Talk:Christianity and violence/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Assessing the current state of the article

I think this may be a good time to assess the current state of the article and discuss where we should go from here. I have done quite a bit of work on this article recently and I think we now have a good outline although some sections are clearly weak (e.g. Crusades) and others are perhaps a bit too long, most notably the ones on slavery and anti-semitism. I've been trying to trim those back but getting constructive criticism from other editors would be appreciated.

I think my recent work has shifted the article away from being a coatrack by focusing on academic discussion on whether Christianity is a violent religion and the evolution of Christian doctrines regarding pacifism and just war. These are followed by a discussion of specific broad categories of violence where Christianity has been accused of being complicit (e.g. slavery, antisemitism, Crusades, etc.) I believe that it is more appropriate to focus the discussion on whether Christianity is truly complicit (i.e. was the church officially supportive of the violence or was the violence committed by people who happened to be Christian) and the nature of that complicity. In many cases, the connection is unclear and the subject of ongoing debate (e.g. antisemitism).

In the section titled Lots missing from this article above, Tryptofish wrote "I started systematically re-referencing the page so that it would not be a coatrack, in preparation for restoring the massive amount of material that had been, wrongly in my opinion, removed from the page. ...I do have a bunch of sources that I still want to add, and it remains important that the page not be assailable as a coatrack. "

I was the one who removed the "massive amount of material" back in April of this year. This diff] shows what was removed. My argument is that the material in question described individual trees and left the reader to develop his/her own view of the forest (and the presentation tended towards an interpretation of the forest as "Christians are violent"). As my recent edits show, there has been quite a bit of academic discussion about the nature of the forest.

However, I acknowledge that we could discuss more of the trees as long as we attempt to fit them into categories so that the article does not go back to being a coatrack. Also, I think the text I removed tended to have too much detail about the specifics of the violence (who killed how many on which date and in what fashion) rather than explaining the religious context of the violence and the extent and nature of Christianity's complicity in the violence. I would like to see most of the discussion of specific "trees" to follow the model of the current sections on Rwanda and the Holocaust.

I do think there is one glaring deficiency in the current article and that is sectarian violence such as in Northern Ireland. Another "tree" that I see missing is the Greek/Turkish conflict on Cyprus. Of course, this is ethnic and political as well as religious but religion played a part in the violence as well.

Your feedback is solicited and welcomed.

--Richard S (talk) 17:19, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Scope of this article

(note: this is written in partial response to the comments of Yt95 and Noleander in the section Need sources for some of the antisemitism material above, specifically focusing on the question of what the scope of this article should be)

There are three basic approaches this article could take:

1. Christianity is a religion that teaches peace and love, all who commit violence are sinners even though some have committed violence while invoking Christianity as their justification
2. Christianity is a religion that encourages violence against sinners, heretics and non-believers
3. Both of the above is true and there is evidence of both threads throughout the history of Christianity

I prefer the third approach as being the most NPOV approach. That is, we don't try to decide whether or not Christianity is a violent religion. We simply report on what other people have said on the question.

To this end, it is not necessary to list every time Christianity has been invoked in the name of violence or every time a group of Christians has been violent. Instead, we would focus on why some people think Christianity is a violent religion and, by the way, mention some of the most important examples. Are there specific scriptures and teachings that are used to justify violence? Are there any reliable sources that actually compare Christianity against other religions such as Judaism or Islam along this dimension?

We should also consider whether Christianity has changed its posture towards violence in recent centuries. Has the separation of church and state led to the church being less invested in the secular interests of the state?

--Richard S (talk) 17:14, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that is a decent approach, provided that (1) the sources support the material; and (2) the material is related to violence. We should also be thinking about consistency with Judaism and violence and Islam and violence. Also, you say "To this end, it is not necessary to list every time Christianity has been invoked in the name of violence ..." but that is not quite right: there is no WP "notability" policy for individual sentences or paragraphs within an article: if there are sources, it can go in. On the other hand, all editors agree that violent incidents where the perpetrators just happen to be Christian/Jewish/Muslim are not appropriate for inclusion. For comparison: the editors of Islam and violence have been quite inclusive. --Noleander (talk) 17:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I strenuously object to the approach that "if there are sources, it can go in". I'm not singling you out. I've objected to this repeatedly in a number of other articles before. My mantra is "Just because it's sourced, doesn't means it belongs in Wikipedia. Even if it does belong in Wikipedia, it doesn't necessarily belong in this particular article." Only editorial judgment can keep articles from becoming "indiscriminate collections of knowledge". Notability and reliable sourcing are a necessary criteria for inclusion; they are not a sufficient criteria.

It is critically important that we provide the reader with a "view of the forest" from different points of view. It is neither possible nor desirable to provide a catalog of every single tree in the forest. If we describe individual trees (i.e. specific instances of violence committed in the name of Christianity), it should only be with the purpose of describing some salient characteristic of the forest. In other words, it's not that big a deal in the greater scheme of things if a single cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church perpetrated a single violent act. However, taken as a general pattern of corruption of the Church (e.g. the Medicis), this is worth mentioning. Similarly, a single bishop or archbishop getting involved in local politics is not that big a deal. However, the role of Cardinal Wolsey or Cardinal Richelieu in the matters of state was part of a significant entanglement of the church and the state in each others affairs.

--Richard S (talk) 20:41, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

In response to an above remark on christianity being about peace and love I would have to disagree. "jesus" clearly states in Mark that he comes 'not to bring peace but a sword' and continues to list who he will set at odds with each other. 05:49, 18 November 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by High Magister Nicholson (talk • contribs)

As I commented above in the question about external sources that do not relate Christianity to violence, there is a fourth way this article could be written, and that is to start with a look at the Christian definition of violence, starting with the Christian God of the Bible who decrees death for those who disobey. It is not NPOV to judge Christianity by a non-Christian definition of violence, regardless of whether external sources can be quoted doing this.Cadwallader (talk) 19:11, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Cadwallader's comment above. There are basically four topics which deal with this subject, each of which probably deserves it's own article. I cannot see any good reason nto try to lump them all into this one topical heading - there's probably material enough for each to have at least a separate section. Having said that, I also agree with Richard that there is no reason to a priori arbitrarily limit the content to only one or a few of these ideas. First, the article should spell out in the lead exactly what it is dealing with, including providing the definition of violence which is being applied in this context.

Having said all that however, I acknowledge that the problems still won't all be solved. There is a serious question regarding the definition of "Christianity." Does the article refer to the larger groups of Christians primarily, or are fringe cults, many of which are much more violent? Is it fair to lump them all together? What should we do with eras when there were no defined churches as we currently recognize them? Particularly for Christianity, which has a much broader spectrum of beliefs and groups associated with it than some other major religious groupings, these are serious problems.

And, of course, there is the question just how "Christian" the people involved were, and the contexts in which things developed. Were the Crusades "religiously" motivated, or politically motivated? I think most scholars today think they were more the latter than the former. Should this be reflected in the articles?

Yes, religion is a human activity, just like violence. As such, there are going to be points of contact between the two. But we should be very careful in all of these articles to ensure that they not perhaps lazily and inaccuratetly link the belief groups with the specific actions of individual adherents in specific settings. John Carter (talk) 21:50, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. I think the pre-AFD version of this article tended to make exactly that kind of "lazy, inaccurate" linkage that suggested, if we describe the incident here, then the reader can assume that Christianity was somehow involved and culpable for the violence. This is guilt by association. We should take a stance of "innocent until proven guilty". We need to focus not on the violent actions of Christians but the ways in which the Catholic Church or other Christian religious institution specifically enabled, fomented, supported and praised the violent actions of Christians. This is a much harder case to prove cf. the long discussions and debates in academia over slavery and antisemitism. And yet, that is where the real encyclopedic topic is. Not in the coatrack onto which everybody piles on their favorite example of "Christians gone wild". --Richard S (talk) 01:53, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Material without sources will be removed

Richardusr: In accordance with WP:Burden, I will be removing all sentences that are do not have citations providing a reliable source, including those in the lead paragraph. For sentences that are sourced, you must provide a quote (either here on the Talk page, or in the footnote itself, the latter is better) from the source that demonstrates that the source does indeed say what the associated sentence in the article is saying. In summary: sentences will be removed if (1) there is no source; or (2) no quote from the source is provided; or (3) the quote does not support the sentence in the article; or (4) the quote from the source is not related to violence. The reason for this step is to resolve the large amount of WP:Original research that you are inserting into this article. You've been notified of these WP policies several times above, but you don't seem to understand. Sources were initially requested from you on 5 November, 13 days ago, but you have not demonstrated that you understand the WP:Verifiability or WP:OR policies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noleander (talk • contribs) --16:34, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I would suggest that you also visit the articles that the text was copied from (the original articles are well documented in the edit history) and delete that text, too. Failing to do so would suggest that you are exhibiting ownership of this article and using lack of sourcing as an excuse to remove material that you don't like per WP:IDONTLIKEIT.

A more collegial approach would be to tag assertions that you feel lack adequate sourcing and then give me (or others) a few days to find the relevant sourcing.

It would be good if you would forbear from deleting text pursuant to point (4) above until after the RFC is finished. Deleting text pursuant to point (4) before the RFC is complete would be presuming that your POV will prevail. Such a presumption is a bit arrogant and defeats the purpose of issuing the RFC in the first place.

Besides, given the plentiful quotes and sourcing provided in the article text and here on this Talk Page, it's hard to fathom what points you consider as "not related to violence". You haven't even answered the points that I've made in the RFC.

One begins to wonder whether it is reasonable to consider continue assuming good faith here.

--Richard S (talk) 17:12, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

RichardUsr: You were asked two weeks ago to provide sources, and yet you continually add new material that is unsourced, or has dubious sources. The burden is not on the editor proposing removal of material - instead the burden is on the editor (you) proposing addition of material. You are obligated to provide quotes from the sources. You've known that for two weeks. Your past editing practices show that you do not understand fundamental WP policies. Also, please read WP:TLDR: you are way too verbose both in the article and in this Talk page: please try to be more succinct. Most importantly: just because a single source connects, for example, slavery to violence, does not open the floodgate for you to include any and all material about slavery. Every individual source and sentence must be related to violence. I'm sorry you do not understand that, but I can only repeat that so many times. --Noleander (talk) 17:46, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

It's too bad you don't have the patience to read my careful explanations and defense of the direction in which I have been taking this article. If you prefer to engage in a cycle of deletions and restorations with sources on a sentence-by-sentence basis that will likely result in multiple RFCs and other steps along the WP:DR path, I can't stop you. I just think that we would save ourselves both a lot of time and energy if you stopped to read my comments to the RFC, the sources that I have provided above and give the entire current revision of the article a complete read with "fresh eyes". There are ample sources to establish that all of the topics in question (viz. "suppression of heresies", "antisemitism", "slavery", "colonialism") are examples of what J. Denny Weaver calls "systemic violence". But, if you prefer confrontation to collegial collaboration, I can't stop you. --Richard S (talk) 18:06, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry but, yes, you will have to restore the material sentence by sentence, supported by quotes from sources (see WP:Burden). To pick one random example out of dozens, here is a section that has citations, but has absolutely nothing to do with violence:

"19th century [slavery] In spite of a stronger condemnation of unjust types of slavery by Pope Gregory XVI in his bull In Supremo Apostolatus issued in 1839, some American bishops continued to support slave-holding interests until the abolition of slavery. In 1866 The Holy Office of Pope Pius IX affirmed that, subject to conditions, it was not against divine law for a slave to be sold, bought or exchanged."

That section, and all others like it will be deleted, unless you can provide quotes from sources that somehow link those sentences to violence. --Noleander (talk) 19:04, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you grant that slavery is "violence" and that Christian condonation of slavery is violence? If so, then the sentence in question is relevant. Whether it is worth keeping in the article is a different question. I think there's too much detail and the sentence could be cut to half its current length. But the question you are posing is whether the fact is at all relevant to the topic. The point here is that Catholic bishops in the U.S. continued to support slavery even after the Pope issued a papal bull against it and continued to do so right up until the Civil War. Seems relevant to me unless you're arguing that the whole topic of the Catholic Church's involvement with slavery is irrelevant to this article. --Richard S (talk) 19:23, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Noleander, I can't believe that you don't think that slavery is violent. Would a citation that Pope X condoned mass rape or murder not count, if mass rape/murder were not specifically called "violent" in the source? Slavery is inherently violent, just as rape and murder are. Ergo, if a church supports slavery, it supports violence, just as if it supports rape or murder. — kwami (talk) 19:53, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

We have to use the source's words, not our own opinions. Of course there are several sources that discuss violence in the context of slavery, and those sources can be and should be used in this article (I have never objected to that material). But that does not give us editors to insert any and all material relating to slavery .. that would be WP:Original research and WP:Synthesis. It is the latter sources (that are not discussing violence) that I am objecting to. --Noleander (talk) 19:59, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Noleander, what you say about the slavery section needing to address "violence" is close to true but a bit off-the-mark. It's not as if the newly introduced text was discussing the clothing, music or other aspects of slave culture. It's not even as if the new text was focusing on slave revolts and the bloody suppression thereof (which would technically be about violence but not really about Christianity).

The basic thesis of this article (i.e. what it's about) is the idea that Christianity may be a "violent religion". It is certainly documented in the first section of the article that some significant reliable sources make this accusation. Moreover, there are some significant reliable sources who take the charge seriously enough to feel that they must rebut it. So, no matter what any one of us thinks about the question, the point is that the question is clearly encyclopedic based on at least 5 sources.

Now, we have also established that slavery is considered within the topic of "Christianity and violence" by at least one reliable source. (there are more sources than just one but it doesn't seem worth piling on more sources just to establish this one point). Moreover, it is documentable that many sources criticize the Catholic Church for having sanctioned slavery well into the Age of Discovery. Some (admittedly fringe anti-Catholic polemicists) have even charged that the final date at which the Catholic Church changed its mind is as late as 1890 or even 1965(!). Thus, a discussion of the manner in which the Catholic Church sanctioned slavery (a rather nasty, if usually non-lethal, form of violence) and the rationale/justification for it as well as a discussion of when the Church opposed slavery and how it attempted to improve the situation of slaves is fully appropriate to this article. However, since much of that discussion is covered in detail in Christianity and slavery, all we need in this article is a summary of the main points.

I have been working towards that goal and made some progress although I think we could still cut the section down by at least a third. If you can propose specific text to accomplish that goal, it would be much appreciated.

--Richard S (talk) 01:48, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Slavery Section

Let's start with the slavery section. I've added citation tags to that section, rather than spamming every sentence with individual citation tags. Sentences without sources need sources. Sentences that have sources: we need quotes from the sources to verify that the article is accurately reflecting what the sources say. See WP:Verifiability, WP:Original Research, WP:CHALLENGED, and WP:Burden. --Noleander (talk) 22:59, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I object to and will revert unilateral deletions of sourced text that is the subject of an active RFC and for which no consensus has been formed for the deletion thereof.

I will do this even if the deleting editor asserts that the deletion is justified according to his/her interpretation of Wikipedia policies. Disagreements regarding the interpretation of Wikipedia policies should go through the dispute resolution process of which an RFC is an early step. If the RFC is unable to provide a satisfactory resolution, then perhaps mediation will be in order.

I am however quite amenable to collegial and collaborative discussions as to the relevance and appropriateness of specific text that other editors feel do not belong in this article.

None of the new sections is perfect. In fact, all are works in progress and there is much room to agree that the article could be improved by rewriting or deleting some of the new text.

--Richard S (talk) 00:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC) unsourced

See WP:Burden. I quote:

"This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. The source should be cited clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed."

An RfC is no excuse for inserting unsourced, unverified material. --Noleander (talk) 00:47, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

There are 18 sentences in this section without sources. I don't see any effort being made to supply sources, since the issue was first brought up two weeks ago. I'll wait another day or so. --Noleander (talk) 23:11, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Richardshusr: Can you help ensure compliance with WP:Verifiability policy on the slavery section? For example, to pick a random sentence that you recently added: "He then granted Portugal the right to subdue and even enslave Muslims, pagans and other unbelievers in the papal bull Dum Diversas (1452)." Could you supply the quote from the source that you used as the basis for that sentence? Thanks. --Noleander (talk) 23:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, the newly-added sentence in question was an attempt to summarize a couple of longer, more detailed sentences that were there before. Much of the text in the slavery section came from Christianity and slavery and I don't claim to be familiar with the sourcing of every sentence in the text that was copied over because, like most other Wikipedia articles, there are multiple contributors to that article. I don't have access to the secondary source ("The Slave Trade" by Hugh Thomas) and cannot provide you a quote. The primary source for the assertion is the papal bull Dum Diversas and the text that supports the assertion is "We grant you [Kings of Spain and Portugal] by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property [...] and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery." If you insist, I'm sure I can find you an online copy of the text of Dum Diversas so that you can ascertain that the text given supports the assertion made in the article text. --Richard S (talk) 23:41, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Needs to be moved

Title violates WP:AND. It is a red flag because it is often not neutral. (see linked policy). Title should read "Violence in Christianity." Or "History of violence in Christianity." New titles suggest (among other things) that Christianity does not "own" violence, that other organizations may also have similar articles. Title would be a little more precise and not be a home for everyone with some axe to grind. Student7 (talk) 21:08, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree wholeheartedly with the above that this is a truly regrettable title. It might make a good disambiguation page, but the title is far too imprecise and vague for any content regarding the subject to be clearly relevant. I would suggest that it be turned into a dab page, with separate articles Violence against Christians, Christian thought regarding violence, Violence perpetrated by Christians, etc. John Carter (talk) 18:38, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that this should be a dab page but I do think the ideas in WP:AND are enlightening. If you read my comments below on "Splitting up the article", you will see that the proposed division in that section parallels John Carter's. The problem here, though, is that these ideas are all related. There is the thesis that "persecution of early Christians" influenced the posture of Christians in late antiquity. (There are scriptures and patristic writing that praise pacifism and non-violence. How then can a Christian state (e.g. the Roman Empire) justify the use of force? If Christianity is a violent religion, what makes it so? Is violence a feature of all transcendent religions? of all monotheistic religions? of Christianity in particular? These questions are best discussed in this article as discussing them in other articles is likely to result in a fragmented discussion spread out over several articles.

--Richard S (talk) 19:47, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The biggest objection I can see to the above comments is the question about whether Christianity can be discussed as a single topic for these purposes. There are several sources which speak to the problem that many religions which emphasize an afterlife or religious principles have in terms of violence to non-adherents, but that would probably best be discussed in an article on Violence as an aspect of religion or something similar. I am not averse to having this article remain as a possible "main article" for a series of articles on violence and its relationship to Christianity, which seems to be what Richard is discussing above in discussing the interrelationships of the various forms of violence. But in that case, I do believe that the article would best serve with comparatively short summary sections on the differing topics, and, maybe, the bulk of the discussion from Biblical and other widely accepted sources regarding violence in its various forms. But some of the questions Richard asks, at least to my eyes, have no easy, chronologically consistent, or "universal" definition within Christianity, particularly taking into account the various sects, denominations, etc., which have called themselves Christian over the years, and I do think that the discussion of those topics would probably best be primarily contained in separate articles on those more specific subjects. John Carter (talk) 01:38, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Sources

Are you saying you added several thousand words to this article without reading the sources? Please tell me you're kidding. --Noleander (talk) 23:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm a major contributor to a number of the articles that I copied text from. Some of the text was written by me; some of it was written by other editors. Some of the citations are mine; others are not. I did not re-verify every citation before copying the text. In truth, I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't read every sentence carefully before I copied the text because there was some funky OR in the copied text. I have tried to remove such problem text since but I'm glad to work with other editors to review and improve the copied text. --Richard S (talk) 03:22, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I take it from this that you have not read the sources. Richard: you cannot add material unless you read the sources. The WP:Citing sources policy specifies: "Don't cite a source unless you've seen it for yourself." And of course, WP cannot be used as a source (see WP:Circular). If you cannot assure us that you've read the sources, then the material is not verifiable, and can be removed, per WP:Burden. Before deleting the material you added, though, we should know: which of the sources that you provided as cites have you read? --Noleander (talk) 00:17, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Noleander, WP:CIRCULAR does not say that you cannot copy text from Wikipedia, it just says that you can't cite it. Thus, if there is an unsourced statement "X killed Y" in Wikipedia article A, you cannot put that same statement in Wikipedia article B and cite Wikipedia article A as the source. There is, in fact, a protocol that demands that, if you do copy from a Wikipedia article, you make that copying explicit in the edit summary. (This rule is about preserving the authorship trail for copyright/copyleft purposes.)

That said, I acknowledge that "Don't cite a source unless you've seen it for yourself." suggests that one might want to check the sources personally before copying them although this is an inference and not explicitly stated in WP:Citing sources. BTW, WP:Citing sources is a content guideline. "It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. " So, while I am willing to respect the intent of the guideline, I think we should also apply the "common sense" that the previous sentence refers to.

Now, to your specific question... I tend to use {{cite}} format quite extensively for my citations (like at least 90% of the time) so if you see a citation in another format, it's very likely not mine. If there is a URL and/or quote in the reference, it's very likely that I have read the at least the page in the cited source. I almost always attribute text that is copied from other Wikipedia articles in the edit summary. I have generally brought over any citations that were in the copied text. Since I am a major contributor to many of the articles that I copied from, some of the citations in the copied text are mine, others are not.

Now, if you want to go through the text and look at each source and re-verify that the source supports the assertion, we can do that. I think a more useful approach would be to go through the current article text and see what assertions we want to keep and which ones we want to toss. Then, we can look at the sourcing for the assertions that we want to keep and either verify the existing sources or find better ones. There's no point in verifying sources for text that we don't want to keep. Similarly, there's no point in deleting text just because the sourcing is deficient. If the assertion is valuable to the article, then we should improve the sourcing instead of deleting the assertion.

--Richard S (talk) 03:22, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I would also like to point out that WP:BURDEN says " It has always been good practice to make reasonable efforts to find sources yourself that support such material, and cite them. "

Here's the kind of collegial and collaborative process I would hope for:

1. If you truly think that there is something in the article (added by me or by anybody else) that is false, then we should remove it.
2. if it is an opinion, attribute it to a reliable source as a POV per WP:NPOV.
3. If, however, you think something is true and appropriate to this article but lacks adequate sourcing, then I would suggest that you could help find a source for it rather than beating me over the head about it. I'll look too but this is supposed to be a collaborative effort, isn't it?
4. If you think something is true but inappropriate for this article (off-topic or excessive detail), I would much rather you just bring it to everyone's attention as such and discuss it here rather than demanding sources for something that might not belong in the article in the first place. I've been deleting a bunch of stuff as "excessive detail" so focusing sources is perhaps an inefficient way of debating the scope and content of the article.

--Richard S (talk) 03:39, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

To answer your question: Yes, I would like to go over all the sources for the Slavery material you recently added. You've been asked to supply quotes from sources for over two weeks, and you keep delaying. I asked above for a list of the cited sources that you have personally read, and you have not given any quotes. Yet you did find the time to write dozens of paragraphs on the Talk page. Wouldn't that time have been better spent reading the sources? I repeat: you cannot add thousands of words to this article unless you read the sources. If you have read the sources, could you provide some quotes here? I'll start removing material from the slavery section. When you have the quotes, we can start restoring it. --Noleander (talk) 06:04, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Bloated sections

Noleander, if you think the "Slavery" and "Antisemitism" sections are "bloated", I don't disagree with you. If you look at my recent work on the "Slavery" and "Antisemitism" sections, I have removed a bunch of stuff and given the reason "excessive detail" in the edit summary. Just off the cuff, I think each section could be cut in half and still tell the basic story. I'm just struggling with figuring out what to cut or how to summarize things further. --Richard S (talk) 03:39, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good. The simple rule I would follow to cut material is this: Keep the material where the source is explicitly talking about violence (war, torture, physical harm, assaults, threats, genocide, punishment, etc, etc) and remove other material. I would help you with that, but I need the quotes from the sources you used to help me apply that test. If you provide the quotes, I'll pitch in and help out. --Noleander (talk) 06:21, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

We still don't seem to understand each other. Slavery is violence (or at least some reliable sources think it is); Christianity condoned and accepted slavery for Christians until well into the Middle Ages when serfdom replaced slavery; however, the Catholic Church still condoned slavery of non-Christians, initially of Muslims, then native American tribes and finally Africans. By the 19th century, however, the Church was changing its position. However, American bishops ignored a papal bull claiming that it applied only to the slave trade and not to slave-owning. By the 20th century, the Catholic Church was fully in opposition to slavery. As for the Protestants, almost every major Protestant denomination in the U.S. split into two branches over the issue of slavery. To me, it's not a question of what part of the narrative isn't about violence. It's all about slavery and so it's all about violence ("systemic violence" as defined in the new section "Definition of violence"). What I've inserted is about how the Church justified its condonation and acceptance of slavery and how it changed its position. Thus, your desire to focus only on violence is meaningless. To trim the section, we have to figure out what part of the narrative is important to focus on and what constitutes "excessive detail". --Richard S (talk) 07:34, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Size of this article

This article is getting long (109kb). While 109kb is beyond the guidelines set in WP:SIZE, it wouldn't be so bad except that there are areas where we still need to add text so I think it might be useful to take a minute to discuss how to manage the scope and the size of this article. I see two major approaches to cutting down the article size:

1. Trim certain sections that are too long
2. Split up the article into subarticles

Summary style

First of all, we should recognize that a number of sections of this article need to be in summary style because there are full-length articles that discuss the subtopic covered in that section.

The question I have is how condensed a summary should we have? Here are some thoughts

• Just war theory - about the right length, maybe a little too long, cut out some of the detail about Augustine's writings?
• Suppression of heresies - this is long but it needs to be, actually we need more info about the Abigensian Crusade, witch hunts, Inquisition and European wars of religion
• Crusades - way too short, needs a lot of work
• Colonialism - OK for now? could use some expansion
• Slavery - kind of long, maybe we could condense each subsection into a short paragraph in the intro and then get rid of the subsections
• Antisemitism - kind of long but I think this is an important section, especially the section on the Holocaust, maybe we could trim the section on Martin Luther a bit further

Splitting up the article

Since this article is already a summary article, there already are a number of subsidiary detailed articles and so, for some sections, (e.g. antisemitism, slavery) we just need to get rid of "excessive detail".

However, it's worth noting that there are really three major subtopics in this article:

1. Discussion of whether Christianity is a violent religion
2. History of Christian teaching on violence and non-violence
3. History of violence as a phenomenon in Christian societies

I think the discussion of "Christianity as a violent religion" is about right. It could be cut down by a couple of paragraphs but I don't think it should be much less than that. I think it's important to establish what the major attacks on Christianity are and the major defenses and, most importantly, to establish that there is an active scholarly debate and that this is not just a POV/OR thesis. I'm not sure that this section could become an article unto itself. I'm not sure there's a lot more to say on this topic. There are other sources that discuss the topic in more detail but I'm not sure that we need an article that covers all their arguments in detail. I think this section covers the landscape adequately for an encyclopedia but I'd like to hear what other editors think.

I think the section on "Christian teaching on violence and non-violence" is about right. The "Just War Theory" section is perhaps a little long, we could maybe cut out some detail on Augustine's teachings. My question here is: Should this become a subsidiary article? It could be titled something like Christian teaching on violence. That would allow for a longer discussion of the topic without making this article longer. I'm on the fence on this one. I don't think there is a lot more to write on this topic given that there are subsidary articles on Christian pacifism and Just war theory.

A good chunk of this article (maybe half?) covers the "History of violence as a phenomenon in Christian societies". It's really long and, if we want to keep it from becoming a coatrack, we need to have substantive discussion of each entry. It's not enough to say "Christians did bad thing x on y date in z country." We need to examine the role of Christian religious leaders and institutions in fomenting the violence. I'm far less interested in how many people died during an incident as I am in presenting the cases for or against there being a linkage between Christianity as a religion and the violent acts committed by Christians.

Thus, eve4n if we trim back the sections on slavery and antisemitism considerably, there is the potential for this part of the article to grow substantially. One possibility is for us to move this into a separate article so that it is not burdened with the important but lengthy discussions of the other two subtopics. I'm on the fence on this question. I think the article hangs together as a more or less cohesive presentation as it is right now but the truth is the article is long and getting longer so I'm trying to figure out whether creating a separate article is a good idea or not.

--Richard S (talk) 15:26, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Definitely agree that the article would have to specify the role of Christianity in any violent phenomena attributed to it. Have some questions whether slavery and antisemitism are inherently violent, because I have read some articles which indicate that some slaves in some eras were in at least some cases subject to less violence than many free citizens of their eras were, particularly if they were engaging in activities important to their masters. And, while antisemitism has often resulted in really objectionable behavior, it isn't necessarily in all cases violent. I think getting some editors like maybe User:Jayjg, User:Avi and User:Slrubenstein in for that material might be very useful. And, of course, the article could always have spinout articles created if any particular type of content grows excessive for the main article here. John Carter (talk) 20:44, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I think we have to be careful not to try and "decide" whether slavery and/or antisemitism are "inherently" violent. The fact that there is a significant debate in the academic and religious communities means that we should present the debate here in an NPOV way, citing reliable sources and letting the reader make up his/her own mind as to which side to believe. If you can provide a reliable source for the "not inherently violent" or "not always violent" argument, then we can look at putting that into the article. I think we would want to critique the source to make sure that it is an academic or theologian and not just some pro-Christian apologist with a rant on a webpage. --Richard S (talk) 21:02, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I wish we had an article about the treatment of slaves in wikipedia, but I don't see one. I do remember reading that there have been cases, particularly in old Greece and Rome, of individuals of high rank who were captured during war and became slaves who served as ambassadors or similar for some negotiations for their owners, and barring their status of being slaves tended to have pretty much a similar lifestyle pre- and post-capture. At that time, violence was often the standard response for any legal infractions by anyone, so they were probably no more prone to violence than any non-citizen of those states. I wish I could remember the source right now, but I read that years ago and can't. But I do think the individuals I named probably know the material about antisemitism better than many of us. If there were to be no objections to asking for their input, I would think their input would be welcome. John Carter (talk) 21:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the argument you are alluding to is that slavery in Classical Greece and Rome is different from slavery in the United States which was termed "chattel slavery". Chattel slavery suggests that the slave is not much more than cattle (I would guess that there is a shared etymological root between "chattel" and "cattle") I'm not sure if this is a valid argument or not; it is often cited in POV arguments that are apologetics for the Catholic Church. That fact alone doesn't make the argument invalid but it does suggest that we need to look at it closely to be sure it's not just a pro-Catholic POV. I think there must have been different kinds of master-slave relationships in Classical times. Surely there were slaves who ran Roman households, tutored Roman children, etc. But there were also galley slaves and slaves who worked in mines. I doubt those slaves found being a slave to be a "walk in the park".

As for inviting Jayjg, Avi and Slrubenstein, that's great. I recognize all the names although I wouldn't be able to tell you what POV slants they might have. Let's get them in here and get some additional input. My only caveat is that the intent is to shrink the Slavery section, not expand it. Details belong in the Christianity and slavery article.

--Richard S (talk) 22:47, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Thus Spake Tryptofish

As I said somewhere above, I've been away from Wikipedia for a while, but I'm back now, and I found multiple requests at my user talk to comment here (and I guess I can't put it off any longer)—so I will!

About whether we should split up the page or something: No. I want to caution editors against basing these kinds of decisions on whether or not the editors looking at the page at the moment happen to think WP:AND does or does not apply in this specific case. Down that road lies an endless argument that has become a WP:PERENNIAL at every page that can possibly be construed as involving criticism of any religion, and it opens up all manner of unpleasant possibilities onto which people with agendas may jump.

The right way to go about that is—of course!—to look at the sources, principally scholarly secondary ones. (Minor point: let's try to avoid encyclopedias, which are tertiary.) So, are there any scholars who say that "Christianity and violence" constitute a verifiable subject? Well, let's take a look at the reflist as it is now. There's Miroslav Volf, no academic slouch and not particularly hostile to Christianity, who has published two works titled Christianity and Violence. Similarly, J. Denny Weaver wrote Violence in Christian Theology. And so forth. That trumps editor opinions. It's a topic for an article.

About whether the page is getting too long: It is, but that's not an emergency. The solution will be, in large part, to prune out the over-abundance of verbatim quotations. Way too many of them right now. A better writing style is to limit them to what is really memorable, and thoughtfully paraphrase elsewhere.

About what to include, and what not: It comes down to those same sources again. Keep in mind that our charge is verifiability, not "truth". If someone like Volf, Weaver, and so forth says that a particular topic falls within the area of "Christianity and violence", it belongs, and if there's no such sourcing, it doesn't. For the specific issue of slavery, we could obviously write a lot about the subject, but we need to limit it to what is both (a) identified by sources as arising from Christianity, and (b) identified by sources as involving violence. (Again: identified by sources, not identified by editors.) This means we can probably include a treatment of slavery, but it probably needs to be short.

About how to handle this: Let's face it, this page is always going to involve differences of strongly held opinions. Good first-line strategies: Discuss it in talk, or make an edit, other than just deletion, that tries to improve on the previous editor's edit. Bad first-line strategies, to be reserved only for times when the good strategies have been tried, given a chance to work, and failed: Reverting the other editor without trying to find a compromise, splattering the page with tags, or calling an RfC (and let's not canvass editors based on their perceived interests in antisemitism). Yeah, I know about Jimbo's oft mis-applied quote about removing unsourced material, but he was talking in the context about blatant misinformation, especially where it might defame living persons. Here, WP:AGF, and give one another a chance to add the sourcing. No need to reflexively revert, and WP:There is no deadline.

Guppy has spoken! --Tryptofish (talk) 23:30, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Trypto: As you know, a couple of months ago the article was more-or-less started over from scratch, and material was being gradually added, with good, reliable sourcing, and then - boom - the article was tripled in size with tons of material that is entirely (I mean not even remotely) connected to violence. This article's scope is not even close to the scopes found in similar articles Mormonism and violence, Judaism and violence, Islam and violence, or Religion and violence. I'm all in favor of documenting the relationship of Christianity to violence, but we need sources and we need quotes. To pick a random example, look at the "Anti-Judaism" section ... do you think those sources are discussing violence? --Noleander (talk) 06:29, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I meant what I said. You (and, subsequently, Richard) asked me at my user talk to provide my opinion, and I did. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:40, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Anti-Judaism vs. Anti-Semitism

Sigh... The argument runs like this: Some charge that Christianity fomented and incited antisemitism which, in turn, was responsible for the Holocaust, a phenomenon considered by many to be among the most horrendous examples of man's inhumanity to man. Some religious scholars have found what they claim are antisemitic passages in the New Testament and the patristic writings, thus arguing that antisemitism has its roots in early Christianity. Some Christian apologists rebut this charge by drawing a distinction between "anti-Judaism" and "anti-semitism" claiming that Christianity has only been anti-Judaic and not anti-semitic. --Richard S (talk) 06:56, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I have no problem with the phrasing you used immediately above. Can you find a source that says approximately that, and put it into the article as a single paragraph (leading up to the Holocaust paragraph) instead of the six long paragraphs in "Anti-Judaism" that are a disjointed jumble? (PS: I'd like to see a quote from the source before you do). --Noleander (talk) 06:59, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't think I've seen a really good source that says all of that in a single document. The only one that came up in a Google search was this one: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.cuf.org/FileDownloads/antijud.pdf. It's published by Catholics United for Faith. The author is Helen Valois but when you Google her, we find out that "Helen M. Valois is a homemaker and mom currently residing in the northwoods of Wisconsin. She is a member of the MI (Militia Immaculatae) movement founded by St. Maximilian Kolbe. In 1996, she received a Master's Degree in Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville. Helen's articles and book reviews have appeared in a number of publications since that time." She's got a Master's in Theology so she's not totally unqualified but she's not an academic either. If we decide not to use her as a source, I can probably find sources for the individual sentences in what I wrote above. Some of them may already be in the text. If not, they would be in Christianity and antisemitism or Anti-judaism. --Richard S (talk) 07:51, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, keep searching. The key point is: the "argument" (your word) that Christianity -> anti-Judaism -> anti-Semitism -> Holocaust is a chain that we, as editors, cannot forge. A source has to make those connections. If you cannot find a reliable source that makes that chain, we cannot put the chain in the article. --Noleander (talk) 08:01, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

That chain is well-documented in the literature. See this source], for example. It's the bit about anti-Judaism that I'm having trouble documenting in the same source as the rest. The problem is that these are two opposing POVs. People like Robert Michael argue that Christianity is responsible for antisemitism. People like Helen Valois argue that it isn't because Christianity is anti-Judaic, not anti-semitic. --Richard S (talk) 08:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

That chain is well-documented in the literature. See this source], for example.

Also, consider this website. Here's a quote from that page:

Christians have often employed semantics to achieve distance from the Holocaust. Centuries of Christian "anti-Judaism" may have been bad, according to this view, but it was "racial antisemitism" which led to the German murder of six million Jews. Gabriel Wilensky walks us through two thousand years of history to reveal the flaws in such a claim. Christian complicity was substantial. By the early twentieth century, too many Christians viewed the persecution of Jews with equanimity, or even with enthusiasm. This is a sobering but important book.

— Robert P. Ericksen, Professor of History, Pacific Lutheran University, Author of “Theologians Under Hitler”

It's the bit about anti-Judaism that I'm having trouble documenting in the same source as the rest. The problem is that these are two opposing POVs. People like Robert Michael argue that Christianity is responsible for antisemitism. People like Helen Valois argue that Christianity (or at least the Catholic Church) isn't responsible because Christianity is anti-Judaic, not anti-semitic.

This distinction between "anti-Judaism" and anti-Semitism is a Christian apologetic. In general, Jews don't accept such a distinction.

[This http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/publications/details.php?content=2007-06-01] is from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"The essays reveal that annihilative anti-Semitic thought was not limited to Germany, but could be found in the theology and liturgical practice of most of Europe’s Christian churches. They dismantle the claim of a distinction between Christian anti-Judaism and neo-pagan antisemitism and show that, at the heart of Christianity, hatred for Jews overwhelmingly formed the milieu of twentieth-century Europe."

Here's a good source that tells the story from the POV of Christian scholars. [1]

Here's a quote from a blog by Bill Tammeus

It is, however, anti-Judaism in Christian history that bears much of the responsibility for laying the groundwork for modern antisemitism. Historian Robert Michael has it right: “…two millennia of Christian ideas and prejudices, (with) their impact on Christians’ behavior, appear to be the major basis of antisemitism and of the apex of antisemitism, the Holocaust.” And historian Robert S. Wistrich agrees: “Without the irrational beliefs inculcated by centuries of Christian dogma…Hitler’s anti-Semitism and the echo which it found throughout Europe would have been inconceivable.” Even Mohandas K. Gandhi recognized this reality when, in 1938, he wrote this of the Jews: “They have been the untouchables of Christianity.”

That should provide a good start. There's lots of literature on this topic. Way too much. The challenge is to pick which sources best support the story that we want to tell.

--Richard S (talk) 09:03, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying. My point is that details about the variations and expositions belong in Christianity and anti-Semitism article. This article should summarize that background information in one paragraph, then spend most of its text on the actual violence (Holocaust, pogroms, etc). Ditto for slavery, heresy, etc. --Noleander (talk) 08:44, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and I still disagree on this point. I don't think this article needs to spend any time talking about the details of any violence. All of that can be found in detailed articles. Where I think we can provide the most value is in explaining what Christianity teaches about violence (that it can be justified, Christianity is not necessarily a pacifist religion), how some Christians believe it should be a pacifist religion, and how Christianity has encouraged, enabled and even incited violence. --Richard S (talk) 09:07, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Need sources for Antisemitism section

The anti-semitism section has the appearance of substantial OR and Synth. To help ensure its validity, we should review the sources of the recently-added material (I think it was all added in the past 2 weeks). To whichever editors added the material: could you please provide some quotes from the sources? (See WP:CHALLENGED, WP:Burden, WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT). The Iron Guard and Holocaust sections look okay, so no work is needed there. But the Martin Luther and Anti-Judaism sections need more validation. Also, can quotes be supplied for the first paragraph of the Pogrom section: the text seems to say that Christianity was not responsible for the violence ... so why is that paragraph even in this article? Quotes from the sources will help resolve that conundrum. --Noleander (talk) 06:16, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

One of the things you ask about is the pogrom-related material. Since I added that (but I don't know who wikilinked the dates in some of the references, blech!!), I'll answer that part. The part about the Tsar, as opposed to Christianity, is sourced to a Jewish Chronicle article that is quoted more extensively at Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire, from which I got it. As I see it, it's a good thing, not a bad one, to explain how things are complex, partly resulting from Christianity and violence, and partly not, rather than painting it simplistically. But I'm very open to writing it better, as opposed to (as I proclaimed above!) just reverting the whole thing. I also found the source for the last sentence, about the priests, at Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire, and I think we discussed that earlier. There are two sources for how the material is considered by scholars to be Christianity-related: a quote from Volf, which you can find higher on the page at Christianity and violence#Christianity as a violent religion (fifth paragraph, the one starting with Volf's name linked), and a section by Lambroza, for which you can follow the link in the citation. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

The relationship between Christianity and antisemitism is complex. Many want to simply say "Christianity is responsible for antisemitism", pure and simple. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Repent and sin no more. However, the Catholic Church (and some Protestants as well) argue that there is a difference between anti-Judaism and anti-semitism (see the discussion titled Anti-Judaism vs. Anti-Semitism above.) --Richard S (talk) 20:24, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Pogroms

Noleander wrote "can quotes be supplied for the first paragraph of the Pogrom section: the text seems to say that Christianity was not responsible for the violence ... so why is that paragraph even in this article?"

This is the paragraph in question...

"A series of genocidal persecutions, or pogroms, against Jews took place in Russia. These arose from a variety of motivations, not all of them related to Christian antisemitism. In part, they have been attributed to religiously-motivated antisemitism arising from the canard that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.[11][155] The primary trigger of the pogroms, however, is considered to have been the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.[156] The first Kishinev pogrom of 1903 was led by Eastern Orthodox priests.[157]"

Most of the pogroms happened in Russia which is predominantly Orthodox. I don't know what the Orthodox position on this question is but I did run across a source that claimed that the Orthodox Church has yet to come to grips with the question of antisemitism.--Richard S (talk) 20:24, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Above, I wrote "Most of the pogroms happened in Russia which is predominantly Orthodox." I would like to retract that. I don't know whether "most" of the pogroms occurred in Russia. There were pogroms in Poland as well and Poland is predominantly Catholic. I don't know whether there were more pogroms in Russia or Poland but I suspect "most" is an inappropriate word to use with respect to either country. Still, I do think there is a source that asserts that Orthodox Church "has yet to come to grips with the question of antisemitism". --Richard S (talk) 15:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Noleander, your question "the text seems to say that Christianity wasnot responsible for the violence ... so why is that paragraph even in this article?" highlights one difference that you and I have regarding the scope of the article. Your question suggests that you think only violence that can be attributed to Christianity should be in the article. First of all, this suggests that there are violent events for which the blame can be laid unequivocally at Christianity's door and others for which Christianity can be shown unequivocally to be free from blame. The truth is rarely so clearcut. A much more common situation is that some (usually atheists and non-Christians) will blame Christians for a violent event and some Christians will accept the blame while others will reject it. Besides, understanding "why" something happened is far less clearcut than establishing who did what and when.

That said, my criterion for inclusion in this article seems to be different from yours. I think a violent event should be included in this article if there is significant debate in academic circles regarding the culpability of a Christian church in the violence. It doesn't matter whether the Christian church in question is actually guilty of inciting the violence. It suffices that there is a credible charge made by reliable sources. Usually, one will find academics on both sides of the debate, some accusing the Church and others defending it. As long as there are reliable sources (i.e. not just some nutjob with a weblog), the incident should be included in the article. (Well, within the limitation of not wanting to cover every last incident in the COATRACK version of this article.)

--Richard S (talk) 04:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Uh oh... we need to decide whether the section title should "Pogroms" (see Pogrom) or "Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire" (see Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire). The current section title is "Pogroms" but the section text seems to focus on "Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire". So what is the intended scope of the section? --Richard S (talk) 04:14, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Status of various sections

In a conversation on his Talk Page, Tryptofish commented that he was waiting for me to finish (or at least, slow down) before jumping in and contributing edits of his own. I think I'm going to slow down a bit over the Thanksgiving break. I figured I'd post a status report of where I was vis-a-vis various sections in this article:

• "Definition of violence" - done for now, need help trimming this down with summaries and moving quotes into footnotes
• "Christianity as a violent religion" - done for now, need help trimming this down with summaries and moving quotes into footnotes
• "Slavery" - still working on it but kind of "stuck"; could use some help trimming this down

• "Crusades" - needs a lot more work, I've only scratched the surface
• "Antisemitism" - still working on it; needs a lot more work, especially around pogroms and Nazi Germany
• "Colonialsm" - still working it, needs a lot more work but I'm kind of "stuck", need some help expanding this section

--Richard S (talk) 22:33, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• "Sectarian violence" - woefully incomplete...needs a lot more work

--Richard S (talk) 03:58, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll take a stab at it, probably after the holiday. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:49, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Richard, do please indicate when you are going to come up for air (as it were!). I've been thinking about this, and I'm leaning towards believing that the "Christianity as a violent religion" concept may be creating more problems than it solves. I think it would better suit NPOV to get the framework back towards "Christian thinking with respect to violence", and that need not lead to any coatrack issues. The key to the coatrack issue is, instead, to make sure that the sources that establish the overall subject (example: "Christianity and Violence" by Volf) also support the specific incidences (example: what Volf says about pogroms).

Also, you just deleted the see also links about violence against Christians, and asked for discussion by anyone who objects. I object. My reasoning is that the page is about Christianity and violence, as opposed to violence by Christians. Besides, they're only links, for readers who might be looking for related topics to read about. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:15, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Well... I did think I was "done" for a while until I got a short spurt of energy on a few sections in the last 24 hours. I think I'm ready to take a breather although there are still a few sections that are incomplete.

I'd like to understand better what your issues are regarding the section on "Christianity as a violent religion". I admit that I don't much like the section title but I think the points made in the section are a good survey of the scholarly debate on the topic over the last 20-30 years. It's meant to set up a framework for understanding the criticisms made of Christianity: (1) it's a religion (2) it's a monotheistic religion. Then we move on to scriptural passages and Christian teaching (e.g. Augustine, Aquinas and just war theory).

Now, I admit that both Volf and Weaver discuss stuff that is a bit heavier theology than I would wish for (i.e. creation/new creation for Volf and atonement for Weaver) but that's what they present and I don't have more appropriate sources at the moment that do a good job of presenting the Christian side of the debate. What I do is try to gloss over that part of their discussion, even though it is the "meat" of their respective articles. If anyone can offer better sources, I would love to have those used instead.

Is this your concern with "Christianity as a violent religion" or is it something else?

As for "violence against Christians", we should decide whether that is in scope or out of scope for this article. If it is "in scope", then we should deal with it in the article. If it is "out of scope", then we should just leave it out, including out of the "See also" section. Personally, I think it should be "in scope" because the title says "Christianity and violence" and it doesn't say "Violence by Christians". Of course, I dread the idea of trying to expand the scope of this article any broader than it is now.

--Richard S (talk) 03:58, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

As for the "see also" part of that, I too would welcome more comments from others (and I have no doubt they will come!), but it seems to me that they don't necessarily need to be, strictly, within the scope. They need only be related, and of potential interest to some readers wanting to read more. Thus, they can be "see also" without being incorporated at length into the page (in which case they would not need to be "see also", having been linked inline). --Tryptofish (talk) 15:49, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

comment

I was asked to make a comment on Christianity and anti-emitism. I will provide a concise statement of my views and would be glad to clarify but I must alert you that I hv enot looked at the sources for a long time

• There is an ongoing debate as to whether Christianity has within it an anti-Judaic or anti-Semitic bias. I think most historians (and certainly Jewish historians) would say that orthodox Christianity has a strong anti-Judaic bias.
• Moreover I think many scholars would say that while the NT itself is not anti-Semitic (simply because such a claim would be anachronistic i.e. ani-Semitism is race hatred and racial categories did not exist or were not the issue back then) (my understanding is that anti-Judaism was the product of an age when religious differences mattered most in people's minds, and anti-Semitism developed when national differences came to be more important to people than religious differences), the NT has several verses which under specific conditions have encouraged or justified anti-Semitism.
• One need not be Christian to be anti-Semitic, but Christianity has definitely encouraged anti-Semitism
• Anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism follow different logics that reflected the moment in history when they developed. It is pointless to debate which is better or worse. From the Jewish perspective, the expulision of Jews from Spain in 1492 (which many historians label anti-Judaism) was as traumatic an event for Jews as was the Holocaust (which was anti-Semetic).
• Anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism need not lead to physical violence in order to be hurtful to Jews. To be told one will not enter heaven, to be labeled a "christ killer" (even when one is a child), or to be treated as a second-class citizen, may not be the same as physical violence but over centuries it had a corrosive effect on the Jewish soul. Historians have pointed out that violence (murder) erupted at specific times for specific reasons in addition to existing anti-Jewish sentiment, so obivously more is inovlved in violence than just Christianity. But some forms of violence are not physical.
• It is wrong to deny the violence against Jews expressed symbolically in medieval passion plays, or during the Crusades (especially the first Crusade) and the expulsion of Jews from Spain and other countries.
• We also have to distinguish between violence against Jews by Christians (who may have had other motives besides anti-Judaism, as in the 17th century pogroms in Poland) and violence against Jews that was encouraged or justified by Christianity. Sometimes it is very hard, or even impossible, to make this distinction. But some historians try.
• Finally, during the middle ages and during the Holocaust some Christians, surely inspired by their religion, gave considerable support and comfort to Jews, in some cases saving their lives. This needs to be acknowledged. Again, it shows that violence against Jews cannot be explained by Christian theology alone.

I think one can find a major historian who would support each of the claims I have made, but as i said I last studied this stuf a long time ago. I know there are robust arguments among historians as to the differrence between anti-Judiasm and anti-Semitism, about the significance of physical violence versus "structural" violence (the systematic denial of certain rights, and symbolic forms of prejudice), and about the role of Christian theology versus class struggles or other political conflicts in precipitating physical violence against Jews. Such robust arguments are typical of academe and a good NPOV article will provide multiple views when muliple views exist. Remember, the strength of WP is in its recognition of multiple views. Discovering multiple views does not weaken an article, it strengthens it. Good luck. Slrubenstein | Talk 05:55, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I was the one who asked for input from the above editor. One of the most important points to me in the above is the differentiation between the idea of violence against Jews by Christians and the separate point of violence against Jews by Christianity. I myself acknowledge the difficulty in drawing a clear line between the two, but think the differentiation is a valid one in any event.

Also, on what might be an unrelated point, I am really surprised that for all the interest in articles about "Religion X and violence," there still does not exist the clearly relevant and related Atheism and violence (or perhaps Irreligion and violence) article. Much of the violence of the atheistic French Revolution, Soviet Union, and Communist China was clearly related to the religious opinions then in power, yet that subject does not seem to be treated to its own article, as so many other belief systems are. I am somewhat curious as to why that would be the case. John Carter (talk) 18:18, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

When Dubya led(?) America's invasion of Iraq there were many supportive and patriotic speeches ending with the expression God bless America, and similar exhortaions procaliming God is on our side, or the equivalent. Never heard the alternative atheist expression. What would it be? No-one is on our side? HiLo48 (talk) 20:36, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't want to get into any arguments about what editors think about current events, but I want to thank Slr for the advice, and reply to the points that John has brought up. I think John's point about violence coming from Christianity, as opposed to violence by persons who just happen to be Christians, is clearly an important one, and one that is perennially at issue for this page. At the risk of my sounding like a broken record (sorry!), I'm going to say what I always seem to be saying: the decision should rest on what the secondary sources say, not what editors think. When Richard offers a break point, I'm going to try to make some edits in hopes of being responsive to such concerns. And about "Not-religion and violence", I'd say the same thing. If there are secondary sources that support such a topic, no one is preventing anyone else from starting such a page, but the same needs to steer clear of WP:SYNTH and WP:COATRACK would still apply (however imperfectly!). --Tryptofish (talk) 21:05, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Tryptofish, I think I've run out of steam for now...however, as the last 24 hours have shown, I might get a little burst of energy on selected sections. Why not declare which sections you wish to edit and I'll try to stay out of your way until you're done. Or did you have in mind an overall scan of the entire article? If the latter is the case, just indicate when you are ready to start and how long you think you'll be and I'll try to keep my fingers off the keyboard for that period. It's not like this is the only article in Wikipedia that I am interested in. Or that I don't have things to do in that place they call "the real world". --Richard S (talk) 02:42, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Richard. I think the only way I can really accomplish anything useful is to spend a big hunk of time examining the page as a whole, not just sections. I, too, will have real life time constraints for a few days. When I'm ready, let's say I'll slap an "in use" template at the top of the page for a few hours. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:54, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Article title is misleading

Having spent the last few days reading through this article, it's clear that the content isn't focused on Christianity and violence. Instead it reads more like "Long list of evil things Christians have done". What I expect to find here is analysis of the topic, WP:RS explaining the relationship of Christianity to violence, and analyzing the different ways it has played out in history. That's not what I'm seeing. Some of these sections don't contain a single reference to any WP:RS relating the section title to violence, and some of them don't even include proper referencing. Would anyone mind dreadfully if I started being bold?--Taiwan boi (talk) 14:39, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I would. See my comment below. --Richard S (talk) 16:43, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to be clear, we're talking about fixing up the page, not changing the title of the page. Yes, I'd say go for it, and thanks! As you'll see in the talk above, I too have been talking about doing a rewrite, but I'd be delighted if you would take a swing at it first (keeping in mind previous talk here). --Tryptofish (talk) 23:17, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes I'm being a bit sarcastic. The title itself is fine. The introduction is fine. But the rest of the article does not match very well the purpose of the article as stated in the introduction.--Taiwan boi (talk) 05:19, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

It would seem that you want an article called Violence in Christianity. That should allow you to analyze the topic you want, and give you the focus you want. The focus of this article is OK.-Civilizededucation^talk 23:57, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

No, I want an article which actually does what the introduction says this article is supposed to do. It's not complicated.--Taiwan boi (talk) 05:19, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if I'm being dense but could you be more explicit about what you think "the introduction says this article is supposed to do"? I wrote the intro (which admittedly does not summarize the last two-thirds of the article) but my expectation was to expand the intro to summarize the whole article. Are you proposing instead to truncate the article to match the current incomplete lead section? --Richard S (talk) 05:52, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

The very first sentence says it, "The relationship of Christianity and violence". I am not suggesting truncating the article. I'm happy with all the sections in it. Specific details are necessary to analyze the relationship of Christianity and violence. So that's what the sections should do. Take the witchcraft section for example. Instead of saying "This pope said go and burn some witches, and then these guys wrote this one book which made everyone go crazy for killing witches", and then describe how witch hunts rose and fell in various areas, it should take the time to analyze the relationship between Christianity and the witch hunts. It doesn't do this. At most it gives the topic a bit of a nod by citing Exodus 22:18, then backflips and says '"To justify the killings Christianity and its proxy secular institutions deemed witchcraft as being associated to wild Satanic ritual parties", which begs several questions (what's "Christianity" in this context, and how does it have "proxy secular institutions"?), and gives the impression that "Christianity" decided one day to kill a lot of people and justify it post-hoc by inventing stories about satanic ritual parties. There's no development of how a religion which for centuries insisted that witchcraft was mere superstition and that witches didn't exist, came to persecute people deemed as witches. There's no reference to the medieval development of the doctrine of satan which a number of key scholars view as critical to the witch hunts. There's a bit on intellectuals thrown in there for no apparent reason. Most of this section is a barely rephrased slab of Paul Johnson (who is referenced somewhat vaguely), which is unfortunate because Johnson's treatment is a popularized account which cites exactly zero references, certainly none of the standard studies on the subject. The last two paragraphs of the article abandon any attempt to analyze the relationship of the hunts to Christianity, and just say 'Germany started late burning witches, but they soon caught up; oh, and there were these witch hunts in North America too". Contrast this with the impressively referenced treatment of this sophisticated subject in the article on witch trials in Early Modern Europe. Some mention of this may also be appropriate.--Taiwan boi (talk) 09:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I think he wants an article which only deals with violence in an abstract way, and does not go into any specific instances of violence. I don't think so. The way forward is to expand the lead a bit to include some of the specific instances. That should fix the problem.-Civilizededucation^talk 07:47, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I think you should read what I actually write. I have twice supported including specific examples, including all the sections here.--Taiwan boi (talk) 09:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

@Taiwan boi & Tryptofish - Sorry to object but I would request that any major restructuring be discussed here on the Talk Page first. I have spent the better part of a month rewriting this article (admittedly being quite bold myself). I did a lot of research and most of what I have added has been sourced (admittedly the restructuring and initial edits came first and the sourcing came later).

Taiwan boi complains that this artifle reads like a "Long list of evil things Christians have done". To this, I can only reply, "Hah! You should consider what it looked like back in April of this year when it was put up for its second AFD." This is what it looked like before I took out a machete and started whacking at. It was definitely a WP:COATRACK and a poorly organized one at that.

This is what it looked like a little over a month ago when I started what turned out to be a major overhaul. I didn't plan to do a major rewrite. Partly I was egged on by Noleander who kept pushing for better sourcing. The more I searched for sources, the more relevant information I found to put into the article and so the current version is the result of that process.

Taiwan boi wrote "Some of these sections don't contain a single reference to any WP:RS relating the section title to violence." My response to this is that I'm not sure which those sections are unless we are talking about different definitions of violence. Please read the section at the beginning of the article titled "Definition of violence". There are several sources who look at "the big picture" defining violence as more than just physical violence but also "systemic violence". Consider the last paragraph of that section:

Heitman and Hagan identify the Inquisitions,Crusades, wars of religion and antisemitism as being "among the most notorious examples of Christian violence".[8] To this list, J. Denny Weaver adds, "warrior popes, support for capital punishment, corporal punishment under the guise of 'spare the rod and spoil the child,' justifications of slavery, world-wide colonialism in the name of conversion to Christianity, the systemic violence of women subjected to men." Weaver employs a broader definition of violence that extends the meaning of the word to cover "harm or damage", not just physical violence per se. Thus, under his definition, Christian violence includes "forms of systemic violence such as poverty, racism, and sexism."[5]

By Weaver's definition, this article is incomplete because it doesn't discuss corporal punishment, poverty, racism and sexism. I have to admit that I'm not too keen on going after those topics and I suspect that Weaver's definition is broader than the mainstream (although I don't have any sources to back up that assertion). Heitman and Hagan identifies antisemitism as being "among the most notorious examples of Christian violence". It is the unifying theme between the medieval pogroms, Eastern European pogroms and the Holocaust. You cannot discuss these without discussing the question of the extent to which Christianity is responsible for fostering antisemitism. To fail to do so is to prejudge the answer. NB: I'm not saying that the article has to point the finger at the Catholic Church or at Martin Luther and say "Guilty!" I'm just saying that we should provide an NPOV presentation of the accusation and the defense.

I recognize that some sections such as slavery and colonialism don't have any explicity descriptions of violence in them. Instead, they assume that these phenomena are forms of institutionalized violence and focus on the responsibility that Christianity had in supporting them. I'm more interested in the question of whether Christian missionaries supported colonial administrations or opposed them than in describing the actual violence of the colonial administrations.

NB: I'm not saying that I own this article or that my view has to win. I'm open to discussing concerns that people have and working out ways to address them. I would just appreciate it if editors would take a moment to understand what I've attempted to do and discuss an major overhauls before embarking on them.

--Richard S (talk) 16:43, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not arguing about the definition of violence, or the topics in the various sections. I'm not saying "Hey, there are sections in here which don't talk about violence as I define it!". I am not saying there are sections which don't have any specific references to violence. I'm talking about lack of referencing. Some sections have no WP:RS whatseover which actually relate the specific form of violence referred to in the section, to Christianity. It's a lack of referencing to which I'm referring. And yes, I realise we could expand the definition of violence to include pollution, Third World Debt, and picking fruit. I don't believe that's necessary.--Taiwan boi (talk) 05:19, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Most of the "linking to Christianity" was done in the first two sections of the article "Definition" and "Christianity as a violent religion". I didn't want to repeat those linkages in each section covering different kinds of violence. If you could be more specific as to which sections you mean, I could perhaps respond more directly to your concern.

I think you are specifically talking about slavery, colonialism and maybe anti-semitism. If we are agreed that these are forms of "systemic violence" (I prefer the phrase "institutionalized violence" myself), then the approach that I'm taking is that I'm not so much interested in providing horrific narrations of specific incidences of such violence. I'm far more interested in presenting the debate about the extent and nature of official Church involvement in fostering and supporting such violence. I'm interested in presenting the ways in which the Scriptures and other Christian doctrines have been employed to justify such violence.

--Richard S (talk) 05:52, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Well great, sounds like you're interested in what I'm interested in. So let's get some analysis in there. For example, there was no specific linking of Christianity to witchcraft in the first two sections, nor to anti-semitism, nor to slavery, etc. There was a general discussion of whether or not Christianity is an inherently violent religion, which is what the article should open with, but that doesn't mean we should ignore exploring the relationship of Christianity to specific instances of violence.--Taiwan boi (talk) 09:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Richard, just replying for myself, I don't figure on doing anything that I haven't already mentioned in some form already in this talk. And, of course, anything that I might change is entirely subject to reconsideration (as is, of course, anything that you have changed). --Tryptofish (talk) 19:23, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanx... I was more concerned that Taiwan boi would jump in and make radical changes without having been aware of the history of this article and the rationale behind my recent changes. I do think the article is very long and would like to get some ideas on how to cut it down without losing any entire sections. Two key techniques that you mentioned were the use of summary sentences and pushing quotations into the footnotes. I've done some of that. More help along these lines would be much appreciated.

I also wanted to understand what you meant above when you said that you thought that the "Christianity as a violent religion" section was problematic. To me, that one section captures the entire scholarly debate over "Christianity and violence". I'm not saying that it says everything there is to be said but I think it establishes that there are two sides (for and against the proposition that Christianity is a violent religion) and presents some of the arguments on each side. I don't mind improving that section but I'm concerned that you think the topic itself is a problem.

--Richard S (talk) 19:48, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that's a problematic section, I think it's necessary. It's actually on topic.--Taiwan boi (talk) 05:19, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

About "violent religion", I see that less as a matter of organization than of choice of words. But I'm still trying to figure it out. And, really, nothing is etched in stone. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:55, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

What I see here is a lot of effort going into writing sections which are the size of individual articles. I agree that brief summary statements should be made in each section, and readers directed to a link to the article in question, if it exists. If it doesn't exist, it can be written. Otherwise this is going to end up like a lot of other articles (such as "Differences between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches"), in which editors have tried to provide readers with all the information in a single article, resulting in an unwieldy monster article which in some cases duplicates information already in existing articles on the topic.--Taiwan boi (talk) 05:24, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I understand your concern and I've been aware of this problem all along. Let's please not compare this article to [[

Roman Catholic–Eastern Orthodox theological differences]]. That article is basically two Wikipedians arguing with each other, leaving a record of the argument in the article.

The approach I would like to take with this article is to for us to agree as to what the major sections and subsection titles should be. Then we can see what really needs to be said about each topic and subtopic and what can be relegated to the main article on that topic. The sections are absolutely not "entire individual articles". If you don't believe me, click on the main article link and see what's in the whole article. The sections and subsections are intended to be summaries of the main article per summary style. If they fail in their goal, it's because I'm terrible at writing summaries. I would welcome some help in reviewing the text and shrinking the verbose and flabby text.

The only proviso that I would beg to impose is that we not delete entire sections or even subsections without prior discussion. I'd like a chance to weigh in on whether we can do without a section before it gets whacked.

I also have some ideas about how we can spin off entire sections of this article into a subsidiary article but I will withhold those for a short while until we have agreed on the general strategy for this article.

--Richard S (talk) 05:52, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm happy to add rather than delete.--Taiwan boi (talk) 09:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, feel free to delete sentences or paragraphs that are "excessive detail". Just please don't delete entire sections without discussion. -Richard S (talk) 16:32, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Reading through this, I think that Taiwan boi's comments are well-taken. I agree. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:33, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Organization of this article and proposal for subsidiary articles

I have been revisiting old versions of this article to mine them for material which might be useful to restore to the current version (or to put in a separate article). In particular, I have been looking at the version of April 3, 2010 which is the one right before the second time it was proposed for deletion.

There is a lot of material in that version but, unlike the current version, there was no logical organization to the information thus the charge that it was just a coatrack. The current version reflects my attempt to provide a logical organization to the many incidents of Christian violence. This effort is not finished; I am still trying to come up with an organizing scheme that will cover this extremely broad topic.

Here is my current thinking... (NB: I haven't found any reliable source that uses this specific paradigm so there is a bit of OR and synthesis involved here but I think it is within the scope of an editor's duties to do this.)

I the following major categories of violence by Christians:

1. Violence against members of one's own church (e.g. suppression of heresies, Inquisition, witch-hunts, sins punishable by death)
2. Violence against members of other sects within one's own religion (sectarian violence e.g. Northern Ireland, European wars of religion)
3. Violence against members of another religion (e.g. antisemitism, Christian-Muslim conflicts, persecution of pagans)
4. Institutionalized or systemic violence (e.g. slavery, colonialism)
5. Other forms of violence (e.g. domestic violence)

Note that almost all of these (with the exception of "sins punishable by death") have their own main articles that cover the topic in detail. The goal for this article is to provide a grand overview of the topic using summary style. Even so, this article is very long (over 150kb).

I have been looking for ways to cut the article length but there's only so much summarizing that can be done. Moreover, I am concerned that the newly created section "Sectarian violence" only scratches the surface. There is also a lot of material in the April 3, 2010 version that we might want to cover in at least a summary fashion.

As a first step towards providing a place for more detailed discussion of some of these topics, I have created a new article titled Sectarian violence among Christians. I chose the phrase "among Christians" to signal that the article scope was intended to cover topics such as "violence against Orthodox Christians in the Crusades, Northern Ireland, European wars of religion" but not topics such as "Christian-Muslim conflicts or the persecution of pagans".

I am contemplating the creation of an article titled Sectarian violence between Christians and other religions.

I would like to hear the opinions of other editors regarding the creation of these two articles. I'm hoping that having these two articles would help us keep this article from growing too much longer. Thoughts? --Richard S (talk) 16:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Sounds sensible to me.--Taiwan boi (talk) 16:53, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I also think, broadly speaking, that the 1–5 organization is reasonable. As an additional observation growing out of Richard's comment, part of the task seems to me to bring this page to where it is less of a copy-and-paste from other pages, and is more framed, in each of those five sections, as deriving from the overall sources that establish what is "Christianity and violence" in the opening sections of the page. That, as always, is how to avoid OR and SYNTH. It doesn't mean repeatedly quoting the same sources at length, but it does mean citing them. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:29, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Re - getting rid of the text that was "copy-and-paste" from other articles. Yes, I agree. I just did that as a fast way of fleshing out the article based on the outline that was developing in my head. If you guys want to help me rewrite the text of various sections to be more focused on the topic of that section, I'd really appreciate it.

Also, I have now created Bible and violence as a copy-paste from the text in this article and then trimmed down the "Christian scriptures" section a bit. I don't mind trimming sections in this article as long as what's left still covers the basic points that are relevant to the topic of Christianity and violence.

--Richard S (talk) 19:56, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Slavery

The only reservation I have is to possible overplay of the slavery issue. I remember reading some historical sources saying that the greatest majority of published material regarding slavery in the US is about slavery in the large plantations and other locations where there were multiple slaves, because those locations were both closer to the literary world and more generally more likely to appear in RS's. However, the greatest number of slaves in the US were held by those who owned only a few slaves, and that, partially because of the expense, those slaves tended to be treated better than plantation slaves, often on a par with "farm hands" in general, and sometimes even marrying/legitimately interbreeding with the owners. I acknowledge that this view is probably presented primarily in "slavery apologetics" sources, but those sources do seem to have the sources to verify their positioon. John Carter (talk) 20:56, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

What you say may be true... however, IMO, the discussion doesn't turn on whether or not slaves were treated well but rather turns on the question of whether or not slavery, even slavery on a par with being a "farm hand", is violence. If the slave could not leave of his own free will or have his children leave of his own free will, then some measure of coercion is in play. If the slave could be sold, then there is certainly coercion. A progressive might argue that serfs and workers in "company towns" also had restricted freedoms and so this is a slippery slope but the typical distinction is that slavery is different from other forms of employment servitude. This is characterized by many scholars as "systemic violence". (I prefer the phrase "institutionalized violence" but it's the same idea.) --22:08, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Christian Pacifism

Some reference to the historic Christian resistance to war and military service, and the peace churches would seem to be relevant. I'm not yet convinced that we should omit all references to Christians who opposed violence.--Taiwan boi (talk) 00:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

In principle, I agree with you. Practically speaking, I'm not sure how we could add more material in that direction. The section on Christian teaching already has a section on Non violence as a Christian doctrine which links to the articles on Christian pacifism and Peace churches. Do you want to expand that section to discuss these topics in more detail? I'm open to the idea except I thought the idea was to reduce article length not increase it. If you think there are important points that are missing and need to be made in that section, be bold and add it. --Richard S (talk) 01:47, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I realize that we have two short paragraphs on non-violence as a Christian doctrine, in an article which is over 20 pages long. I question that this is sufficient. I agree that the idea is to reduce the length of the article. This can be done by rewriting each section so that it actually analyses the relationship between violence and Christianity with regard to each topic, instead of just padding the sections with as many examples of Christian violence as we can find. For example, no witch hunting statistics need be included. The background is already covered in the witch hunt article, which can be linked. That section should instead discuss how changes in Christian doctrine contributed to the witch hunts, and how Christians who retained the original doctrine were not involved in the witch hunts and even protested them. It should also discuss how a later change in Christian doctrine contributed to the decline of witch hunts, and how their brief late resurgence resulted from the Enlightenment.--Taiwan boi (talk) 02:05, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Mmmph... I think we need the very top-level statistics on approximately how many were executed as witches. It's important to communicate to the reader that this wasn't just a few hundred witches. (Of course, there are some sources who argue that the estimates of people executed is way over-exaggerated.)

It sounds like you know a lot more about the topic of witch-hunts and witch trials than I do. Perhaps you could rework the section to cover the points you raised above.

Similarly, I'm OK with you expanding the section on Christian pacifism. I wanted to do that but I was afraid of meeting resistance from other editors. Let's see if anyone else has an opinion on this before going too far down that road.

--Richard S (talk) 04:13, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Top level statistics certainly, we can mention the scholarly consensus of 40-60,000 killed, but we don't need the details of individual trials such as Salem and Torsåker. We can cover the duration and death figures in a single sentence. I'll see what I can write up.--Taiwan boi (talk) 09:02, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

You might find this discussion enlightening. I'm not saying that the treatment of the topic in the current version of the article is perfect. However, you might find it useful to review what other editors have said on this topic. I believe we should mention pacifism but other editors think it is weird to discuss the topic in an article about violence. --Richard S (talk) 10:08, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

If the topic of this article is the analysis of the extent to which Christianity is violent, then Christian pacifism must be mentioned. If I want to determine if A is more B or more C, I can't start by excluding all evidence for C and select all evidence for B, then conclude "Yes, 100% of the evidence supports the idea that A is more B than it is C". Similarly, if this article is analyzing the extent to which Christianity is violent, then it not only needs to address systematically the essential way in which Christianity as a religion caused or contributed to acts of violence, it also needs to refer to Christian pacifism. As you said in that discussion, "we should discuss the tension between Christian pacificism ("turn the other cheek", "love your neighbor") and militant Christianity (e.g. the Crusades,"Just War Doctrine")".--Taiwan boi (talk) 10:37, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It was good to look back at that earlier talk thread, which applies very well today. I agree with Taiwan boi's analysis. I would also add that this is a big part of why I would advocate restoring to the See also section the links to pages about violence against Christians. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:28, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I still think that restoring the "See also" links to articles about "violence against Christians" should only be done in conjunction with a discussion of "violence against Christians". We need not say a lot but I think we need to say something. I have to confess that my personal perspective is that Christians have had a persecution complex which affects their attitudes towards violence. That is, a focus on being persecuted can sometimes blind them to the fact that they themselves are persecutors. I've seen some hints along these lines in my research but not much and so, to avoid being accused of original research, I have not introduced this idea into the article. If anyone can recommend sources that make this argument more explicitly, I would appreciate hearing about them. --Richard S (talk) 07:28, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Military orders

It came to me that any discussion of Christianity and violence should include at least a mention of military orders such as the Teutonic Knights, the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller. However, because this article is already over-long, it seemed infeasible to say anything substantive about each group so I just wrote a single short paragraph describing what a military order was and mentioning these three groups as famous examples. If anyone thinks we need more than that, then please be bold and edit the section. We can discuss the edit afterwards if necessary. --Richard S (talk) 07:23, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, definitely they should be included. However, the doctrinal basis on which they were founded needs to be made clear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Taiwan boi (talk • contribs)

Umm... other than the doctrine of "Holy War"? Should that be mentioned again in this section? I don't know a lot about this topic so any help you can give would be appreciated. --Richard S (talk) 19:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, other than the doctrine of Holy War. All three of these orders were initially formed to provide protection and medical care for pilgrims, nothing to do with Holy War (the Hospitallers in particular were initially a monastic order which did not even bear arms). It was only later that the Templars came to be used in the Crusades to attempt the recapture of territory (this was indeed Holy War), and the Hospitallers were later used even against other Christians (this was not Holy War). The history of these orders is complex. The Hospitallers were eventually divided into two groups, the knights (used for Holy War), and the monastic Hospitallers (whose only service was to provide medical care). So it was entirely possible to be a member of the Knights Hospitaller and not bear arms.--Taiwan boi (talk) 02:51, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The doctrine of "Just War" is also relevant.--Taiwan boi (talk) 03:56, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Witch hunts

I have completely reworked the section on the witch hunts. It is still a work in progress, and I am planning to move some of the material to the main witch hunt article, whilst adding a few more references. I have kept the focus of this section explicitly on the manner in which Christian doctrine contributed significantly to the witch hunts.--Taiwan boi (talk) 18:31, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the new text is an improvement over what was there before. I would like to suggest that the section explain why witch-hunts ended. Are there any reliable sources that propose any theories in this regard? --19:03, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, there's plenty of literature on the reason for the end of the witch hunts. Like the rise of the witch hunts, it's a complex combination of factors, and as with my previous work in this section I will only address those factors in which Christianity was directly involved (such as the return of Christian doctrine to skepticism of witches and witchcraft, and a diminution of the role of Satan).--Taiwan boi (talk) 19:32, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

We should also add the recent cases of witch burnings. eg. [2]. There are many more recent/contemporary cases from different parts of the world.-Civilizededucation^talk 08:06, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Sure, if there are enough represented in WP:RS to make it notable. I'll go looking for all the witch burnings by Christians in New York in the last 10 years right now. The relevant scholarly commentary must be replete with such incidents.--Taiwan boi (talk) 08:18, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeh, but we must be careful to avoid recentism. We also risk performing original research and synthesis by relying on anecdotal evidence from primary sources. Let's make sure to look for scholarly secondary sources. If you don't find significant scholarly discussion of modern-day witch-hunts as examples of violence by Christians, let's put more recent instances of witch hunts in the Witch-hunt article. --Richard S (talk) 08:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm currently reading the UNHCR report on witch hunts around the world. It's clear that the vast majority of the recent witch hunts by Christians have occurred in the last 20 years, almost all in Africa, and are attributed (by the UNHCR report itself), to social breakdown triggers (including war, famine, and disease), which locals are attempting to address using traditional means (witch hunts), and that some African evangelical churches are offering witch finding and exorcism services. However, I haven't found any reference yet to African Christian churches conducting witch hunts and burning people. I'll keep looking.--Taiwan boi (talk) 08:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Would these be coatrack too?[3][4]. These incidents have been reported widely enough to be notable. (I could provide more reports of these incidents.) And news reports are not primary sources. Government/police reports are. As for recentism, I think, it should be sufficient to wait until next year before we include the report from Ghana in the previous link?-Civilizededucation^talk 13:30, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The UNHCR report I cited was published in January 2009, and makes reference to numerous news reports, government reports, and police reports, so it's a relevant WP:RS. I'd rather use that than point people to Youtube and give them a personal editorial.--Taiwan boi (talk) 14:57, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Of course the UNHRC report is an RS. So are most news reports. I think we should use both. The UN report for some wordings, and then some news reports, to provide support to what it says.-Civilizededucation^talk 19:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Taiwan boi that the UNHCR report is likely to be more reliable than newspaper reports and Youtube videos.

Not all reliable sources are equally reliable and they are often only reliable within a limited scope. A newspaper report about one witch being burned with gasoline is just that... anecdotal evidence about one incident. One swallow does not a summer make. You could string together 100 such news reports and still have only anecdotal evidence and you would be performing original research asserting that all 100 reports were equally reliable and that all 100 reports involved the same kind of incident.

What you need is people who are experts in the field with training in data collection and analysis. This is what makes the UNHRC report likely to be far more reliable than any number of newspaper reports. The newspaper reports only establish that a specific incident occurs. I haven't seen the UNHRC report but it presumably provides evidence that this is a phenomenon that is neither localized nor transient in time i.e. it's important enough to include in their annual report. (P.S. to Taiwan boi - can you provide a link to an online copy of the report?)

Now, I would guess that the UNHRC is mostly interested in violations of human rights and they might or might not assert a link between the witch-hunt and Christianity. If a Christian accuses his neighbor of being a witch and burns her, how can we be sure what role Christianity played in the incident? Now, if a pastor preaches against witchcraft and participates in a witch-hunt, we have a bit of a closer link but how do we know that this is not a renegade pastor? Can we indict Christianity on the basis of the actions of one, two even 50 pastors? What's needed is an analysis beyond just collecting data regarding number of incidents. I don't know how deeply the UNHRC report goes into these issues. My guess is that they are more interested in reporting and preventing human rights violations and less interested in the theology and sociology of the phenomenon. (But I could be wrong; which is why it would help to see the actual text of the report)

What would be great would be to find a scholarly book that discusses witch-hunts and Christianity in the modern era.

--Richard S (talk) 22:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Here's some sources from Google Books:

• Ashforth, Adam (2005). Witchcraft, violence, and democracy in South Africa. University of Chicago Press. p. 271.

• Tull, Denis (2005). The reconfiguration of political order in Africa: a case study of North Kivu. GIGA-Hamburg.

--Richard S (talk) 22:12, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The UNHCR report is here. There are far fewer cases of Christian inspired witch hunts than Civilizededucation would like to see, but unfortunately that's the reality. The simple fact is that the vast majority of Christians in Africa aren't hunting witches.--Taiwan boi (talk) 00:44, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you think I like to see these things? And where did I try to make out that the vast majority of Christians in Africa are witch hunters? Please do not engage in strawman arguments, and please do not make preposterous suggestions.-Civilizededucation^talk 01:21, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe you like seeing these things any more than I do, but I do actually believe it pleases you to see evidence of Christians involved in witch hunts, which is why you went looking for them so they could be included in this article. I didn't claim you tried to make out that the vast majority of Christians in Africa are witch hunters.--Taiwan boi(talk) 01:34, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I was looking for reports of an incident which took place 3-4 years ago, at a village around where I live. A pastor had burned 6-7 women to death on charges of witchcraft. Instead, I ended up finding reports like these.[5] It's not that I like such reports.-Civilizededucation^talk 02:37, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

That link you just provided shows how tenuous the connection is between these modern witch hunts and Christianity. It even identifies the people responsible as belonging to a renegade church.--Taiwan boi (talk) 03:11, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

@Taiwan boi - OK... thanks for the link. I skimmed it very quickly and, as I suspected, the author is more interested in identifying "risk groups" (i.e women, elderly, children and albinos) and says almost nothing about linking witch-hunts to Christianity. I did a search in the document for the word "Christian" and it only appears 5 times. The author does not seem to make any attempt to link witch-hunts to Christianity although some of the witch-hunts in her anecdotes do involve Christians.

I think my work on this article establishes that I have no problem "telling like it is" when the Church has fomented or supported violence. However, reading the UNHRC report and doing some Google searching (including in Google Books) has not shown evidence of a clear linkage between Christianity and witch-hunting in the modern world.

The author acknowledges that a belief in witchcraft is important in Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu contexts. She also asserts that the Salem witch trials occurred in a "broader context of military and political crisis". Some Christians (particularly in the developing countries) do engage in witch-hunts. However, the UNHRC report does not establish a linkage between such activity and Christian churches.

I think we would do better to focus on witch-hunts in the medieval and early modern eras. I think the UNHRC report might be useful as a source for the article on Witch-hunts in general.

--Richard S (talk) 01:34, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes the author is assessing current global witch hunts, not focusing solely on Christian inspired witch hunts. One reason why the report does not establish a linkage between witch hunts and Christian churches is that such a link is highly tenuous. Not only are there relatively few instances of it taking place, where they do take place is within a complex mixture of existing traditional non-Christian views on witchcraft which are simply retained when people are "Christianized". Even in Africa there aren't any witch hunts being caused by Christians in places where no witch hunts existed previously. One of the books to which you linked even makes the point that mainstream Christian missionaries in Africa "have long preached that witchcraft does not exist" and that people "know they ought not to believe in witches" ("Witchcraft, violence, and democracy in South Africa", p. 124), but that this has failed to overcome existing traditional beliefs. I have no problem telling it how it is either, but the fact is that there's no solid link between modern Christianity and modern witch hunts. Fringe Christian groups like extremist evangelical and Pentecostal groups certainly provide a theological environment in which such beliefs are encouraged, but they are hardly representative of Christianity as a whole. One of the links which Civilizededucation provided mentioned witch hunts in PNG, where 96% of the population is Christian. This supposedly establishes a connection between witch hunts and Christianity, but what wasn't mentioned is that in the PNG it is actually illegal to persecute and kill people for witchcraft. It wouldn't be difficult to establish a connection between Christianity and modern witch hunts if the evidence actually existed.--Taiwan boi (talk) 01:51, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Tenuous? The revivalist churches play a role in amplifying conflicts within the family. They offer no explanation other than child witchcraft.[6] Do you see a link here?-Civilizededucation^talk 06:55, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Civilized, I think the problem here is one of perspective. In this article, we are mostly talking about linkages between Christianity as a whole (or at least a major branch of Christianity e.g. the Catholic Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, etc.) and violence. In the article from The Times, we are talking about a linkage between some African churches (revivalist churches) and violence. The question is not just about reliable sources (though I do have my doubts about the reliability of a single newspaper article) but also one of whether this particular topic (Christianity and witchcraft in the modern era) belongs in this article. I could imagine discussing the content of the article from The Times in the article titled Witch-hunt or a new article titled Christianity and witchcraft. However, putting it in this article seems like it would be a little out of place. It would be like discussing a local hill in a book that described the great mountains of the world. There has to be some kind of parity of the topics or else the article starts to seem like even more of a hodge-podge than it already is. --Richard S (talk) 07:36, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, tenuous. Remember, we're supposed to be investigating the link between modern witch hunts and Christianity, not just "revivalist churches". I already said myself "Christian groups like extremist evangelical and Pentecostal groups certainly provide a theological environment in which such beliefs are encouraged", but I also noted "they are hardly representative of Christianity as a whole". Looking at these modern witch hunts we find one primary common factor, which is Africa, and one secondary common factor, which is social breakdown. In other words we find exactly what we find in the Early Modern witch hunts; such hunts cannot take place without an existing belief in maleficium (in this case supplied by African tradition), an existing belief that witches must be hunted and punished (in this case supplied by African tradition), and trigger events such as social breakdown (in this case supplied by Africans). The fact that the churches involved are invariably indigenous African churches (not foreign-run churches), simply reinforces the point. Africans have been hunting and killing witches for years without any need for encouragement by Christianity, and the fact that a number of them continue to do so after becoming "Christianized" is hardly surprising. The fact that certain fringe Christian groups carry beliefs which foster the existing tradition is also not surprising, but there's no causative link here with Christianity as a whole. Out of around 2 billion Christians globally, how many are hunting and killing witches? Even if 20,000,000 Christians were currently involved in hunting and killing witches, that would still only be one percent of all Christians. I'm happy to include any statements from WP:RS that demonstrably link modern witch hunts causatively to Christianity.--Taiwan boi (talk) 07:46, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark is identified in the article as a Catholic apologist. Do we have a source for this identification? Stark was raised a Lutheran and described himself in 2007 as an "independent Christian". When did he become a Catholic, and then an apologist? The reference to Stark in the "Christianity and violence" article is dated to 2003, while he was still an agnostic.--Taiwan boi (talk) 08:18, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Ugh... that was pretty bad. Mea culpa. I've fixed it. Thanx. --Richard S (talk) 16:45, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome.--Taiwan boi (talk) 00:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Christianity and violence part of WikiProject Atheism?

Does anyone know why this article is part of the WikiProject Atheism and of mid-importance? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.59.121.90 (talk) 20:26, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

It's really not important so far as our readers are concerned. It's just a way for interested editors to find out about pages they might want to improve. The importance ratings are subjective. You can follow links in the box at the top of this talk page to find out more about this, if you are interested. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:10, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect Article Name

Extended content

Christianity does teach to love your fellow man along with many other well known proverbs. Unfortunately, there is a loss of fact when Christianity is claimed as the cause of the crusades. If my memory and many written works by scholars serves me correctly, Catholicism is the force and mind behind the entire set of crusades, inquisitions, and many massacres throughout history. Mind the reader that Catholicism and Christianity are two very different religions. I will not go into detail about the enormous differences between the religion and the belief. I can only cite that Catholicism, by way of a biblical view, is satanic in all forms. I encourage the editors to conduct a great deal more research regarding the Catholic church than issuing the blame of violent atrocities to an innocent belief in something more —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.55.124.77 (talk) 03:58, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

NPOV Tag

I'm looking into the backlog of NPOV complaints (someone has to do the dirty work ) and there is no listing of exactly what the complaint is on the talk page. Might I inquire as to what the issue actually is so that we might try to resolve this dispute and remove this article from the backlog? I am just another editor by the way just looking to help out the project but I would like to provide a neutral ear and see this resolved. Tirronan (talk) 14:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It appears that the tag was put up through this [7] edit. However, I too am unable to locate the discussion related to this tag.-Civilizededucation^talk 15:20, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The NPOV tag was put on by User:Noleander as part of a critique of edits that I made in November 2010. Here are some pointers to possibly relevant discussion: [8],[9],[10],[11]

I think Noleander's argument was that some of the topics (e.g. slavery and anti-semitism) were not "violence" per se and thus introducing them into this article amounted to a POV attack on Christianity. I have since documented that some scholars do, in fact, consider slavery and anti-semitism to be forms of "institutionalized violence".

You would have to ask Noleander if the above description of his concern is accurate and whether he still considers the article to have a POV problem.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 16:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

No, that was not my obection. I concur that there are some sources that connect violence and Christianity in the context of slavery/antiSemitism. My objection was that you brought in tons of material that was NOT RELATED to that connection. Simply stated: this article should not contain generic material about "Christianity and slavery" but instead should ONLY contain material about "Violence in relation to Christianity and slavery". If the source is NOT discussing violence, then material from that source does not belong in this article (but does belong in Christianity and slavery). --Noleander (talk) 19:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks all of you for paying attention to that. I've been here through all of that discussion, and I think the summary above is accurate with respect to the immediate history of the tag. What I can add is that the concerns really go back to the multiple AfD discussions that are linked at the top of this talk page. Editors have been concerned that the page is a WP:COATRACK serving as an attack page against Christianity, and Noleander was, I'm pretty sure, acting as one of several of us who would like to see the page kept, but who also want to make sure that the page is of good enough encyclopedic quality that it deserves to be kept. Right after the tag, there was a flurry of activity editing the page, followed by a consensus, I think, that the page now needs some pretty serious tightening up and shortening. That shortening began, then kind of petered out. If editors newly drawn to the page would help take up that effort, that would be very helpful indeed. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:17, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

This article is a total and complete mess. The article is a hodge-podge of misleading material copied-and-pasted from other articles. Most of the material violates the consensus from all the "religion and violence" pages, which is: The Religon and Violence articles should only contain material from sources that directly relate violence to the religion's doctrines, texts or leaders. It is not enough that the perpetrators of the violence just happen to be members of the religion. I've stated this several times in the Talk page, and yet the problems persist. We don't need "background" information in this article about the Crusades, or slavery, etc ... "main" template links to those articles are sufficient. See Talk archives for more details. --Noleander (talk) 19:29, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

POV / Synth / OR tags: necessary remedy

If it is ok I am going to highjack the top of this section to introduce myself and explain my involvement here. I've been an editor for over five years now and I work mostly in military history articles. So that the question is answered I am a Roman Catholic Christian and I am well aware of the history of the church. That is to say that in this I intend to simply be a moderator to help resolve this in a timely matter. Please be aware that I am not here to defend the faith nor to scourge it for past sins. I am here to make sure that the article meets the desires of the wiki project. As such I ask each of you to keep it to the technical points of the article as per the guidelines that we try to follow. I don't have a side here which is why I am working to resolve it.Tirronan (talk) 23

14, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The POV tags in the article are identifying two systematic problems in several sections of the article: (1) The article contains a vast amount of material that is unrelated to violence. The article should ONLY contain material based on sources that are discussing violence. For instance, lets say that there are 10 sources that discuss Christianity in relation to slavery. Let's say 2 of those sources discuss violence (e.g. Christianity was responsible for promoting whippings, etc). Then only material based on those violence-related sources may be used in this article. Material from the other 8 sources does not belong in this article, and in fact is already covered in Christianity and slavery. A "main" template link is sufficient to that other article is sufficient. There is no need to copy material (unrelated to violence) from the other article into this article. The fact that some sources may consider slavery to be inherently violent is NOT justification for copying ALL material related to slavery into this article ... that expansion constitutes OR and Synthesis. The same point (from the "slavery" example) also applies to several other problematic sections in this article, including the antisemitism, crusades, etc. (2) The article contains a large amount of material that is based on scenarios where the perpetrators just happen to be Christian (or low-level leaders). The article should only contain material related to violence associated with the doctrines, text, or high-level leaders. The remedy necessary to remove the POV tags is (1) to eliminate the material in this article that is based on sources that are not discussing violence; and (2) remove the material where the perpetrators are not high-level leaders of the church. --Noleander (talk) 19:44, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Lets start with the Hersey section that has an NPOV tag on it. I don't see any mention of slavery there and at least on 1st reading the points seem to be directed at the subject matter. If there is an issue here exactly what citation and what sentence are involved with your dispute? Again please no general statements lets work together get this cleaned up.Tirronan (talk) 23:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

[Edit Conflict] I scanned the article again, and the article is in worse shape now than it was a few months ago. To pick a few random examples out of dozens: (a) the section "Anti-abortion" includes two paragraphs, supported by a single citation to some sort of blog. (b) the "Anabaptists" section is three paragraphs with zero citations; (c) the "Witch Hunts" section says 40,000 to 60,000 people were executed yet that figure is a 40-year old value that has been discredited by modern scholarship (which puts the figures around 1,000 to 9,000). The entire article is riddled with poor citations, irrelevant material, and excessive duplication. It should be deleted, and started over again from the 30 Sept 2010 version. --Noleander (talk) 23:20, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Answering your question on Heresy: 90% of the material in that section has nothing to do with violence. Even if some editor were to say "yeah, but heresies are violent in nature (or the Ch response to H were ...)" that is not sufficient. The SOURCES must make that connection. And it is not enough that some source somewhere says that the Chr church was violent in regard to heresies: the sources used to support the material in this article must discuss violence. Other wise it is OR, Synth, and POV. --Noleander (talk) 23:24, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Tirronan: If you want to see what a decent article looks like in this genre, see Judaism and violence which covers a very similar breadth of topics, and yet has been scrubbed by many authors, using a very clear rule on what belongs in the article. Again, the rule is: Material can go in the article only if the source of the material is making a direct association between violence and the religion's doctrines, texts, or leaders. It is not sufficient for an editor or another source to make that association. --Noleander (talk) 23:41, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It is normal for editors to decide what is relevant material and what is not. Why should there be so restrictive requirements on this/these article/s only? Relevance can generally be seen without having a source to establish relevance. When a source has actually been found to say that such and such thing is related to so and so, that should seal the matter? Material should be seen as irrelevant only if there is ed consensus that it is irrelevant or in the situation where sources say that the material is irrelevant. Even in the situation where there is disagreement among sources about the relevance of issues, that material would still be relevant depending somewhat on ed consensus. Here, I find that material whose relevance has been established by producing a source is also being deemed to be irrelevant without producing any source to say that the material is irrelevant. Even if such sources are produced, the material would be irrelevant only if there is a broad consensus among sources that the material is irrelevant.IMO.-Civilizededucation^talk 01:11, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

You are correct, that consensus is key. But consensus has been achieved, over and over, spanning several years, in Islam and violence, Religion and violence, Judaism and violence, Mormonism and violence, and even Christianity and violence (see Talk page archives for early/mid 2010). The broad consensus reached in all these articles is: Material can go in the article only if the source of the material is making a direct association between violence and the religion's doctrines, texts, or leaders. Inserting material outside that scope is Synth, OR and POV. That rule is followed in the other articles, and we should not give Christianity special treatment. There is only a single editor that is violating consensus, that that is User:Pseudo-Richard. To repeat for the 7th time: No one is saying we should omit Slavery (etc etc) from this article - Im simply saying that all the background material (that is not directly related to violence) belongs in Christianity and violence, not in this article. --Noleander (talk) 02:11, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

While I did give the article a major overhaul back in November and I still stand by the changes that I made, I do not think it is valuable to continue the discussion at the level of broad, sweeping generalities. Let us instead discuss each section one-by-one and address the tags that Noleander has put on them. I am not necessarily responsible for all the text in each and every section so it is very possible that I will agree with at least some of Noleander's criticisms. (Heck, even if I am responsible for text that Noleander criticizes, I may still agree with him and seek to modify my own text to address his concerns.) --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 06:59, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I also acknowledge that it is possible that some of the tags in the sections that follow may have been inserted by editors other than Noleander. I do not have the patience to track down who put which tag on which section. I will just comment on the tags in general. If Noleander did not put on the tag and does not think it is appropriate, please accept in advance that I am not targeting Noleander with my comments. I am commenting on the tag, not the editor who put it there. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 07:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, again if we are going to make general statements this is not helpful. I appreciate that we are passionate about a position again let us stick with one section at a time one sentence at a time and let us proceed. No one needs to state positions we need to really work at this for a bit and we will get this cleaned up. Tirronan (talk) 07

47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Slavery

This section is tagged as potentially containing original research and synthesis. In addition, it is tagged as possibly being factually inaccurate and possibly containing inappropriate or misinterpreted citations that do not verify the text. This is a substantial section that consists of three subsections. Can we please identify the specific text that is of concern? --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 07:42, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The majority of the text in this section is not related to violence. The sources cited do not mention violence. The insertion of the material into this article is OR because it implies an association (with violence) that is not made by the sources cited, but rather is made by the editor. It is POV because the piling on of irrelevant negative material could be construed by readers as an attempt to portray the religion in a negative light. Question for Richard: can you supply a source for each sentence in this section, wherein the source is discussing violence? If not, that means you are the one making the association with violence, so it doesn't belong. --Noleander (talk) 10:39, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Confessing Church

This section is tagged as potentially containing original research. This section is fairly heavily supported with citations. Can we identify the specific issues that are of concern? --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 07:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The majority of the text in this section is not related to violence. The sources cited do not mention violence. The insertion of the material into this article is OR because it implies an association (with violence) that is not made by the sources cited, but rather is made by the editor. It is POV because the piling on of irrelevant negative material could be construed by readers as an attempt to portray the religion in a negative light. Question for Richard: can you supply a source for each sentence in this section, wherein the source is discussing violence? If not, that means you are the one making the association with violence, so it doesn't belong. --Noleander (talk) 10:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

This quality of this article is horrible

Richard: See the "assessments" at the top of this Talk page. They rank the article as "Start" quality. That is generous. Yet you are responsible for nearly the entire article, and you've had months to rectify the issues. Maybe you could take some time to review the criteria of a good article (see WP:Good article criteria) and start listening to the input from other editors. Copying-and-pasting vast amounts of material from other articles, without reading sources, is not good editing. The article needs to be severly pruned, and the sources need to be carefully read. --Noleander (talk) 11:16, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to tiptoe in here and make some suggestions.

• Tirronan, I think it's great what you are trying to do here. Thank you!

• Richard and Noleander: I appreciate that both of you care a lot about this page. But please take a look at the talk on this talk page over the past 24 hours, and think about how it looks to the rest of us. You are each talking past one another, and not getting any closer to agreement. And that is in spite of the fact that you are both trying very sincerely to reach agreement. So let's please stop discussing in broad terms what may be wrong with the page. And let's please stop discussing one another. There is now a big list of things that some editors feel may need to be fixed. I'd like to suggest that both of you just step back for a little while. Nobody is going to blow the Wiki up in the mean time, I promise you. Tirronan, me, and maybe some other editors can take a look at these issues, and make an effort to address them, nothing etched in stone, and maybe we'll make some progress that way.

Peace, --Tryptofish (talk) 15:35, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Suppression of heresies

This section has been tagged as having NPOV issues and possible original research. What exactly are the NPOV issues and what is considered potentially Original Research? --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 06:59, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The majority of the text in this section is not related to violence. The sources cited do not mention violence. The insertion of the material into this article is OR because it implies an association (with violence) that is not made by the sources cited, but rather is made by the editor. It is POV because the piling on of irrelevant negative material could be construed by readers as an attempt to portray the religion in a negative light. Question for Richard: can you supply a source for each sentence in this section, wherein the source is discussing violence? If not, that means you are the one making the association with violence, so it doesn't belong. --Noleander (talk) 10:38, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Reading the Heresy section again the point that was brought up in objection was that there was lots of talk about heresy and punishments but... there is one phase that seems to have a bearing on violence, that being the 14 burnings in Orleans. We have the Eastern Church being mentioned but we don't know if they were involved? Regardless of what side you are on, that only weakens the stance of the article. The point of fact here is that that section is pretty weak on actually who was hurt or killed. I don't believe that the sentence about the Eastern Church should be there at all. It would seem that the Spanish Inquisition, of which heresy was a portion of what they were after, not mentioned with hard facts not hard to obtain. I'm speaking off the cuff but weren't the Anabaptish destroyed by Papal Calvary and this isn't mentioned? The point is not NPOV here I don't think the problem is that this section kind of misses the mark. I'd suggest taking the NPOV tag off because this isn't a point of view issue its an accuracy issue of where the dialog heads off to. I'd agree to the point of ok there the Heresy and the powers that be ordering it but where was the violent act that followed... not that it didn't happen but that the section doesn't go there but once to the tune of 14 people.

Tirronan: POV is a problem in the Heresy section as follows: by including vast amounts of material that is not related to violence (that is, neither the material in this article nor the source cited for the material mention violence) it is producing a large amount of material that - to a casual reader - exaggerates the magnitude of the topic beyond what the sources say. For instance, lets say there is a single source that mentions the violent suppression of heresies by the church, but the section includes 18 other sentences about heresies that are not related to violence. The reader sees a huge section, with lots of footnotes, yet only 1 out of 19 sources are discussing violence. This portrays the religion in an excessively negative light. That is the POV issue. Of course, it is also a WP:Synth and WP:OR issue. --Noleander (talk) 10:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Tirronan: I want to support the direction you are taking here: analyzing each sentence one-by-one, and seeing if it is appropriate for this article. I tried to do that back in November, but Richard suffers from WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT and no amount of persuasion could get him too understand why most of his material is not related to violence. So I gave up. In summary: I support your sentence-by-sentence approach to pruning the article and getting the overall quality up. Good luck.--Noleander (talk) 11:31, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Basically, its that the section doesn't maintain its focus. Again, please no commentary about another editor, I promise you that some of the editors that in the past I have had it out with hammer and tongs I now count among my closest friends on Wiki, nor does it help getting past the heart of the issue that you have brought up, lack of focus to the primary subject. As for heresy, violence was wrapped around it, how much is a matter of how one would define it. The 30 year war could be defined as a crusade against the Protestant Reformation in northern Germany, however it also has elements of political/national aspirations of the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, the Papacy, Sweden, and France. The 30 year war also depopulated about 30% of the areas of operation. What I am getting to here is I want every editor involved to think for a couple of days and bring a one paragraph proposal of how He or She would, Define Heresy, How it relates to violence as it relates to Christian Religion,supporting citation. The last thing I am going to suggest here is that we take a format that keeps it to the facts and only the facts. Let the reader make the conclusions that shouldn't be up to us we are an encyclopedia not a court of justice. Again, a short proposal and no commentary on other editors.Tirronan (talk) 16

01, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Tirronan, I appreciate your approach as outlined above. Here is my perspective. You wrote "As for heresy, violence was wrapped around it, how much is a matter of how one would define it." I agree very much with this. There is a lot more that could be written about suppression of heresies than is in the current article text. For example, the European wars of religion could be mentioned as could suppression of individual heretic movements such as Savonarola and Giordano Bruno. A full exposition of the topic is an article unto itself.

The key points that I think need to be made is that Christians have been engaging in violence related to doctrinal disputes since before the Edict of Milan. Walter Bauer and Bart Ehrman are the leading proponents of the proposition that early Christianity was characterized by heterodoxy rather than orthodoxy. This is not necessarily a majority opinion but it is a view that should be presented.

Because early Christians did not generally have the authority and force to efficiently suppress heresies, they were unable to enforce orthodoxy except via moral suasion. After Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the ecumenical councils were convened by Roman emperors in an attempt to resolve doctrinal disputes on the grounds that such controversies were corrosive to public peace.

It is argued that this intertwining of religion and state transformed Christianity and, in some eyes, not necessarily for the better. For the next 1500 years (at least), those who were considered heretics were subjected to violence to either compel their submission or otherwise remove their heretical beliefs from society.

Thus, the suppression of heresies is a major theme in discussing "Christianity and violence". To me, the discussion of specific incidents (of which there are far too many important ones to even list, let alone describe in this article) is far less important than establishing the points that I have made above.

--Pseudo-Richard 16:37, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Yet it is exactly the lack thereof that weakens and forms the core of the complaints here. Look I am a Catholic, yet even the Pope will tell you that the Crusades were horrible and there is a reason we have a list of Anti-Popes. We are talking historical fact but copying text that you have no idea if it is well cited or mistake prone is not a great idea. Weasel wording is not allowed in Wikipedia. You are talking about real events yet I get the idea that you are trying to convince me that they happened... I know they happened I want it reported, history simply is, it isn't up for debate. Make sure that you can keep your feelings out of your editing. I get the impression that you are wanting to put forward and idea that Christianity is inherently Violence ridden and that is a POV. I hope that is just a wrong impression that I have because if it isn't it makes is pretty hard to be a neutral editor for an article of this type. I'm going to revert your addition to witch hunts for now, not because they are bad faith but because this article needs to be rewritten to eliminate weasel wording and now apparent a lot of citations are going to have to be checked. I need the absolute truth here did you work on the witch-hunt article and copy over your work or did you just copy it over?Tirronan (talk) 16:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Tirronan, it is a matter of opinion as to how many incidents of violence are required to illustrate the points made in this article. Reasonable peopel can differ on this question. Let's discuss it and come to a mutual agreement.

It is important to understand that this article was nominated for deletion twice due to its being primarily a laundry list of violent incidents that seemed to be performing a synthesis of a POV argument that Christianity was guilty of a whole host of violent crimes. This is what the article looked like at the time of the second AFD. Here is a link to the second AFD discussion. The article was kept from deletion primarily due to the objections of editors like me who asserted that there really was an encyclopedic topic here despite the laundry list nature of the article at the time. At the risk of self-promotion, I assert that I have changed the character of this article for the better by providing a more scholarly framework for addressing the topic by creating the sections "Definition of violence" and "Christianity as a violent religion". I wrote almost all of those sections and the quotes and citations are mine. I personally read them, etc. etc. I think these two sections provide a conceptual framework to understand the academic debate over whether Christianity is a "violent religion". If you read these two sections, I think you will see that they try pretty hard to provide an NPOV description of the debate without taking sides.

That said, I am not opposed to inserting additional incidents of violence to illustrate the points made in the article but I think the focus should remain on allegations of Christianity as a religion being complicit in actual and threatened acts of violence as well as so-called "institutionalized violence" such as slavery and anti-semitism.

I reorganized the rest of the article according to major topics that were mentioned by the sources cited in the two introductory sections. I admit that I fleshed out the Anti-semitism and Slavery sections with text copied from Wikipedia articles on those topics. I have personally worked on those articles but I do not claim to have personally written the text copied over or to have checked all the citations that I copied. (I don't think this is a requirement of Wikipedia policy but I acknowledge there is a good argument for doing so.)

The text in my recent edit to the Witch-hunt section was "just copied over" from Witch-hunt. I'm not thrilled that you reverted it but I'm not that invested in that particular text anyway so I won't raise a stink about it either. More importantly, as I explain below, much (probably most) of the text in that section was written by somebody else so the current text is probably a pastiche of citations inserted by editors to this article and (maybe) some citations copied over from witch-hunt. I will say that I do feel a little bit the target of a witch-hunt myself. You should not assume that the bulk of the article text is written by me. Much of it was written by other editors before I began to reorganize it back on October 27 and some of it (the witch-hunt section in particular) has been worked on by other editors since then. Most of the stuff that I copied over was providing background material to introduce the material. Some of what I copied over was stuff that I had worked on. Some of it was written by other editors of those articles and some of it was written by me. I didn't make any effort to separate text I wrote from text that other editors wrote. There is no place that I know of in Wikipedia policy that says that doing so is required. Either the citations are verifiable or they are not. Now, I accept that the burden is on the editor inserting the text to prove that the text can be supported by a citation to a reliable source so, if you want to challenge a specific assertion and it's supporting citation, go ahead and do so. If I can support it, I will. If not, we can discuss whether or not to delete the citation and possibly even the assertion itself. However, I think the goal should be a well-written article so the focus should be on whether or not the assertion helps the article or not. If it helps the article, we should work together to find a suitable citation for it. If it doesn't help the article, it really doesn't matter whether the citation supports it.

--Pseudo-Richard (talk) 19:10, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

For the record to everyone, none of this is personal, period, if I have given you that impression then you have my apologies it was unintended. Now that we have the reason why I reverted down we have to address copied over citation, where, when, and lets get it out of the article. Intended or not we not have a major verifiable issue now, It has to go. That isn't my ruling its wiki's. What I am getting to on the other is that is fine I don't want lists either, but saying hypothetically that the inquisitions across Europe resulted in 10,000 dead and the confiscation of x millions of dollars in properties, focuses it back on the actual violence. Nor is the a problem if there are very different opinions by scholars, then we put xyz and abc and def hold that... while rrr xxx aaa hold that, regardless the concensus of scholars is that that so many were killed and approx so many were forcibly removed... What I am trying to get to here is lets focus at least some of the effects because frankly looking at the article as is looks like most of this was bloodless difference of opinions. Rape was common as dirt for women accused of witchcraft, sorry to say. Theft of property was a major motivation in many cases. Gaining of political power was a powerful part of the mix more often than not, religious wrappings made them more vicious and gave them the right cover for awful things. Again, points and examples and outcomes focus, not endless lists but a few per section are not out of place I would think. Tirronan (talk) 21:12, 9 February 2011 (UTC)