User talk:Mathenkozhencherry

Welcome!
Welcome to Wikipedia, Mathenkozhencherry! I have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time. I just wanted to say hi and welcome you to Wikipedia! If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on or by typing helpme at the bottom of this page. I love to help new users, so don't be afraid to leave a message! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Oh yeah, I almost forgot, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on, or place helpme on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome! CordeliaNaismith (talk) 19:31, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
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Your recent edits
Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126; ) at the end of your comment. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. --SineBot (talk) 19:36, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Talkback
CordeliaNaismith (talk) 19:48, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Mar Thoma edits
I'm grateful for your desire to improve the coverage of the Mar Thoma church. Please be advised of two things. First, it is not allowed to delete another editor's comments on the talk page. Feel free to add your own opinion there, but don't delete another's words. Second, when making large controversial edits, please wait for discussion. You have posed some important questions on the talk page, but in the interests of harmony, please give others a chance to respond before blanking large portions of the article. Finally, be sure you understand Wikipedia's policies about a neutral point of view. It seems as if different Indian Christian groups disagree among themselves about the history. Wikipedia's job is not to take one side or the other in such a dispute, but to accurately report the existence and background of the dispute. Tb (talk) 20:15, 7 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I have given my comments on your edits in the Talk page of the article, Mar Thoma Church. From where can we get confirmation for your comments? Please give details. Neduvelilmathew (talk) 16:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Please WP:AGF in discussions. Many, if not most editors try to be objective. In some cases there are overlapping claims which are equally valid when referenced by WP:RELY sources. For example, there are around five Patriarch of Antioch, all with competing claims to the same title. There may have been more at one time. All equally "valid" under rules employed by Wikipedia. No one reasonable suggests that "his" claim is more valid than someone else's, despite their private belief. In other words, Wikipedia is not required to publish my private beliefs (which happen to be Catholic) as the only set of beliefs. All others will be equally represented if possible if valid citations are supplied.


 * Second, while there is no religious test for editors (!) many of us are Christian. From my point of view, it sets a bad example when Christians start accusing each other of "bad faith." When this is pointed out, the offender says, "Well, he started it!". Which seems vengeful (and unchristian), at best. Assuming good faith initially may forestall discussion wars and misunderstanding.


 * Some of your questions may have already been raised by others. All articles are years old. No one is deliberately lying (there are vandals, but that is no different for these articles than any other). There are claims that are poorly documented or documented with unreliable references. Many more in Indian Christianity than anywhere else I have seen. I am trying to assist the above editors (and others) in correcting these, one by one. It will take awhile. There are many myths, passing as facts. We appreciate objective assistance.


 * People who are easily upset when discussing religion, may be better off editing other articles where they don't feel challenged when others wish to represent their differing claims as valid. Student7 (talk) 00:16, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks Student7, if your are interested in assisting other editors. My only suggestion is, allow the articles and charts to be kept neutral. Biased images and articles will only invite vandalism. I see a lot of difference in the most of the wiki articles of Indian Christianity now, than 1 year before. The articles are becoming more and more biased. One year before, much of the articles were neutral, hence I never had to turn and look, however, now I am complelled to be here. Lets not consider sources/references written by a member of a certain community, thats the root cause for all probes. The history varies from church to church, and you have to understand, that local christians are not highly oranginsed, unlike Europeans, who record everything. Sad and also happy to say, churches like the local Orthodox, CSI, Jacobite, etc remain churches and not like Organisations. It is important to also understand and get a grasp of the local culture. Most indians, are not very much interested in keeping their tradions or recording them. Their is a hindi word which describes the attitude of Indians, "Chalta hai", "it dosent matter" or "let it be". This attitude is why most of the local churches cant compete with more competant European counter parts. And also, long back, during the Portuguese time, much of the writings were done on palm leaves. Several desroyed by Hindus, then the portuguese.. etc. Citing good sources are often a trouble for everyone. And remember, their were as few as 100 churches in kerala during the portuguese arrival, hence moving to 100 places and destroying, them, is very very easy.Their are various accounts on , how the local christians were treated. For that you have to come down to Kerala, and access the archives of Kerala History in Trivandrum (http://www.keralahistory.ac.in/). Fyodor7 (talk) 07:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Procedure is important. Wikipedia has a long history of successfully dealing with difficult things and topics.  But it requires that you respect the procedure at the same time as the content.  Tb (talk) 17:15, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Excellent material
You have provided excellent material for the population of the several churches. Is is correct to assume that the Indian gazette you have quoted is not online?

I have slightly reformatted the material you have furnished in a sandbox of mine. It is "Question 8" at User:Student7/Sandbox 23. Would you take a look at it for accuracy? I was thinking of moving this to the new Saint Thomas Christians Project, on the talk page, as (newly numbered) question 1 of a FAQ, which does not yet exist. It seems to me that you have provided the best information we have seen to date and it seems a shame not to take advantage of it.

(BTW you can ignore the other questions there. They are not ready for visibility yet! Okay to comment, but I'm not about to move them)

Thanks. Student7 (talk) 20:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Tb, the stats are not available online to the best of my knowledge. But they can be found on the Yearbook i mentioned. The year books source of info is from the Indian Census made every decade. They have denomination-vise break ups. The stats are accurate to the best of my info. However the accurate numbers to the last digit could be made known only if i could have the yearbook with me. Im presently out of India and will return only by end of next month. Il refer it and give you the figures down to the last digits according to the last census when i get back home.

Mathenkozhencherry (talk) 20:53, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I noticed that the figures I copied may not reflect population counts abroad. I suspect that this is true for the Orthodox church? I will check with Tb.


 * I am totally neutral (slight Catholic bias), but really would like all Christian churches in the area to look as good as possible. I think we are getting several "neutral" povs with other interested outsiders. On one hand, it is a bit easier for us since we are not swept up with biases which may infect some thinking, but, as you point out, we may miss the boat completely on some issues. We have to have insiders for the real information. In general, we do not have access to any books.


 * I do agree about fiction from church sources. Pretty awful for some. But we have made vast strides with the addition of many new faces since last year, including yours. Almost nothing gets by us now. Last year, it was only me! NeuvelMatthew was disgusted and just interested in one article on his church and one or two others, but about the only other objective person around! Student7 (talk) 21:38, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

The yearbook is surely an accurate reflection of membership within India. We need a worldwide figure, and we have no documented source for a worldwide figure beyond the one million number cited. If the Indian yearbook did anything about worldwide membership, it would be helpful, but otherwise it's really just not going to help. You still haven't addressed this, except for vague confident proclamations that you just know the worldwide population can't be much bigger, but we need sources, not confident proclamations. Tb (talk) 00:48, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Brahmavar (Goan) Orthodox Church
I reverted your edits here becuase they were correct. I also added at the bottom, so it would display correctly. -- &#47; MWOAP &#124; Notify Me &#92; 20:59, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

MWOAP, Thank you very much!

Mathenkozhencherry (talk) 20:54, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Talkback
CordeliaNaismith (talk) 01:58, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Congratulations!
Thank you very much!

Mathenkozhencherry (talk) 14:50, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello again
I've been very busy for the past few weeks, but I did see your lovely note on CordeliaNaismith's Talk page. I am sad to hear about the state of Nasrani culture. Soon enough, people are going to regret that it's in such bad shape, unless they forget about it altogether which would be terrible. Hopefully, Wikipedia will help people remember because people can find out about so many things from Wikipedia. Also, I've seen that you've made some very nice edits to the pages you'd been talking about. Good for you. You might also want to come to Wikiversity, which is a project related to Wikipedia that is, instead of an online open encyclopedia, an online open school/university. Wikiversity is much more flexible than Wikipedia, in terms of what types of learning materials can find a home there. For example, perhaps the Wikipedia articles could link to Wikiversity "how to" pages about what Nasrani people can do (how to practice the rituals, how to hold a Nasrani service, what is special about its theology and culture, what your personal ideas about Nasrani Christianity are, examples of Nasrani slang, how to cook Nasrani cuisine, etc). I think "how to" pages could also walk people through practices in a way that encylopedia articles can't, and because of this, might make people better able to identify with Nasranis.

>our spirituality and culture has many jewish-semitic influences, especially the prostrations

Unfortunately, most Jews don't pray that way anymore. (Well, at least it's my own angle that this is unfortunate, because it's a facet of Judaism that so many people forgot about and it seems to me like a moving way to pray.) I am Ashkenazi Jewish and Ashkenazim pray in chairs or pews with their shoes on, like Catholics and Protestants. Karaite Jews are some of the few Jews that still pray prostrate, but there are not very many of those left.

Do you have photos of what your clergy wear?

Additionally, I'm curious what you cook for Passover, which is coming up. We have trouble figuring out what to eat for the 8 days of Passover because of all the restrictions on grains. Also, I don't eat meat so traditional Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, which is designed to handle passover but with lots of meat, becomes a problem for me.

Also: You may want to add information about what Nasrani do to the articles about their holidays. Right now, there's a move toward merging the articles about Christian celebrations of Jewish holidays into the articles about the Jewish holidays. This has already happened with Feast of Tabernacles (Christian holiday), which is now part of the Sukkot article. The article Passover (Christian holiday) still exists but may well be merged in the near future. The Christian articles seem to mostly be about new branches of Christianity that have adopted Jewish holidays based on their readings of the Bible, and these articles probably need more information about older branches of Christianity. BTW, do you yourself celebrate Passover? -- AFriedman  (talk)  08:07, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Afriedman, thank you very much for your reply and mentioning about wikiversity. I hope to check it out after easter, right now am out of my country and dont have much time on the internet.

Jews dont prostrate much anymore?!..thats very bad. All religion seem to be getting europeanised of late. Even the syrian christian churches are starting anglican style choirs with humming etc instead of the rhythmic chantings which we were used to. It really frightens me that the world is becoming uniform, homogenised and losing its colour and diversity. I admire the jewish people for what they contributed to the world in terms of both spirituality and ideas(also hollywood), and you might be aware that many people around the world are in awe of your race. It is more sharp among the christian communities in India, they simply believe jews to be the master race.

You are ashkensazim? It might seem funny, but some people in our community are claiming to be Jewish in descent after taking some dna tests. My cousin also took the test and says we are all jews. Check out this website: http://www.familytreedna.com/public/SyrianChristiansOfIndia/default.aspx I think he says we are called "Ashkensasi Levite" or something like that hehe...im not sure if thats the same as yours.

Personally i think its preposterous and silly. Some mongolish looking people in the north eastern indian state of Mizoram also took similar tests and 5000 of them immigrated to Israel in the last decade. I think they are called "Bnei Menashe". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnei_Menashe These people were formerly a tribe of headhunters and the  conversion to evangelical christianity, the resulting education brought about by western missionaries, made them have an identity crisis and also disgust for their tribal animist past, which some of them seem to have compensated by this new jewish identity.

We do have some jewish customs, which we may have inherited because of the semitic nature of our christianity, and not necessarily because we are jews by blood. There are also a lot of hindu customs as well. There is a legend among Kerala Christians that the Syrian Christians here were descended from four root hindu Brahmin highpriest families- Kalli, Kaaliyankal, Shankarapuri and Pakalomattom. I myself belong to the Kalli family. Now some immigrant syrian christians in the west are saying they were not "brahmin highpriests", but "jewish levite priests". I dont believe in both, as i believe we are not a homogenous race of people. But these claims maybe arising from the identity crisis the kerala syrian christians are facing in the West. A jewish identity may make them look more cool. Im not sure what to believe.

Here is a picture of a orthodox syrian priests in kerala: http://www.orthodoxherald.com/wp-content/uploads/ordination-service-fr-mathew.JPG The ones with the black cap are the priests. The bishops wear a black robe, and the priests a white one, when they are not inside Church.

Im not sure the Christian Passover we have here is same as the Jewish passover. But our grandmothers used to cook something called a pesaha appam, which is a sweet steamed rice cake. Before 16th century, our people also observed sabbath and we had no indigenous bishops of our own, all our bishops were from middle east who came with a one-way ticket, in arab dhows and lived and died here. Some of them were Syriac Orthodox, there are some syriac orthodox in syria and lebanon who call themselves "Knanoye" and say they are jewish converts to christianity from 2 millenia ago.

Yes i know churches are fanatic about converting jews, a "jewish christian" is much sought after specie. Its very irritating to be "harvested" by evangelists. Here western churches have the same thing with syrian christians. Now we have "syrian catholics" and "syriac protestants" as a result of aggressive conversions often marring the limits of decency, using material incentives and political means. Earlier we were all part of semitic churches- either assyrian(nestorian) or syriac orthodox. Sorry for the lengthy reply. Thanks again for your interest and your help.

Mathenkozhencherry (talk) 18:41, 18 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi! I'm about to email you, since I think this might be getting off topic for a Talk page.  -- AFriedman   (talk)  23:16, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Ahatallah
I guess you are not active these days. Would you please go through the article and pass your comments on it. Shlomo.Fyodor7 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:28, 23 June 2010 (UTC).

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