Talk:History of Christianity

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Neutrality

Who placed the tag and why? Please explain. Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:54, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Thi This Christianity also shaped ideas of slavery. The American Revolution was also a secular project and only one of many historical events. has nothing to do with neutrality, and your tag is misplaced and misguided.

First, the lead is a summary. As a summary, it does not mention everything in the body. In the body of the text in "Late Modernity" it opens with "For over 300 years, many Christians in Europe and North America participated in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade which began in the sixteenth-century." I think that satisfies your first assertion. More discussion would be detail that would not be appropriate in an overview article like this one. This is not an article on slavery.

Next, this is also not an article on the American Revolution, it's Christian History, therefore that is the only aspect of history that it is appropriate to include here. The secular aspects of the revolution are off topic.

Anything and everything not history of Christianity itself is off topic.

These complaints are unfounded and in error and certainly do not prove a lack of neutrality. Please remove the tag. Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:09, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

The lead: "Christianity also influenced the New World through its connection to colonialism, its part in the American Revolution, the dissolution of slavery in the west, and the long-term impact of Protestant missions." You have read my suggestion: "Christianity also influenced the New World from the age of colonialism onward, and Protestant missions had a long-term impact." As you say, this is not an article on the American history and the Wikipedia is not US-centric. If only certain aspects are selected (pick and choose) from the main text and world history, it may appear as advertising. The text does not mention the role of Christianity in slavery, but instead gives the impression that Christianity is solely the solution to that problem. The American Revolution is an example of a multifaceted historical phenomenon, and there are others like it in history. These things do not need to be explained in the introduction. The lead section is short and must concentrate on Christianity. --Thi (talk) 23:13, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Thi

In what way is your sentence a better summary of the body? That's the purpose of a lead. It's not an introduction.

You're right that this is not American history. But the end of the Atlantic slave trade is not solely about the US. It was a major event for Western culture including Europe, and could be discussed as a major event in the world. Christianity played a role in bringing about the end of the Atlantic slave trade according to the sources and that is not disputable.

Please check what the references say.

If you have sources that say Christianity had little to no impact on the ending of the Atlantic slave trade, please present them. Otherwise, all you have is personal feeling. You don't like it, and that's too bad but that, by definition, is non-neutral and has no place here.

The American Revolution is an example of a multifaceted historical phenomenon, and there are others like it in history. So what? What does that have to do with the History of Christianity? Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:15, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

You pick and choose from the general history those things you like and ignore those you don't. You don't write in the lead section that the Christianity played a role in supporting the slave trade. That is apologetics, not neutral point of view. You could as well write in the lead that Christianity contributed to the witch hunts, rise of Nazi Germany, the world wars or some other events. The point is not what is in the body, you just have selected some things from there. The question is what is in the lead section. "In Wikipedia, the lead section is an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents." "According to the policy on due weight, emphasis given to material should reflect its relative importance to the subject, according to published reliable sources." The lead must follow the general introductions to the topic. [1] --Thi (talk) 11:28, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Thi Picking and choosing is the nature of editing. I have now removed the phrase “dissolution of”. Is that sufficient? Jenhawk777 (talk) 17:24, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I removed the tag. --Thi (talk) 17:51, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I also added another source indicating the impact is not limited to the U.S. to address your concern that this is American biased. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:35, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Discovery of oldest evidence for Christian life north of the alps (230 - 270 AD)

You are all invited to help working on Frankfurt silver inscription (about the newly discovered oldest evidence of Christianity north of the alps), and to also cover it in this article. Renerpho (talk) 16:29, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

List of things the article doesn't adequately describe

To be expanded: ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:34, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

• What an "apostle" was.
• What the result of the Council of Jerusalem was (in the last paragraph of "Early Christianity")
• What the trinity is (there should be a line in the second paragraph of "Early Christianity")
• What Christian monasticism was.
• Why did the previous version on the Vulgate focus on whether it was similar to Roman jurisprudence, and not on its massive legacy?

I checked one source, Humfress 2015, for the "art and literature (350-500)" section. There was much too high a proportion of close paraphrasing. You also need to pay attention to this. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:10, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I'll take care of it. Thank you for giving me something to do! Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:17, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

That particular instance has been taken care of, but others may be out there. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:19, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I am bad about forgetting quotation marks. I'll put them at the beginning and forget the end, forget them entirely - I am trying to be more careful. I will be. I will do the rest of this list today, I promise. Do you want the answers here or do you want me to insert them? Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:26, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

• • Dear darling hard-working friend ~~ AirshipJungleman29

1. • Apostle: Persons in the position of apostle are representatives sent out from the Christian community as bearers of a message.

• Burton, Ernest DeWitt (1912). "The Office of Apostle in the Early Church". The American Journal of Theology. 16 (4): 561–588.

1. • Council of Jerusalem

• • The Jewish Christians in Jerusalem decided to allow Gentile Christians their form of Christianity and allow Jews to keep theirs. The only restrictions given were to "abstain from the pollutions of idols and from fornication and from what is strangled, and from blood".

1. • Trinity: God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I do not like the idea of adding this. There are no discussions of theology in this article - nor philosophy - both of which Christianity is heavy with. Both of these change over time, and impacted all kinds of things, like the Reformation, so they would have to be discussed repeatedly. They are probably important enough to be included in a history of the church - but hopefully not a history of Christianity - because its not just rabbit hole, it's a rabbit warren. If we start explaining it we will have to keep on till the cows come home - and I don't have any cows - so they will never come home - if you get my meaning.

   You do not think that excluding a topic which Christianity "is heavy with" and "impacts all kinds of things" means the article is incomplete? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:59, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

   ~~ AirshipJungleman29 I am drawing a fine line, to be sure, but academics in this field draw fine lines of meaning using excriciatingly minute detail. I am drawing a semantic line between a history of the church which would include its theology and practices and a history of Christianity in the broader sense of events and impact on society, politics and economics. When you excluded practices from Early Christianity, I felt validated in that choice. If you want it in, the article will end up at 20,000 words, I'll betcha, even if you edit it all with your magic touch. Theology is obscure to most people and requires lots of explaining and most people just don't care. So. The article is incomplete but in a complete way - does that make a weird kind of sense? Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:53, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

   I will do what you decide. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:59, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

   • Monasticism

• • The structured pursuit of the ascetic life. The first sentence of our WP Article Christian monasticism says Christian monasticism is a religious way of life of Christians who live ascetic and typically cloistered lives that are dedicated to Christian worship. That's close enough.

1. • Vulgate and law? Because it was used later to justify many of the changes made in canon law. There's a line in the High Middle Ages section on Law and Papal monarchy: Canon law became a large and highly complex system of laws that omitted Christianity's earlier principles of inclusivity. It is so significant it should be highlighted and underlined. Sociological theory has society becoming more intolerant as the Middle Ages wore on, and power was centralized, and states became more secular, but the church was right there with them. State and church were copying and competing with each other and the tolerance and inclusivity that had been so important to the early church up through the early middle ages got lost somewhere. Augustine said leave the Jews alone in the fourth century. In the thirteenth century the church wrote canon law - law - that restricted Jews to a ghetto, had them wear a yellow patch to identify themselves as Jewish, and forbid them from holding any public office. How did they get from "There is no Greek or Jew..." to that? The Roman law in the Vulgate made them think it was okay. It was too much detail to include in the article, but the mention remained. It's fine to remove it.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 05:07, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Christendom

The "Early Middle Ages" section begins by talking about three different cultures: Germanic Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and Islamic civilisation. We then have a section of Christendom, which claims that the concept was "pervasive and unifying". Do the sources say if it was pervasive and unifying across Christian communities in Germanic Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and Islamic civilisation, or was it only in the former and maybe the second? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:13, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

It was used in Europe and included the East up to the big divorce. I like your placement of it. I moved it both places, but yours works best I think. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:20, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Tag

What do you think is missing that should be included? Periodization in this article is broken up according to old standards with Late Antiquity ending in 476, and the early Middle Ages ending in 842 when the iconoclast controversy ended. This is not the same periodization used by the Cambridge history of C., but we can still approximate a total content.

Their Volume 3 begins in 600, and it starts with Christendom. Then it has the emergence of Byzantine Orthodoxy. Then it moves on to stuff that's in the High Middle Ages in this article. The next for them is Christianity and Islam. Then again Part Three is moving into the High Middle Ages for the most part, but it also discusses some "early" in chapter 13 - Asceticism and its institutions. Most of the rest is the next period.

Volume 2 is Constantine to 600, and it has most of what's covered in the Late Antiquity section: chapter 2 - Germanic and Celtic Christianities; 4 - Early Asian and East African Christianities; Jews; pagans; heresy; councils; church law; art and architecture, and a whole section on theology and liturgy and stuff I don't think should be included.

So, what do you think is left out? Jenhawk777 (talk) 05:34, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Assuming this is directed at me, I'm not sure what this is asking. We are discussing the only tag I've placed above. If not that, then what? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:00, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes the only tag, the one that says, "The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject." ???? Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:41, 23 December 2024 (UTC)