Talk:Churches of Christ/GA1

GA Review

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I'm going through the article from the top down, so I'll be listing issues as I come across as I read the article. The only ones that don't need to be corrected to pass would be in the "Other things to remember" section (but may be a good idea especially if FA is considered). Here are the following issues I see, so far.

Prose/MoS issues

• In the Overview section, I'm assuming when you meant "first century", you meant "first century A.D." as opposed to "first century B.C."? You may want to disambiguate that.
  • Done, although that seems a bit... I dunno, overly precise? Jclemens (talk) 23:23, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• The capitalization of "churches" in "[Cc]hurches of Christ" is inconsistent. Please stick to one form throughout the entire article; sources and my personal experience say it should be lowercase.
  • I can't speak to your personal experiences, but sources are mixed on the matter, so I prefer following the rules of English, which expect dual capitalization. Actually, if we go solely by church signage, "CHURCH of CHRIST" seems far more common than either "church of Christ" or "Church of Christ", but the latter form with the proper English capitalization is typically the formal organizational name, regardless of what the sign says. Jclemens (talk) 23:23, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
  • This is an issue that's been discussed multiple times. For purposes of the article, I'm personally o.k. with the tacit compromise that's been reached: a) the article discusses why members generally prefer the lower case usage, but b) the article itself goes with the upper case usage. On the broader issue, my sense is that for signage most congregations go with typical sign conventions, using some form of title case that either goes with all caps or capitalizes all but the least significant words. (This really does seem to be just a matter of following the typical practice for signs, because it's not just the word "church" that ends up being capitalized on a sign when it otherwise would not be in, say, an article in a church newsletter.) For other purposes, most authors within the fellowship will capitalize the word "church" if it begins a sentence, but not if it does not fall at the beginning of a sentence (for the reasons discussed in the article). Most authors outside the fellowship, however, do capitalize the word "church" in "Church of Christ." That's why I'm generally comfortable with the compromise. It recognizes the usage preferred by the group, but then adopts a usage consistent with Wikipedia being an "outside author." Having said that, because the lower case usage is the one I'm more familiar with, I do tend to fall into it when editing. EastTN (talk) 16:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I think this is fixed; I did a case sensitive search, and only found one place where a lower case "c" was used that was not either in the discussion of the preferred usage or in a direct quote. I flipped the one instance I found to upper case, but you may want to review that. The sentence is "They believe that the New Testament demonstrates how a person may become a Christian (and thus a part of the universal Church of Christ) and how a church should be collectively organized and carry out its scriptural purposes." In that instance it's talking about the church universal, so should the term "Church of Christ" really be treated as a title there?EastTN (talk) 03:14, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
• You have two sets of bulleted lists which are formatted differently – one in the "Overview" section and one in the "Beliefs" and "Soteriology" sections – with regards to using end-punctuation and (with the latter) how it's used as a series. Please stick with one form throughout.
  • Done EastTN (talk) 16:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
• In the bulleted list in the "Non-instrumental worship" subsection, at the end of each passage, there should either be a period there or an ellipsis if the sentence didn't end there.
  • Done.EastTN (talk) 16:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
• In the "Early Restoration Movement history" subsection, I'm not sure that italics are the right things to use for the early names of the people in the Restoration Movement as denoted by the Campbells (i.e. "Christians" and "Disciples of Christ"). Something tells me that quotation marks are more appropriate, but as I said, I'm not sure.
  • Done. I've changed them to quotation marks. It had looked a little funny to me, but I'm not a manual of style guru, so I'd left it alone. EastTN (talk) 22:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
• Throughout the article, there are quite a few occurrances of the word "however" in there, which is a word to avoid. Try and remove or replace as many of them as possible, knowing that it will be difficult to remove all of them as it would break flow in some areas.
  • Done. I've removed all instances of the word "however" that are not in a direct quotation (two are left, one in the body text and one in a footnote). I don't think I've damaged the flow too much, but you might want to check. EastTN (talk) 15:44, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
• In the "Race relations" subsection, As with the country as a while, the assumption of white racial superiority was almost universal among those on all sides of the issue and it was common for congregations to have separate seating for black members. - Can the first part ("As with the country as a while") be rewritten, as there's either a typo in there, or something else.
  • Done - that was an embarrassing typo for "As with the country as a whole."EastTN (talk) 22:09, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
• In the "Baptism" subsection under "Doctrine of Salvation (Soteriology)": David Lipscomb insisted that if a believer was baptized out of a desire to obey God, the baptism was valid, even if the individual did not fully understand the role baptism plays in salvation. and More recently, the rise of the International Churches of Christ (who insisted on re-baptising anyone joining their movement) has caused some to reexamine the issue. → the usage of the word "insisted" in this context seems POVish and loaded. Please replace with a verb not as POVish and loaded.
  • Done. For Lipscomb, I've replaced "insisted" with "consistently argued" (I think that's a reasonable parallel for what the source meant by "insisted"). For the ICoC I've replaced "insisted on re-baptizing" with "required the re-baptism of." EastTN (talk) 21:57, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
• In that same paragraph: Austin McGary contended that to be valid, the convert must also understand that baptism is for the forgiveness of sins. → the same issue as the above point with the verb "contended". Please change out with something more NPOV.
  • Done. I've replaced "contended" with "argued strongly." With both this one and the one above (Lipscomb and "insisted") I've intentionally kept the wording fairly strong - the source suggests that this was a pretty strong argument at the time. You may want to take a second look at what I've done - I've tried to keep the intensity without suggesting a point of view, but I may not have pulled it off successfully. EastTN (talk) 21:57, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
• In the "Overview" section: Although they view the Old Testament as divinely inspired[8]:103 and historically accurate, they do not see its laws as binding under the New Covenant in Christ (unless they are repeated in the New Testament). → I think it's something with the first part of that sentence, but it sounds comparatively POVish (could be the usage of "although" in there). Can that be reworded a bit?
  • Done (or, at the least, "attempted"). I've replaced that sentence with "They view the Old Testament as divinely inspired[8]:103 and historically accurate, but they do not see its laws as binding under the New Covenant in Christ (unless they are repeated in the New Testament)."

Verifability concerns

• In the "Overview" section, ...and historically accurate, they do not see its laws as binding under the New Covenant in Christ (unless they are repeated in the New Testament). They believe that the New Testament demonstrates how a person may become a Christian (and thus a part of the universal church of Christ) and how a church should be collectively organized and carry out its scriptural purposes. → can you please provide a source for this (looks like it would be the same source from as was previous used earlier in the paragraph)?
  • Done. EastTN (talk) 23:15, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• In the "Variations within Churches of Christ" subsection, the first paragraph is unsourced. Is that reference in the second paragraph covering the first one? If so, when I would place a citation at the end of the paragraph for good measure.
  • I think this may have been an editor's attempt at "pulling it all together." For now, I've sourced that there are divisions, and cut the rest. I think the result flows reasonably well, and provides the same essential content. Does this work, or do we need to chase down some more sourced material? EastTN (talk) 23:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Looks good for now. You can always add back in once you find a source. MuZemike 16:55, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
• In the "Non-instrumental worship" subsection, This is not a formal distinction; church members simply refer to congregations as "instrumental" or "non-instrumental". → needs a source or should alternatively be removed.
  • I removed this for now, since that seemed to be the simplest solution. When I get a chance, I'll see if I can find some indication of how many congregations use instruments (don't know that I can, but that would seem to be a useful bit of info).EastTN (talk) 02:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
• In the "Separation of the International Churches of Christ" subsection, In the early 1980s, the focus of the movement moved to Boston, Massachusetts where Kip McKean and the Boston Church of Christ became prominently associated with the trend. is completely unreferenced. Please provide a reference for this.
  • Done. EastTN (talk) 01:41, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
• In the "Separation of the International Churches of Christ" subsection, This new designation formalized a division that was already in existence between those involved with the Crossroads/Boston Movement and "mainline" Churches of Christ. Much of the outside literature during this period refers to it as the "Boston Movement" or occasionally the "Discipling Movement", after the practice of assigning each new church member a mentor who was to "disciple" the newer member through prayer and advice about a wide range of day-to-day decisions. is completely unsourced. Please provide a reference here.
  • Done.EastTN (talk) 02:11, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
• The URL in reference #20 https://web.fhu.edu/NR/rdonlyres/35B68BA3-B1E5-48E4-9C4A-019B4C699311/0/Flavil.ppt is a deadlink. Either find a working link for this, or, if there is a paper source for this, you can provide a reference to the corresponding print reference.
  • Yep, that link is completely dead. I've found where the paper version of the survey is available for sale (a university bookstore), and also an mp3 of the author presenting the results at a lectureship a few months later. As soon as I finish here, I'm going to order a copy of the booklet so I'll be able to verify it in the future. EastTN (talk) 17:02, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Image issues

• Image:Millennial views.svg is going to need a caption in there. Also, normally we don't force a certain size of thumbnails, (It also is technically against MOS:IMAGE to do so.) but I can see why an exception can be made here.
  • I'm fine putting one in, but is it necessary given that the chart has the descriptive title "Comparison of Christian millennial teachings"? When I originally added the image to the article, I went to add a caption, but found myself basically just re-typing the title at the top. That struck me as unnecessary, unless we wanted to use it for purposes of providing a link to one or more of the articles on eschatology.EastTN (talk) 16:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I've taken a stab at a caption that tries to relate the typical CoC view to the chart. Does this work?EastTN (talk) 16:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Looks good. MuZemike 17:07, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Other things to remember (not part of the GA review)

• Always try to have long, full paragraphs whenever possible (around 4 sentences minimum and about 8 maximum). Longer, fuller paragraphs look more professional to readers than short, choppy paragraphs. I tried to combine some where it would make sense; if it doesn't, feel free to undo or whatever.
• Watch out for overlinking. Normally, once in the infobox, once in the lead, and once in the article body is sufficient. However, for longer articles, it's not uncommon to have it wikilinked again several sections down.
• Don't forget non-breaking spaces between numbers and figures or measurements, like "1.8 million".
• Unless quotes are involved, there's not really a need to repeat inline citations; just have one at the end of the paragraph or whatever is being referenced.

• Based on the history of this article, we've consciously tried to provide a specific citation (and when possible, multiple citations) for each and every assertion. Up until about a year and a half ago the article was quite contentious. Given the nature of the group involved, there isn't an official body that can be quoted for beliefs and practices. As a result, the article was quite unstable as editors with different points of view would argue about what "churches of Christ" believe based on what a particular congregation or preacher did or said - in far too many cases it turned into a debate over which belief or practice was "correct," without any regard to how prevalent or characteristic of churches of Christ it really was. The only way we could find to put an end to that was to "over cite" each statement using the best secondary sources we could find. It does tend to break up the flow of the text, but it has seemed to bring stability to the article.EastTN (talk) 15:47, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

• Unless a quotation itself is a complete sentence, then the end-quotation precedes the end-punctuation.
  • Done (I think). I took a pass through trying to clean up the punctuation at the end of all of the quotations. This one's a challenge to me, because I went to school long enough ago that I learned the older U.S. conventions, so this usage always looks wrong to me.EastTN (talk) 18:23, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
• In the Congregational autonomy and leadership subsection, (I'm not going to gig on this for GA but may present issues in front of FAC.) the last sentence in the last paragraph, though it's referenced from that passage from Romans, lacks an inline citation. Again, I can clearly see that it's verified, but at FAC, you may get some stingy people complaining about consistency, lack of citation, etc.
  • Done. The verse from Romans really wasn't one of the best ones available for making the point (it has Paul's salutation to all those in Rome "called to be saints"), and I was able to find a CoC source that explicitly says there's no distinction between clergy and laity, that every Christian has a gift, and that they all have a role to play in doing the work of the church. Take a look, but I think this makes the text stronger. EastTN (talk) 00:47, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
• Remember, when using appositives, they are either set off by commas, endashes with spaces, or with emdashes without spaces. Hyphens are not used to set them off.
• I also think those images need to be spread out a bit as the images, where they currently, are presenting from problems with layout. MuZemike 20:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
  • What would you suggest? Given the nature of the topic, the most obvious images to include were of prominent early leaders. It seemed to make sense to put them in the history section where they were discussed, but that does mean that all of the pictures are bunched together. Would it be too confusing to spread them across the article so they looked better visibly, but weren't as tied as closely to the text? One additional constraint is that, given the objection of members to identifying anyone other than Christ as the "founder," it probably doesn't make sense to put a picture of any early leader at the top of the page - that might be seen as implying a point of view on the issue.EastTN (talk) 22:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I've moved Stone's picture down to the race relations section where he's also mentioned to spread things out a bit.EastTN (talk) 15:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
• Also, per MOS:IMAGE (while not a GA issue but will be an issue at FAC), the faces of the people in the images are supposed to be looking toward the text; in the "History in America" section, they're looking away from the text. MuZemike 20:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Done. EastTN (talk) 15:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
• You will also need to include alt text in all the images in the article when the article approaches FA. Please follow WP:ALT (a fairly new guideline) for guidelines on how to utilitze alt text for images. MuZemike 17:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Done. I've taken a stab at adding alt text to all of the images. EastTN (talk) 18:01, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Conclusions

I am placing the GA review on hold pending improvements above. As of this timestamp, I am done through the "Beliefs" section. More will be coming, and I will update the above sections as well as down here when I see more issues. MuZemike 21:10, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

• Update – I'm done through the "History in America" section (though I may have to go back and check a couple extra things as I am kind of pressed for time right now). MuZemike 20:48, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• Thank you for taking the time to do such a careful review - and for all the minor fixes you're doing yourself. EastTN (talk) 21:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• Update – that should be everything. I went through the last section and saw no glaring problems, and I have noted some additional MoS issues above, mostly regarding WP:NPOV issues as far as wording/words to avoid are concerned. MuZemike 20:19, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

• Everything looks good. Passed. MuZemike 00:56, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Thanks for all of your help! Do you have any other advice on next steps for the article? EastTN (talk) 02:28, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Well, I cannot catch every little thing with the article, prose, grammar, or MoS-wise. You can always request a peer review of the article through WP:PR or, if your WikiProject has a peer review section, through there. Somebody else can (and probably will) catch things that I did not see in this GAN. If your WikiProject has A-Class, you may also want to consider, in the future, an A-Class assessment if you feel the article is complete and near-FA quality.

One more thing, though. With the images of the luminaries of the Churches of Christ, you may want to consider spreading them out more. One no-no with WP:LAYOUT is to, first, not have text sandwiched between two images or other boxes; and second, to not have images directly below L3 headings (something with that the software doesn't like).

As you get past GA, more attention to detail is needed. When approaching FA, all i's need to be dotted, and all t'd need to be crossed. That is, the prose needs to be polished and ensured that it's written in a professional tone (especially for a topic like this). Double-check the images and make sure they are appropriately and properly tagged, in this case, as public domain or other appropriate license such as CC-BY-SA. If there are other print sources out there that are not referenced in the article that can help out the reader look more into Churches of Christ add them into a "Further reading" section; see WP:FURTHER for more details. Finally, look at other FACs and look at the most common "opposes" and remedy them in this article if need be. Hope that helps out a bit more. MuZemike 16:45, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - that helps! EastTN (talk) 03:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Instrumental or Non-Instrumental

Churches of Christ in the United States is the probably the most comprehensive listing of A Capella congregations in this grouping. In 2009 it delisted some congregations that allegedly were instrumental. Other congregations, that had the same degree of "instrumental" worship were not removed. Was the non-removal due to a lack of knowledge on the part of the editors of that publication, as claimed by the editors of that publication, or were other criteria used to delist the allegedly instrumental congregation, as claimed by some bloggers and pundits? (http://oneinjesus.info/2009/01/23/what-is-a-church-of-christ-introduction/ partially discusses the issue of "What is the Church of Christ (A Capella)".) There are "instrumental" congregations that self-identify with the "A Capella" group. There are "A Capella" congregations that self-identify with the "Intrumental" group. This specific article is about the A Capella branch, but as one digs into the specific practices of specific congregations, the question of what "Instrumental" and "A Capella" includes, and what they exclude, gets very blurred. jonathon (talk) 15:40, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that this article should cover those "churches of Christ" that separated from the Disciples of Christ in 1906. The Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ are a different group that split off from the Disciples later on. They are sometimes described as Churches of Christ (Instrumental), because other than the use of instruments in worship and participation in an annual conference, they are very similar to the group that split off in 1906. The congregations that this article is talking about (arising from the 1906 split) are often described in contrast as the Churches of Christ (a capella), because they have historically not used instruments in public worship. There are several identifiable subgroups within this fellowship, though, such as the churches of Christ (non-institutional) and a relatively small group of congregations that have begun using musical instruments.

My understanding of this article is that it is intended to describe the broader fellowship of churches of Christ historically associated with the 1906 division of the Restoration Movement. Accordingly, it describes the historical origins, the most common beliefs and practices within the fellowship, and identifies the most significant variations and subgroups. We can add specific articles for those subgroups as needed, along the lines of the article for the churches of Christ (non-institutional). That's why the section on non-instrumental worship says:

"The Churches of Christ generally combine the lack of any historical evidence that the early church used musical instruments in worship and the belief that there is no scriptural support for using instruments in the church's worship service to decide that instruments should not be used today in worship. Churches of Christ have historically practiced a cappella music in worship services . . . There are congregations that permit hand-clapping and musical instruments."

It's intended to cover the general practice while recognizing that some congregations do use instruments.

Your point about the difficulty in sorting out all of the modern divisions among churches with a Restoration Movement heritage is well taken. I think it's probably easiest to keep it all straight if we continue to organize things historically - so we have these "churches of Christ" originating in 1906, the "independent churches of Christ" originating in a later split (1926 or 1968, depending on how you look at things), and the "International Churches of Christ" that split off from the 1906 group during the 1970s.

Does that make sense? EastTN (talk) 20:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I concur with your organization of the major divisions. Jclemens (talk) 23:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

EastTN's statement makes sense to me. This article is specifically about the "A Capella" branch. I made this subsection to avoid breaking up the "verifiability concerns" list. The "disputed" statement was/is This is not a formal distinction; church members simply refer to congregations as "instrumental" or "non-instrumental". Richland Hills Church of Christ" --- which probably should have its own wiki article --- _might_ be able to point to verifiable data on "A Capella" congregations that also have an instrumental service. The editors of Churches of Christ in the United States stated that there are individual congregations that are in "no man's land", because they consider themselves to be "A Capella", but utilize instruments. What I haven't seen on the instrumental side, is a list of congregations that don't (¿currently?) use an instrument. The only reason I'm aware that they exist, is that I've seen references to such, in various places. From the outside, the only difference between the two groups, is whether or not they use a musical instrument.jonathon (talk) 19:39, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

That's a good point. It seems to me that a formal historical distinction can be made between the "churches of Christ" and the "Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ," because the former were on one side of the 1906 division and the later were on the other side. There are certainly congregations of the "churches of Christ" that use musical instruments, and it's causing a good bit of consternation. Whether that yet constitutes a "formal" split or not may depend on the eye of the beholder. I wasn't aware that there were congregations of the "Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ" that don't use instruments, but it doesn't really surprise me. I've thought for a long time that if there were any two branches of the Restoration Movement that might come to rapprochement with each other, it would be these two.EastTN (talk) 22:12, 15 November 2009 (UTC)