Talk:History of religion in the United States

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I created the inital page as imports from loc.gov and census.gov sites. All public domain. Please feel free to edit it for accuracy, grammar, format and general copyed. Davodd 10:31, Mar 2, 2004 (UTC)

While I hesitate to make the direct claim that this article fails as NPOV, the parts about the Founding Fathers look like they come close. I feel like this article is just barely dodging NPOV. Does anyone else feel this way? Rhesusman 22:41 17 June 2005 (UTC)

Seems to me much of the article is trying to lead reader to conclude that religion is important in republican gov't. The gov't site took that approach too - perhaps I could find it again --JimWae 00:23, 2005 Jun 18 (UTC)

I agree. A lot of articles have content which makes pointing out NPOV easy. This is tough, but I can't help but think that I know what the author's position on the church-state controversy is, and that can't be good for NPOV. Rhesusman 22:23 7 July 2005 (UTC)
There's another problem with this article. It makes no mention of the growing numbers of religious minorities like Muslims or Buddhists that have been the results of conversions or immigration in the past hundred years. This further leads me to believe that there's a political agenda behind this article. I would think someone motivated to be purely descriptive would not omit this. Rhesusman 06:24 8 July 2005 (UTC)

The article is hopelessly POV. Its hard to express precisesly how, but as you read you get bombarded with biased wording and language. Like Rhesusman, I can tell the author's position on a number of issues just by the phrasing that is being used. IMO, if you can do something like that, its a pretty clear sign that the article is POV. There is also the occasional passage that even with my limited knowledge I can tell is a misrepresentation at the very least. For example, the passage "The efforts of the founding fathers to find a proper role for their support of religion..." seems to imply that all or virtually all of them had some great interest in the "support of religion", when I know that a remarkable number of them were Deists and pretty much actively opposed to organized religion. The Deism section, incidentally, is also pretty poor, failing to so much as mention that Deists believe in a non-interventalist god or the writings of Thomas Paine, and I can't help but feel this sort of thing is intentional. Nothing major, but a pretty consistent pattern. Someone with more time and knowledge than me needs to give the thing a major overhaul. Be brutal, IMO a lot of sections need to pretty much dissapear and be replaced by completely new writing that gives the same (or better) information. In any case, I have given it the POV Check - it does nothing but hurt wikipedia's reputation to have articles like this without it (with the implication that it is considered NPOV), it will encourage people to help edit it, and I don't think anybody is really arguing it is okay as is. As far as non-POV issues go, a lot of it just isn't worded in the style wikipedia usually adopts. That sort of thing can easily be fixed when the rest of it is being reworded. 24.156.86.181 05:04, 20 July 2005 (UTC)


Now that I know the source, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/ I wish I had been bolder in my earlier edits of it. I thought it was crafted by somebody who had taken a great deal of time & would object to significant changes that could not be completely backed up - and did not want to spend lots of time arguing over changes. It seems this could be a 1st amendment violation by the Library of Congress website - (besides a copyvio problem in keeping it here). --JimWae 06:07, 2005 July 20 (UTC)

The 18th Century section leaves much to desire. "Anglicans" are "left behind" in the Great Awakening, yet they praise Whitfield AN ANGLICAN. It speaks nothing of the Methodist movement and the Moravians. In addition, despite the fact that many founding fathers were Diests, many still were members of mainline Christian denominations, giving money and time serving on Church councils. For example, George Washington was a vestry member of an Episcopal Church, and Benjamin Franklin gave tons of money to one Episcopal parish in particular. CJJDay 22:21, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

--- I'm cleaning this thing up... --Verditer 02:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC) I really want to change this, but I don't know what exactly I can do, and I think I might be veering into Uncyclopedia's realm...so good luck fixing this article. It needs it (not to mention the government who wrote the article), and I can't do it NPOV. Verditer 03:07, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Uh... Where is all of the 20th Century/21st Century Info?!

Unless I miss my guess the religious history of america did not end in the year 1899, where is the rest of the article?! The Fading Light 02:43, 21 August 2006 (UTC)



Where are all the citations to back up any of this? Who knows who the quotes are from, for all we know whoever wrote this could just be making it up! 24.17.59.67 04:42, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Makes me want to tag every single sentence citation needed. This article is poorly written and very factually challenged. I cleaned up a bit, and did add one citation in the Diest area, but this article is hopelessly pov and may as well be deleted. Alexr

[edit] Incorrect History

I'm compiling data for my final paper in a seminary/master's level course that has a lot to do with US Church History, and some of the facts presented in this article are completely false. The biggest one is this: While there were some communities within individual colonies that shared common faith, overall church attendance in the colonies hovered near 10%. I'm considering starting a new page on here when I'm done to present my research. It was very disappointing to see that so much of what we grow up learning through grade school and high school - even undergraduate work - regarding this nation's founders, is simply fabricated. Regardless of one's own personal inclinations, it is not good news to learn we have been lied to. Godsmaverick 15:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)godsmaverick

Each page is an article. Don't start a new page unless it is on a new subject. Can you imagine the confusion if there were multiple articles on the same topic? If you have corrections to make, please do so as long as you can reference published information. Data from an unpublished thesis would not be very helpful. --Blainster 21:21, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 19th Century Discussion is very limited

The discussion of 19th Century religion in the U.S. is far too limited. It states, explicitly, that evangelical Christianity was the dominant religious influence in the early-mid 19th Century, which is misleading, to say the least. There ought to be some discussion of major 19th Cen. religious trends, such as the immigration of large numbers of Catholics to the US, the "Deism" practiced by Thomas Jefferson, and others. The bias toward evangelical Christianity on this page is disturbing. Cntreras 10:58, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Plagiarized

Oddly, part is stolen from http://www.richmondhillhistory.org/clergy.html

Go figure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.215.38.170 (talk) 05:23, 4 November 2007 (UTC)