Talk:Aniconism in Christianity

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[edit] Byzantine iconoclasm

Why don't we have anything on the iconoclastic movement in Byzantine religious life? That was arguably a more significant aniconic movement than the Protestant Reformation (in terms of how significant its aniconism was, not in terms of the total impact of the movement, obviously). I don't really know enough about the subject to write this myself, but if need be I bet I could synthesize something from other Wikipedia articles. I'm hoping that with the influx of traffic from the Muhammed Cartoons thing, someone better suited to the task will fix this omission for me, though. Zabieru 05:59, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually you can find more information about that at Iconoclasm. Possibly the articles could be merged. Schizombie 02:23, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that article. I don't think a merge is appropriate in this case, as per my vote below. I'd like to see a 'Byzantine Iconoclasm (main article at)' section... In fact, I'll go work on that right now. If the vote comes out in favor of a merge, it shouldn't be too much work to pull. Zabieru 06:44, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree, no merger. Iconoclasm includes destroying other people's images. That's what the Taliban did to the Buddha statues in Afghanistan. Aniconism is a regulation imposed by a religion on its followers (or its god(s)) but not necessarily imposed on others. Granted, some groups have done both (such as early biblical Hebrews destroying Canaanite statues or Christian missionaries destroying Native American Indian items) but I think the distinction shoud be retained. Rooster613 14:22, 6 February 2006 (UTC)Rooster613

Section's in. If anyone can improve it, I'd love to see that. My sentence structure is a bit turgid, I'll be the first to admit. Also, while I'm opposed to a total merge, I think we should merge the section here on the Reformation, which contains some information not in the one on the Iconoclasm page, with the section on the Reformation at Iconoclasm, and re-do the section here in line with what I just did for Byzantine iconoclasm. I'm reluctant to do any more cross-editing between the two pages while the merge vote is still going on, though. Comments? Zabieru 07:14, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't like to see important topics like Byzantine iconoclasm submerged into more general summary articles: the information starts getting lost. It is also inevitable that overviews bring a certain amount of POV perspective, so shouldn't suck in more focused articles. If you want to know about Byzantine iconoclasm in its historical context, you should be able to find it out without wading through a load of stuff about the Reformation (or the Taliban); you can then move on to this useful general discussion of aniconism if you want to. Myopic Bookworm 10:51, 23 February 2006 (UTC)