Category talk:Religious leaders

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[edit] earlier comments on this category

Maybe a bit late to ask, but should this category include articles like cardinal or just article about individual cardinals? -- User:Docu

BTW there is Category:Christian leaders (which currently isn't a subcategory). -- User:Docu

[edit] Guidelines for Page

This page should only contain categories containing people. Articles about religious leadership positions or roles should go in Category:Religious leadership roles and articles about individuals should be placed in an appropriate sub-category. If the sub-category doesn't exist, create it (with this Category as its parent). --JeffW 20:23, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Organization proposal

Here's an idea on how to have this organized...

Religious leaders by religion
- Christian religions leaders
  - Methodist religious leaders
  - Roman Catholic religious leaders
  - Anglican religious leaders
  - ...
- Jewish religions leaders
- Muslim religious leaders
- Buddhist religious leaders
- Taoist religions leaders
- ...
Religious leaders by title
- Clergy
- Priests
- Imams
- Rabbis
- ...
Religious leaders by nationality
- (as it is now, mostly)

And intersections of those, such as Wiccan priests, Anglican priests, Roman Catholic bishops, Italian clergy, American rabbis, etc. Titles that're only used by one religion (such as, say, Grand Mufti) wouldn't need an adjective saying what religion they're for, they'd just go under (in this example) Religious leaders by title and Muslim religious leaders (or Sunni religious leaders). Other things, such as priest, ought to be subdivided by religion. There'd be some grey areas, but it'd be more structured and less haphazard than now. What do others think? Mairi 05:43, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. --Alynna 19:54, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I like it up to a point. Personally, I would like to see the categorization go something like this:

Religious leaders by religion
- Christian religions leaders
  - Methodist religious leaders
    - Methodist bishops
    - Methodist priests
    - ...
  - Roman Catholic religious leaders
    - Roman Catholic Popes
    - Roman Catholic archbishops
    - Roman Catholic bishops
    - Roman Catholic priests
    - Roman Catholic religious
  - Anglican religious leaders
    - Anglican archbishops
    - Anglican bishops
    - Anglican priests
    - Anglican religious
    - ...
- Jewish religions leaders
  - High Priests of Israel
  - Rabbis
- Muslim religious leaders
  - Shi'ite religious leaders
  - Sunni religious leaders
- Buddhist religious leaders
- Taoist religions leaders
- ...

(the rest as per the proposal above). I say this only because I think it might be a good idea, particularly in the larger faiths, to break down the structure of the church by its own internal hierarchy, hopefully listing only the highest position achieved for each person, but definitely listing at least that position. This would make it easier to find the real "heavyweights" in the various religions, for those who are inclined to do so. I am leaving a copy of the message that was sent to the WikiProject Religion on the talk pages of all of the "daughter" projects, and hope that we will hear from some of them soon as well. Badbilltucker 21:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Both look fine to me ... I like the second one better, although I would keep in mind that most denominations probably will not need to be split up into sub-categories. BigDT 22:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad we're having this discussion. I like the second one better as well. The only thing I would mention is there needs to be a category for lay religious leaders.NinaEliza 23:01, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

That's roughly what I intended too, so I'm fine with that. I agree about the need for lay religious leaders categories; they could just go under Category:Foo lay religious leaders, unless the church has a specific name for them. Mairi 23:51, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

One other thing I thought about ... there are Baptists, Southern Baptists, American Baptists, and Independent Baptists. There are Lutherans, ELCA, and LCMS. There are Catholics, Roman Catholics, American Catholics, and plenty of other Catholics not in communion with Rome. You get the idea. In each case, other than name, there is little relationship between the two. For example, American Catholics do not acknowledge the Roman church. American Baptists usually don't belong to the Southern Baptist Convention. However, with a lot of the denominations, you're really getting into category creep, if we give each and every Baptist group its own category structure. I'm not particularly picky ... we just need to make sure that there is some standard for when we split up, for example, Catholics into Sub-Catholics, so that we don't, six months from now having someone creating a complete structure for a 10-church Baptist denomination. BigDT 21:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I agree wholeheartedly with BigDT above. I think we might try to create categories only when there is already a specific page in wikipedia already about the "denomination" (if that's what it's called). Otherwise, if I, for instance, am found out to have started the Church of Cthulhu, but there is no specific existing article for my church, then I should be included only in the category of religious leaders from physical area Foo, and, maybe, in a generic religious category like Category:New age religious leaders, for example. Badbilltucker 21:57, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm tempted to found the Church of Foo.NinaEliza 01:45, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

And, as a defender of religious belief in all its forms, I would support you in doing so. People should be allowed to create any tax dodges they can think of. But I do think that maybe a bit of clarification of my earlier statement is in order anyway. To clarify (I hope) a little, I think maybe we would only create categories if there already exists a category for that particular named religious group. So, as their is a Category:Hinduism, there would be subcategories created. If there is not a category, like, for instance for the Church Universal and Triumphant, their leaders would be classified in the Category:Leaders... of whatever existing Category is included on their page to describe their church, in the case above, maybe either Category:New Age religious leaders and/or Category:Spirituality religious leaders (which in this case don't really make a lot of sense, so probably would not be created.) Badbilltucker 03:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Mairi's idea is good, but I think that User:Badbilltucker's improvement will work better because of the vastly different structure and terminology between churches. In the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the top-down structure is: