Talk:Canon Press

Controversial publications

Looking at the history of this very stubby article, I see it once contained this sentence: Two books published by Canon Press have been found to contain significant portions of uncited work by other authors and were subsequently retracted and remaindered: Southern Slavery As It Was (1996), co-authored by Doug Wilson and Steve Wilkins and A Justice Primer (2015), co-authored by Doug Wilson and Randy Booth. It was deleted with the comment "This is probably undue weight, and relies on weak sources - please discuss on the talk page."[1] The sources seem adequate, and it's perhaps the only thing that this publisher is known for. Without this, the topic may not be notable at all. I'll restore it unless there's a good justification for omitting it, in which case this article should probably be nominated for deletion. WestRiding24 (talk) 05:06, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

References

Even with this returned, I have trouble seeing that there is enough to meet WP:NCORP in the refs currently on the article. Here is a bit more, but only a bit (the article is in-depth on the church, this is just the only part on the press.) Here's an opinion piece regarding the Press. I'm not finding things much deeper in a newspaper search. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 06:05, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't realized it was the same organization as did the billboards. Maybe a couple of sentences on that topic will broaden the article enough so that the deleted sentence wouldn't be unbalanced anymore. WestRiding24 (talk) 08:15, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

N.D. Wilson's books

Wikipedia has articles on a dozen of N. D. Wilson's books, mostly listed as published by Random House. (Template:N._D._Wilson). At the same time, many of those books are also listed on the Canon Press website without any special designation.[2] In most cases it's probably safe to assume that publishers only list their own titles. In this case, though, it could be that Canon is acting as a bookseller of convenience for Wilson, who is a partner in the company. It's also possible that they have taken over the titles from Random House and are printing new editions. Canon has a "shop" on Amazon.[3] It has a section of children's books, including on by N.D. Wilson, but not the specific titles on Wikipedia. Ordinarily, a publisher's website would be a sufficient source for their catalog. But given the contradictory facts above, it's probably safe to leave them off until we have additional evidence. WestRiding24 (talk) 22:36, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

I doubt that Canon took over publishing. Looking at 100 Cupboards, which is listed on the Canon website, Amazon still lists Yearling (an imprint of Random Penguin House) as the publisher for the currently available copies, which has the same cover as what is shown on Canon. If Canon had taken over publication, the book would've gotten a new ISBN and thus been associated with Canon at its retail listing. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 23:49, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

This is turning even more complicated. The latest entry in a series is The Silent Bells. It appears to be published, in serial form, by Canonball Books,[4] "Canonball Books is the children's imprint of Canon Press."[5] Canon Press has it here.[6] Based on those sources, it appears that Canon Press is the publisher of that book. WestRiding24 (talk) 03:56, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, The Silent Bells is definitely being published by Canon Press. StAnselm (talk) 04:41, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

That leaves the question of whether it is actually a notable book. I suppose it is officially notable in that it has a Wikipedia page, but that page doesn't look like it would survive a notability challenge. (I'm not too bothered by its presence here one way or t'other.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:26, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

I started a discussion at Talk:Ashtown Burials about merging the articles. WestRiding24 (talk) 01:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Categorization

I removed Category:Christian nationalism and Category:Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches as failing WP:CATDEF. The explanation of that is too wordy for the edit summary so I'll point it out here. This is not a church; it's a publishing house. Being closely associated with Doug Wilson does not make it part of CREC, and there is no sourced indication that it is a denominational publishing house. For Christian nationalism, it's not a defining characteristic of the article's topic. ButlerBlog (talk) 11:36, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining your reasoning. To your first point, it seems like it is the denominational publisher. But it's fair to ask for a specific citation that connects the Canon Press more explicitly to the CREC.

That said, I don't see why that category should be limited to church buildings any more than the "Catholic Church" category is. "Churches" is in the name of the CREC denomination. CREC ministries, pastors, theologians, and publications should be included too. We could change the category name to "Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches denomination" if that would make it better.

The CREC seems to be right in the middle of the Christian Nationalism topic. The Canon Press began as a ministry of Christ Church (Moscow, Idaho) From Wiki: Heath Druzin, host of NPR's podcast Extremely American, describes the church as "a major player, if not the major player" in the Christian nationalist movement nationwide.[5] Canon Press publishes books promoting Christian Nationalism. A source says calls it a "Christian nationalism publisher" and "an Idaho press that promotes Christian dominion over society".[7] Nobody involved is shy about this. It's right there in the book titles. Furthermore, they are prominent in this role. They may be, in essence, the most prominent published of pro-CN materials. So I think the category fits and there are already sufficient sources. But maybe we can find one more citation that makes an explicit connection, if that'd make it better.

FWIW, if there were a "Classical Christian education" category it should probably go there too. This is a surprisingly diverse publisher. WestRiding24 (talk) 03:37, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

This Presbyterian & Reformed News article use the phrase "Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals (CRE)". That may be the best name for the category. (This is the wrong place to discuss it, but probably the same editors follow both pages.) WestRiding24 (talk) 06:32, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

You would likely not get support for renaming the category since that name is old (as noted in the article). ButlerBlog (talk) 11:05, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Looking further it seems CRE is used mainly by opponents within the PCA or Reformed Presbyterians. That gets us back to "denomination" as an umbrella term. WestRiding24 (talk) 02:56, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't see a lot of point to renaming a category in order to force fit a categorization that, even with a change would still not fit the way articles are to be categorized. First, the suggested change does not follow the naming convention used for the other related categories (and it shouldn't be decided here anyway - but this isn't a RM at this point either). Second, we'd still be back to whether this is part of the denomination or not. The article doesn't make this connection, and neither does Canon itself. While I generally don't like comparing examples of other articles on Wikipedia because sometimes they're not done right, but one that is done right (at least partly) and can be compared for example is LifeWay Christian Resources. This is categorized in Category:Southern Baptist Convention. The article states Lifeway "is the Christian media publishing and distribution division of the Southern Baptist Convention" and on their own site, they say about themselves, "Lifeway Christian Resources is an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention". So the categorization applies because they are actually a part of the denomination. Canon makes no such claim that they are part of CREC - at least not that I have seen. In fact, the article states that it operates as a private company (which would imply that it is not connected to the denomination of the church). Categorization on WP should not be treated as "meta tags" and that seems like what you're trying to do here - tagging the article to related subjects - but that's not how categories are to be used. Categories should represent the defining characteristics of the article (refer to WP:CATDEF) and should be a logical hierarchy. Your efforts to improve the article are appreciated, so I'd suggest working on the article's actual content rather than spending too much time worried about what categories it should be in. Content is far more important to the article's standing. ButlerBlog (talk) 13:48, 29 July 2024 (UTC)