Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/General

Why a project

I'll start with some reasons why there should be an active Christianity project.

• Quality is very uneven. The more general overview articles, such as Christianity and New Testament, are reasonably encyclopedic and comprehensive. The quality drops when we get to Pauline epistles, and when we get to, e.g., the Epistle to Titus, there's almost nothing except a brief treatment of the views about authorship (for that matter, there's hardly any more coverage in Pastoral Epistles, and the First and Second Timothy articles redirect there).
• There are approximately four tons of stubs.
• Christianity lags behind other religions (not to mention Discworld) in the attention it has received from projects.
• There is a Christianity Portal which appears to be run by one person. I don't see much to object to, but surely wider participation would be beneficial.

I propose this project should include:

1. A regular collaboration.
2. A destubbification campaign, which would consist of categorized lists of stubs nominated for expansion by project members. New nominees would be placed at the bottom and rise as stubs above are removed. Each category's top stub would be removed once a week, or re-added to the bottom if it's not destubbed yet, making sure the focus stubs are rotated. The categories would be something like:
   1. Bible stubs
      • Bible archaeology
      • Bible places
   2. Theology stubs
      • Christian philosophy
      • Ecumenical council rulings
   3. Ecclesiastical stubs, for denominations, traditions, churches, and parachurch organizations
      • TV and radio networks and ministries
   4. People stubs, for individuals
      • Bible figures
      • Modern clergy
   5. Culture stubs, for culture, music, art, archetecture, and so on
   6. Christian politics stubs
      • Church-state issues
      • Death penalty stubs
      • Abortion and euthanasia stubs
3. Article review, for articles nominated by members for wider review. In this case the new ones go at the top and sink as new ones are added.
4. Work on expanding or adding templates, such as a template for Christian theology.

A.J.A. 21:05, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I've had another idea, taken from the "Adopt an article" section from the boilerplate template: adopting a whole topic. For example, the Pastoral Epistles, which would include the articles I mentioned about plus the creation of 1st and 2nd Timothy articles, and maybe work on the Timothy and Titus biography articles. That's a relatively small number, so it would be a good way to test out the idea.

Does anyone have any objections or additions? A.J.A. 05:20, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

• A link to each sub-category of Christian stubs on the main page.
• A central clearinghouse of non-stub articles that need to be fixed, grouped by problem, and listed on the main page (at least until it gets too big). Endomion 21:33, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Membership

To more accurately gauge the level of commitment to the project, I started a membership list on the main page. This project is an excellent idea.   Guðsþegn – UTCE – 16:50, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Christian leader article

I've bumped into an occasional link to Christian leader, which doesn't yet exist. Not sure whether it ought to be an article or a category, or a list, or...? Anyone have any thoughts on the matter? Waitak 03:22, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that this ought to be a category... much like "Member of US Senate" or what-have-you. I'm extremely new to Wikipedia, so I don't know how to create the category, but that's my opinion. Seth Moko 20:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

What is actually meant by "Christian Leader"? If, for example, it means "national leaders who are also Christians", then you immediately include almost every founder of the USA, writers and signers of the Constitution, its early Presidents, as well as quite a few Prime Ministers of European nations. Or does it mean "leaders of Christian groups, movements, etc.", like John Wesley was the most noteable leader of the Methodists? Robert of Ramsor (talk) 19:37, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it was meant to link to the latter. Note that this thread is over a year and half old. What ever they were talking about is long ago resolved. -- SECisek (talk) 07:24, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

The Last Temptation of Christ

"Categorized as a Christian Film debate" I would very much deny that this could be called a "Christian film". What do others think. The fact that an author of a work believes something to be the case doesn't actually make it so. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 11:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

The fact that the word "Christ" appears in the title and the film is primarily about Jesus Christ makes it worthy of inclusion. You could add sentences like "Christians disagree with the primary premise of this film" or "This is a speculative treatment of Christ's life showing possible consequences if he did not allow himself to be crucified." Caroline1008 08:01, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

No way is this a "Christian" film in the sense of being from a Christian persepctive or advocating anything like a positive view of Christianity. Rather the opposite in this case, as films of this sort undermine any genuine and factually supportable perspective. If the Wikipedia Christianity project had a section for Anti-Christian films etc., then it might merit consideration. Robert of Ramsor (talk) 19:30, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Cyber-apologetics

I've been doing quite a bit of work on arguments for the Existence of God and similar. Could really use help! Esp. on two articles Argument from love and Argument from beauty which have been proposed for deletion on a poll which I think will close today or tomorrow. Please have a look and contribute to the vote - and the articles if possible. NBeale 12:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

History task force

I would like to propose a history task force that would initially focus on the improvement of four articles: History of Christianity, History of the Catholic Church, History of Protestantism and History of the Papacy. All of these are a mess except for History of the Papacy which while not GA quality is in better shape than any of the others. I have started "cross-fertilizing" these related articles by copying relevant sections from one article to another. However, much more text is needed in three of the articles and all four of the articles have organizational problems in varying degrees.

Once we clean up these four high profile, high importance articles, we might move on to other topics in the History of Christianity but my primary objective is to bring all four of these articles to at least B-class and, dare I dream?, maybe even GA class.

--Richard 17:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Need for Consistency in the "Importance" parameter for denominations

I'm not entirely sure how we go about doing things, but it seems that we need to improve the consistency of the "importance" rankings for various denominations. Obviously, there are differences in the importance within Christianity of various denominations, but I did just notice that United Church of Christ was recently assessed as "High" class whereas Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) was assessed as "Top" class. Based on the size of these two denominations and the historical importance and influence in American Christianity (and American culture more generally) of these two denominations and their antecedents, it seems that these importance assessments are reversed. However, within the scope of the Christianity WikiProject, I'm not sure that either of them would qualify as "Top" (as much as I might wish the United Church of Christ did, as a UCC clergyperson)--in all actuality, they should probably both be ranked either "High" or "Mid". Anyway, given the rather subjective nature of judging a particular denomination's importance within Christianity, I'm not sure exactly how we would reach a completely consistent system--but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't perhaps have some discussion on how we might attempt to. Emerymat 02:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)