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I received your message.I was under the impression that the head of the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church 'H.B. Baselios Thomas I' didnot claim the title of Catholicos of The East and Malankara Metropolitan.He was ordained by the supreme head of the Antiochian Syriac Church 'H.H Zakka I Iwas'
under the title 'Catholicos of India' .'You yourself have created a page in wikipedia named Catholicos of India (title).This itself proves that the title 'Catholicos of the East & Malankara Metropolitan' belongs to the Supreme head of the 'Indian(Malankara) Orthodox Church' and this is supported by the verdict of 'The Supreme Court Of India'.
It should be also noted that I have not added any kind of statements in my article which hurts or ridicules any group.I strongly believe that the article contains true facts widely accepted in the Christian community .Therefore I ask you not to redirect the page to 'viewpoint of both the churches'. If you disagree with any of my statements above please do clear it with me.
The goal of WikiProject Christianity is to improve the quality and quantity of information about Christianity available on Wikipedia. WP:X as a group does not prefer any particular tradition or denominination of Christianity, but prefers that all Christian traditions are fairly and accurately represented.
You are receiving this invitation because you are a member of one of the related Christianity Projects and I thought that you might be interested in this project also - Tinucherian (talk) 12:12, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Look over the recent changes list for recent improvements to articles, other changes and vandalism.
WikiProject Christianity Coordinators : The project coordinators are generally responsible for maintaining all of the procedural and administrative aspects of the project, and serve as the designated points-of-contact for procedural issues. They are not, however, endowed with any special executive powers, nor with any authority over article content or editor conduct.The Lead Coordinator bears overall responsibility for coordinating the project; the Assistant Coordinators aid the Lead Coordinator and focus on specific areas that require special attention.
The following Coordinators were elected after Elections 2008
There is also a discussion regarding whether any new subportals dealing with Christianity should be created here. All inputs are welcome.
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Our membership continues to expand. It is currently at 223 users. 39 new users have joined the WikiProject in the month of April 2008. Please make them feel welcomed!
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Welcome to the Sixth issue of the WikiProject Christianity newsletter! Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.
Luckily, you all won't have to see my comments very often, as very little I have to say is really that important. But I would like to take the opportunity to say that I hope everyone finds the new General Forum page useful for discussing ideas relevant to Christianity in general, and feels free to make any additional comments regarding general Christianity there. Also, if any of you feel that you want to place a comment here in the future, please let us know what you want included. We would encourage all members to get more involved and if you are wondering what with, please ask. Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.
We are initiating a new feature here. Every month, we will list one misisng article. The first person to start the article will be mentioned by name in the next newsletter, as well as any others should they help get included in the Main Page DYK's section.
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We now have 53 featured articles 6 featured lists, and 130 good articles, with the recent promotions of Thomas Cranmer to FA class, List of encyclicals of Pope John XXIII to FL status, and Hugh de Puiset to GA level. Thanks to all those who worked on these articles!
Welcome to the Eighth issue of the WikiProject Christianity newsletter! Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.
As many of you will know, we currently have several articles relating to the same basic topics. The articles in the Category:Baptism are one example of such. It is really in the interests of all of us to try to place as much content in the main article of such topics, and then have the other articles "branch off" from there and making the central article as good an article as possible. We also now have a proposal for a new general "Christianity" related award, similar to the Military history project's chevrons, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/General Forum. John Carter (talk), Lead Coordinator
Newsletter challenge
Last month's new article challenge, Church of Daniel's Band, was begun by User:Jack1956 and was included in the Main page's DYK section on June 15. Thank you to Jack1956 for his great work on creating this article!
Let the churches offically split, then we can add your wish. Further, No time in history there were two catholicos of the East in the Oriental Orthodox Church. How can suddenly two catholicos ??. Accept the fact that both are parallels.
Even if u say both are seperated, that is not acceptable. Since both claims the same properties and civil suits continuing. Let there be an end. Then we all accept your claims. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexyalex (talk • contribs) 08:57, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. I said the truth. Anyone can enquire of the reality. The above said people are discussing of churhces, but the article List of Catholicos of the East is of those individals who uses the title Catholicos of the East. Lijujacob is purposely trying to make it a church based article. It has nothing in connection with which denomination or fraction it belong. It is only connected with the persons who uses the title.Further, i like to point out that with a simple example. How can a Catholicos take the name of Baselios Paulose II with out a predecessor with name Baselious Paulose I . For ur kind information, the reality is that there exists two adminstrative parallael fractions in the Orthodox church of India. One call itself Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and other Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church. There were civil disputes for authoirty and power. The matter was heared in the Supreme Court of India and decided in vague in 1995 and is reported in AIR 1995 SC 2001. For clarification and execution of this judgement there are various cases existing in several courts in India today also. As per the Court order, Patrairch of Antioch is the supreme spiritual leader and the Catholicos cum Malankara Metropolitan is the authoritative and temporal leader of the whole of orthodox church in India. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexyalex (talk • contribs) 12:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
'Even if u say both are seperated, that is not acceptable'.
Its not me Alex, it is everyone except you that is saying that the church is divided. Wikipedia says the church is divided, Media Says it is divided, church heads say it is divided, politicians say it is divided.
As I said before the supreme head of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, H.H. Marthoma Dydmos Ist has himself said that he is the supreme authority in the church and there is none except god above him. Please see this(http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8987266008315730306)
Do Jacobite fraction has a church or institution of thier own built before 2002. AS per the court order, even if there is a seperation it happened in 2002. Jacobite fraction if say is sepearate it wont in the ultimate get the proeprties. I dont want to c such a situation. I want both to work togegther and form a new constitution or sort for common good.
Further, ur saying that there of God above Catholicos. Catholicos cannot be judged by Patriarch it has a seperate individuality, but ofcause not equalant with Pentarchial Patriarchate of Antioch. Even if Didymos or anyone say they they are independent every one know the truth as well as what is there in the Constitution. Liju i can understand ur concern and feelings. I too have concerns. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexyalex (talk • contribs) 00:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Catholicos
Please Correct the article 'Catholicos' with correct informantions.
The Christianity project and its related projects currently have 65 FAs, 7 FLs, and 146 GAs. That is a wonderful number, particularly of the GAs. Thanks to all those who worked on these articles!
Secisek was interviewed by the Wikipedia Signpost in their 9 March 2009 issue here. Thank you for your great work in getting more attention to the project!
Member news
Our membership continues to expand. We are currently at a stunning 278 registered members. A profound thank you to all of you. Without your support and work, this project, and wikipedia itself, would not exist.
Other news
We have recently started a separate subpage of the project dedicated to keeping the members informed of the latest activities regarding FA and GA status, requests for peer review and comment, proposed deletions, and other article related activity. That information can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Article alerts. Please feel free to look at the page frequently and respond to any and all items posted there that you wish.
Related projects news
The Iglesia ni Cristo work group, Syriac Christianity work group, and Oriental Orthodoxy project are all currently being considered for restructuring. Any and all members of any of those groups are welcomed and encouraged to take part in the discussions.
Welcome to the Seventh, admittedly delayed, issue of the WikiProject Christianity newsletter! Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.
Yes, it's been more than a bit of a rough time for some of us, okay, me, for a while here. Several things, most of them not real pleasant, kept coming up. I think most of that is over with know. I hope and pray as much anyway. Easter is the church's time of rebirth, and I hope it's a good time for the rebirth of this newsletter. I hope that the project grows in numbers and effectiveness as the church itself has over the years. Thanks again for all your efforts to date. Oh, yes, and please note that this section is entitled "From the Members". That means you, all of you. If any of you have any comments you'd like to share with the other members in this section, please feel free to let us know, and we'll put them in the next issue. We would encourage all members to get more involved and if you are wondering what with, please ask. Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do. Thanks again.
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The Christianity project and its related projects currently have 68 FAs, 7 FLs, and 146 GAs, which includes 3 more FAs. We did however lose one FL and 2 GAs over the past month, but we still basically broke even with the 3 new FAs.
Member news
With the additions of cindyrom4jesus at 69.254.33.66, User:Jwhosler, and User:Arverniking, we now have 281 listed members. Thanks to you all, and a special welcome to our new members!
Welcome to the Eighth issue of the WikiProject Christianity newsletter! Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.
Hello from the new Christian films task force! I was recently apart of founding a task force, so this is the story. For several months, I would not only contribute to Christian films, groups, etc., but I'd also see other users working on similar articles. I really wanted to create a project for us to work from. Filmcom contacted me about trying to get a task force going, so we began working together on it. When it appeared the idea was dying, we continued to fight, and several other users joined!
Thanks to the efforts of many users, I'd like to introduce you to the Christian films task force! We are currently having a bot tag all Christian film-related articles, and we are working to define our project scope. We now have our own icon and shortcut (WP:CFTF), with ten users signed out thus far - these are just some of the things that have been happening in the last few days. If you have any interest in joining such a project, we welcome everyone to join and get involved.
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It has been proposed that the Oriental Orthodoxy project be merged into the Eastern Orthodoxy project, which would probably be retitled Eastern Christianity after the merger. Please feel free to express an opinion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Eastern Orthodoxy#Proposed mergers shortly. the proposal has been in place for about a month and a half, and gotten very little attention, so I am contacting directly all members of the Oriental Orthodoxy project about it. Please try to respond, one way or another, within a week of this notice, to expedite matters. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 18:36, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Deletion of history from Jacobite Syrian Christian Church
I noticed that you deleted all the history from Jacobite Syrian Christian Church by removing the template "Indian Christian History 52-1653" which contained a) a extremely brief summary of history, b) "the" chart showing the lineage of all churches formed as part of the St. Thomas Community, and c) a link to "History of the Saint Thomas Chrisitians" (also foreshortened to 1653). I didn't notice an edit summary. I was curious to understand your reasoning behind this deletion of history.Student7 (talk) 17:54, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have no axe to grind. I am totally neutral on the history not belonging to any of the churches. Why can you not 1) delete the offending item (less desirable) or 2) leave it with a qualifying remark - "Some researchers believe that... but the prevailing view is that...." That is more desirable IMO because it covers all bases. Particularly if there is a WP:FOOT someplace. I'd add it myself, but have already been accused of pro-Vedic, pro-Brahman beliefs, which is truly a laugh since I barely know what these terms mean! :)
I knew when I blended the history of five churches that there would be problems, but having five experts focusing on one history has to be superior to having five experts working on their own (pov) history. Student7 (talk) 11:03, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The Christianity project and its related projects currently have 72 FAs, 6 FLs, and 145 GAs, which includes 4 more FAs. We did however lose one FL and 1 GAs over the past month, but we still gained overall.
The WikiProject Films has recently created a new task force for Christian films. All interested parties are welcome to join and contribute.
Member contest of the month
Given the lateness of the newsletter last month, the contest from last month continues. Anyone who can bring any of the few Stub class articles among the project's 1000 most often accessed articles by the end of June will get an award. Please see the details Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Christianity#Project challenge of the month.
Welcome to the Ninth issue of the WikiProject Christianity newsletter! Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.
I am in the process of going through the various categories related to Christianity. I am finding that several of them may not have sufficient number of members to continue. By the end of the month, I hope to have the main category list finished (yeah, it might take that long, it's huge). At that time, I think we will review all the categories and see which may not have sufficient articles to continue. Please feel free to take part in the discussion regading what the minimum number of category items is, and how to deal with the non-qualifying categories, on the General Forum page.
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This newsletter is automatically delivered by -- TinuCherian - 13:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The Christianity project and its related projects currently have 76 FAs, 8 FLs, and 148 GAs. We gained new recognized content in each field, with 4 FAs promoted, 2 FLs, and 3 GAs. Congratulations and a big thank you to all those who worked on these articles!
I am still working on the categorization matter. With any luck, we should have some results by the end of the month. There are also some discussions regarding project related activities at Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/General Forum. One issue in particular that might be addressed is possible elections of new coordinators. Anyone interested in serving in such a capacity is more than welcome to indicate as much.
Related projects news
The WikiProject Films has recently created a new task force for Christian films. All interested parties are welcome to join and contribute.
Member contest of the month
The previous contests are still ongoing, because of the extreme amount of time the categorization is taking me. Anyone who can bring any of the few Stub class articles among the project's 1000 most often accessed articles by the end of July will get an award. Please see the details Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Christianity#Project challenge of the month.
Welcome to the Tenth issue of the WikiProject Christianity newsletter! Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.
It has been a long time since the last coordinators election. There is a lot for people to do, and I certainly would welcome seeing any individuals with an interest in such a position put themselves forward as candidates. I in particular would very much like to see some degree of "specialization" in the coordinators, so that, for instance, we might have someone knowledgable about some of the specific Christian faith traditions or other main subjects, like Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, Mormonism, the Jehovah's Witnesses, art, theology, and so on. If any parties who have experience with some of our faith- or- subject-based content would be interested in being candidates, I would love to see them do so. Please feel free to take part in the discussion regading what the minimum number of category items is, and how to deal with the non-qualifying categories, on the General Forum page.
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The Christianity project and its related projects currently have 75 FAs, 8 FLs, and 147 GAs, with a net loss of one FA and one GA. Our thanks to those who helped keep some other articles listed, and to those who have worked so diligently in improving all of our articles.
Member news
Three new members joined this past month, including new members User:116Calvinist, User:Lrnngrbc, and User:Frazz, bringing us up to 295 listed members. Thanks to you all, and a special welcome to our new members!
Other news
Two new pages for the benefit of members of the project have been created. Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Mutual aid society is designed to be a place where editors seeking specific assistance from other members can with luck find others who have the abilities or materials they need, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Special collections is, at this point, the beginnings of a list of publicly accessible special collections libraries which our members might find useful. Anyone who lives near one of the collections listed is encouraged to visit them and see if they can find anything they would like to read or use to improve some of our articles. There are always some discussions regarding project related activities at Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/General Forum. I think the timing of the call for elections might have been bad (summer vacation, what was I thinking?), and have thus changed the period for individuals to run to be one of the project's coordinators. Individuals who have a particular interest or knowledge of specific fields within Christianity are encouraged to run, to serve as a kind of "unit coordinator" for that topic.
Related projects news
The WikiProject Films has recently created a new task force for Christian films. All interested parties are welcome to join and contribute.
Welcome to the Eleventh issue of the WikiProject Christianity newsletter! Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.
One area in particular need of attention right now is the content related to the Oriental Orthodox churches. Several of the topics within this field are of great importance, including the churches themselves, their histories, thinking, and some of the individuals associated with it. Unfortunately, the number of people who belong to the churches, and, correspondingly, the number of editors working on that content, is smaller than it could be. Anyone interested in helping to develop this content is more than welcome to look at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Oriental Orthodoxy page and seeing where they can help out.
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This newsletter is automatically delivered by -- TinuCherian BOT - 19:29, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Jacobite Syrian Christian Church
I just reset the article Jacobite Syrian Christian Church. While I found your changes to be readable, maybe even credible, they were mostly unfootnoted. Nor did you explain why you deleted the file drawing on how the churches separated in the area. You said that "one size does not fit all." I don't know what that means. It is history. I would hope that "one size would fit all" when historical dates are talked about.
Please fill out edit summaries for all entries so that editors will understand what you are doing and why. You just replaced the entire history of the church with your deletion of the template. This should require a detailed explanation on the talk page and perhaps an equally detailed discussion on the template you replaced to explain what is wrong with it. See Template:Indian Christian History 52-1653 and the common history it links to: History of the Saint Thomas Christians.
A minor matter, you left an outline to be filled out later. We don't do this to readers. They will not understand a mess. Okay to comment out the outline and fill it in later. Thanks. Student7 (talk) 14:25, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
An afterthought: you seem to have some good ideas. If you can back them with WP:RELY citations and good WP:NPOV reasons about what is wrong with the old text, there's no reason that not only can this article be improved, but can serve as a solid basis to improve articles on other Christian churches in the area, as well. Some are really a mess, historically. Student7 (talk) 14:38, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your reply. You have made some valid points. I would like to discuss them:
"The history always is written by victors." Somewhat true. But there are the following articles: Goa Inquisition and Coonan Cross Oath, neither of which is complimentary to the West!
"History is not objective but subjective." Sometimes, the closer the date, the worse it is. But while we can't get an objective article yet on Hugo Chavez, we are able to on Pope Alexander VI and the Crusades, I think. So time may help.
"If a Syro Malabar Catholic write Indian Syrian Church history it will have a Catholic perspective, if a Syriac Orthodox Christian write it, it will have a catholic perspective." I am a Latin Catholic residing in the US. I do not have a "slant." I am not trying to make the Orthodox "look bad" nor any other branch. I have no axe to grind other than to try to present history as objectively as possible and make all Christian churches put forth their best in an article. They cannot put forth their best when all histories disagree. They all look silly! If one reads like nonsense, it casts doubt on all the others, as well.
"So I am against a template of common history for all the Syrian Churches in India." Why is it to the advantage of one church to say something happened in the 8th century and another not to say that existed? I don't see the point of not sharing a common history.
It would be like the United States saying (in one state), that Pilgrims founded a colony, and another state saying that the French founded a colony and omitting that the Pilgrims did. While we have better documentation, there's no reason to discard, underemphasize, nor overemphasize, history. This is something that intelligent people should be able to collaborate on. There is a great deal more mutual sharing of belief between the editors of the Indian churches than there is among the editors of the Crusades or the pope!
"No Syrian Church in India agree on a thing in history other than the arrival of St. Thomas ;-D." One of the things I demur on since I'm not really that convinced myself. You put a smiley so I assume you agree that it might not be 100% provable.
"So what I was planning to do was to write a history myself adding references later." - Sorry. Can't discuss this proposal. You really should not do that. References must come with the text. Try developing it in your sandbox, if you find developing it online is too confining. On the other hand, please discuss broad changes first in the article's talk page.
"Also an accurate study on the history of the church in India is impossible because there are not enough evidences on the pre-colonial years. Most even destroyed or set to file during the inquisition by Aleixo de Menezes." Let's face it - it was hard to preserve written documents in a tropical climate. There are thousands of documents left to be found in the mid-East. Hardly any in India. Climate was mostly at fault. Menezes didn't help, I am sure.
"Even colonial writing are biased. Portuguese say that the Catholic church ruled over Indian Syrians, but Protestant Claudius buchanan says that they were ruled by Antiochian Patriarch." Here is material over which reasonable people can disagree and insert in the article - BOTH sides. Reason - there is no reason (WP:BIAS) for the Portuguese, IMO, to have stated that Indian Syrians rules Catholic Church, although that is a peculiar statement. Are you sure? Anyway, the distant rule of Antioch may be equally true and valid. Presumably we can present both. If they have critics, those can be presented as well.
So: no, there doesn't have to be one history on which everyone agrees. We can present both sides in a single article if they each have WP:RELY sources. This is what I tried to do when I combined various church histories in the History of the Saint Thomas Christians. A lot of stuff in there did not have proper WP:FOOTnotes and could be deleted or replaced or given citations, or re-written. Another editor has suggested replacing it, which is fine. But there should be more, valid citations than mine!
