Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/National church


 * 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   delete.  MBisanz  talk 08:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

National church

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This article purports to describe a "national church" as "a church organization in Christianity that claims pastoral jurisdiction over a nation", but not the same thing as an established church or state religion. Note that according to this article, even some countries with no state religion and no established church have one or more national churches. However, the article is completely unsourced, and it is not clear whether the concept of a "national church" as described in this article is actually a concept used by scholars of religious studies or by people in general. There is also no indication that all of the churches listed as national churches actually do claim pastoral jurisdiction over their entire nations. In summary, to justify keeping this article, some reliable sources ought to be provided to state that (1) the concept of a "national church" really exists (as distinct from established churches and state religions), and (2) the churches listed meet the description of "national churches". But until then, I recommend a delete. Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:52, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep - when I look back at the orignal article in 2005 the parts of the opening paragraphs in the current version made sense and just needed tagging for provision of sources. The accretions of 3.5 years have turned the article into a mish-mash of a list but it needs cleaning up rather than deleting. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:05, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. This is just OR and most of the content I know about is just wrong. For example, in the lists, for Scotland, the Church of Scotland is the the established church there. In Australia, I have never heard of the those churches having this national thrust. Unless the basic concept can be well sourced, there is no point in trying to clean it up.-- Bduke   (Discussion)  10:20, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Apparently, this is a list based on a category Category:National churches that Wikipedia uses as a label for an organization of churches within an individual nation. The category seems to have that label for lack of a better title.  However, it's a gigantic and unwarranted leap to say that a church organization claims "pastoral jurisdiction" over the nation, though sometimes it seems that way, as with the Southern Baptist Convention.  At best, they have some control over whether a church continues to be in an association.  If I'm not mistaken, even the Vatican has individual dioceses by cities, rather than for an entire nation (in other words, there is no Archbishop of the U.S.A.).  Mandsford (talk) 17:11, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete The article appears to confuse issues relating to theocracy and diocese. Pastor Theo (talk) 00:42, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. The terminology is unclear; the sharpest definition of what is at stake is found in state religion. There is nothing to merge here, and other nominators are quite right in pointing out the OR-aspect of the application of this ill-defined term to the world map. Drmies (talk) 04:22, 28 January 2009 (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.