Talk:Persecution of Christians/Archive 6

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Recent revert by Pincrete

@Pincrete: Your revert says This is an astonishing claim, which does not appear to be either substantiated or given context anywhere in the body of the article. This is incorrect in both claims. It is in the text of Current situation where it is substantiated by two separate sources. It is in this paragraph:

Paul Vallely and the Danish National Research Database, argue that Christians are, as of 2019, the most persecuted religious group in the world. A report released by the UK's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs prepared by Philip Mounstephen, the Bishop of Truro, in July 2019, and a report on restriction of religious freedom by the PEW organization studying worldwide restrictions of religious freedom, both have Christians suffering in the highest number of countries, rising from 125 in 2015 to 144 as of 2018. PEW has published a caution concerning the interpretation of these numbers: "The Center’s recent report ... does not attempt to estimate the number of victims in each country... it does not speak to the intensity of harassment..." France, who restricts the wearing of the hijab, is counted as a persecuting country equally with Nigeria and Pakistan where, according to the Global Security organization, Christians have been killed for their faith.

The one reverted sentence basically sums up the entire Current situation section which is not represented at all in the lead without it. Unless there is a good argument for leaving an entire section unrepresented in the lead, something needs to be there. It doesn't have to be this sentence, but it needs to be something.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 15:22, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

The "Current situation" section and your post above do not say that Christians are the most persecuted etc.. . They say that some people claim this, including a Pope, a bishop and a Vatican envoy, all well known neutral sources! More importantly than the lack of neutrality of those making the claim, is any kind of context - what does the sentence mean? Are Christians killed in more countries or in larger numbers SOLELY for being Christian? Is sectarian violence included as 'persecution' (as it appears to be elsewhere in the article) - at what point does ill manners or social disapproval of Christianity become 'discrimination against', and at what point does that become 'persecution'? We are given no idea what the claim actually means, even less how and by whom it was arrived at, and yet the claim is framed in WP:VOICE as though it were an obvious and agreed scientific fact. Apart from these, suffering in a large number of countries is relatively trivial if the extent of suffering is itself trivial, focusing on that one claim creates a wholly false impression. Personally, I cannot see how anyone could meaningfully claim that any religious or ethnic group are the most persecuted - but we know well that almost all groups DO make exactly that claim. Without context, such claims are almost meaningless. Pincrete (talk) 16:26, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

@Pincrete:

• First in a long list: I did not use that particular claim of Christians as the most persecuted in the reverted sentence. However, it does have a neutral source. "The Danish National Research Database is a single entry point for Danish research, Danish researchers and Danish research institutions." [2] It says it has "More than 1 million research publications and more than 90 thousand researcher profiles collected from the research databases of 15 Danish universities and research institutions."[3]

• There is no Pope or "Vatican envoy" referenced for the sentence you removed, so that's an objection to something that isn't there. Please read what is actually said before objecting to it. The first paragraph in the section that does reference the Pope is a debunk.

• The man who prepared the report for the UK's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is a Bishop, true, but that does not disqualify him from accuracy in his numbers. The fact the Secretary accepted and published it is support for its accuracy, and since it agrees with the scientific organization PEW, his numbers are verified by them as well. Valid source then, even if you could prove bias. Read this: [4]

• PEW publishes its definitions along with its results, always. You could have found them yourself if you looked.

Pew measured both government restrictions on religion and social hostility using the State department report [5].

"Laws and policies restricting religious freedom (such as requiring that religious groups register in order to operate) and government favoritism of religious groups (through funding for religious education, property and clergy, for example); government limits on religious activities and government harassment of religious groups. One category of social hostilities has increased substantially – hostilities related to religious norms (for example, harassment of women for violating religious dress codes) – Two other types of social hostilities, harassment by individuals and social groups (ranging from small gangs to mob violence) and religious violence by organized groups (including neo-Nazi groups such as the Nordic Resistance Movement and Islamist groups like Boko Haram), have risen more modestly. a fourth category of social hostilities – interreligious tension and violence (for instance, sectarian or communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims in India) – has declined markedly since the baseline year (17%). By one specific measure, in 2007, 91 countries experienced some level of violence due to tensions between religious groups, but by 2017 that number dropped to 57 countries."

When things like this are referenced, it isn't usually deemed necessary to include all the detail in the text itself. Perhaps it would be helpful if it were in a note. I will add that in hopes of clearing up this issue.  Done

• Your question at what point does ill manners or social disapproval of Christianity become 'discrimination against', and at what point does that become 'persecution'? is for this article to address in the definitions section. It doesn't have anything to do with the reverted sentence. This is a red herring.

• You say the claim is framed in WP:VOICE as though it were an obvious and agreed scientific fact. The claim is framed as a summation of an established scientifically researched fact as determined by the scientific research organization called PEW.

• Your claim Apart from these, suffering in a large number of countries is relatively trivial if the extent of suffering is itself trivial, focusing on that one claim creates a wholly false impression. is callous, and is not only not supported by the sources, it is directly contradicted by them. Persecution ranges from light to severe. It often begins with light restrictions and moves onward and upward into violence. Grim and Finke say their studies indicate that: "When religious freedoms are denied through the regulation of religious profession or practice, violent religious persecution and conflict increases." Anything that can be defined as a human rights violation of religious freedom counts to those experiencing it.

• Without context, such claims are almost meaningless. That's what this entire article provides. The whole section on current situation provides current context. It's there, you just have to actually read it. The lead doesn't have to supply that, only point to it.

• All of this fails to address that there is no sentence representing a summary of the current situation anywhere in the lead. I am flexible on what it should say. I'm not hard over on that particular sentence. Read the section and offer one of your own. We can collaborate.

• Finally, I note that none of your objections are backed by sources. The sources I reference are neutral - though that is not a WP requirement. Unless you can come up with a valid source that disproves PEW's research, or offer an alternative, I will eventually replace the sentence. I will give you time to research and respond first.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:44, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

• Do you realize the PEW forum article cited for the claim that "Christians are persecuted in more countries than any other religion" never once mentions the word "persecution"? How about the "Persecution of Christians - A taboo?" Do you realize it is merely a screeching editorial written by none other than the Lutheran theologian Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen, itself citing so-called research by the Baptist activist the Rve. Dr Elijah M. Brown published in the grandly titled Journal of Ecumenical Studies? There is no "research" as has been claimed above, mere POV and labelled as such. Add to this an Anglican bishop's complaint to the right-wing of the Conservative Party and all you have is WP:SYNTH, WP:BIAS, and WP:OPINION. We need out-of-universe sources, not the speculative tirades of theologians and their echoey echo-chambers. To call this pamphleteering neutral is a joke. GPinkerton (talk) 20:05, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

• Wow. GPinkerton Let's tone this down a bit. There isn't anything on Wikipedia that warrants getting upset enough to rant and personally attack others.

My response to your claims: It isn't necessary for the word persecution to be present if the description of it is. If a report doesn't use the word stabbing, but instead says that a sharp object approximately 2 inches wide and 5 inches long was forcefully inserted into the body cavity multiple times, causing massive bleeding, organ damage and death, is it understood that the person was stabbed to death? Of course it is. Synth is not required. If the PEW report isn't about how religions are persecuted - all religions - what is it about? This is disingenuous.

PEW reports, and the state department reports, and the report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and any number of other human rights organizations almost never use loaded words that are ill defined - like persecution. They describe that sharp instrument and the damage done. We summarize the whole, and call it persecution for brevity's sake, because that's what it is.

Part of the reason these things keep cropping up with this article is that there is no definition section providing that connection. It's assumed everyone knows. But that's a false assumption that only leaves the door open for problems like this.

People here are repeatedly saying someone can't be a source because they are Christian and must therefore be biased - obviously - and no one seems to understand that the WP response to that is, so what? It isn't required that sources be neutral, only that we are. That commitment to neutrality is why I included a debunk of the Pope's claim, why I wrote the Muslim section of [Religious persecution] and write on all religions without favoritism, and have argued against atheism being treated differently in articles here on WP. But the sources are not required to contain that standard.

No one ever reads this, but I keep posting it in hopes someone will actually care what WP standards actually are:[6] If you read it, you will see that your assumption of bias is not sufficient to disqualify these sources.

And it's stupid on the face of it really. The persecution of Muslims is mostly tracked by Muslims; the persecution of Hindus in India is tracked more by Indian Hindus than anyone else; the persecution of Christians is no different. This does not prove they don't have correct data. Ask a Native American about persecution events. You won't have ever heard of half of what they tell you. They know because they are invested. That doesn't make them wrong.

I see that if you can successfully discount the secular sources because they don't use a particular word, and discount the rest for bias, then you can keep pretending it isn't really happening and that you aren't spending your time and effort enabling persecutors. Niemöller's quote seems to fit here: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me."

You don't like the wording of my sentence. That's fine, it's gone, but don't waste time arguing that persecution isn't real. Find out what the current situation really is - whatever words are used to describe it.[7]

Write a sentence of your own that properly reflects what is currently happening around the world to religious freedom. But don't avoid researching it and then claim you are the only one who correctly understands reality. That makes the only "speculative tirade" here, yours. Jenhawk777 (talk) 03:51, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Your comparison between the overweening over-privilege of Christians and the victims of Nazism is as unbecoming as it is false. The idea that persecution of Muslims is mostly tracked by Muslims; the persecution of Hindus in India is tracked more by Indian Hindus than anyone else; the persecution of Christians is no different is preposterous, as is the idea that in such a situation we should give an credence to all of them. Bias does not disqualify the source, but it does disqualify them from being used for grand claims like these. In this case, this issue is less about bias and more about the sources not saying what the text is claiming. GPinkerton (talk) 04:17, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Overweening over-privelge? Prove that with a dependable non-biased source please. Grand claims? Please prove with a dependable non-biased source that such a characterization is correct. Otherwise stop wasting my time.

My sources say restriction on religious' freedom correlates with armed conflict and physical religious persecution. Page 232. Also see Grim and Finke. Try pages 79 and 81: "restriction of religious freedom holds a powerful and robust relationship with violent religious persecution." "The measures for government restrictions on religion have the strongest total effect on violent religious persecution."

PEW says that its "Government Restrictions Index is based on 20 indicators of ways that national and local governments restrict religion, including through coercion and force. In addition to government restrictions, violence and intimidation in societies also limit religious beliefs and practices. Accordingly, Pew Research Center staff tracked more than a dozen indicators of social impediments on religion. The Social Hostilities Index is based on 13 indicators of ways in which private individuals and social groups infringe on religious beliefs and practices, including religiously biased crimes, mob violence and efforts to stop particular religious groups from growing or operating. The study also counted the number and types of documented incidents of religion-related violence, including terrorism and armed conflict." [8] Please cite a reliable non-biased source that says these characteristics and behaviors are not descriptive of religious persecution.

Please prove that "persecution of Muslims is mostly tracked by Muslims; the persecution of Hindus in India is tracked more by Indian Hindus than anyone else; the persecution of Christians is no different is preposterous" with a dependable non-biased source. My source - the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act of 1997: Private witnesses says on Page 38 that the State department's creation of the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act of 1997 was only done in response to a "grass roots movement of Christians and people of other faiths." What's your claim based on?

Bring valid sources or go away.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 05:56, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

The metonymic citation of violence and atrocities does its rhetorical work through the accumulation of examples that are simultaneously distinct and repetitious. “In Egypt, Coptic Christians were gunned down in a church by Islamic militants” or “In other countries in the region [the Middle East], believers have been imprisoned for attending worship services” and so on. When such examples appear in the literature of advocates and activists, they evoke a building sense of embattlement. These things are happening everywhere, all the time, right now, somewhere. These are statements intended to generate both a sense of urgency and a sense of responsibility.¶ Related to these litanies of atrocity are the anecdotal and individualized stories of religious persecution. The anecdotes make a personal appeal and convey to their addressees a demand for solidarity. Such anecdotes are, not surprisingly, overwhelmingly present in the materials that organizations like Voice of the Martyrs, Open Doors, and International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church generate as organizing tools, educational resources, and devotional guides. The genre tends to include a low-resolution photograph of the individual in question (sometimes with his or her eyes blacked out or with the face obscured), often with a map of the person's country of origin. These personalizing stories tend to be disseminated in collections so they have a cumulative effect that is simultaneously individualized and formulaic. In this, they echo the hagiographic tradition that goes back to the second and third centuries in which martyr stories were generated, recorded, repeated liturgically, and entered thereby into the life of individual Christians and their communities. Like the martyr-acts of the early church, these narratives invite a readerly identification and solidarity, and they lose none of their impact in their repetitions and standardizations. Perhaps most significantly, these simple and apparently straightforward narratives, like their early Christian precursors, are unapologetically partial in their deployment of myriad individual examples. These examples, whatever their singularities and unique features, are inevitably multiple incarnations of a single, structurally recognizable, always already told story: the story of the Christian martyr. And the language of persecution is an inexorable part of that unapologetically partial process.¶ According to these influential biblical passages [John 15:20; 2 Cor. 12:10] and countless later formulations by the church fathers, to be a Christian is to suffer persecution. Hence, the term is not only politically charged and analytically challenged, it is also formative and determinative of a particular religious identity (“Christian”). This is an especially important point when one considers what experiences, conflicts, and events come to “count” as the persecution of Christians.¶ When activists and advocates describe the 20th century as the century during which more Christians have been persecuted and martyred than in the previous 19 centuries, their statistics depend not only on the exponential increases in the world's population—and in the numbers of Christians—but also upon what historical events and political regimes they assert have been responsible for the persecution of Christians....some activists in this movement operate within a notably maximalist framework for determining when state-sponsored violence, in particular, is an example of “persecution of Christians.” (Indeed, there is an uncanny mirroring effect here in the attempts on the part of the US government to disaggregate US military actions against particular states and extranational terror networks from the implication that these actions are taken against Islam. Surely the same logics that produce Stalinism or Nazism as “religious persecution of Christians” could be put in the service of an argument that current US military action amounts to the “religious persecution of Muslims.”)

Castelli, Elizabeth A. (2005-07-01). "Praying for the Persecuted Church: US Christian Activism in the Global Arena". Journal of Human Rights. 4 (3): 321–351. doi:10.1080/14754830500257554. ISSN 1475-4835.

Let's have a bit more in the article about how it is part of Christianity to inflate the number and sufferings of potential martyrs, and how the right-wing is endlessly falling for it both sides of the Atlantic. Castelli's article is very interesting, and proves the lie of the claim that the only people that care for human relights are those that organize the organized religions! GPinkerton (talk) 07:22, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

It's not even a new phenomenon. According to history, there were, at most, three official general persecutions of Christianity in the Roman empire. According to Saint Augustine, there were ten. Who to believe …

Augustine, Civitate dei, 18.52: "Primam quippe computant a Nerone quae facta est, secundam a Domitiano, a Traiano tertiam, quartam ab Antonino, a Seuero quintam, sextam a Maximino, a Decio septimam, octauam a Valeriano, ab Aureliano nonam, decimam a Diocletiano et Maximiano."

GPinkerton (talk) 08:50, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid the various claims above confirm my initial suspicion - that it is not an almost universally accepted fact that Christians are more persecuted, or persecuted in more places than other religuous groups (which it would need to be to be in WP:VOICE). Also that no one seems to know what the sentence actually means - it's a good sound bite, but neither the text itself nor the section from which it is extrapolated [ie WP:SYNTHed), makes clear what specifically is actually being claimed, nor how the claim was arrived at. What is the threshold of persecution and what is simply living in a country with values other than your own?

Furthermore, by focusing on the number of countries, rather than the degree of persecution, the claim becomes valueless, and fairly misleading. Since Christianity may well be practiced in more countries than any of the other major religions, and if the threshold of 'persecution' is defined very loosely, the combination of the two would inevitably lead to the claim being true, especially if we include sectarian persecution, but wholly misleading, but so would contrary claims. I cannot see anywhere, certainly not in the lead text, anything that gives any context to what is being claimed. Without such context IMO, the sentence is merely a dramatic sound bite, conveying zero actual info. Pincrete (talk) 10:15, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton Ah Castelli, the one lone voice. Please note, she does not use numbers or data. Her thoughts are based entirely on rhetoric. She casts aspersions and raises suspicion quite effectively, but even when she says things like "the anecdotes arouse a sense of embattlement" she doesn't deny that they are real, true anecdotes. Castelli doesn't support universal human rights. She speaks of "the impossibility of religious freedom" and the "double-edged character of the universal" idea of religious freedom. If other governments want to kill people in the name of freedom of practicing their own religion, that is their right as far as she is concerned.

Her views are radical and do not represent the majority view. However, as such, she should be included here according to WP policies. The minority view should have a paragraph up front and have sentence in the lead as well.

Some of the primary sources of actual data on persecution are:

  U.S. State Department annual reports on International Religious Freedom
  U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom annual reports
  U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief reports
  Human Rights First; Freedom House reports 
  Human Rights Watch topical reports
  International Crisis Group country reports
  United Kingdom Foreign & Commonwealth Office annual report on human rights
  Council of the European Union annual report on human rights
  START Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland
  European Network Against Racism Shadow Reports
  United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports
  U.S. State Department annual Country Reports on Terrorism
  Anti-Defamation League reports
  U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
  Uppsala University’s Uppsala Conflict Data Program, Armed Conflict Database
  Human Rights Without Frontiers “Freedom of Religion or Belief” newsletters
  Amnesty International Country Profiles
  United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Population Statistics Database
  Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre Global Internal Displacement Database
  U.S. government reports with information on the situation in the United States
  U.S. Department of Justice “Religious Freedom in Focus” newsletters and reports
  FBI Hate Crime Reports

The information these sources supply counters her rhetoric effectively, but I still vote for adding her here somewhere as representative of the minority view.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 17:08, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

What rubbish. The (pro-Christian Conservative Party) FCO's most recent report mentions persecution 25 times. Only in ten of those instances does the use refer to Christians or Christianity, and in almost all of those cases, it is either in the context of other religion/their followers being persecuted alongside Christians or more intensively than are Christians, or in reference to the hand-wringing report of that one bishop written up two years and one foreign secretary ago. I challenge you to find evidence in any of these reports for the grand claims that Christianity is somehow persecuted all over the world and not only in the handful of pariah states recognized in the FCO report. Just listing these sources doesn't prove that they agree with the idiosyncratic view of the world's most dominant, richest, and most powerful ideology. GPinkerton (talk) 19:26, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, I didn't have to look very far to find Castelli is very far from your quite substantiated claim that she was the one lone voice. Step outside the bubble awhile.

"The narrative of martyrdom allows Christians in the West (particularly nationalistic dispensationalists), who are cultural hegemons and who maintain economic and political dominance globally, to claim the position of marginalization, disadvantage, and literal persecution in “the world,” because of their faith. In addition dominant groups within Western Christianity have relied upon martyrdom narratives to assert their dominance over those not in the dominant group, by compelling the non-dominant to accept their domination; to adhere the example of suffering, best exemplified by the martyrs."

Brown, Alease (2019). "Martyrdom, Violence, and Dignity". Estudos Teológicos. 59 (1): 133–150. doi:10.22351/et.v59i1.3618 (inactive 2020-08-31). ISSN 0101-3130. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2020 (link)

GPinkerton (talk) 19:48, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I went and read your reference and it's interesting. It is representative of the minority view, but I am thinking more and more, the minority view should be in this article. So do so. If I were writing this article myself, I would haver fewer anecdotal examples from specific countries, and much more of this kind of discussion of what persecution is, whether it is, and where - if it is. It's total nonsense to say Christians have the ability to compel anyone to be dominated by them in secular nations, or in countries where there is a state religion and they are not it, or in those places where they are opposed socially, or are a minority. That isn't really possible - think strategically. What this author accuses them of can't be done. Why do minorities riot and burn things down? Because minorities so often don't get a voice. That applies no matter who the minority is. 208 million Christians live in countries where they are a religious minority.

BTW, that PEW study indicates Islam is persecuted in 142 countries, only 2 less than Christians. I also believe that. I go with the statistics. You say the FCO lists 25 instances of persecution with "only" 10 of those aimed at Christians. Statistically then, 8 to 10 would have been aimed at Muslims, 3 would have involved Buddhists, and the last two could be any number of groups. That's the way the stats fall out no matter whose data you look at. What you quoted verifies that Christians are being persecuted too, doesn't it? But they aren't alone. There is no religious group in the world today that isn't suffering persecution of some kind. No one has ever claimed Christians were the only ones - just the biggest group. But they would be wouldn't they, simply because there are more of them. That's what statistics explain.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:34, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jenhawk777: Where are you reading this? The PEW report says there are 52 countries with "high/very high government restrictions on religion" and a further 4 have "high/very high social hostilities involving religion" as well. Even if all these 56 countries could be generously described as "persecuting", you would then have to show where the other 100-odd countries come from, and why you image they apply to only one religion. One such apparently "persecuting" country is France, with the justification that "the city of Lorette banned headscarves in a public pool". It says "government favoitism" towardds religion is in some places increasing, as "... in 2014, a concordat between the island nation of Cabo Verde and the Vatican granted privileges to the Catholic Church that were not available to other groups. The agreement allowed for “Catholic educational institutions, charitable activities, and pastoral work in military, hospitals, and penal institutions, as well as Catholic teaching in public schools.” It also provided tax exemptions for Catholic properties and places of worship." and The Greek government recognizes the Orthodox Church as the “prevailing religion” and funds the training of clergy, priests’ salaries and religious instruction in schools. Iceland’s government provides the official state Evangelical Lutheran Church with financial support and benefits not available to other religious groups. And in the UK, the monarch is the supreme governor of the Church of England, and must be a member of that church. and In 2011, the Samoan government began to enforce a 2009 education policy that makes Christian instruction mandatory in public primary schools.18 And, in 2017, Samoa’s parliament amended the constitution to define the country as a Christian nation.. It says, in fact, There has been a bigger increase in government limits on religious activities – such as restrictions on religious dress, public or private worship or religious literature – in Europe than in any other region during the course of the study but "government limits on religious activities" are not persecution and amount to innocuous rules like "employees of judicial institutions are prohibited from wearing “religious insignia” at work" and "prohibitions on wearing religious symbols or clothing in photographs for official documents or in public service jobs to national bans on religious dress in public places" and even highly-necessary prohibitions on exploitative cults, as "... in the United Kingdom, the high court found that a Scientologist’s allegation of discrimination was not valid after the Church of Scientology was barred from holding legal marriage ceremonies because it was not “a place of meeting for religious worship.” and dangerous mutilations "... in Slovenia, Muslim and Jewish groups accused the Slovenian ombudswoman for human rights – a government figure – of religious discrimination after she called child circumcision a criminal offense" Much of what might really be termed persecution happens in countries with active warzones in which (you guessed it) rival religions are attacking each other for the benefit of no-one. "Persecution of Christians" in the PEW report amounts to the Kiev-Moscow schism in Christianity itself (and concomitant religious warfare) and the restrictions on Jehovah's Witnesses and other cults in authoritarian countries, where all religious material is controlled. As with the other examples, the persecution is not directed especially or particularly at Christians - as the report says: "Many of the countries with high levels of religious violence by organized groups have active Islamist militant groups within their borders. This includes ISIS and other groups in Syria, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, al-Shabaab in Somalia, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hamas in the Palestinian territories." I'm seeing nothing, nothing, that justifies the claim Christainity is persecuted in more countries than any other, or in 142 countries (all bar 48 of them) for that matter. GPinkerton (talk) 23:57, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton don't misquote me to make baseless allegations. I never said they apply to only one religion. I specifically said the opposite: There is no religious group in the world today that isn't suffering persecution of some kind. No one has ever claimed Christians were the only ones - just the biggest group. But they would be wouldn't they, simply because there are more of them. I'll be sure not to hold my breath till you admit error.

On the rest of this wall of textual tirade, first, you're looking in the wrong place, and second, you're only quoting part of the data. Key findings on the global rise in religious restrictions is where you'll find the numbers I quoted: [9] #4 says: "Overall, the number of countries where various religious groups were harassed either by governments or social groups increased in 2016. This represents the largest number of countries in which harassment took place since the start of these analyses in 2007, and all of the religious groups included in this report (with the exception of the unaffiliated) were affected. The most widely targeted groups in 144 and 142 countries respectively were Christians and Muslims, the world’s two largest religious groups.

The share of countries with “high” or “very high” levels of social hostilities involving religion remained stable at 27%. but that's just the upper end - the worst - that's not the total.

Yes, you are correct in saying There has been a bigger increase in government limits on religious activities – such as restrictions on religious dress, public or private worship or religious literature – in Europe than in any other region during the course of the study but for your own reasons, which I will refrain from speculating about, you fail to quote the rest: One of the consistent takeaways from a decade of tracking is the relatively high level of government restrictions on religion in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which has ranked above all other regions each year from 2007 to 2017. ... government favoritism has barely increased in the Middle East over the course of the study, partly because it started at such a high level that there was not much room for growth on the scale.

Third, you're wrong in saying "government limits on religious activities" are not persecution and amount to innocuous rules. Persecution and discrimination are not the same things, but let's be clear, as I said above, The Ashgate Research Companion to Religion and Conflict Resolution says "restriction on religious' freedom correlates with armed conflict and physical religious persecution. Page 232. That's a scientific claim. Grim and Finke say the same thing. page 81: "The measures for government restrictions on religion have the strongest total effect on violent religious persecution." Where there is high government restriction of religion there is high persecution.

Fourth, please show me where the PEW report says the persecution is not directed especially or particularly at Christians. The Factank report directly contradicts your claim, and I don't believe PEW said it.

The fact countries have terrorist groups in them increases the likelihood of persecution. Terrorists do often target groups based on religion including minority Islamic groups, Christians and others. Read the state department reports, and the Uppsala reports for proof of that. There's too much for me to type out here. The Global Terrorism Database is one of the most comprehensive sources on terrorism around the world and is the source for the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism. Read them all. Religious persecution is real. Christians are not exempt.

Finally, Please note that I conceded eliminating the sentence you and Pincrete disliked at the start. In my very first comment, I said Unless there is a good argument for leaving an entire section unrepresented in the lead, something needs to be there. It doesn't have to be this sentence, but it needs to be something. Yet apparently you don't take yes for an answer. It remained necessary from your point of view to bully and browbeat me into agreeing - not about removing the sentence - but with your personal point of view.

Since I had already agreed to leave my sentence out, I asked a second time that one of you write a replacement sentence yourself. That was apparently beneath the notice of someone with the higher calling of correcting the rest of us. Neither of you even responded to say no, you couldn't be bothered. But the browbeating continued.

I agreed that a discussion of the minority view should be added to the article, but even that wasn't enough to stop the ongoing tirade over your personal views and feelings. Well I am done now.

I'm telling you now that if one of you doesn't write a sentence that accurately represents the data on the current situation, soon, I will be inserting something myself. I will not reinsert the sentence you objected to, just because you objected. I don't care why. Wikipedia requires that the lead summarize the article and current situation is not summarized in the lead. I don't care how you feel about it. Write it or don't, I don't care. But I do care about Wikipedia, and I will do something.

I won't be responding to any more of this waste of time.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 05:37, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jenhawk777: Why don't you propose something to add? As far as I can see, the lead already adequately summarizes the situation. GPinkerton (talk) 06:05, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. What sentence contains a summary of the current situation in your understanding? I am apparently missing it. If it's already there, then my objection is moot.

I do, however, really want to add a paragraph on definition. Your questions on 'is this persecution?' should be addressed. If you have them, readers will too. I will work on that in my sandbox and bring something.

And I really want to add the minority views you brought up. This is an encyclopedia and all the views should be represented not just some of them. Perhaps you would be willing to work on that, but please limit the advocacy aspect. A paragraph of minority views should be sufficient. Do you think it should be in the current situation section or up front under definitions? I am thinking up front.

All of the country by country information under current situation should also be removed from this article and placed in Persecution of Christians in the post–Cold War era which is pretty much just a list already. It belongs there, not here. Perhaps we should request comments on that. Jenhawk777 (talk) 15:37, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I also think that the present lead adequately summarises the current situation - by noting the most extreme forms of persecution - if any other notable examples exist, they can be added, but I would guess that summarising a world position is going to end up as a muddle. Pincrete (talk) 16:37, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Okay, if that's consensus then we will leave it. Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:40, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Informal request for opinion.

What does everyone think about moving the long list of countries under current situation over to Persecution of Christians in the post–Cold War era? It is a list, and this article duplicates much of it. It seems to me it would fit better there and doesn't really add much here. Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:53, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree that that section takes up much too much room and should be reduced to a more compact summary. The pertinent countries should still be named and treated separately, but there is too much of litany of examples and not enough analysis and overview. At the moment a three-decade window is taking up nearly half of the space on a subject covering nigh-on 2,000 years. I've already removed some material that had no place being there. GPinkerton (talk) 08:13, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Well done GPinkerton. I think your assessment is right on target. Keep up the good work! Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:10, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Crusades section needs to be narrowed down

This section is growing out of the bounds of all reason. The entire first paragraph is one repetition after another of statements already present in a later paragraph. They add nothing new or pertinent.

The second paragraph is a platform for advocacy. Make a single, supported, well referenced statement that the Eastern church was persecuted for having different beliefs than the Latins, and leave it at that. I doubt you will find it, but if it's there, it should be here. But ALL the commentary on how the Latins saw their opponents as barbarians is off topic and needs to go. It is not evidence of persecution.

All of these various peoples saw the "others" as barbarians. Tolerance as we know it was not a virtue in the eleventh century. The Byzantine stereotype of the Latin as uncultured barbarians was part of Byzantine culture from the first split between them. In the ninth century Photios claimed Pope Leo III had made Christians say the creed in Greek instead of Latin because Latin was such an inferior language. He used the same kind of terms for "Latins" that Niketas Choniates later used. Choniates "does not spare adjectives" to describe the Latins as noisy barbarians, treacherous and unrestrained "cobblers and beef eaters." The Byzantines, meanwhile, are "gentle and modest," while the Latins are "supercilious, boastful, arrogant and stupid." Muslims thought the same of all non-Muslims. It doesn't prove religious persecution on anyone's part.

The third paragraph is full of innuendo and mutual blame-shifting, but no real evidence of religious persecution either. This is not an article on the disagreements between Byzantium and the Roman church.

The fourth paragraph is more one-sided advocacy.

IMO, these paragraphs should be removed as non-neutral, and because they are simply off topic. We need to stay on topic better. Somebody please use your powers for good and revert and edit this section.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 05:54, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Disagree. The section is shorter than the section dealing with the 40 years of fascist dictatorship in Spain, yet it deals with a half-millennium span of the longest and most violent and extensive persecution of Christians there has ever been, which was itself justified by claims f persecution of Christians. All the paragraphs deal with persecution of Christians; I fail to see how it constitutes "innuendo and mutual blame-shifting" or "one-sided advocacy". It is an established fact that the crusaders undertook mass persecutions against all non-Catholics; why should this be omitted? It still needs expansion; it doesn't even mention the Fourth Crusade or the Frankokratia yet! (I see you removed my interim summary.) Choniates had good reason to dislike the Franks; they attacked, sacked, and enslaved Christendom's oldest and biggest city and expelled Choniates from it, as well as expelling the Christian hierarchy of the church of the Romans and replacing them with foreign Catholics. As you've said "Tolerance as we know it was not a virtue in the eleventh century", so when Catholicism promoted the persecution of non-Catholics as a virtue (error non habet ius), it's only right that that receive due coverage here. GPinkerton (talk) 18:02, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

It is an established fact that the crusaders undertook mass persecutions against all non-Catholics; No, it isn't. I've spent all day looking and I can't find a single source that supports that statement - even as a minority view.

Western Christianity saw Eastern Christianity as equally Christian - if somewhat misguided - which is exactly the same as Byzantines saw westerns. Pope Eugene III included at the beginning of Quantum predecessores and the Second crusade (1145) how greatly preceding Roman pontiffs "labored for the freedom of the Eastern church" calling on his contemporaries to do the same. "Innocent III in his crusading bull Quia Maior of 1213 asked how anyone could "know that his brothers, Christian in faith and name, are held in dire imprisonment among the perfidious Saracens ...and not take effective action for their liberation." The fourteenth-century magnate Don Juan Manuelin wrote in Libro de los estados that Muslims had conquered lands "converted to the faith of Jesus Christ by the apostles".

"Almost all the historians and chroniclers of the expeditions that were later called the First crusade considered them a response to the Muslim threats to Christian Holy places and peoples in the East". The Latins did not think of the Byzantines as anything but fellow Christians in need of help. That is not the basis of religious persecution by any definition.

According to Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon, "Relations between the Latin Catholics and other churches were pragmatic... The Crusaders gave little thought to conversion of either Muslim or Eastern Christians..." George T. Dennis writes that, what we call a crusade, was called a pilgrimage in the eleventh century. Those who took part were pilgrims, and it was a holy journey not a Holy War. The First "holy journey" was regarded as defensive, and did not advocate the forceful imposition of Christianity upon others. Forced conversion was an aspect of jihad foreign to Christianity both East and West at that time. No desire to convert = no basis for religious persecution.

Once Alexius got over the shock of seeing tens of thousands of Latins instead of the few hundred mercenaries he was expecting, he employed the "time honored strategies" of Constantinople to handle it: he used "power, panoply, bribery and diplomacy" and made a deal. First he exacted oaths from the crusaders to return Byzantine lands in return for weapons, food and assistance. But the Greeks outmaneuvered the Latins at the Battle of Nicea in May when they secretly took control of the city, and they later neglected to send troops to Antioch in 1098 when it seemed the Crusader's siege was failing and they needed help. The Byzantines said they kept their troops at home because intelligence said the crusaders were losing! Feeling betrayed, the Latins carried back anti-Byzantine propaganda to Europe. The Byzantines distrusted the Latins and acted accordingly. Then the Latins distrusted the Byzantines. Then they kept the land - for awhile. This was politics, and war, and mutual distrust, and that is what led to the deteriorating relationships between the two groups that eventually led to the Fourth crusade. Politics; it had nothing to do with religious persecution.

"The Latin East dabbled in the reformist, centralizing and "persecuting" trends of twelfth century Europe but chose not to participate in them". There were certainly massacres committed by the Latins, the Byzantines, the Turks, the Baibers, The Mamluks and others, but they were products of the kind of war practiced in the High Middle ages, not persecution.

The Fourth crusade can certainly be mentioned, along with the Venetians, but it can't legitimately be said to have been driven by a zeal to persecute Byzantines for not being Catholic.

when Catholicism promoted the persecution of non-Catholics as a virtue (error non habet ius), it's only right that that receive due coverage here.

Since that phrase wasn't coined until 1864 by Pope Pius IX, that's a conflation that isn't applicable here.

Thinking badly of each other isn't persecution. Political betrayals aren't religious persecution. Your claims are unsourced and non-neutral and off topic, and at least partly, just wrong.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 06:49, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

So you're just ignoring all the citations and sources already adduced to favour the quotes that (don't really) support your ideas. Your claim of the Fourth Crusade it can't legitimately be said to have been driven by a zeal to persecute Byzantines for not being Catholic is irrelevant. What actually happened was a mass persecution of Eastern Christians, as well as religiously motivated massacres of the same. If the persecution of Roman Catholic priests during the Spanish Civil War is persecution and not products of the kind of war practiced in the 20th century, then the persecution of Christians by the crusaders (and of the crusaders by other Christians) is persecution of Christians not products of the kind of war practiced in the High Middle ages. In fact, the book you choose to quote on the issue is at variance with the prevailing academic consensus, as The American Historical Review says:

Christopher MacEvitt is keen to set aside the commonly held view that the Franks treated the local Christians as heretics and second-class citizens, arguing that, at least in the twelfth century, there was a considerable measure of mutual respect and cooperation, and that the gulf between the Frankish Catholic Christians and the rest of society under Latin rule (in which Eastern Christians probably outnumbered Muslims) would not have been unbridgeable.

It is also absurd to use a text whose considerations deal with the 11th century only, since the Fourth Crusade (and most of the subsequent ones) happened in the 13th century or later. The review in The American Historical Review continues:

Moving beyond the end of the Third Crusade, mention is made of Jacques de Vitry as representative of a harsher attitude toward Eastern Christians, but how did the Fourth Lateran Council and the rise of the mendicant orders contribute to creating a new climate of opinion? In Cyprus, occupied by the Franks from 1191, it looks as if the rulers allowed "rough tolerance" to govern relations between the separate Greek and Latin hierarchies for the next thirty years; it was only in the early 1220s that Pelagio Galvani, the papal legate fresh from leading the Fifth Crusade to humiliating defeat, insisted on the subordination of the Orthodox to the Latins, setting the two main religious groups on the island on a damaging collision

. Indeed, actually reading MacEvitt reveals that the situation was very different in most of the history of crusading, as can be seen from another review in The Catholic Historical Review:

MacEvitt argues that the Latins became exclusive only in the thirteenth century, as a result of European ecclesiastical development and the radically changed nature of their settlement. The only application of the term heretic to eastern Christians before Jacques de Vitry in the thirteenth century occurs in the Letter of the Crusader Leaders dated September 11, 1098 (p. 1): it would have strengthened MacEvitt’s case if he had recognized that this denunciation was rooted in political events that also led to what he curiously describes as the crusaders “having chosen not to return the city [Antioch] to Byzantine control” (p. 100)

and another in the journal Common Knowledge:

For the twelfth century, that history is especially important, given how MacEvitt and other scholars have noted a fundamental recalibration in perception of “the other” that occurred in the thirteenth century.

Furthermore:

MacEvitt attempts to get the most out of what little there is, but alternative conclusions to questions such as the status and role of Meletos, the bishop of Gaza, could be advanced, while the evidence he adduces for Frankish patronage of Melkite religious foundations in Palestine is tenuous.

So not only is MacEvitt's book explicitly and deliberately irrelevant to most of crusading history, especially to the Fourth Crusade and all subsequent crusades, but its conclusions about relations between the western and eastern Christians in the 11th and 12th centuries are themselves not commonly accepted. The other sources do nothing to contradict the fact that persecution of Christians by crusaders was rife, indeed, the fact that the Catholics "gave little thought to conversion of either Muslim or Eastern Christians" is hardly surprising, given the preoccupation they had with removing their heads and properties. Neither is the fact that the crusades were considered armed pilgrimages. In fact it's difficult to see why the POV of the Catholic persecutors should be adopted, since modern historians' judgements are available, and we need not take those medieval views as representative of reality. The crusaders never bothered to mention their massacres of the clergy at Christendom's most senior cathedral, but we can know it occurred from non-crusader sources in Greek and Arabic. As for your claim that politics has nothing to do with religious persecution: I guess you wont object if I remove all mention of the USSR. After all, their persecutions of Christians were "only politics, not religious persecution" and since there was "No desire to convert=no basis for religious persecution."(!!!) Honestly, your opposition to this looks like cherry-picking. GPinkerton (talk) 07:44, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton Please refrain from personal accusations. Proceed from good faith. I have a commitment to what's good for the encyclopedia, that's it. The first paragraph contains unnecessary repetitions of what is already in the section. How many times is it necessary to state the same idea, over and over, in different ways?

The second paragraph is non-neutral. If the paragraph was neutral in its point of view it would - of necessity - include everyone's attitudes and not just those of the Latins. Plus, it would not just contain their negative attitudes, but would include a full representation of all their attitudes, including their good ones. Your sources both indicate everyone thought everyone else was a "barbarian" during the crusades. What's significant about that is that those attitudes do not automatically lead to or equate with persecution. There is no correlation between bad attitudes and persecution in any source. In fact, the definition of tolerance requires putting up with something of which you think badly. Perhaps bad attitudes lead to tolerance.

The second paragraph is not a neutral presentation of attitudes common during the crusades, and it does not accurately represent the full view of your own sources. It does not represent any discussion of persecution anywhere.

Neither of your first two sources claims, anywhere, that Latins persecuted Byzantines - bad attitudes or not. So let's look at what your third source says. The paragraph begins with Guibert of Nogent, a Catholic writer, the persecution suffered by the Eastern Christians and goes on in that vein. But what the source refers to is persecution by the Turks, isn't it? Not the Latins. That's on page 168.

On page 162, your source explains that he is looking at two 12th century historians who are divided in their views toward the Byzantines. Ní Chléirigh says "there was not a consensus of opinion [among the Latins] toward the Byzantines even for a number of years after the fall of Jerusalem." You quote only the one who is critical of Alexios without mentioning the other.

Ní Chléirigh says of the second historian on page 177 that the overall tendency of Fulcher to provide a conciliatory and fraternal image of the Byzantines is unmistakable. Choosing to mention one and exclude the other twists it to a point of view it never claims for itself. It's misleading. That is not a neutral approach to the topic. It is not even an accurate representation of what your source actually says for itself.

In this chapter, Ní Chléirigh says the crusaders arrived to a hostile population but that equity was restored. Nowhere in this book is there a claim that Latins persecuted Byzantines for their differing religious views. Ní Chléirigh does not even claim the Fourth crusade was persecution but was instead a result of deteriorating relations based on misplaced expectations, political maneuvering, and periodic betrayals. Alexios asked them to come then didn't want them there. He rejoiced at their losses. The Latins went home with bad attitudes of their own. That's the neutral sum total of what this source -- your source -- says.

None of this is documented as religious persecution in any of these sources.

Your next source is used for two sentences. When First Crusade's Siege of Jerusalem ended successfully for the crusaders, the patriarchate of Jerusalem was vacant, and the crusaders elevated a Latin patriarch without reference to either the Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox churches. Is this supposed to be an example of persecution? Your source doesn't claim that though. It says that because it was the crusaders who reclaimed it and not the Byzantines, "The crusader conquest of Jerusalem called into question "Byzantine claims to the protection of Jerusalem and the Holy places." Those who did the work then appointed one of their own as patriarch of the city. How is installing their own government and ignoring both Latin and Byzantine churches persecution of Byzantines only? This source does not claim that act was religious persecution but presents it more as the spoils of war. (Didn't you say above that government limits on religious activities are not persecution?)

This event isn't documented as an act of religious persecution in the source you use so it doesn't belong here.

Only when Saladin's Siege of Jerusalem was concluded and the city was returned to Muslim control were the Orthodox Christians allowed to practise in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Explain the rest of that story for heaven's sakes! Who destroyed it in the first place? Who tried to reclaim it and failed? Any claim to neutrality requires a full discussion or none at all.

So here you go on and on about MacEvitt who has put forward a new idea called "rough tolerance." It can be presented as a minority view if you like, but that does not make it unusable or inaccurate. As I said, views on the crusades are constantly changing. MacEvitt actually seems to be part of a new wave of scholars studying tolerance itself, and his views about it in the crusades are consistent with those other works. For example:

But the claim that Latins persecuted Byzantine Christians because they had bad attitudes toward them, or favored their own people, or even because they governed their territory according to their own views is not presented as persecution in any of the sources you have used or in any of the 20+ I have looked at. Not once does anyone say persecution of Christians by crusaders was rife.

But you know me: find a good source that says it and I will support putting it in. But it actually has to say what you claim -- no innuendo or implication or misrepresentation. That's just OR and Synth and has no place in this encyclopedia. That's the job we've accepted here.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:29, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

The destruction of the Holy Sepulchre is already examined in detail in the appropriate section. It was then rebuilt in the 11th century. For the entirety of its existence until the First Crusade, it was an Eastern Church. Then the Catholics expelled the Orthodox and it was only a century later when the Greeks were able to use their church again. The attempts of the Third and other crusades to recover Jerusalem a second time need not be explained here, as it is irrelevant. (Except for the persecutions against the Christians of Sicily and Cyprus carried out before the crusade reached Asia.) And yes the, the persecution and exile of the Greek patriarch (discussed by Angold) counts as persecution just as much as Franco's persecution of non-Catholics counts as persecution. Those who did the work then appointed one of their own as patriarch of the city. is just an example of your accepting uncritically the Catholic crusader POV. Had the crusaders never attacked Jerusalem and massacred its population, the work to which you euphemistically refer, the Christians would never have been deprived of their holiest shrine, and had the crusaders not occupied the city and seized the church, the Christians would have been able to resume their worship there, instead of having to wait several generations before Saladin liberated them. I fail to see why the persecution by Muslims is somehow more worthy of inclusion than is persecution by the Catholics, as you seem to claim, or why persecution which is far worse than anything suffered by any Christians today is somehow "rough tolerance". I fail to see why you imagine that the one crusader author that deliberately excises all mention of the crusaders' atrocities against the Romans (i.e. Fulcher) can somehow overturn the facts of the matter. That fact that one author pointedly took a slightly less hostile to them than did all his co-religionists is irrelevant and the positive attitude of one writer can hardly be said to outweigh the mass of evidence. Why would this singular attitude be relevant for inclusion in an article all about the persecution of Christians? Are you going to argue for the minimization of all Christianity's crimes against the Christians, and the continue your exaggerated claims about how Christianity is persecuted by others? Where, for example, did you get the claim (I have since removed) that Christians are persecuted in Turkmenistan? There was nothing about that in the source cited. Neither is there anything about persecution in the PEW report. I guess you'll be removing that now, and all the pearl-clutching claimed cited to it. All your other points are based on apparently wilful misreading of the sources. 19:55, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

A spirit of cooperation and compromise would go a lot farther than accusation and personal attack. Last things first. The ISCRF does mention Turkmenistan. On page 44 under recommendations: "Redesignate Turkmenistan as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) ... Impose targeted sanctions on Turkmen-istani government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States under human rights related financial and visa authorities, citing specific religious freedom violations; and ... secure the identification and immediate release of individuals imprisoned in Turkmenistan for their peaceful religious activities or religious affiliations, and urge the government of Turkmenistan to desist immediately from the practice of “disappearing” prisoners; account for the whereabouts of all prisoners of con-science, including those imprisoned on religious grounds."

I didn't misread any sources. I quoted them directly. I have no feeling whatsoever about espousing a Catholic point of view. I am not Catholic, and I really don't appreciate bringing such personal information into Wikipedia discussions about content. I do understand that you can't see any other point of view here. It seems there is no point in continuing. Once again, belligerence wins over commitment to quality encyclopedia.Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:34, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I didn't misread any sources. I quoted them directly. Where you have quoted above, the text makes no mention of persecution of Christians in Turkmenistan. You've just assumed that because it's listed as a CPC by the US Gov't they must be persecuting Christians because their "former communism" (whatever that means). But the source makes no mention of this, so your adding in to the lead (!) of the article was pure SYNTH. I've not accused you of being Catholic, just of promoting the mediaeval Catholic perspective on the crusades (i.e. Crusading is defensive, motivated by persecution of Christians, and of net benefit to Christianity.). To present a neutral article, we need to treat persecution of Christians objectively as a significant and fundamental part of Christian ideology, not as some tool invented by non-Christians to attack Christianity (which is of course how the Church sees it). GPinkerton (talk) 21:10, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Good grief! That is a direct quote written above from page 44 of the USCIRF Full Report: the Turkmenistan government is directly responsible for "disappearing" prisoners! But you do have to look at the full report. Here: [10] There is no synth and I am not wrong about this claim. Your inability to properly access the material is not my fault. In the future, consider an alternative to making accusations: come back here and say you can't find the quote could I tell you where it is? That would demonstrate good faith which is what we are supposed to do on WP.

And according to this dif: [11] I am not the one who put Turkmenistan in the article by name. You did, Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:14, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

You say I've not accused you of being Catholic, just of promoting the mediaeval Catholic perspective on the crusades No, GPinkerton NO. You are wrong, completely wrong. I am not promoting anything but as full an accounting of what sources say as I can manage. I used your own sources to show that they do not reflect your claim of persecution of Christians during the crusades. I also said I remained open to you finding sources that do support that claim, (since the ones you accused me of ignoring didn't), and that I would fully agree with putting in anything you can find on that topic that is actually in a good source. I note you have not come back with any so far. That's all I care about.

I have no other opinion on this, outside what the sources say. I have no particular feelings about any of it, nor desires to reflect any view over any other. What's it to me if people in the middle ages persecuted one another? I have no emotional investment in any particular interpretation of the past. Why would I? It's the past.

My only emotional commitment is to writing a quality encyclopedia in the here and now. I have a commitment to good faith and cooperation because I know personally, that's how WP works best. I have a personal commitment to practicing kindness and not responding to personal attacks even when I get them. If someone complains about my work, and I can, I adjust to their concerns without getting defensive and aggressive because it is better for the encyclopedia if we all cooperate.

It's not only no skin off my nose to cooperate, I believe content is always improved when cooperation happens, and that's actually why I am here. If good sources support a complaint, or if reasonable adjustments to style can be easily made – I cooperate because that's how WP works - and why it works - when so many others like it have failed. Accurately reflecting the sources, cooperation with one another, good faith in other's willingness to do those same, these are what makes WP work. These represent my commitment to WP quality and not any particular bias.

Who cares whose medieval point of view it is? What difference could it possibly make today? This is an encyclopedia. This is not a platform for espousing one point of view over another. For that you need to blog. I don't blog.

we need to treat persecution of Christians objectively as a significant and fundamental part of Christian ideology First you'd have to prove it is a "fundamental part of Christian ideology". I studied World religions and philosophy in college and graduate school. Over the last 40 years since that time, I've read a lot of histories of theology, and histories of Christian thought, and seen a lot of shifts in scholarship, but I've never seen this. But I don't know everything. I could be wrong, so, as I always say - find a source that says it, and I'll support putting it in. Because this is an encyclopedia and not a blog. I don't know what more I can say GPinkerton. I believe I am done trying to work with you.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:07, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jenhawk777: I find a little hard to understand how anyone can dissent from the idea persecution is a significant and fundamental part of Christian ideology. Christians worship a persecuted and executed god, and it goes from there. All his alleged friends were persecuted. Tertullian envied the deaths of 2nd century martyrs. Conflicting Christian groups in Roman Africa competed to get themselves killed by provoking persecution by pagans and one another. The Doctor of the Church Basil the Great, speaks of the Diocletianic Persecution as "the good old days". Honestly, they never taught you about martyrdom? About the athletes of Christ and the milites Christi? You never heard of confessors, hieromartyrs, Saint Ambrose, the 20,000 martyrs of Nicomedia? Never been in a church decorated with scenes of the most varied and elaborate tortures Christians of yore are imagined to have suffered? What world religion did you study?! I say I have reflected the sources accurately. You claim otherwise, but you have not demonstrated it. And no, I did not put Turkmenistan in the article by name. (It doesn't even appear in the diff you've adduced as evidence for that claim!) You, however, did add Turkmenistan to the article by implication, ([12]) with your uncited claim that "Eight of these countries are either currently communist or former communist states such as China, Cuba, Russia and Vietnam." What's the eighth country? Turkmenistan. Where's the evidence for persecution of Christians in Turkmenistan? Nowhere. It should not surprise you that I have already looked at the report you are citing, and yes, you are misreading it. There is nothing about persecution of Christians. The word is only mentioned the once, and only in the context of stating they are 9% of the population. The persecution discussed is directed at Islam and draft dodgers. Christians are not mentioned. GPinkerton (talk) 04:50, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton I apparently misunderstood what you were saying when you referred to persecution as a fundamental part of Christian ideology. I thought you were referring to inflicting it, not receiving it, so I apologize for my misunderstanding.

The diff I referenced [13] is the one where you changed my summary to include names of countries. I assumed Turkmenistan must be on your list, and didn't check, since I knew it couldn't have been on mine - since I had avoided having one. I apologize for that assumption.

I didn't include Turkmenistan and you didn't, so I looked at last week's edit history to find where anyone put Turkmenistan in, and I can't find Turkmenistan in any diff, or anywhere in the article either, so now I am completely confused by this whole boondoggle. It seems as though you are complaining about something that isn't actually there. Could that be correct?

Your complaint that I am reflecting the views of the Catholic middle ages is true to some extent, since that is what the historians do. These aren't my personal views, and they may not be the historian's personal view either, because a historian can only legitimately describe the past in the past's terms and views. It isn't copacetic to judge history by contemporary values. Presentism (literary and historical analysis) is considered a logical fallacy in historical study. So the good historians reflect the views of the time. That's what there is.

On WP, we don't judge, we don't interpret either. We just report.

Sorry about any confusion I may have contributed to. Jenhawk777 (talk) 07:25, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jenhawk777: No problem, don't worry. The problem is that in fact there are numerous sources from the middle ages that emphatically do not reflect the perspective of the persecutors but the persecuted, and even though it was very rhetorical in tone and polemical in intent, the persecutions certainly happened and should be characterized as such. This is especially true when we use a maximalist definition for modern religious persecution, which in many instances are no more or less complicated by war-time, political considerations, ethnic or national dimensions, and so on than are the crusades and persecutions of the middle ages, and indeed, are often not precisely referred to as persecution per se, as in that PEW document cited. GPinkerton (talk) 08:27, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton Sources from the middle ages are primary sources of course, which we never use, because that would be OR. We only use the secondary sources of historians who have studied and interpreted those primary sources. We can only reflect their interpretation. If they say persecution happened, then we should say so and reference them accordingly. Jenhawk777 (talk) 09:21, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Crusade section still needs editing

This section still contains unnecessary repetitions. One or two sentences claiming the crusades were defensive is sufficient.

This section needs a good secondary source that actually states that Eastern Christians were persecuted by Latin Christians for their religion. That is the definition used in the rest of this article. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:50, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

United States

I have added a paragraph on the restrictions on church gatherings in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. @Rhododendrites: reverted this edit, saying, "Yeah ... that's not what this article is about."

I believe that is what this article is about. Banning church services, and arresting pastors and believers who attend church services, is described as "persecution" in the other countries mentioned in the article. So, when the U.S. government authorities did this during COVID-19, that's the topic of this article. 216.14.157.170 (talk) 15:52, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

No that is not persecution of Christians, as everyone is banned from this kind of thing, shops clubs other religions. Also RS have to say it is persecution.Slatersteven (talk) 15:57, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

No, everyone is not banned from this kind of thing. In the Supreme Court case I cited in the article it mentioned that the COVID-related restrictions were applied more severely

to churches that to other types of public establishements.216.14.157.170 (talk) 16:01, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Read wp:v.Slatersteven (talk) 16:05, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Also I cannot find where it says that.Slatersteven (talk) 16:07, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I think the claim is that churches were treated more severely than casinos and suchlike temples of Satan! Regardless, no WP:RS has described this as 'Persecution of Christians'. Pincrete (talk) 16:26, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

So not "all other types" just some (which are businesses that reply on customers, unlike churches which can function on line). So (again) the source (which may not even be an RS) does not say its persecution, just unfair.Slatersteven (talk) 16:38, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

216.14.157.170 IMO, the others are right.Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:01, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Images

The top-ish right is a little crowded, at least from a laptop. 3 leadimages are 2 too many. Is there a preference? Also, I don't think 3 images from Menologion of Basil II is needed. However this article is in clear violation of WP:TISSOT (a very obscure reference, mostly for Jenhawk). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:48, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Okay, I get it - now that you explained! It's missing a 'painting by Tissot'! I can't very well volunteer to put one in when what we need to do is take some out though! This article is crowded all right. It should probably be split into different eras. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:39, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Gråbergs Gråa Sång that there are just too many images in this article. One per section can be seen as illustrative, but more than that is just distracting. A GA or an FA review would immediately remove most of these. [14] explains the do's and don'ts of images like Don't use images or galleries excessively and Place images in the section to which they are related. There are three images in the lead - two too many - and it isn't possible to move them to their appropriate sections because they are already crammed full. Imo, whoever added these needs to pick the one they like the best and delete the rest - or at least someone needs to. Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:14, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Voluntary martyrdom

I am rewriting a small section for multiple reasons.

This sentence Roman authorities tried hard to avoid Christians because they "goaded, chided, belittled and insulted the crowds until they demanded their death." is not supported by the references cited which say nothing of Roman authorities avoiding Christians for these reasons. The "goading" quote (on page 21 of Ide's book) is a specific reference to the martyrdom of Perpetua and not a general comment. It says her "singing of hymns", and her "motions and gestures" at death suggested to her audience that she was saying "You have condemned us but God will condemn you." Her audience interpreted that as "a deliberate provocation" on the part of the dying. This isn't a particularly good unbiased source, but even it only says, "The martyrs in this account goaded, chided, belittled and insulted the crowds until they demanded their death". Changing it to a more generalized statement is OR and POV. Also, this is De Croix's "quasi-volunteer martyrdom" which is a disputed modern concept that didn't exist in Antiquity, yet is not described as such in this article.

The next paragraph makes a stab at balance, but contains enough POV that it also fails to give Due weight to prevailing scholarly views. In the martyr literature, "distinctions have been drawn between those who were enthusiastically pro-martyrdom, those who were pro-martyrdom and those who were anti-martyrdom... the Gnostics are cast as anti-martyrdom; Montanists and Donatists are cast as enthusiastic practitioners of voluntary martyrdom; and the orthodox as occupying a neutral, moderate pro-martyrdom stand". I don't see that taxonomy anywhere, so I am adding it.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:46, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Objection

I object to this edit: [15] and especially to the removal of the following text:

Persecutions of followers of doctrines which were seen as heretical or causing schism were persecuted during the reign of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, and they would be persecuted again later in the 4th century. The orthodox catholic Christians now close to the Roman state represented imperial persecution as an historical phenomenon, rather than a contemporary one.

and

After the accession of Constantine the Great, the Roman state was considered divinely directed, and the first great age of persecution, in which the Devil was considered to have used open violence to dissuade the growth of Christianity, was thought to be at an end. Henceforth, besides the third age of persecution expected to be associated with the advent of the Antichrist and the end time, the Devil's machinations in the second, middle age of persecution were to be worked through subterfuge against individual Christians. The last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty, Constantine's half-brother's son Julian (r. 361–363) opposed Christianity and sought to restore traditional religion, though he did not arrange a general or official persecution, since martyrdoms strengthened other Christians' resistance. By the later part of the century, the bishop Basil of Caesarea wrote of the era of persecution with retrospect, describing it as "the good old times when God's churches flourished, rooted in faith, united in love" in his 164th epistle.

and

For other Christians, including the dissident Donatists, state persecution continued unabated. They too no longer attributed persecution to the emperors, now Christians; they blamed non-Christian officials in the imperial government. Major persecutions were launched against Donatist Christians in Africa by first Constantine and then his sons and successors as augusti Constans and Constantius II.

and by the addition of the claim that In 385, Priscillian, a bishop in Spain, was the first Christian to be executed for heresy which is clearly untrue and can only be seen as true if one excludes the many Christians executed in the Constantinian persecutions, as much of this edit does. The removal of up-to-date, NPOV academic sources and their replacement by the facile, antique, and highly POV Catholic Encyclopaedia is clearly improper. What is the justification for this? All this material is well-sourced and highly relevant. GPinkerton (talk) 20:32, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

References

GPinkerton Okay, I had simply rephrased most of this for brevity and clarity, but I have no problem adding much of this back in.

The orthodox catholic Christians now close to the Roman state represented imperial persecution as an historical phenomenon, rather than a contemporary one. is still there in the article. followers of doctrines which were seen as heretical or causing schism were persecuted during the reign of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, and they would be persecuted again later in the 4th century. is now back.

After the accession of Constantine the Great, the Roman state was considered divinely directed, and the first great age of persecution, in which the Devil was considered to have used open violence to dissuade the growth of Christianity, was thought to be at an end. is still in the article.

Henceforth, besides the third age of persecution expected to be associated with the advent of the Antichrist and the end time, the Devil's machinations in the second, middle age of persecution were to be worked through subterfuge against individual Christians. seems irrelevant to an article on persecution.

The last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty, Constantine's half-brother's son Julian (r. 361–363) opposed Christianity and sought to restore traditional religion, though he did not arrange a general or official persecution, is still in the article.

By the later part of the century, the bishop Basil of Caesarea wrote of the era of persecution with retrospect, describing it as "the good old times when God's churches flourished, rooted in faith, united in love" in his 164th epistle is not in the refernce given. It is instead on page 216 of "A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church: St. Basil: Letters and select works" published by the Christian Literature Co. which I think is a self-publishing company.

For other Christians, including the dissident Donatists, state persecution continued unabated. is incorrect according to Tilley who says they occurred at different times.

I am fine with removing Priscillian. I hope that is everything. Does that help?

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:01, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

@Jenhawk777: Thanks! There are a few issues though: the quote from Basil of Caesarea is very much in the cited reference, in the penultimate paragraph: "In the late 4th century Basil could look back on the persecutions as ‘the good old times when God’s churches flourished, rooted in faith, united in love’ (ep. 164, 1)." Priscillian presumably has place somewhere but describing him as the "first Christian executed for heresy" is too absurd in light of the more than a half-century of state-mandated tortures and killing of Christians by various other Christians that had elapsed before Priscillian's turn came. I can only assume his name was retrospectively cleared by the repentant Church, unlike the Donatists' and everyone else's that opposed the saint-emperor Constantine. Tilley is an older source than is the one cited. Augustine's masochistic view of how persecution improves Christianity is a highly relevant demonstration of how the Christians (and particularly the dominant "Catholics" of the day) rationalized the persecutions and incorporated them in their theology and sacred history, inclsuing how, in Augustine's time, "orthodox" Christians were the hegemonic social group and could afford to believe that persecution of Christians had ended (by ignoring their own persecutions of those whom they considered to be "non-Christians" or "heretics"). "Continued unabated" means that the persecution of the Donatist Christians did not end with the conversion of Constantine, not that it never ended or that is was of continuous and constant intensity. GPinkerton (talk) 21:23, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

GPinkerton happy to oblige. I am grateful you placed your objections here and didn't just aggressively revert the whole package. :-) So thank you for being reasonable in the first place, it made it easier to respond in kind. I just quoted the source about Priscillian, but if one counts the Donatist martyrs as Christian martyrs, which seems correct to me, then the claim is clearly absurd and deserved to be removed. You were right.

I looked in the ref given about Basil, as I know that is an actual quote from Basil's writing, he does long for the good old days when the church was united and not divided as it is in his day, but I could not find it. I then googled the phrase and found it in that other source. So why can't I find it or any relevant discussion of it in your reference? Please feel free to add it back in anyway, as I am sure you are truthful and there is some other issue with why I can't see it.

I do request leaving out "unabated" as it is a synonym of continuous, and I think will be read that way. Thank you! Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:38, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Jenhawk777, Are we looking a the same thing? I'm saying Basil is quoted in the penultimate paragraph in the entry on "Christians, persecution of" in the 2018 Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, which reads:

Thenceforth, methodical persecution of Christians ceased in the Roman Empire. The name of only one martyr is known from the reign of Licinius, and the Emperor Julian (361–3) was too canny to enforce a centrally planned persecution as he knew that martyrdoms simply stiffened Christian resistance. In the late 4th century Basil could look back on the persecutions as ‘the good old times when God’s churches flourished, rooted in faith, united in love’ (ep. 164, 1). The persecution of Christians in Gothic territory in the time of S. Sabas, in the Persian Empire under Shapur II, and in Najran in the early 6th century, however, were to evoke comparable spiritual strength expressed in martyr passions whose literary manner resembled those composed in the Roman Empire.

GPinkerton (talk) 21:45, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

GPinkerton What page are you on? I have the book called up now on Googlebooks and have input "good old times", Basil, Licinius, and Julian and this is nowhere to be found! WTF!!! Whatever! I believe you! Put back whatever you think is relevant! Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:57, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Jenhawk777, yeah I've had that problem before with Google Books. I'm looking at the online edition on OxfordReference so I don't have page numbers (it doesn't show them). The self-published source you found the quote in is probably just a reprint from some older translation of Basil's works that's no longer in copyright so can be reprinted by whoever. Basil Julian and Licinius all have their own entries and appear many times in other subjects' as well so as search terms n that book they're quite unhelpful. I also searched for "canny"; the one instance Google Books found was a different one to the one quoted here so I guess that chapter is just not part of the Google Books preview (!). GPinkerton (talk) 22:15, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

GPinkerton Ahhhh - the perversity of Googlebooks! That explains all. :-) Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:21, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Undefined refs

@Jenhawk777: it looks like you added some refs with no definition last year. I've fixed a few, but don't know what to do for "Graham-Leigh" and "Humanities". Could you please fill in those sources? -- Fyrael (talk) 18:39, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Well crap -- Fyrael!! I am so so sorry! I should have checked to be sure everything had transferred correctly and I didn't so my bad. I will fix them immediately if not sooner! Thank you for telling me and for your patience. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

It's not a big deal. Everybody misses stuff sometimes. I just hope you can remember where you got it from nearly 6 months ago. Not sure I'd be able to. -- Fyrael (talk) 19:22, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

 Done I had another article I knew I had used the same references in - History of Christian thought on persecution and tolerance. I write on topics in Christianity a lot and there is sometimes substantial overlap from one to another - so they were easy to find. It was no trouble at all, and I thank you for taking care of that and letting me know. This article has more references than any other article I have ever been associated with. Everyone brought their own in an area they focus on, I guess. Quite mind-boggling really - but for all that, it is really a pretty good article imo. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:47, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Anti-Christian sentiment

Article called "anti-Christian sentiment" should be created in line with other world religions. Persecution is not necessarily related to Christianophobia. Criticism of Christianity is not anti-Christian and why the page redirected to it? The Supermind (talk) 18:28, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

The Supermind You are quite right; those most critical of Christianity tend to be Christians themselves with the goal of improvement. Can't fix what you refuse to see. But there is certainly a lot of anti-Christian sentiment out there. So what criteria would be used to differentiate those two? Not all of those who see the value of Christianity and criticize it for its good are believers, and some of those who have become anti-Christian are actually believers: it isn't God they hate it's other people. So what does one do with that? How could that even be written? Are there sources that discuss this? Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:18, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Jenhawk777 Thank you for your support my suggestion. I've recently created anti-Christian sentiment and you may help by expanding it. The Supermind (talk) 13:54, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

No Nazis

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

@Aenir95: Your genocide denialism fails WP:NONAZIS. If you continue your chauvinistic edits you will be booted out this website. tgeorgescu (talk) 15:11, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

tgeorgescu: I will note that WP:NONAZIS isn't official Wikipedia policy. Obviously scrubbing genocide from articles is bad and should be prevented (probably falls under WP:NOTCENSORED as official policy), but that linked page isn't a policy that will get you banned just for violating it. I would also suggest focusing on content rather than the other editor, there is no good that can come from that. {{u|SamStrongTalks}} ^(Talk) 15:16, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Also take it wp:ani or their talk page, do not issue warnings here.Slatersteven (talk) 15:17, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

@SamStrongTalks and Slatersteven: Warned him with{{alert}}. tgeorgescu (talk) 15:18, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Then this can be closed.Slatersteven (talk) 15:40, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Danish National Research Database

The article references that the Danish National Research Database argues that Christians are the most persecuted religion in the world. The DNRD is a research database, it doesnt argue anything. Similarly, Paul Vallely makes no such argument in the cited article instead referring to an unsourced claim from the ISHR.

I propose striking this sentence: "Paul Vallely and the Danish National Research Database, argue that Christians are, as of 2019, the most persecuted religious group in the world.[301][302][303]" entirely from the article

1) Paul Vallely's article was written in 2014 and makes no such claim. 2) the DNRD is a research database and does not make any claims. Strawgate (talk) 23:22, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Strawgate you are correct in that this needs rephrasing. It is the DNRD's data that indicates Christians were the most persecuted for that year, and in order to convey that without synth or OR, the data itself needs to be posted so the reader can reach their own conclusions. Thanx for pointing that out. In lieu of that, and since it isn't really a major point, so as far as I am concerned, all the various claims of this type can be removed instead. Go for it. Jenhawk777 (talk) 03:35, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Jenhawk777 for future reference, in case this discussion comes up again -- the article in the DNRD was actually an editorial called "Persecution of Christians - A taboo?" which simply stated, "This despite the fact that Christians are the most persecuted religious group." It is only two pages, provides no data and does not source the original claim. For my reference, is it typical to indicate that a database of published articles provides data about something instead of the author of the article in the database? Strawgate (talk) 05:10, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Strawgate I have never sourced an editorial. I tracked back to the original source data, but it's a moot point now because the database has been discontinued. I have found that to be quite common. There are a lot of conflict and human rights trackers but they don't seem to last long. The best current source is PEW [16] which has reported Christians and Muslims as the most persecuted with Christians only marginally higher than Muslims. It is important to note that while PEW counts countries, it does not attempt to tabulate the numbers of individuals within each of those countries - so who knows the totals really? It's difficult and time consuming to track down dependable data on this topic for any religious group. Here is a report given to the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS at the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES in 2014 that says Christians are the most persecuted, but they have no verifiable stats that I can find. The Cato Institute just quotes PEW [17]. The [18] is the state department report I always end up back at. That's pretty much it right now. Jenhawk777 (talk) 09:36, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

What is the problem?

@Slatersteven: what's the problem with my edits? The execution of James the Just is an act of persecution and the acts of Claudius were hostile towards Jewish-Christians.-Karma1998 (talk) 07:27, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

For a start, RS need to say it was persecution, we can't use wp:or to take a primary text and interpret it. Even you yourself said one of these incidents was not "technically" persecution.Slatersteven (talk) 09:20, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Slatersteven and Karma1998 G. E. M. de Ste. Croix in WHY WERE THE EARLY CHRISTIANS PERSECUTED? available here: [19] refers to James as a martyr: "any Christians who were martyred, like Stephen and James "the Just" (the brother of Jesus), were victims of purely Jewish enmity". This article also refers to him as a martyr: and this one: and many, many more that it is pointless to list because all RS refer to James as a martyr.

That indicates the question is: does martyrdom qualify as an act of persecution?

By any modern definition, yes. Since there are no ancient sources, of any kind, that refer to any early religious execution as persecution, every article on WP that discusses any kind of ancient religious persecution does so based on our modern definition, and in that modern definition, being murdered for your religion is persecution.

The same reasoning applies to the expulsion under Claudius. If the later expulsions of the Jews were acts of persecution, then the early expulsion under Claudius qualifies as well. It's only reasonable.

References

Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:24, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Only if RS say they were...Persecution. it has to use that word or at least a synonym. Nor do we do wp:or to interpret sources.Slatersteven (talk) 08:29, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Slatersteven Martyrdom is a synonym. We interpret sources every time we paraphrase anything, it's impossible to avoid. Any discussion of ancient persecution is a modern interpretation. Do you claim otherwise? Jenhawk777 (talk) 16:31, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Read wp:or, we can paraphrase, as long as anyone could come to the same reading. RS have to say it was persecution, not how we read it. If it was persecusti8on a modern source would have said so, it's not as if these events have not been discussed over the last 100 years.Slatersteven (talk) 16:38, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Slatersteven I have no argument with anything you have said here. You are absolutely correct. The disconnect we seem to be having is whether or not a constant and continuous reference in the RS to "martyrdom" counts as a continuous and constant reference to a specific persecution, and whether most people read it that way. Wikipedia has already defined Martyr as "A martyr (Greek: μάρτυς, mártys, "witness"; stem μαρτυρ-, martyr-) is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or cause as demanded by an external party..." I personally think this is a ridiculous argument since a martyrdom, by definition, assumes a persecution, but hey, we can hash this through if you like. Shall we ask for comment on this? Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:28, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

No it does not, if it did RS would say so. If you want to RFC go ahead.Slatersteven (talk) 08:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Clarifying the proposal and the problem

It's difficult to see what is the proposal from the diff. Here is what I see. A subsubsection Josephus is added under a new subsection Israel and a subsubsection Claudian expulsion is added in an existing subsection Roman Empire. Here are the two added subsubsections:

Josephus

Josephus reports in the Antiquities of the Jews that High Priest Ananus ben Ananus took advantage of the death of Roman procurator Porcius Festus to have James the Just and others stoned to death. This act angered the new procurator Lucceius Albinus and the Jewish king Herod Agrippa II, who had Ananus deposed and replaced by Jesus ben Damneus.

Claudian expulsion

Main article: Claudius' expulsion of Jews from Rome

While technically not a persecution, the first official hostile act of the Empire towards Jewish-Christians happened under the reign of Claudius: according to the Acts of the Apostles and ancient historians Suetonius, Cassius Dio and Orosius, Claudius had both Jews and Jewish-Christians expelled from Rome because they were causing disturbances. Both groups were re-admitted in the Capital after Claudius's death.

References

So, what is the problem with this? Normally, the problem is described in the most specific way possible, so that we can see if and how we can adapt the proposal. I have not seen this discussion happen. If it did happen, it will be useful to summarize it here, because that is what is needed for the RfC. Dominic Mayers (talk) 19:42, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Good evening @Dominic Mayers:: I apologize, but I haven't followed much of the discussion. I would simply point out that the execution of James, brother of Jesus can, in my view, be considered persecution, since Josephus himself states that some citizens were "outraged" by Ananus ben Ananus's actions and Lucceius Albinus was enraged by this act, meaning that it was a political act of persecution by the High Priest toward the early church. I do recognize, however, that Claudius' expulsion of Jews from Rome is difficult to classify as a persecution, since it was not specifically aimed at Christians. Still, I do believe that Christians considered it a persecution (though this is obviously subjective).--Karma1998 (talk) 20:18, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

The rule for inclusion is that it must be pertinent to the topic. (It must also be pertinent with respect to its context in the article. Some content might not be pertinent in one section, but be pertinent in another section.) Whether it is a persecution or not is not the final criterion. I believe that martyrs during a persecution are pertinent and I am confident that RSs prove this point. It can be seen as a part of the persecution of the group. Some might directly see it as a persecution of the martyr, but these are details. Similarly, the Claudian expulsion can be pertinent to provide a context. Now, I would like to take another angle on this. I would like to know what is the confusion, lack of clarity or perhaps misinformation or whatever is the problem with the proposal. Thus far the focus was on the notion that is not a persecution, but this is not a problem in itself, if it is pertinent. So, what is the problem? I would say that it is possible that the pertinence can be made more clear in the text, but a discussion will be useful to achieve that. Or maybe the discussion will make clear that there is a serious issue for some reason that must be made explicit. So, what is the specific issue? Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:59, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Dominic Mayers What you have above on the subsections is what Karma1998 put in the article [[20]] that was reverted by Slatersteven within 30 minutes [[21]]. Slatersteven said his reason for removing it was that it was OR because the source did not use the word 'persecution': RS need to say it was persecution, we can't use wp:or Slatersteven then said it could be included if and Only if RS say they were...Persecution. it has to use that word or at least a synonym. That is the sum total of the issue.

I think that argument is purely semantics. Thesaurus.com gave 'killing' and 'murder' as synonyms for persecution, so I went with that argument in response. All the reliable sources say James was killed - illegally murdered - martyred for his faith. I don't see how anyone can be killed for their religion and not be considered as persecuted, but the sources use the words killed and martyred and murdered and not persecuted. I think that's about timing - most persecution is spread over a period of time - whereas killing someone isn't. That doesn't mean killing isn't an aspect of persecution, it just means it's a specific variety of it, and is labeled differently accordingly.

But Slatersteven has been inflexible on his requirement for that one word and has been unwilling to accept a description from the context in the sources as an acceptable equivalent.

You have restated what Slatersteven already reverted, and asked the very same question Karma did - what is the problem? - but I'm afraid you will just continue to get the same answer as he has already said my mind and opinion has not changed. This is just going over the same ground again and isn't going to get us anywhere. Jenhawk777 (talk) 02:03, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

This could be very well true, yet we have no choice but to discuss a possible modification of the proposal in view of the result of the RfC. In fact, to be on the safe side, if Slatersteven does not express a more serious problem than "it's not a persecution" or even "it's not the word persecution", other people here should do a critic of the current proposal in view of the conclusion of the RfC, which is that "being persecuted" cannot be used interchangeably with "being a martyr". This means that we must now read the proposal with the new understanding that it might not be directly about persecution. As you said, the issue might be that killing does not extend in time. Do we decide that it does not matter, because the readers will understand that it's related? I will be tempted to read carefully the sources again to see if they are taking care of this issue or to understand why the issue does not arise in their case—it might be because of the way the content is organized. We should do as if these critics were raised in the RfC. If it is decided after a discussion that what we do in the proposal is as good as what is done in sources in all respects, then we are ready for the RfC. Dominic Mayers (talk) 02:38, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

@Slatersteven: the first reason why I ask these questions is that I have a hard time to believe that, even after the discussion that we just had, your issue is still simply that the word "persecution" must be used, because otherwise it is OR. You are aware that the Wikipedia guidelines say that editors must discuss in good faith before doing the RfC and we do the RfC when the discussion stalls. Again, it looks weird to me that the discussion is stalled and you have no more to say than "it's not persecution in the sources, so it's OR". Dominic Mayers (talk) 03:09, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Because it is "technically not a persecution", and this page is about things that are.Slatersteven (talk) 07:59, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Again do RS say this [josephus subsubsection] was persecution, if not I fail to see how we can include it.Slatersteven (talk) 08:00, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Of course, the scope of an article is something that editors decide together. An RfC is not so useful for that purpose, because there is no strict rules and any reasonable choice of scope made by the editors (that work on the article) is fine and should be respected, because after all they are the editors that work on the article. Now, the editors here have not decided that the scope is very strict: that we only list acts of persecution that create no martyr, say because sources name them differently. On the contrary, they seem to inspire themselves from sources that do mention martyrs when the topic and the specific context is persecution. It's very natural to be flexible in the scope and include content that is related and thus contribute naturally to the topic. The only thing I see that should be discussed here is what the best way to do that. It's a decision that must be taken as a group. It's the consensus that should rule here. Dominic Mayers (talk) 08:29, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

We already have that, its called policy, in this case wp:v. That is there so that we do not have endless debates as to whether or not getting jailed for breaking the law (for example) is persecution. Indeed why does (say) your view this is persecution trump my view it is not, why does your wp:or trump mine.?Slatersteven (talk) 08:32, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

NO, WP:V is not broken here, if all the added content is verified in the sources and respects what is meant by them. In fact, I clearly insisted about that. Yes, you are right that we must be vigilant to avoid breaking WP:V, but you did not explain why the proposal is doing that. Please explain. You need to be explicit and look at the sources provided. I am far from knowing well the topic. This is why I ask the question. Maybe I missed something and you are the one that sees the sources correctly. That will be fine. Dominic Mayers (talk) 08:46, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Meta discussion

Dominic Mayers So now that you have pinned them down with a pointed question, we will see if you get any answer at all. It is my expectation that you won't. At least, that's been the pattern so far.

This is like being a hamster in a wheel going nowhere. The rest of us all seem more like-minded on this - for us it is merely deciding 'how' to include this and not 'if' - but for Slatersteven it is still 'if' it should be included.

Consensus should rule, but it isn't, because reverting and stonewalling are effective techniques against it. Throw in some edit war warnings and an editor can completely shut down input they don't like. I have seen this approach to editing quite often on WP; it's not uncommon. I personally have made the decision to try and do the opposite, that's why I go to the Talk page and Rfc and Third opinion and so on. But maybe I am wrong. Maybe they will respond. Maybe Santa Claus is real after all. Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:22, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, Jenhawk777 but I am not following you. Please only make comment about the article, its scope, its organization, its content. If there is a difficulty with an editor, we will see that when the time comes with standard procedures. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:46, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

I am commenting on the discussion here, its scope and content, which I am free to do and is not only constructive but needed as we continue over old ground. I am not limited to commenting on the article alone, as long as there is no PA which there isn't, but as you say, time will tell what response you get. Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:04, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

It's just that I did not felt that what you wrote was useful to me. It was not a positive view. Let's not discuss that further. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:15, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Err, I have, wp:v is clear, if it needs the correct "interpretation" to come to the same conclusions it does not say it. We need RS saying it was something. Directly, clearly, and unambiguously. And it is not the first time I have pointed that out.Slatersteven (talk) 09:54, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

@Slatersteven: For your information, here is a synonym for "interpretation":

a statement that makes something clear
  that's one possible interpretation of that cryptic remark

— merriam-webster

We do an interpretation every time that we add text that is not exactly as in the sources, which is always the case, except in direct quotations. In a humble manner, we say that it is an interpretation because there is always a possibility that the sources are misunderstood. Only a know-it-all would insist to say otherwise. Moreover, the main issue of interpretation has been taken care in the RfC. Nobody has the intention to change the terminology "martyr", "killed", "persecuted", etc. when it is systematically used in al the reliable sources. The current proposal does not do it. If all the sources always use "martyr", we will use the same word. So, again, no, there is no WP:V issue here. Please be way more explicit. Use specific extracts from the proposal and compare it with the sources. We need to be concrete here. I suspect that you confuse a scope issue with a WP:OR or WP:V issue. Do you understand the difference between a scope issue and a WP:OR or WP:V issue? Dominic Mayers (talk) 15:27, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

The RFC has said they are not synonymnous.Slatersteven (talk) 15:41, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

We all agree and this is why the proposal does not change the terms "martyr", "killed", etc. when they are systematically used in all the reliable sources. So, there is no problem at this level and the proposal should be accepted. Dominic Mayers (talk) 15:46, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Does Josephus use the term Martyr?Slatersteven (talk) 15:49, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

The added text uses "stoned to death". Isn't this what the source says? I don't see any WP:V issue. Where is the WP:V issue here? Dominic Mayers (talk) 15:53, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

"stoned to death" does not mean "Martyr". Jews were stoned to death, were they "Martyr's" (indeed James himself was technically still a jew, as the Christian church did not exist at the time, it was a sect of Judaism))?Slatersteven (talk) 15:57, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

You raise an issue, the relation between martyred and stoned to death, that is not raised in the sources. The proposal only says what is in the sources. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:00, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Nor is the idea this was an example of persecution, that is the point. The sources do not support the conclusion this was anything other than a legal execution based upon breaking the law, Josephus does don't tell us why he was executed, just that he was. It is OR to say "because he was a Christian" (as I said the church did not even exist at this time).Slatersteven (talk) 16:04, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

We are now just arguing the same points over and over again, its time for fresh eyes to look at this.Slatersteven (talk) 16:07, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

On the contrary, in my perspective, we are making progress. We switched from an issue of terminology to an issue that is independent of terminology. I never realized (even though you might have mentioned it somewhere hidden under all this issue of martyrs vs persecuted) that the main problem is that it's not pertinent, because the context in the source was not Christianity. BTW, the proposal does not say "because he was a Christian", so it's not OR. It can be non pertinent though. As I said, there might be an issue of scope and pertinence. We might be making a serious progress here. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:23, 22 August 2021 (UTC)