Talk:Brethren
Is it appropriate to include the text of the "Brethren Card" here? Is it available for Fair Use? RickK 03:02 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Except in gnostic groups (which the Brethren are most emphatically not), a statement of faith is intended by virtue of its purpose to be public information, and redistribution is permitted (even, encouraged). I know that this is the view of the FGBC and CGBCI groups (and if it is wanted I can easily lay my hands on a statement of faith from either of those groups). Barring any objection from the Church of the Brethren, which seems very unlikely, I wouldn't worry about it. Additionally, I am almost sure that the included Brethren Card predates modern copyright law. --jonadab
I think it would be good to make this a more generic article about the various Brethren denominations, and merge most of the specific information on the history & beliefs of Alexander Mack and his followers into the Schwarzenau Brethren topic. I will do that in a few days if no one objects. Please give me any opinions you might have on this. Thanks. Rlvaughn 06:38, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- Seeing comments neither pro nor con, I have rearranged this article as mentioned above. I am moving the "Brethren Card" info to the Schwarzenau Brethren topic. - Rlvaughn 20:46, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- I think this was a good idea, and in fact I think it would be good to go further. This article could usefully be a short general index article about the tradition of churches called 'Brethren', with slightly less information here about the Schwarzenau Brethren, and slightly more on the principal other churches such as Moravian Brethren, Plymouth Brethren, etc. Myopic Bookworm 23:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
The Brethren
The article The Brethren is about a book by John Grisham. It has one link from this article, about a US group founded in 1966. I have created The Brethren (disambiguation) to separate the Grisham book from another book and from The Brethren (cult). Perhaps an article should be created about the 1966 group as well, by someone with knowledge about the group. I'm not sure what the article should be named, though, as The Brethren is alrady taken. But if someone creates the article, please add a link to it at The Brethren (disambiguation). (Entheta 11:50, 10 May 2006 (UTC))
External link cleanup
The external link section is becoming excessive for this article. There are dupiclates of preferable internal links, blogs, forums and other items specifically discouraged by WP:EL. I think the easiest would be to remove the whole section and start fresh, evaluating additions against MOS:L and WP:EL for possible inclusion. Other thoughts? JonHarder 00:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Paragraph removed
The following paragraph, added here, is not sourced and could not be confirmed by me. Please restore if it turns out to be correct.
- The Brethren, a Central U.S. group founded in 1966 as an iconoclastic response to the Vietnam War and to question the burgeoning feminist movement. Members are now active from coast to coast and in Canada. All members are college educated. Most marry, have children, and pursue lives which express fundamental gender differences, as researched by Simon Baron-Cohen.
Maybe this is a really convoluted, misleading and false reference to The Brethren (cult); in any event, Baron-Cohen does not seem to be involved at all. AxelBoldt 00:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
- On the other hand, Baron-Cohen (Simon, not Sacha!) is a pretty reliable source, and founding in 1966 is not 1971; don't rule out follow-up research. But the 2-edit IP contributor, the accompanying URL (presently an ad for an alarmist book), and a careful reading of the Baron-Cohen sentence (
reserachedresearched diffs, not group?) are discouraging.
--Jerzy•t 23:49, 3 & 01:41, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
What a mess!
I did an edit that fixed some of the fundamental affronts to WP's purpose and style, but it needs more serious work.
- The 6 entries under "Other" are apparently related to the others only by being Protestant and using the word "brethren". They should move to Brethren (disambiguation).
- The 2 entries under "Fundamental Bible Churches", until shown otherwise, are equally unrelated, and deserve the same. (If they have a common history, they just should probably be under a common heading in the same Dab. If they do belong together, then either "fundamental" is PoV, or it should be lk'd to Fundamentalism in which case that article may need a slight enhancement about earlier moves twd its early 20th-century heyday, or it should be lk'd to some article related to another historical focus on fundamentals.)
- Those plans help one focus on the biggest two problems:
- It's at least burdensome to reach a point where one can form a reasonable opinion about whether there is a contradiction between "The following [Anabaptist and/or Pietist] Brethren bodies are not related historically to the Schwarzenau groups descended from Alexander Mack." (the article and "The Schwarzenau Brethren movement began as a melding of Pietist and Anabaptist ideas." (Ch of B'n)
- In either case, it's important to settle whether these two separately treated groups of denominations should be treated in one article (or article section), two, or even three (of which two would focus on events in denominations of one group or the other, that insignificantly affected the other, and the third would describe Interaction between Schwarzenau and Anabaptist/Pietist Brethren histories or #Interaction between Schwarzenau and Anabaptist/Pietist Brethren histories).
- Once all that reaches at least a working approach, a decision will be needed about what topic should be covered by Brethren. FWIW, i'll be surprised unless the answer is "a dab": either
BTW, while coverage should not be mathematically proportional to notability, significantly more coverage requires significantly more notability, and membership of denominations is an important contributing factor to notability. So a table on the talk page summarizing membership estimates could make it easier at least to motivate editors to work on the important part of this topic.
Removed "See also"
A "see also" section, outside a Dab, is often a warning sign. In this case, we deserve for each lk an explanation on talk of why
- the following lks are necessary to an understanding of each of the denominations discussed here, and
- those lks can't be embedded (ever heard of the wiki concept?) in sentences on this page or pages about the individual denominations.
(I'm really not saying this just for the pleasure of the sarcasm, tho this pushes the limits of any obligation to be careful against deleting useful material.)
These are the removed lks: