Talk:Primitive Baptist

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Christianity Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. If you are new to editing Wikipedia visit the welcome page to become familiar with the guidelines.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.
	This article is supported by the Anabaptist work group. (with unknown importance)
Assessment comments This article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

User 65.40.99.105 made two edits, which appear to be POV. These edits eliminate links to two kinds of Primitive Baptists - absoluters and universalists - and leave the links pretty much representative of one type. I think this must be point-of-view related and therefore a bad edit. I have added the links back. - Rlvaughn 01:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Though I added back the links, someone else removed them and added this note: "rv linkspam 'cleverly' hidden as 'rv POV edits". Would someone please explain why these particular links are "linkspam"? It appears curious to me that external links that present the viewpoints of certain types of Primitive Baptists mentioned in the article have been left, while external links that present other views have been edited out.?? That seems point of view related to me, but perhaps I just don't understand. I'll be glad for someone to explain. The "Beebe" link explains the absolute predestinarian PB doctrine from one of its 19th century proponents. The Remnant link gives access to one of their periodicals. The other link gives info on the Primitive Baptist Universalists, also mentioned in the article. If there are better links that can be provided, I'm all for it. But if these are being edited because someone only wants one view of Primitive Baptists linked, there is something rotten in Denmark. - Rlvaughn 04:19, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I may have been hasty in removing the links; sorry! The only excuse I can offer is the point I made in the edit note: adding links with 'revert POV edits' is a trick used by some ...less savory characters. I don't really have enough expertise on this subject to say that the links in question represent major sources of information that can't reasonably be represented within Wikipedia itself; I'll have to take your word on it.

I do think that external links should be stronlgy discouraged in general, though. If there is useful information on the referenced pages the first reaction should be "let's write about it in the article", not "let's turn Wikipedia into a link farm". If I buy an encyclopedia from a book shop, I wouldn't expect every entry in it to read "no information on this subject here; go to a library to find out about this".

If by the "...because someone only wants one view..." remark you mean that I might want to promote some fraction within some church, you can rest easy. My view of religions in general is that squabbling over points of doctorine within any religion is like fighting over what color of eggs the Easter Bunny likes the best. I'm the common infidel pagan enemy against whom they all can unite! :-) Weregerbil 12:43, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, Weregerbil. When I spoke of someone wanting only one view, I had in mind the original editor. I wasn't sure what your reasoning was. I'm not sure the links are "major sources of information", but the problem with some of the more elusive religious bodies in that currently there is very little online information at all. I am in general agreement with you on the idea of having too many links. Plus, I think this is something that has kind of been modified in our thinking as Wikipedia has grown. I've been on awhile and sometimes find that when I do things the way I once did, they can be out of step with the most current Wikipedia ideas of style, etc. But since a Wikipedia article is a living thing on which many individuals colloborate, my opinion is that early in the life of an article, adding several links can prove helpful to future editors. They also give folks a way to check the validity of information. One problem is that often as an article grows, the links also grow and grow and grow. As an article grows, the links should actually diminish as we make the article "tighter". Just my thoughts. Thanks again. - Rlvaughn 00:34, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I removed the link to the Sovereign Grace website because : 1. The link was broken. 2. If it had worked I suspect it would have linked to the Sovereign Grace Baptist website, which although having similar beliefs to those of PBs, is not a Primitive Baptist denomination. I hope I did not act in haste. I have tried that link several times over a period of days and nothing seems to be coming up.

Amity, I'm adding back the Sovereign Grace website. It is working now; and though Sovereign Grace often means similar but not Primitive Baptist, in this case it is a Primitive Baptist website. I believe it is in some way be connected with Lexington Primitive Baptist Church and Eld. Michael Gowens. - Rlvaughn 13:49, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I also added mention of _A Portion for the Singers_ in the Sources section, and linked to the shape note listing, since there was a mention of acapella singing which I thought could be elaborated for the curious. Of course other types of singing are practiced in PB churches across the country as well. amity150

[edit] limited predestinarians

I altered the section on limited predestinarians to read:

"some churches among this group are still very evangelistic"

since despite the evangelistic work in the Philipines, etc., many old line limited predestinarians view such efforts as an aberration and a departure from historic practice. I don't know if statistically the qualifier "some" might justifiably be changed to "many" or even "most" or not, but certainly not "all."

Also on a related note, considering the categorization of this discussion as relating to "Calvinism", should the article contain some discussion of the widespread PB contention that Primitive Baptist doctrine is NOT in fact Calvinistic, and what the points of difference to Calvin's classic TULIP doctrine are understood to be? Again, how widespread is this issue? Adding a discussion of church organization, lack of central organization, plus perhaps a representation document of Articles of Faith would help to clarify what PBs believe.

amity150

I edited out the "unsalaried ministers". I've been a primitive baptist my entire life and my dad is a primitive baptist minister. We pay our ministers, maybe not as well as we should but they are paid. I changed it to family style worship since this is a practice of the primitive baptist. If that is not liked it can be edited as well but I would really appreciate "unsalaried ministers" being left out. It is simply not true. Thanks. Kitchec

[edit] Too many links?

Is it possible that we are adding too many individual church links to the article? I believe that many of these can be reached from some of the original external links that were given. We need some kind of guideline, I suppose, to guide in link choices rather than to just keep adding and adding more of them. Thoughts? - Rlvaughn 21:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I didn't get any feedback on this question, but I have removed all the individual church links. If someone wants to make a case for adding some of them back, it can be done here. There are many individual Primitive Baptist church web sites, and we could just continue to multiply links here. But that doesn't really add anything to the article, does it? It seems like the links we have left give a fair representation of the various types of Primitive Baptists, and if we find some type has been left out, let's look for a representative link for them. - Rlvaughn 04:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Primitive baptist = Regular Baptist?

This article lists Regular Baptist among "other names by which Primitive Baptists are known." Are they really the same thing? If so, the two articles should be merged. If not, the text calling them equivalent should be altered. DanB†DanD 18:29, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

A pity! As a lifelong Primitive Baptist, I am disappointed that this article has been so edited to remove any controversial content that it does very little to accurately describe one of the least understood of the Christian religions. As for unsalaried ministers, some P.B. churches pay the ministers, but some certainly do not. It simply IS true. Hdj42 (talk) 20:30, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding does "Primitive Baptist = Regular Baptist", I agree that association ought to be removed. I am a life long PB and PB elder and know of no current association between these two distinct denominations. There was some fellowship between the two denominations after the anti-missionary split but this was very minor. Perhaps it is because of some fellowship between the two plus percieved similarities that has led to confusion about them being one and the same.--Iakobos1970 22:12, 5 October 2007 (UTC)