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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.
[1]
[2]
[3] 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.
[4]
[5]
[6] 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..."
[7] 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.
[8]
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
auto3
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).auto2
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Jenhawk777 ( talk) 15:22, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
"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
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.
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.
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." [1]: 6Anything 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.
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 18:44, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
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 differentis 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)
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 differentis preposterous" with a dependable non-biased source. My source - the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act of 1997: Private witnesses [3] 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?
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 05:56, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
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.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.”)
GPinkerton ( talk) 08:50, 1 November 2020 (UTC)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."
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
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 17:08, 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)
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 22:34, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
"... 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 studybut "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)
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.
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.
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 studybut 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.
"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. [1] Page 232. That's a scientific claim. Grim and Finke say the same thing. [2] 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.
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.
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.
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 05:37, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
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)
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. [1]: 87, 88 He used the same kind of terms for "Latins" that Niketas Choniates later used. [1]: 88 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." [1]: 87, 88 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)
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.
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.
References
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (
link)
Liaou
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Jenhawk777 ( talk) 06:49, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
it can't legitimately be said to have been driven by a zeal to persecute Byzantines for not being Catholicis 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 the20th 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:
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: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.
. 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: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
and another in the journal Common Knowledge: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)
Furthermore: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.
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 wereMacEvitt 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.
"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)
Guibert of Nogent, a Catholic writer, the persecution suffered by the Eastern Christiansand 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.
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.
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?)
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.
persecution of Christians by crusaders was rife.
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 19:29, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
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 workto 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)
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)
I've not accused you of being Catholic, just of promoting the mediaeval Catholic perspective on the crusadesNo, 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.
we need to treat persecution of Christians objectively as a significant and fundamental part of Christian ideologyFirst 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)
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)
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)
to churches that to other types of public establishements. 216.14.157.170 ( talk) 16:01, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
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)
Don't use images or galleries excessivelyand
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)
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.
[1]: 153
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". [1]: 145 I don't see that taxonomy anywhere, so I am adding it.
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 19:46, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
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. [1] The orthodox catholic Christians now close to the Roman state represented imperial persecution as an historical phenomenon, rather than a contemporary one. [2]
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. [3] 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. [3] 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. [4] 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. [4]
and
For other Christians, including the dissident Donatists, state persecution continued unabated. [3] They too no longer attributed persecution to the emperors, now Christians; they blamed non-Christian officials in the imperial government. [3] 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
The orthodox catholic Christians now close to the Roman state represented imperial persecution as an historical phenomenon, rather than a contemporary one. [1]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 epistleis 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.
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 21:01, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
"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 ( talk) 21:45, 12 February 2021 (UTC)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.
@ 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
@ 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)
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 04:24, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
"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)
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 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. [1]
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 [2] and ancient historians Suetonius [3], Cassius Dio [4] and Orosius [5], 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. [6]
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)
RS need to say it was persecution, we can't use wp:orSlatersteven 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.
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)
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)a statement that makes something clear
that's one possible interpretation of that cryptic remark
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)
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@
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.
[1]
[2]
[3] 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.
[4]
[5]
[6] 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..."
[7] 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.
[8]
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
auto3
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).auto2
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Jenhawk777 ( talk) 15:22, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
"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
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.
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.
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." [1]: 6Anything 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.
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 18:44, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
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 differentis 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)
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 differentis preposterous" with a dependable non-biased source. My source - the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act of 1997: Private witnesses [3] 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?
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 05:56, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
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.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.”)
GPinkerton ( talk) 08:50, 1 November 2020 (UTC)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."
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
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 17:08, 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)
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 22:34, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
"... 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 studybut "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)
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.
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.
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 studybut 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.
"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. [1] Page 232. That's a scientific claim. Grim and Finke say the same thing. [2] 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.
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.
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.
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 05:37, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
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)
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. [1]: 87, 88 He used the same kind of terms for "Latins" that Niketas Choniates later used. [1]: 88 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." [1]: 87, 88 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)
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.
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.
References
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (
link)
Liaou
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Jenhawk777 ( talk) 06:49, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
it can't legitimately be said to have been driven by a zeal to persecute Byzantines for not being Catholicis 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 the20th 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:
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: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.
. 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: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
and another in the journal Common Knowledge: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)
Furthermore: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.
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 wereMacEvitt 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.
"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)
Guibert of Nogent, a Catholic writer, the persecution suffered by the Eastern Christiansand 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.
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.
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?)
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.
persecution of Christians by crusaders was rife.
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 19:29, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
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 workto 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)
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)
I've not accused you of being Catholic, just of promoting the mediaeval Catholic perspective on the crusadesNo, 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.
we need to treat persecution of Christians objectively as a significant and fundamental part of Christian ideologyFirst 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)
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)
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)
to churches that to other types of public establishements. 216.14.157.170 ( talk) 16:01, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
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)
Don't use images or galleries excessivelyand
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)
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.
[1]: 153
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". [1]: 145 I don't see that taxonomy anywhere, so I am adding it.
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 19:46, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
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. [1] The orthodox catholic Christians now close to the Roman state represented imperial persecution as an historical phenomenon, rather than a contemporary one. [2]
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. [3] 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. [3] 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. [4] 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. [4]
and
For other Christians, including the dissident Donatists, state persecution continued unabated. [3] They too no longer attributed persecution to the emperors, now Christians; they blamed non-Christian officials in the imperial government. [3] 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
The orthodox catholic Christians now close to the Roman state represented imperial persecution as an historical phenomenon, rather than a contemporary one. [1]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 epistleis 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.
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 21:01, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
"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 ( talk) 21:45, 12 February 2021 (UTC)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.
@ 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
@ 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)
References
Jenhawk777 ( talk) 04:24, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
"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)
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 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. [1]
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 [2] and ancient historians Suetonius [3], Cassius Dio [4] and Orosius [5], 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. [6]
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)
RS need to say it was persecution, we can't use wp:orSlatersteven 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.
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)
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)a statement that makes something clear
that's one possible interpretation of that cryptic remark
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)