Talk:Rātana

Major expansion
Hard to find much and I had a few misconceptions when I started. May add some more later.

Herne nz 07:51, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Merger proposal
It has been proposed (by Beeswaxcandle) that Te Haahi Ratana (Ratana as religion) be merged into the main (secular) Ratana article.

Vote:Leave with a clear separation of the two (religious and secular) wings.

Currently the Te Haahi Ratana article is in need of wikification. Although The Ratana movement was both religious and political and Ratana politicians were also Ratana ministers, I suggest keeping the article about the nature of the Ratana faith separate from the secular article that deals mainly with the establishment of the movement and its political involvement. Fanx (talk) 19:45, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Vote:Leave separation of political and religious concerns is important, even when considering a group who advocated a union of religion and politics. Stuartyeates (talk) 08:39, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Vote:Leave and I agree the articles differences could be strengthened. Pakoire (talk) 23:57, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

New merger proposal
User:Helenalex suggested in 2008 that Christian Maramatanga Society be merged into this article.

I think it is appropriate for the articles to remain separate, since the founder of the Maramatanga Society is sufficiently notable to have her own entry in the New Zealand Dictionary of National Biography. However, merging to this article would be preferable to deletion of the content entirely.- gadfium 20:41, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Something missing
"In both the parliaments of 1946–1948 and of 1957–1960, the formation of a Labour Government depended on the votes of the Rātana Movement members. Not all Labour Party Māori MPs have been members of the Rātana Church, but the alliance with Rātana allowed Labour to hold on to all four Māori electorates from the 1940s until 1996.

"Under John Key, this has continued, with the notable exception being in 2015, where he was overseas and unable to attend. This invited some controversy, although Bill English attended in his place.[6]"

- This is absolute rubbish. What's John Key's being overseas got to do with Labour holding the Maori seats? David Cannon (talk) 04:55, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Redundancy
We don't have to copy over poor writing from out sources, unless we are using a direct quotation, which we are not doing here:
 * "On 31 May 1925, Te Haahi Rātana (The Rātana Church) was formally established as a separate church which was formally registered on 21 July 1925."

Using "formally" twice in one sentence is the first sign that the writing is poor.

Then there is the question of whether something can be "informally registered". I don't think it can -- registration is by its nature a formal act.

And then there is the question of what the distinction is between being "formally established" and "informally established". Was it informally established as a separate church before it was formally established as a separate church''? Not according to the article adms it is written now. It tells us that until 1924, Ratana was preaching to lots of Maoris, but there is no suggestion that he had informally established a separate church.


 * "On 31 May 1925, Te Haahi Rātana (The Rātana Church) was established as a separate church which was registered on 21 July 1925" tells the reader the same thing.

And replacing "Initially" with "At first" is just a way of making our writing livelier, which is always a good thing.

We don't have to use someone else's poor writing, and we shouldn't. We should strive for something better. Ground Zero &#124; t 02:45, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

There is quite a lot of comment on the Churches own website covering 'registration'. The primary purpose for one sort of registration is to be able to conduct marriages and for that formal registration under the Births Deaths and Marriages  Registrar is required. Another registration seems to be for its  'banking'  activities. maybe further detail on the previous registering, unregistering and  then re- registering again  from http://www.theratanachurch.org.nz/history.html could help  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Okerefalls (talk • contribs) 03:57, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
 * In the page you linked, the word "registration" is used 4 times, and "register" is used 11 times (including variations). There is not a single instance of "formal registration" or "formally registered".
 * The article says "On July the 15th, 1925, the Ratana Established Church of New Zealand was registered with the Registrar General of Marriages, Births and Deaths in Wellington...." There is no modifier attached to "registered" here, and there should be none in Wikipedia.
 * You've proved my point. Now, can we restored my edit? Thank you.Ground Zero &#124; t 10:42, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
 * No I havent proved your point. The original source used was different and did say 'formal registration'. The idea of the new source with deeper discussion was so that  perhaps you would be inclined to  expand on the previous material, not have a fetish about undoing stuff that doesnt please you.Okerefalls (talk) 22:53, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm just trying to improve the writing style and therefore the readability of the article by removing redundancies. And it was you who undid my edit, as the history shows. Ground Zero &#124; t 22:28, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Expanding and cleaning up article
I have been editing to address the lack of citations, to expand with new sources and to make this about the movement and different to the article about the church Te Haahi Ratana. Some of the language at this stage is a bit clunky and needs a copy edit. Other improvements are to check for copyright violations with relevant Te Ara articles and more citations are needed for big sections still. I welcome any discussion about any approaches I have been taking. This is not a subject well-known to me. Pakoire (talk) 04:00, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Te Haahi Ratana into Rātana (2024)
Support merge because the Te Haahi Rātana article is far too detailed. I've added a Template:Overly detailed because it contains a really excessive amount of intricate detail about the practice of the religion. I suspect that once the excessive information is removed, the remaining article will be so small it could be merged into the spirituality section of this article. Keeping them separate does not make sense to me, given the close ties of the religious and political components of the movement. If I was a person wanting to read more about Rātana as a church, I'd expect all of it to be in the Rātana article somewhere. -- David Palmer aka cloventt (talk) 01:07, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Oppose merge, since the Te Haahi Ratana is an article specifically about the church and its organisation, while this article is about the movement as a whole. I don't think the secular vs religious distinction above is quite right, rather we're dealing with a main article (about the secular, religious, and political aspects) and a sub-article (about the religious aspect alone). While I think that the sub-article needs wikification (there is too much direct quotation and no sources), this is a sensible way of dividing up the topic and I don't think Te Haahi Ratana is excessively detailed. WP should explain what the Rātana creed is, how their church is institutionally structured, how their services work, when their sacred days are, etc. (as long as it can be sourced). A sub-article is the appropriate place to do that, while the important parts should be briefly summarised here in WP:SUMMARYSTYLE. (sidenote: why is it Te Haahi Ratana rather than Te Haahi Rātana?) ((Further sidenote: I think there is more to do on the structure and content of this article. The "history" section is also functioning as an "overview" section and it would be better to separate those out; this article ought to have more information on demographics and geography; Ture Wairua and especially Ture Tangata are under-emphasised compared to Koata; and we probably want a section that explains Rātana's significance within Te Ao Māori and Aotearoa/New Zealand as a whole)) Furius (talk) 10:59, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Merge, or just simply delete Te Haahi Ratana. That page has no sources, and even if it were sourced, most (99%) of what is written there should still be deleted as WP:UNDUE or WP:NOT, or is duplicate with this page. It appears to function as a manual or introduction to members, or as a church document, rather than an encyclopaedia article. As for whether we need two pages for two facets of the same subject, consider by comparison, Catholicism and the Catholic Church (tongue-in-cheek, they are the same page). There is no meaningful need to make readers go through two different pages to understand the whole story of what people mean when they talk about Rātana. “Merging” the two pages would result in no loss of context, and if we ever did come to a day when separation of the two was meaningful, it would be easy to evaluate a split based on the well-sourced material of one well-written page. — HTGS (talk) 00:34, 8 February 2024 (UTC)