Talk:Christian college

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 07:04, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

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Christian Colleges → Christian college – The article should be in the singular, not the plural, with "college" in lower case because it is a common noun in this context. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals). -- Metropolitan90 (talk) 03:31, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Strong oppose this article is highly biased. There are regions of the world where protestant colleges would be very rare, and the only Christian colleges would be Catholic or Orthodox. Everything about this article screams bias. The link to "Catholic colleges" doesn't even link to Catholic colleges, it links to such things in the United States. This is not a "Christian college" article at all, it's a US college article. It should be called Protestant colleges in the United States. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 04:07, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support per policies cited by nominator. Perceived problems in the content can be worked on perfectly well under a corrected name. Elizium23 (talk) 04:15, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
  • The corrected name can be Protestant colleges in the United States -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 23:41, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Propose your own RM then, and don't try to disrupt this one: we supporters feel that the article should be salvaged and expanded to document all Christian colleges, rather than just the USA Protestant ones. Elizium23 (talk) 23:45, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
      • A new article can be started to cover Christian colleges in general, when this article vacates the location, as it is, this article is not suitable to be the basis of such a general article. At best, it could become a Christian colleges in the United States, but not a worldwide article. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 00:54, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support move - the scope could be improved, but the name of the article definitely needs to change. StAnselm (talk) 04:43, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support This just a basic grammar issue. The content problem is another story—the IP editor makes a good point. First Light (talk) 22:34, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
• Support: (best) Orlady below; (2nd) rename as nom - this is a very minor issue compared to the blatent oversimplification of the start of the lead: "Christian Colleges are ..." (now I've changed that). (returning) Really Orlady's comments below, though possibly rather harsh, do propose the best solution. Johnbod (talk) 15:50, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect to Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Otherwise, I have a weak preference for the proposed rename over the current name, but only because the current name is noncompliant with WP:MOS and the proposed name would resolve the nominal issues with MOS. I contend that the current scope of this article is possibly best described by the title "Schools that affiliate with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities" because that organization seems to promote and promulgate the term "Christian college" as it is used in this article.

The article still has the serious issues that I saw when I took it to AFD. This is essentially an original research essay, unsupported by appropriate sources, about a self-identification of a narrow subset of U.S. colleges and universities. Neither of the alternative names that were proposed above is acceptable. The vast majority of non-public universities and colleges in the United States (plus a few public institutions) were historically "Christian colleges" because they were established by Christian churches and denominations, but most never fit the definition in this article. Many U.S. non-public universities and colleges that decidedly do not fit the definition in this article still have affiliations -- and in many cases a strong connection -- with a Protestant denomination. A few examples of institutions that retain strong Protestant denominational connections but don't fit the unsourced definition given in this article are the Quaker-affiliated Earlham College, the Episcopal-owned Sewanee: The University of the South, the Lutheran schools Augsburg College and St. Olaf College, and the Methodist-affiliated Emory and Henry College. These are all arguably characterized as both "Christian colleges in the United States" and "Protestant colleges in the United States", but they do not fit the definition given in this article (and it should be noted that they aren't members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities). Since the article about the Council describes its membership criteria and lists its members and affiliates, I conclude that this article is at best a WP:content fork in its current form. --Orlady (talk) 15:15, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

• Neutral - I agree with the comments of User:Orlady but not sure of the destination for the material to be merged. I don't really think this article's content by itself is worthy stand-alone article and think it ought to be merged into a bigger article on a more appropriate, precise topic--whether a list of Christian-affiliated colleges, or the council article that Orlady proposed above. There are too many questions begged because there is a rather limited sense of a criteria here...sure, they're protestant, largely evangelical schools, but Catholics are Christians too (despite the wishes of some Baptists), also what about schools that were founded and affiliated with Christian traditions (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, etc.) that don't identify despite their history with this group that seems to include the likes of Liberty University, Moody Bible Institute, and Oral Roberts University. This proposal needs better definition.--ColonelHenry (talk) 17:23, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
• Support move. There may be disagreements about the article's existence and content. The title should spark no disagreement. Singular nouns, sentence case. Red Slash 01:10, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Citations

As the recent AFD mentions, the referencing here is very weak, though I'm sure more can be found pretty easily. The current ref 1 is a deadlink, ref 2 just goes to a page with links to other college pages. Ref 3, covering just the last sentence or two, is fine. Johnbod (talk) 14:00, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Definition

The following sentence is unsourced and highly suspect: "Non-Protestant colleges, such as Catholic colleges, which typically have a different educational philosophy than self-identifying Protestant colleges, tend not to self-identify with the term Christian college and instead emphasize their own specific tradition." I think this is just someone's opinion. Here are two web pages where Notre Dame is clearly referred to as a Christian college: http://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/solomon.htm and http://www.christianpost.com/news/religious-colleges-choose-not-to-recognize-secular-student-groups-60887/ I recommend that this sentence be deleted. --Westwind273 (talk) 03:00, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Seeing no objection, I have deleted the sentence. --Westwind273 (talk) 16:29, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm a little confused by this. The definition here is "In North America, the term Christian Colleges is the self-identification of certain private institutions of higher education that have an overt Christian mission statement and employ faculty who profess a Christian faith," but the citation, which is a dead URL, is just a link to the "Council for Christian Colleges and Universities - Members & Affiliates Criteria." That's not the definition of a Christian college in North America; that's the membership criteria for the CCCU, which includes colleges from all around the world. Is this really saying that Christian college just means being a member of CCCU? There are actually lots of colleges with Christian affiliations—e.g. Georgetown, Centre College, Kenyon College, Emory, DePauw—that aren't members of the CCCU. Flyte35 (talk) 19:47, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

George Fox University

George Fox University is not the largest Christian college in Oregon. The University of Portland is larger. If there is no objection, I will change the photo caption to say "George Fox University, a Christian college in Oregon." --Westwind273 (talk) 16:35, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Seeing no objection, I have made the change. --Westwind273 (talk) 05:30, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Request Merge

I propose merging Christian college with Christian University, as these two article are very related and similiar. Cloud29371 (talk) 08:34, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Oppose: the two pages are there for different reasons; one is a disambiguation page to direct readers appropriately when they search the specific term Christian University, while the other is there to discuss education institutions focussed on Christian education, regardless of their name. Readers are best served by having these separate uses kept distinct. Klbrain (talk) 19:13, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Closing, given the uncontested objection and no support. Klbrain (talk) 11:25, 29 November 2023 (UTC)