with no comment or definition
• British Conservative Evangelicalism - a hatnote to the INTDAB
• Christian Fundamentalism (disambiguation) - INTDAB in the 'See also' section

Cnilep (talk) 01:45, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Rejecting Liberal Christianity doesn't automatically make you an adherent of Christian fundamentalism, so that disambiguation would be inappropriate in the Grace (Christianity) article, which means it should be delinked. StAnselm (talk) 02:52, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Fair point. It still seems to me that people who write "Conservative Christianity" might mean "Christian fundamentalism", though (compare the link at 'Satanic ritual abuse'). What I mean is, that might be an appropriate item to include in an honest-to-goodness disambiguation page.

By the way, see also my question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Conservative Christianity (archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation/Archive 29#Conservative Christianity). I'm wondering how/whether this page can come into line with MOS:DAB. Cnilep (talk) 07:50, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

It's easy to comply - make it back into the DABConcept page it used to be. Ego White Tray (talk) 01:34, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

The problem with that version is that there is no central concept on which an article can be built. There is no generally accepted definition of conservative Christianity, just several vague and unrelated concepts about Christianity that is somehow or another "conservative", which has radically different meansing for each of the concepts used. Each concept is best treated in it's own separate article, and they have nothing to do with each other. Lumping them all together under a single name as if they were somehow related to a single concept is OR, as none of the reliable sources do so. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 10:50, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, you could say the exact same thing about football or particle. The problem when dealing with a topic like this is that the people editing it know about the topic and then assume that the average reader does too. Well, they don't. The phrase is used every single day by people who don't see anything ambiguous about it at all (compare to John Smith). The phrase is often used in contexts where it isn't obvious what kind of conservative Christianity they're talking about. Sure the phrase is ambiguous - but, like football and particle, a mere list is not enough clear up the confusions. This is one of those cases that requires more explanation, essentially an entire article, to clear up the ambiguous uses. If editors are constantly linking to the wrong article, it's not because they're all ignorant or stupid, it's because what is at that link is not what should be. Ego White Tray (talk) 13:11, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, this is exactly like John Smith, and nothing at all like football, the various forms of which share a common history, which is not the case for the various concepts called "conservative Christianity". They have absolutely nothing in common except that they are (sometimes) called by the same name. They don't have a common historical, philosophical or political basis. We don't have one article called "John Smith" and lump all the notable John Smith's in it. That's exactly what disambig pages are for. I'd have no objection if you added VERY BRIEF, CONCISE AND TO THE POINT clarifying information to the disambig page, but only to the point that readers and editors can figure out which is the article they intend to read or link to. By brief, I mean at most one sentence, if that, and by to the point, I mean solely for the purposes of orientation, extremely narrowly construed. Any material beyond that belongs in the separate articles themselves. Sorry, but there were major problems with the expanded article: content forking, POV forking, original research, synthesis, coatracking and downright POV pushing among them. It also conflated conservative Protestantism with fundamentalism, and conservative Catholicism with Traditional Catholicsm. I don't agree that it was of much use to our readers, and convinced that it could never be put into a form that would be. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 13:42, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

This is still confusing to most readers

An editor in the above section suggested writing one or two sentences clarifying the distinctions between these various concepts. If you can explain this to a layperson (one who knows little about any of these practices), be my guest, propose it below. I don't see how one or two sentences could possibly clarify anything. Ego White Tray (talk) 05:11, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

not a dab

this page may have been a dab 11 years ago, but it's certainly not one now. I'm marking it as C-class, if the page should be re-made into a dab and the content moved elsewhere we should probably discuss again, but I don't have much of an opinion either way at this time. - car chasm (talk) 00:13, 31 August 2023 (UTC)