User:Ath271

'''Please note update July 2 2015: I’m no longer paid to be here by the CS church, and have not been for some time. I haven’t had the time/ability to revise my user page yet, but perhaps sometime. FYI for now.'''

I am an academic historian of religions with a doctorate in Religious Studies. Before becoming an academic scholar, I had a career as a technical writer in the software industry (mostly telecom). This gave me broad familiarity with open-source principles and ideals. I value how these are dynamically and collaboratively expressed on Wikipedia, respect the site’s pillars and guidelines and the policies that shape them, and look forward to working with others to jointly improve page content in areas related to my expertise.

I have published and professionally evaluated a variety of peer-reviewed scholarly work on American religions, including Christian Science, and am considered a subject matter expert in that field. Recently I contracted with The First Church of Christ, Scientist (the Christian Science church) to contribute closely considered, comprehensively sourced material that meets scholarly and Wikipedia standards to pages relating to my expertise under the conditions that a) I own my contributions here without third-party oversight, b) no church employees will have editorial control of my contributions, and c) I have scholarly freedom to discuss any issue within the full range of academic literature. I mention this in the interest of transparency and disclosure, having extensively researched COI. A church representative may contribute non-scholarly views to pages about Christian Science; I’m satisfied that such efforts would follow disclosure norms, and we would not coordinate our input or track each other’s activities.

I may also make minor, uncompensated contributions to pages relating to other American religions, which I’ve done a handful of times in the past decade (mostly one-liners, from various places in cyberspace). I may also contribute (again, uncompensated) content to facilitate and encourage the important process of leveraging scholarly knowledge on Wikipedia. The intersection of Wikipedia and scholarly standards, procedures, and cultures of knowledge development are of interest to me.

I’ve reached out to experienced Wikipedians for input as I navigate my participation, helpful conversations that I expect to continue. For practical reasons I won’t be present here every day, but I expect to remain regularly engaged.

4/25/14: Please note that I need to revise this somewhat and link it to discussions about my participation on the CS talk page, all of which have been helpful. I'd also like to add some links to WP's relationship to scholars, payment, and other related issues. That's on my priority list for the next few weeks. For now, I'll reiterate/clarify that I'm WP:PAY and will cut and paste a bit here about my funding:

In the academic study of religion, scholars are often paid by religious institutions. I’ve cited Jenkins, Stark, Braden, and Gooden as examples. Ann Taves was employed by a seminary for several years, and her current chair is funded by Catholic sources. Margaret Bendroth is scholar at a denominational archive, which pays her to produce that denomination’s history. Richard Bushman holds a Mormon professorship at Claremont funded by LDS sources. Acharya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen holds a professorship at Naropa, a religious institution that pays him to do scholarship on Tibetan Buddhism. Robert Thurman’s multi-faceted work is formally linked to the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, founded at the behest of the Dalai Lama. And so on. Religious archives (like all archives) are not unusual when they fund scholarly work without project oversight or reference to the scholar’s religious beliefs. This works because scholars of religion speak about religion, not for or against it. Conversely, apologetics and polemics speak for and against.

My participation is on this professional basis. I’m funded by a religious source but do not speak for or against that source. I speak about it. Scholars neither advocate nor denigrate, but describe.