Talk:Anathema

	Christianity portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChristianityWikipedia:WikiProject ChristianityTemplate:WikiProject ChristianityChristianity
B	This article has been rated as B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Template:Eastons talk

I'm no lexicographer, but it seems to me that the following sentence does not contribute positively to this article: eventually the word came to be seen as meaning 'banished' and to be considered beyond the judgment and help of the community. Unfortunately within the English language one does not find such a term.

Whether or not it is a useful synonym for anathema, the term pariah carries the appropriate connotations of banishment and disapprobation.

I would also question whether the current usage of anathema in UK English is predominantly to convey the idea of cursedness. It is far more commonly used to denote strong antipathy.

Greek anathema needs to be discussed. then it can be applied as the LXX translation of Hebrew. Actual usage is important. Wetman 18:40, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I removed this:

Non-Catholics and Non-Christians can reasonably say the Roman Catholic doctrine of anathema looks like Brainwashing. It can mean, "Either you believe and teach what we want you to or we declare you accursed and excommunicate you and just may shun you."

because it is unencyclopedic. I get the point, but the phrasing "can reasonably" is speculative and agumentative. We shouldn't speculate, articles should provide accounts of what scholars/researchers or others have said. Nor should we comment on what is reasonable or unreasonable, which violates our NPOV policy. Has there been debate among Catholics or Christians about this attitude? Why would non-Christians even care? I don't deny there is an issue here that we ought to address, but we have to do it in an NPOV and encyclopedic way Slrubenstein

I reinstated the passage with the first phrase removed. I hope that deals with your objection.Barbara Shack 19:22, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, "looks like" and "can mean" still strike me as very unencyclopedic, and POV. If there is an important theologian or social critic, or sociologist of religion or historian who has actually studied Catholocism or Christianity, who has identified it with brainwashing, by allmeans quote him/her -- otherwise this just looks like your own opinion. That isn't what wikipedia is for. Slrubenstein

I removed the following reinstated paragraph for the same reason as Slrubenstein:

The Roman Catholic doctrine of anathema looks like Brainwashing. It can mean, "Either you believe and teach what we want you to or we declare you accursed and excommunicate you and just may shun you."

Not only is this paragraph extremely POV, but it's also poorly written. Kent Wang 18:06, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Limitations

Wow. First, the bit about "brainwashing" should never have been there. That's pure POV and entirely unacceptable. Second, the article is quite limited at this point, discussing etymology and ancient derivation more than usage and the evolution of doctrine. I'll come back later and discuss how anathema and excommunication differ from one another. Further, there is the infamous formulaic anathema offered up in the 12th century by a particular bishop, and then there is the functional difference in the pronunciation of anathema vs. excommunication (requiring several priests with candles, as opposed to a simple bull). Things that are pronounced anathema are nearly reprobate, whereas excommunication can be lifted. Geogre 04:33, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's probably worth mentioning that the Catholic Church abolished the status of anathema in Vatican II. I don't know the specific details, but that's what my Catholic Bible says.

The term holocaust has undergone a similar transformation to that of anathema. It's interesting that both terms described a sacrifice of a sort, and now have taken on a negative connotation. 12.154.39.13 (talk) 16:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Topsite

Anathema is the name of a topsite on the darknet...it's little-known, like all topsites...just thought you'd like to know! ;-)

Anathema in popular culture

I want to delete this whole section, but want to see what people think first, to avoid an edit war. This is really nothing more than a trivia section, which is against Wikipedia policy, and it includes a lot of instances where the word anathema happens to have been used in some context or other, often without any real relevance to the actual subject of the article. We don't need it, and it trivializes what is otherwise a serious subject. Let's get rid of it. Richard75 (talk) 20:27, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anathema vis-a-vis religion and science today

In the modern political climate in the U.S., the word anathema seems to to be the best word to describe how many fundamentalist Christians feel about science, and many other people feel about fundamental Christianity. But I don't have any references as such, although they could probably be found. Does anyone have an opinion on this?

Richard75 makes a good point about trivialization. But I would argue for a re-working of the section rather than a wholesale deletion. Wildspell (talk) 06:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]