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Conservative Christianity

Conservative Christianity (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Notability of the topic is not established. Although there are millions of Christians who are conservative in some sense or another there does not seem to be one definite meaning of the expression "conservative Christianity." The different themes, for instance Christian right and Fundamentalist Christianity, should each have a separate article. BigJim707 (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

• Delete and save the reader from the confusion. For the life of me, I can not figure out what defines the concept on which the article is based. The text mixes conservative Catholics with conservative Protestants and then makes generalizations about the belief in the divinity of Jesus! The term Chalcedonian Christianity is missing from the article, of course. The underlying basis of the definitions in the article seem to be mostly unaware of the long forgotten field called Christian theology. And the term "conservative" usually has some type of political context such as voting Republican in the US and as someone said on the talk page this is pretty US oriented. And are there non-conservative Mormons? Does the article consider Mormons Christians? Are there non-Conservative Eastern Orthodox? Are all Eastern Orthodox conservative or some are not? How about Eastern Catholics? Are all non-Trinitarians non-conservative? Overall the basic tenet of the definition of the term on which the article is based seems to be unaware of the beliefs of Christian denominations worldwide and uses a very simplistic brush to paint many people the same color. The overall concept seems to have been derived from watching some TV evangelists and forming opinions and concepts based on that. A pretty confused concept which is pretty much "an invention" as a whole and no basis for an article for it. History2007 (talk) 19:50, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:55, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the WikiProject Conservatism as well. / edg ☺ ☭ 20:20, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

• Delete as original synthesis. StAnselm (talk) 20:07, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
• Redirect to Christian right, which is probably what people are looking for if they search on "conservative Christianity." –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:10, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
• Comment Tho we imagine we know it when we see it, "Conservative Christianity" is not a single, clearly defined movement or tradition, unlike Liberal Christianity, the article in reaction to which this one was created in good faith. Scope here has drifted from Conservative movements in contemporary American Protestant Christianity (perhaps duplicative of the article Christian right) to include origins of Christianity, and (relevant, but at disproportionate length) Traditionalist Catholicism (with "Conservative Catholicism" being equivalent to "Catholicism", apparently).
  I expect for this article to be kept, someone would need to:
  1. Determine what this article is actually about, based presumably on what in this article is not already covered in another article (otherwise this is a WP:POVFORK),
  2. retitle accordingly, lest this article be forever WP:COATRACKed,
  3. merge any well-sourced but off-topic matter to the relevant articles,
  4. resume editing article within new scope.

Otherwise, since conservative typically implies politics, redirect to Christian right (or whatever better target is found) as an aid to searches. / edg ☺ ☭ 20:20, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I do not know of an absolute determination but regarding "Determine what this article is actually about" I think I have done that for myself at least: it is about confusion. But there is already an article on that. History2007 (talk) 19:45, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

• Redirect to Christian right - I have found a few sources which mention Conservative Christianity, but it often seems to be interchangeable with the Christian right. Unless a source can be found which differentiates between the two, we only need one article. ItsZippy 20:48, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
• Keep and improve. On the plus side, the article is well written, well sourced, well thought out, and does define the term as the author sees it. On the other hand, it feels like the term is defined, with the sources, as a little bit skewed by the author's own view - in short, there appears to be some bias problems in there. I cannot justify a delete !vote for a little bit of bias, however, let alone even a weak keep, when the large pool of available editors could do some nice work on this. --Dennis The Tiger (Rawr and stuff) 23:00, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
• Keep and improve While I don't agree that the article is well sourced presently, there are ample sources to fulfill the notability requirement. This is just the plain fact of the matter. And this coverage is independent of Christian Right.– Lionel 23:48, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

  If it is to be improved what does Conservative Christianity mean in Northern Ireland or in England? In Northern Ireland is it the Catholics or the Protestants who are the conservatives? In England is it the antidisestablishmentarians who are conservatives or those who want to go back to Rome? -- PBS (talk) 01:41, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, that is right. And may I mention a country called Greece where most of the Christian population is pretty left leaning in political terms but the religious views of Greek Orthodox Church is far from what might be called liberal? And which pigeonhole does the "conservative concept" place those who show up at the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria? Then there is the minor issue of a few other Christians, say the Russian Orthodox Church, and Chinese Christians of course.... History2007 (talk) 10:41, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

• Request incubation If this article is deleted I request that a copy be deposited in the WPConservatism incubator. – Lionel 23:48, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
• Redirect to Christian Right. Many sources use it as a synonym for Christian Right, and those that don't, state that the Christian Right is the contemporary political advocate of conservative Christianity or that Conservative Christianity is the bedrock of the Christian Right. --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 00:15, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
• Redirect to Christian Right (without prejudice) and incubate, per request above. There needs to be a decision made about how to prevent forking on this topic. Christian fundamentalism seems to be on a historical moment in Protestantism; Christian Right on the contemporary social conservative movement. What is this exactly? Is it advisable and historical to connect various streams and trends of theologically conservative Christianity in one article? If so, how is that to be differentiated from other search terms. I'm not adverse to the idea, there just needs to be some work done to keep the search terms accurate and room for differentiation of A from B from C from D from E (since there are probably other parallel topics that I haven't mentioned here). Carrite (talk) 01:13, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
• Delete See my comments on the talk page of the article, but basically History2007 has summed up my point of view. DO not redirect it as the redirect are to equally American concentric articles that almost certainly need moving or deleting. This whole area is whack a rat. -- PBS (talk) 01:36, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
• Redirect as requested above. The article "Christian Right" makes it clear that it is being discussed as a US-centric concept, and it is better a reader be sent somewhere possibly relevant to their search term rather than sent nowhere at all. If an article on the broader/universal/theological aspect of liberalism and conservatism within Christian theology appears then we can discuss then whether "Conservative Christianity" should redirect there or to "Christian Right".AerobicFox (talk) 06:04, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
• keep and improve. I strongly oppose redirect to Christian right, as that term has political context and here it is about values, it would be very deceiving. In my life I met lots of people using this term in exact meaning how it is defined in here and redirect to Christian right would cause semantic havoc.

Christian right is a term used in the United States to describe "right-wing" Christian political groups

Conservative Christianity (also called traditional Christianity) is a term applied to a number of groups or movements seen as giving priority to traditional Christian beliefs and practices.--Stephfo (talk) 23:21, 4 December 2011 (UTC) One more note - I think some people are confusing term Conservative Christianity with Christian Conservatives ({often initial capital letter}of or pertaining to the Conservative party.); a fortiori stronger reason for keeping this page. --Stephfo (talk) 23:31, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Another note: IMHO, the context as described in this article is used also in documentary about Bonhoeffer (9min:18s) when describing his family roots who were anything but political Christian right. Also compare "His Christocentric approach appealed to conservative, confession-minded Protestants; while his commitment to social justice as a cardinal responsibility of Christianity appealed to liberal Protestants." in WP article about him. Your reasoning would imply that "His ...approach appealed to "Christian Right" what sounds as clear nonsense to me in given context, I apologize for any inconvenience.--Stephfo (talk) 00:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

• Keep There is a difference between conservative Christianity and Christian conservatism. NYyankees51 (talk) 02:08, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
• Perhaps turning this into a disambiguation page would be a good idea? It could link to Christian fundamentalism, Christian Right, Traditionalist Catholic and related pages. Mark Arsten (talk) 03:03, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

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