Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christian communism


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) SST  flyer  02:07, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Christian communism

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This appears to me to be blatant WP:SYN. The few sources do not establish the content of the article, most of which reads as a personal essay with a very pronounced agenda. I don't think this is fixable either - communism is not a theistic philosophy. Guy (Help!) 18:46, 12 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment - Hi Guy, have you had a look at these sources regarding notability: and  -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 21:00, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The IF for Science & Society is 0.667 (2014 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2015) which fails the criteria as a RS for such a topic. The HighBeam search brought equally unacceptable results with passing mention (insignificant) of the "term". Atsme 📞📧 21:44, 12 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete - the heart of the prose is noncompliant with WP:NOR, WP:SOAPBOX, WP:ADVOCACY and WP:SYNC. It appears to be more of an opinion piece than an article worthy of inclusion based on WP:RS and WP:GNG.  The only RS that have been cited actually point to known topics such as Marxism, Christianity, etc. not to any justification for this article's notability or inclusion. Atsme 📞📧 21:35, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Add - there is already a section on this topic in the article Communism which is actually where, if anywhere, this belongs considering the lack of any real substance about the topic (created by SYNTH) in the few sources that are available. Atsme 📞📧 05:21, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Perhaps if deleted, a redirect would be in order, that avoids a redlnk, which is usually an invitation to create the article over again. Montanabw (talk)  02:12, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Makes sense to me. Then if an enterprising editor wants to invest in a RS article without SYNTH in the future, they can build from there. Atsme 📞📧 03:20, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep - I find much of the article to be acceptable, including most of the lead and the first several sections. While there may be some - perhaps significant - NPOV issues, these should be fixed by editing, not outright deletion of the page. The opinion of the editor of whether or not Communism can be theistic should be irrelevant - an abundance of sources indicate that people have believed that Christianity and communism can go together. It seems clear to me that the subject is notable, and most of the sources seem quite acceptable to me as well. Why would they not meet the requirements of WP:RS? I'll just comment too that the article is included in many of the non-English Wikipedia versions, which would suggest that notability is not contested.EAR47 (talk) 22:05, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The major problem is that it's a novel synthesis from often unreliable sources. The idea that the subject is notable is rather contradicted by the absence of scholarly sources - Google turns up a number of blogs and apologetics sites, but nothing usable as a source to replace the invalid sourcing currently in the article. Guy (Help!) 07:05, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:SYN simply states that you shouldn't use sources to derive novel conclusions. Likewise you shouldn't use a self-published or fringe-view source, in general. However in this case I think many of the existing sources can be used; while several of them do propound Christian communist views, that is a perfectly acceptable source given that we are reporting on what those views are. If we avoid drawing any new conclusions, but simply report the beliefs held by these Christian Communists, WP:SYN is not violated, and the sources can be considered reliable for the purpose to which we are using them. As for the sources themselves: Chilton and Cort both appear to be books published by a third party and valid references for the ideas of Christian communism and some history. Brown looks to be a neutral, scholarly paper. Gernhard maybe we should get rid of, due to it being a blog post. Finally, a quick Google Scholar search was quite fruitful; here are just a few sources I found:, and Denys Turner Marxism and Christianity ISBN 0389203513. Given the number of books and papers published by and about these people I'd be shocked if you still debated notability. Again I'm not claiming that the article doesn't need work but deletion seems drastic and unwarranted. EAR47 (talk) 19:10, 13 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment - If this article goes I think Christian libertarianism should follow right behind it. I don't know about our article on Christian socialism. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 18:43, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Strong keep – A quick search on Google Scholar seems to indicate that the nominator's assertion that "communism is not a theistic philosophy" cannot be taken to be a consensus view. While the article could certainly use some cleanup, that doesn't mean that this isn't a notable topic that is worth covering. Graham (talk) 05:11, 15 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Weak keep: I agree wholeheartedly that the article is loaded with WP:SYNTH and a lot of unsourced statements, plus way too much POV-pushing. I'd say keep, but do some major pruning of all the cruft.  In fact, I'll take a whack at it and see if what's left is worth keeping.  There is adequate indicia of notability.  Also, per a search like this, there is some support for the concept, as seen in the Anabaptist Hutterite colonies in my state, which while not Marxist/Leninist in structure (they are, collectively, quite fine with capitalism to bring in income to their community as a whole) have been described as "a communist success story".   Montanabw (talk)  18:08, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Think that while the article isn't in great shape, the concept meets notability. White Arabian Filly  Neigh 21:24, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep the topic is covered in a variety of encyclopedias including The Encyclopedia Americana; Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Politics; Encyclopedia of Protestantism and The Encyclopedia of Social Reform. The topic is therefore notable and the rest is a matter of ordinary editing, not deletion, per our editing policy. Andrew D. (talk) 20:38, 19 June 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.