Talk:Daily devotional

Examples of daily devotionals - links
I would like to discuss including my website http://www.GodsLovingKindness.com in the article for Daily devotionals as an example link. We have been doing daily christian devotionals for six years and counting. We have thousands of devotionals, and many people reference to our devotions in our archives. Please include our site as an example. Thank you! Edifier320 03:49, 1 November 2008 (UCT)
 * Edifier320 has been specifically notified on her/his talk page that Wikipedia is not a collection of links, nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. I suspect that the entire section should be removed for just that reason. --Bejnar (talk) 06:51, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposed removal of links under "Examples of daily devotionals"
I suspect that the idea behind the section "Examples of daily devotionals" was noblely motivated, but the result is "advertising or promotion". Examples that are written out in text with citation to a reliable published source (not just any web page) would be appropriate. But this list of links to prosetylization and blogs is not what the Wikipedia is about. See Wikipedia is not a collection of links and Wikipedia is not a soapbox. Therefore, I propose removing the "Examples of daily devotionals" section until such time as it can be replaced with proper text with inline citation to reliable, published sources. --Bejnar (talk) 06:51, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I would suggest removing the Bruderhof's Daily Dig section for that reason. Languagehat (talk) 16:57, 5 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I have removed all of the /* External links */ for that same reason. If you wish to place an external link, please justify here on the talk page and tell us what it adds and why it is not promotional.--Bejnar (talk) 02:49, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

AA
I removed the following that was placed under categories. If someone finds merit in some part of it, please wikify and add sourcing and links and place in a proper section when restoring. --Bejnar (talk) 02:49, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Dick B. is the author of Good Morning!: Quiet Time, Morning Watch, Meditation, and Early A.A.
 * The principal daily devotionals used by early AAs were these: The Upper Room (a quarterly Methodist devotional); The Runner's Bible by Nora Smith Holm; My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers; Daily Strength for Daily Needs by Wilder; and Victorious Living by Oswald Chambers.
 * These devotionals were used by individual A.A. pioneers. They were used for group Quiet Times and for discussion therein. They were used by Dr. Bob's wife Anne Ripley Smith when she conducted her daily quiet times in the morning at the Smith Home in Akron. The Anne Smith Quiet Times were for alcoholics, their wives, and their children.

What daily devotional is and isn't
After I reverted @User:Darker Dreams addition of Buddhist practices, Darker Dreams restored them (instead of coming here to start a discussion) with the comment "Described article topic would be better named something like Daily devotional (Christian publication). General name should cover general subject or risks being wp:undue.)" That presupposes that there's an ambiguity here. Are there any sources that use the term "daily devotional" to describe any aspect of Buddhist practices? I found nothing indicating the use of this phrase to refer to anything Buddhist at either of the two articles Darker Dreams linked to, Buddhist devotion and Buddhānusmṛti. Largoplazo (talk) 22:06, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @User:Largoplazo Opening by throwing rocks doesn't help; you reverted edits acknowledged as good faith rather than coming here to discuss in order to protect this particular, limited definition of what a daily devotional is. To answer your question about describing any Buddhist practice; from the Buddhānusmṛti page, "In other traditions, there are also monthly or bimonthly, weekly or daily observances." There are many religions that involve daily devotions. Buddhism is just the one that I had a reference at hand for within existing wiki. Arguably the Baháʼí Long prayer is more akin to daily devotional than the breviaries (and Salah) which are specified in the article as having fixed prayer times. The problem is that by creating an article named "daily devotions" that discusses only Christian practice it ignores a whole range of other daily devotional acts in major world religions and places a specific type of relatively minor Christian religious text in a place of inappropriate primacy. Darker Dreams (talk) 22:53, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I threw no rocks. I set the context for anyone who comes by this thread to see what led up to it, and then I set out my reasoning. If you mean the part about you not having come here to discuss it, well, I admit I chose to note that fact.
 * The article isn't named "Daily devotions", it's named "Daily devotionals". The pertinent question is whether anybody calls the other forms of devotion you refer to as "devotionals". Going by the OED, I wouldn't expect anyone to because it says of "devotional" as a noun "A devotional composition; a form of prayer or worship. Obsolete. rare." This implies that it isn't an extant, ordinary word that English speakers use generically today to refer to devotional activities in various religions, including Christianity. Based on that, the fixed phrase "daily devotional" is a petrified use of the word.
 * Merriam-Webster's Unabridged, however, doesn't mark it as obsolete; it defines the noun as "a short worship service especially when preceding or incorporated into a meeting (as of a club or discussion group) that is not predominantly religious". On the other hand, Cambridge English Dictionary doesn't recognize its use as a noun at all.
 * I just Googled, chose the Verbatim option (to keep it from accepting "devotion" as a match), and received seven results. In all of them, either "devotional" was given its adjectival use or there was a reference to "daily devotion" in the Christian context. It seems that people aren't calling it a "devotional". To call it such on Wikipedia would amount to original research.
 * I think that if there's to be an article on such daily practices such as those to which you refer, "Daily devotional" is not the title under which it should be found. Though "daily devotions" would be somewhat suitable, I'd expect it to be something more like "Daily worship" or "Daily religious rituals". It shouldn't be a word that is rarely, if ever, used for such activities.
 * It has nothing to do with Christian primacy, no more than objecting to the addition to Talmud of information about religious legalistic and analytical tomes of other faiths on the grounds that one could call them "Talmuds" is an act of Jewish primacy. Largoplazo (talk) 23:20, 29 June 2023 (UTC)