This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.ReligionWikipedia:WikiProject ReligionTemplate:WikiProject ReligionReligion articles
This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChristianityWikipedia:WikiProject ChristianityTemplate:WikiProject ChristianityChristianity articles
This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject Neopaganism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Neopaganism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.NeopaganismWikipedia:WikiProject NeopaganismTemplate:WikiProject NeopaganismNeopaganism articles
As discussed on the talk page of Christian Wicca I have started this more broadly focussed page with, I hope, some defensible references. I do not yet have Joanne Pearspn's book (on order...) but trust that she may have further good sources which we can briefly incorporate here. Kim Dent-Brown(Talk)22:02, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Kim. I think this move/creation was a good idea. I was about to nominate the article for deletion yet again, but I think that situating the topic with a larger context answers most of my objections, though perhaps not all.
A couple of points, though. First, as I pointed out here, Nancy Chandler Pittman's Christian Wicca: The Trinitarian Tradition is self-published and as such is not suitable as a source. Neither is her website, http://www.christianwicca.org/. In my opinion, in accordance with WP:SPS, any claim anchored by that book or website doesn't belong in Wikipedia.
As well, I note that Joanne Pearson's Wicca and the Christian Heritage is cited in the references section. I haven't looked at the book since the AfD, but what struck me most about it was that, near as I could make out, it contains absolutely no mention of "Christian Wicca." What makes that striking -- to me, at any rate -- is that the book is about Wicca and Christianity.
This absence of a single mention of "Christian Wicca" in a book devoted to the subject of Wicca and Christianity highlights the basic problem: outside of the work of wishful bloggers, online essayists and self-published authors, I can't find any evidence that any halfway-coherent set of practices that might reasonably be labelled "Christian Wicca": a) actually exists, and b) has received sufficient coverage in reliable sources to merit a standalone article. Because the topic is such an OR-magnet, I think it's doubly important both that the sourcing for the article be of the highest quality and that the text of the article stick extremely closely to what those sources explicitly say.
For example, part of the lede reads as follows:
"some followers of modern pagan paths have developed practices such as Christian Wicca"
My questions about this passage would be as follows:
Does the author actually use the term "Christian Wicca"?
Is this work a reliable source "with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" and is it about an actually-existing set of practices that some significant group of people actually participate in?
If the answer to either question is no, then the passage ought to go. As for the first, I haven't read the book, so you'd know better than I. But for the second, the signs are not auspicious: first, Llewellyn's "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" is not exactly stellar. Second, while I haven't read the book, Llewellyn itself describes the book as a "unique mix of memoir and how-to" that "shows how one woman [emphasis mine] blended Christian traditions with the magic and beauty of a Wiccan practice." It does not appear to demonstrate that any significant group of people practice something identifiable as "Christian Wicca". Furthermore, the book evidently exudes "warmth and heartfelt reverence," which is rather troubling.
I don't know if you've already done so, but could I ask you to take a moment to look at the AfD and my comments here and here to have a better sense of what my concerns are.
Hello Rr, thanks so much for the feedback and I'm relieved and pleased you think most of your objections have been answered. Yes I have read all your comments that you linked - in fact it was reading your comments that gave me the idea of trying to do something with the sorry wreck that was Christian Wicca. I quite agreed with you that in its various incarnations that article was unsustainable. While I'm no deletionist, I'd have voted Delete at AfD for all the reasons you gave.
I had an exchange with Anon Moos where we agreed that the title was a real problem, focusing the article on a narrow topic that was never going to be notable. As you point out, Jo Pearson's book doesn't mention Christian Wicca and so it's of no use as a reliable source for an article with that title. My thinking was that broadening the focus would allow us to use her scholarly work, hence the new title.
Now that the new article does have a notable subject, Christian Wicca becomes a minor example of the topic in question, and not its central focus. It is an illustration, one exemplar of the syncretism being discussed. Of course even this needs a source of some sort, but I think that a self-published source is now more viable. WP:RS says the following about self-published sources:
===Self-published and questionable sources as sources on themselves===
Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves, without the requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:
the material is not unduly self-serving;
it does not involve claims about third parties (such as people, organizations, or other entities);
it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject;
there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity;
the article is not based primarily on such sources.
I think all the above now apply to the use of the Pittman source - in particular I have tried to make sure it is not self-serving! However I do take your point about mentioning Christian Wicca in the lead section. I don't think this is necessary and I'll delete it. Also, I'll reverse the order of this and the next subsection to demote it a little! I hope this will downplay any undue significance given to the topic in the new article.
However I wouldn't want to delete all reference to Christian Wicca from the article; it is one concrete example of a Christian-Neopagan syncretism and I think the new article would be weaker with one less example. What I will do is try to find other well referenced examples and add them in here, which will further dilute any undue emphasis given to Christian Wicca. In particular I'm going to go through Pearson and hopefully include some of her work, which I think will be much more solidly based and flesh the article out further. Kim Dent-Brown(Talk)22:05, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
With some reluctance I removed the image from this page - not because it doesn't make obvious, logical sense but because I was unsure how encyclopaedic the description was. It said:"Pentacrossagram: A combined Christan cross and pagan Pentagram. A Common Symbol used in Christo-Pagan traditions. Which also emphasizes the overlapping of beliefs through symbolism]]". Now I know Google searches are not to be trusted, but neither term appears AT ALL in a Google search. So either the symbol is NOT common - or at least that these names are not. I have seen the symbol on the covers of various books on the topic - maybe we could use one of those? Or this symbol without the name, which seems to be invented? Kim Dent-Brown(Talk)08:44, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If it's been used on book covers, then that establishes its independent existence (which I didn't know before). Using an actual scan of a book cover would involve "fair use" problems, though. Why not just say something like "A combined pentacle and cross symbol, sometimes used to represent the idea of Christian-Pagan synthesis"? By the way, the pentagram has been used as a Christian symbol at various times in the past, including the "Pentalpha" of Gawain and the Green Knight, some forms of the commons:Category:Pentagrammaton, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 16:50, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A recent edit to the article turned these UK spellings to US variants. As there aren't any other UK/US conflicts here there's no precedent about whether this article is written in British English or US English. So I was minded to revert but what the hell - we can all understand it! Kim Dent-Brown(Talk)13:39, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have just modified 2 external links on Christianity and Neopaganism. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).
If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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.
-- AnonMoos (talk) 10:44, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
