Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arian Catholicism

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Conscious 17:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arian Catholicism

Arian Catholicism (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

This appears to be an advertisment for a very small minority interest group. Slackbuie 20:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

• Weak keep, so long as the article can be spruced up a bit. Charlie 20:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
• Weak delete - Arianism is better described in that article. If you remove the theological argument you're left with a description of a single Arian sect (in the non-pejorative sense). There may be enough to keep an article, but I don't really see enough here at the moment. I'm perfectly willing to look at a rewritten article. -- Bpmullins | Talk 20:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
• weak keep or merge into Arianism. - UtherSRG (talk) 21:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 23:53, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete and redirect to Arianism. This page looks more like a fork of Arianism than anything else. From googling, it looks like the church linked in the external links section - [1] is the one and only Arian Catholic church that there is ... so it's not a denomination that needs its own article. BigDT 00:15, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep but Clean Up It appears to be a sect of Catholicism per http://www.holy-catholic.org/arian/arian-home.html. Since Arianism focuses mainly on the historical doctrine and not on the specifics of this sect, it seems ok to keep. However, the article seems to need cleaning --Blue Tie 01:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• comment if kept, article should make quite clear this has nothing to do with catholicism (these beliefs, esp. the non-divinity of jesus, are officially 'heretical' according to rome, this is not a 'sect' of catholicism) as it stands it's potentially misleading. probably not notable anyway, & per mullins above, most of those refs refer to the original (4th c.) 'heresy', or to subsequent holders of similar views, nothing to do with this particular contemporary group.  ⇒ bsnowball  10:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The arguments for deletion seem to be mainly "they're small" and "they're heretics", both essentially arguments from religious bigotry. Bigotry is POV and not an acceptable argument for anything in Wikipedia. -- Davidkevin 14:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• comment Sorry, no bigotry intended. Of course there should be information about Arianism on Wikipedia, which was an important movement in the early church. But this article is really here to draw attention to the 'Arian Catholic Church', which as far as I can see is a modern, Internet phenomenon. I'm not making any judgements about Arianism as a theological belief by proposing that this article ought to be deleted. Slackbuie 21:32, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• Redirect"" to Arianism, sure they're heretics... but they are Catholic heretics....--Buridan 03:47, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. This should not be merged to Arianism. This is quite distinct from the historical Arians. These "Arian Catholics" are separated from the historical Arians by a sesquimillenium, use a significantly different Bible, are heavily influenced by English traditions (including the legend that Jesus visited England), and in sum are entirely different. I doubt the historical record is even enough to allow a truly authentic revival of Arianism at this date. If this new religion is sufficiently notable (and it looks like it is), it must have its own article. OinkOink 00:21, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
• Weak delete I can't find any evidence that convinces me that they are a denomination. They claim to have a "Diocese of UK and Overseas", which translates to being just a single group. I find no indepndent reliable sources on google web [2], and no results on google scholar [3], google book [4], or google news [5]. The article also uses no independent sources that are relevant. They also have no entry in the world christian database [6]. Thus I don't believe they are a denomination. (If they were, they should be kept.) GRBerry 03:48, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
• borderline We do not judge whether a group is a valid denomination or not, as long as the outside world refers to it in a verifiable way. In this case I can find nothing but a few blog entries to show that the outside world refers to it at all, and some of them seem confused. There are 25 members identifiable from their forums, from Finland to the Philippines. , and they do refer to themselves by this name. I see no true connection between them and the Arian heretics of the early church. This is the firsttime in a qy of this sort I have not said keep--because though our article does not actually legitimatize them, it seems to be used that way.DGG 04:55, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

  Dear KHM03, I speak as a queer [intergendered/khoti] black [practising and rather religious] RC and I have to disagree with the assertion that Arianism was incompatible with the early Church [which would be properly called Orthodox rather than Catholic/Orthodox or Church of the East and the West as it is now by (presumably) polite convention]; in fact St. Jerome's famous quote bears witness to the appeal of Arianism in the early Church, "The world awoke and groaned to find itself Arian!" That the tide eventually turned in favour of the Trinity had as much [if not more] to do with Roman imperial pressure [which in itself would render episcopal conformity suspect if not invalid] as with the moving of the Holy Spirit...one cannot but notice that the Christian Trinity is at least a partial [if not radical] departure from the strict monotheism of the Abrahamic tradition represented by the Samaritan, Jewish, Sabian, Islamic and Baha'i faiths. [Christian] Scripture itself, is remarkably silent with respect to a doctrine of such importance and if we believe it as Roman Catholics and apostolic Christians, we do so inspite of logic, scriptural witness and ourselves. Jesus [or Yeshua bin Yusuf as He was known in His own language] made very few [if any] recognisable claims with respect to His own divinity and seems to have been more concerned with the good news and meek simplicity of Love than with complicated doctrines of three persons [or Persons] in one God with the Second Person having two natures - divine and human and hypostatically united - AND the Third Person proceeding BOTH from the Father and the Son [and not only from the Father like the Orthodox and our common scriptures maintain]...matter-of-fact, He goes far enough in the canonical gospels to rebuke one of his disciples saying, 'Why do you call me good for only God is good'...additionally, according to my own RC faith, the test of a doctrine is ecclesial reception which means that the central magisterium [id est, Rome] can propound doctrines till kingdom come but the test of its validity is its reception by the whole church [id est, all Christians of all times] and some of our theologians would argue that it would need reception by the triumphant [or resurrected] church at the end of time to truly meet the criterion of full ecclesial reception. One must also note with respect to the parallel discussion on RC 'idolatry' that our veneration of images not only sets us apart from nearly all other Abrahamic monotheistic faiths but also from our own RC iconoclastic forbears and popes who would have destroyed all of our sacred images if they hadn't been hidden and guarded by Franciscan and Carmelite monks [and cloistered nuns]; loyalty to my own tradition does not prevent me from seeing how Catholic crucifixes and Ezidi images could give offence to other children of Abraham [and perhaps to the Gnostics]. Having said that, there is a remarkable consensus among the Apostolic Churches with respect to the Trinity inspite of the mathematical impossibility of 1=3 equations; also, for a Church to call itself Catholic or Orthodox, demonstrable apostolic succession would perhaps be at least as important as considerations of ecclesial reception of [Arian/Trinitarian/Nestorian/Monophysite] theological doctrines. The Holy Qu'ran clearly says that Jesus was the Messiah but not God and there are more than a billion Muslims who would [with good reason] dispute the accuracy of ALL the Christian pages in Wikipedia...it would be a pity if they were deleted on those grounds. The Hindus have a Sanskrit saying about God: Neti, neti [not this and not that: which corresponds more or less to the Augustinian Catholic position on our God]. Although it is rather late in the day now to cut a long story short, I would like to apologise for dragging this out [and for any hurt I may have caused] and request KHM03 not to delete, move or mark the Arian Catholic page [for deletion]. My given name is Pratap Patrick Paikaray altho' my queer pseudonym is Pratibha Rani Sixer but that's quite enough of my rambling already. Casimir Declan O'Conchobhar 06:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Churches connected to historical arianism would be notable (as WP:CHURCH #3 or #4). However, it seems to be a recent creation unconnected with historical arianism, with no third-party reference aside from some forums and a geocities page. (Further, I cannot find where this organization has actual meetings, and if it exists solely on the web, it fails WP:WEB.) Gimmetrow 17:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.