Talk:Christianity

The main picture should be of the Crucifixion or the Resurrection

I think the main picture (above the infobox) should be a painting (or other artistic depiction) of either the Crucifixion or Resurrection of Christ. The death and resurrection of the Son of God is Christianity, whereas the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (current photo), while certainly the most important Christian church, is not necessarily super critical to the religion itself (unlike say the Kaaba in Islam which all Muslims are required to visit); indeed the overwhelming majority of Christians have never visited it. JDiala (talk) 16:30, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

yea 178.20.142.170 (talk) 05:27, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I can follow JDiala's reasoning, but if somebody can find something suitable, it would be good to have a triptych picture showing the incarnation/birth of Jesus, crucifixion and resurrection, to depict the main aspects of Christianity in a single image at the head of the page. BobKilcoyne (talk) 05:06, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I would possibly agree in the abstract, but unfortunately the specifics make this a non-starter I would strongly object to, for the simple fact we would have to prioritize a specific artistic tradition or other sectional or historical dimension in selecting a representation. You could make the argument this is still the case with the architectural style of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: however, the fact that diverse Christians visit and control the site makes me worry about that less, on top of its importance for all Christians absolute location–wise. Remsense ‥ 论 05:21, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Good observation, about the church. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 08:44, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

'Southern' Christianity

@Remsense: do you know another way to mention 'southern' Christianity with regard to the cultural diversity? Regards, Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 12:54, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

In the last paragraph of the introduction, there is a mention of the growth of Christianity in Asia and Africa. This discussion could be moved to this paragraph, as it aligns more consistently with its focus, compared to the previous paragraph, which concentrated on the forms of Eastern and Western Christianity.

Christianity is growing in Africa and Asia, the world's most populous continents, resulting in a greater diversity of Christian forms and practices.

Durziil89 (talk) 16:11, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Fix Protestant total adherents

Total number of adherents of Protestantism in opening section lists 1.17 billion, when the cited source [16] shows 625 million. The main Protestantism wiki uses the 625 million number. 2600:1700:3694:8210:9150:F21D:64C4:536D (talk) 00:13, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

 Done Corrected. --Nsophiay (talk) 07:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Outdated Christian Population Figures

This article still uses the outdated PEW estimate for global Christian population which was compiled in 2017. New reliable estimates are available such as this one from World History Encyclopedia. Yet they are constantly being reverted to the older ones by the editors here. Meanwhile articles on Islam and Hinduism no longer use the PEW data from the same timeframe and have adherent population estimates for 2024. I hereby also invite @Plakosa: and Remsense to contribute to this discussion. Thikmi (talk) 13:31, 13 December 2024 (UTC) Thikmi (talk) 13:31, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Like I said in the edit summary: there's no reason to cite another encyclopedia for statistics like this. Encyclopedias are tertiary sources, and therefore not as useful to verify specific figures against—for starters, it would always be preferable to cut out the middleman and cite whoever they're citing instead. Unfortunately, if you read the article, the author does not attempt to provide anything like a complete bibliography for their article—this is often the case with encyclopedia articles written by experts, and we rightfully don't get that privilege (though I still wish they would cite their sources regardless). So, we don't have any actual idea of where the 2.8 billion figure came from, so this is not a very good source for it, even if it is accurate. Pew is a secondary source, and provides more in-depth information about their methodology, etc. If you're going to update the figures, get them from a secondary source of equivalent quality to Pew. Remsense ‥ 论 13:50, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Also, just so it's not left implicit: the figures are not that out of date, and the discrepancy is actually substantial, so I am rather more skeptical that we should cite this tertiary source that doesn't explain where its number came from at all. (Pew's figure for 2020 is around 2.4, so there must be some real underlying differences to bridge that gap, which again are not explained by the encyclopedia author.) So, do not over-fixate on the idea that a newer figure must be preferable here, because it simply isn't for the reasons I've described above. Remsense ‥ 论 14:06, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

I utterly agree with @Remsense. Not only Rebecca Denova of the WHE does not cite her source, and the number which she gives could very well be a typographical error, but I also see that in the overdone list of citations that follow the number in question, none of which support it, there is even (cited twice) the WP:WRDWCD compiled by the people of the Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, which unfortunately continues to be spammed throughout Wikipedia despite being a biased source (cf. 1 and 2). Æo (talk) 15:20, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Addendum: I also believe, as I already hypothesised in the past, that there might be an organised activity by certain users (even with multiple accounts) to spam these sources in Wikipedia. Here you can see an IP adding a 2017 publication by Gina Zurlo (of the WRD/WCD and GCTS) to support the claim that Christianity has been growing in Europe (whilst all censuses prove otherwise), and a registered user later added the exact same source and claim to several other articles (cf. 1 and 2). Æo (talk) 15:50, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

When are we going to openly acknowledge that almost all "counts" of the numbers of believers are inherently flawed and exaggerated? Parents inevitably list their children, including new born babies, as believers in the same faiths they follow. In many cultures, people say they are believers when they're not, because of social or worse pressure. In my own country the Census question on religion is optional and obviously, unlike other questions, the answers cannot be cross checked against other sources. Churches themselves exaggerate their numbers. I have no idea how anyone can claim to know anything like the true numbers of believers. HiLo48 (talk) 22:30, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Christian Theology from the Enlightenment to the Mid-Twentieth Century

This article is currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2025 and 9 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Emahaffy (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Emahaffy (talk) 01:21, 2 February 2025 (UTC)