Talk:National Baptist Convention, USA

Unexplained deletions

I added back the external links and references that were removed by user 24.196.173.227. There didn't seem to be a logical reason to removed them. If so, let someone tell why on the talk page. - 216.62.168.234 19:15, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Still learning how to maneuver this site. Rdaenot

Article name

The main page of this article should be 'National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.' and not 'National Baptist Convention, USA' The organization refers to itself on its seal as well as every publication with the 'inc.' included. The Redirect should have been from the latter to the former designation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdaenot (talk • contribs) 03:47, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The current name is consistent with Wikipedia policy on naming articles. Wikipedia titles use the most common name for the topic, which is not necessarily the same as the official legal name. Thus, for example, you will find IBM (not IBM Corporation or "International Business Machines"), Bill Clinton (not William Jefferson Clinton), etc. See Wikipedia:Article titles for details. --Orlady (talk) 03:58, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The most common name for this institution includes 'inc.' It's significance is in the history of the organization. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdaenot (talk • contribs) 04:04, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm no expert on the history, but my reading has led me to understand that the "USA" is critically important for distinguishing the different National Baptist Conventions, but not the "Inc." Do you have sources to indicate that the Inc. is vital, too?

By the way, please don't try to rename pages by cutting and pasting the contents to the new title. That results in loss of article history, which is very important to retain. See WP:Cut and paste move for details. (I reverted your move and restored the article history.) --Orlady (talk) 04:32, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The sources I am referring to are the organization's website and outside sources which include the ones used to substantiate the organization's member numbers in the article itself. Nowhere is this organization referred to excluding the 'inc.' It would be more difficult to argue excluding the 'inc.' based on the overwhelming evidence. -- Rdaenot

I've refreshed my memory on the history, and I realize that you are right. The "Inc." is important, particularly in view of another convention being called "unincorporated." I will move the page to the other title.

By the way, you can sign your name and add the date on these pages by typing four tildes: ~~~~ --Orlady (talk) 04:40, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah the automated messaging system just reminded me of that too. Thanks! Rdaenot (talk) 04:46, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Estimated Membership

The membership numbers released by the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches are numbers that the organizations themselves report to the Yearbook. The last time National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. reported numbers to the Yearbook was 1999. Since the Yearbook relies on the information the organization gives it, then wikipedia should rely on those numbers as well. The latest estimate of the organization of its membership numbers is 7.5 million. Rdaenot (talk) 06:33, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia can't choose among presumptively reliable sources, particularly when it quotes the article's subject and rejects reliable third-party publications. I have inserted information about the membership number that is reported in the 2012 Yearbook.

Also, please look at WP:Citing sources (or the less compendious WP:REFB) for advice on formatting footnotes and reference citations in Wikipedia. I have spent some time reformatting unconventional descriptions of sources; more of this is needed. --Orlady (talk) 15:25, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

You seem to miss the point of the Yearbook. The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. has not participated with the National Council of Churches (the producer of the yearbook) for a decade. The National Baptist Convention participates in the World Council of Churches which the convention reports its numbers to (please read the conventions homepage and you'll see their partcipation in the World Council of Churches). If you read the link that you sourced, the Yearbook states that the National Baptist Convention did not report numbers. They haven't reported numbers to that organization for some time. They are going on the last numbers reported to their organization which are now outdated--even the last numbers the convention reported were declined numbers because of the then fresh upheaval from the Lyons scandal. If you're going to source material, it should be the latest available and those numbers come from the convention itself and the organization it reports to not an organization it does not report to and has no mechanism to estimate its numbers. Rdaenot (talk) 01:47, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Rather than continue the edit war that has developed here, I am going to request a third opinion from a couple of the WikiProjects associated with this page. Accordingly, I have not restored the reference to the National Council of Churches "Yearbook" that you deleted. However, I am strongly convinced that your insistence on removing the National Council of Churches "Yearbook" reference (dated 2012 and listing a 2010 membership of 5,197,512 as reported by the denomination), while keeping as references the NBC's own website, a World Council of Churches webpage dated 2006, a Red Cross webpage dated 2009, and a promotional page by the Atlanta tourism promotion organization, is contrary to Wikipedia policy on verifiability. Note that your statement that the NBC didn't provide information to the National Council of Churches is not supported by published sources, whereas the National Council of Churches indicates that its information came from the denomination. --Orlady (talk) 02:46, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

This page indicates that the NBC provided information for the 2012 Yearbook. --Orlady (talk) 04:04, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

In my preferred version of the article, the lead reads as follows:

The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. (National Baptist Convention) is the largest predominantly African-American Christian denomination in the United States and is the world's second largest Baptist denomination. It is headquartered at the Baptist World Center in Nashville, Tennessee.[1]

The Convention reports having 7.5 million members.[2][3][4][5] The 2012 edition of the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches identifies it as the sixth largest Christian denomination in the United States, with 2010 membership of 5,197,512.[6]

Rdaenot's version reads as follows:

The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. (National Baptist Convention) is the largest predominantly African-American Christian denomination in the United States and is the world's second largest Baptist denomination. The Convention has an estimated 7.5 million members[1][2][3][4] and is headquartered at the Baptist World Center in Nashville, Tennessee.[5]

The four references supporting the 7.5 million members are the NBC website's "about" page, the Atlanta Convention and Visitor's Bureau (dated 2012), the American Red Cross (dated 2009), and a World Council of Churches webpage dated 2006. The reference to the Yearbook statistic is this page. --Orlady (talk) 03:06, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I think Orlady's preferred text is the most neutral (WP:NPOV) and seems well supported by RSs and should be the version we go with. We don't decide who is right in what may or may not be a membership total dispute (the Org could have grown significantly in the last few years). Of course, we need to cite to RSs for anything along these lines (or anything at all, really, but certainly this sort of thing) and Orlady has done so. (In fact, I am not sure we need notes 3-5.) The Yearbook is too important to ignore as an authoratative, third-party source ([1]). Since there may be some dispute about numbers, attributing in the text itself the Yearbook's number to the Yearbook and the org's estimate to the org itself, rather than attributing either or both only in the corresponding citations seems a good way to not take a position (other than that the each reported number is itself a signifcant fact whether correct or not). Novaseminary (talk) 04:24, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to Novaseminary for examining this situation. Novaseminary is active in editing articles related to other Baptist topics, and thus is a good source of a WP:Third opinion. --Orlady (talk) 17:29, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Your argument seems to hinge on the assumption that the National Council of Churches is an authority. What makes this organization an authority and to that matter a neutral third-party source? The National Council of Churches does not police membership numbers they only report what they have been told. I even question whether the National Council of Churches was given the numbers from the National Baptist Convention because it conflicts with the numbers that the organization estimates on its own website... Additionally, the National Council of Churches is the only party reporting the 5 million number when one easily finds sources that vastly outnumber it to counter their claim--including the organization itself (which the Yearbook supposedly received numbers from...mysteriously receiving numbers after more than a decade of not receiving numbers.) But my first question is...what makes the National Council of Churches an authority? Rdaenot (talk) 00:25, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia tries to base its content on content that has been published by reliable sources independent of the article's topic. The "Yearbook" has been published for nearly a century and appears to be widely regarded as reliable. Somebody that the National Council of Churches considered to be a legitimate representative of the National Baptist Convention supplied them with a 2010 membership figure of 5,197,512. That information deserves to be taken far more seriously than the protestations of an inherently anonymous Internet user. Meanwhile, the sentence on the National Baptist Convention that includes that estimate of 7.5 million members has been unchanged since at least 2005: archived version from December 2005, which does not help convince me that it's the latest up-to-date information.

Rather than saying that one source is correct and the other one is wrong, I think it's likely that the two numbers represent different definitions of "membership". --Orlady (talk) 17:29, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

The information on the National Council of Churches' Yearbook deserves to be scrutinized since it conflicts with the organization that it claims reported the numbers. The page on the convention's website with the sentence that includes the estimate of 7.5 million members is followed by a sentence that speaks of the convention President being in office since 2009 which leads me to believe that the convention made an estimation as late as 2010 of their membership being 7.5 million. Furthermore, since our discussion on this topic began a couple of days ago, the website has been updated nearly everyday with news, event graphics and other updates. It seems hard to believe that someone is authorized to report membership numbers to outside organizations on behalf of the convention but not authorized to have the organization change the membership estimate on the convention website...(a website that is updated nearly daily). Thirdly, the convention reported to media outlets in the city of their latest gathering (2012) that their membership estimate is 7.5 million (see the link). Fourthly, the National Council of Churches is no more an authority than the World Council of Churches. For that matter, the World Council of Churches is more of an authority on the convention's numbers because the convention has advertised their affiliation with the World Council of Churches via website news as late as last week. Rdaenot (talk) 00:18, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The Yearbook is widely cited; of that there is no doubt. It is already somewhat of a compromise to explicitly attribute the Yearbook's number to the source in the text, but appropriate, I think, in light of the discrepancy. Everything else Rdaenot is discussing or suggesting is either a challenge to the source as an RS (and there is a noticeboard to contest a source's status as an RS, which is where one should contest something so important to so many articles rather than here) or itself is OR. If that particular Yearbook number (or that plus others) is so off, perhaps there is another RS that addresses as much. Bring out those sources, and you might get further challeneging the Yearbook as an RS in this particular article (or even generally, who knows?), or at least shed light on the discrepancty. But without sources like that we can't go there; we can't go based on your opinion or personal knowledge, even if you are right (WP:V). Novaseminary (talk) 01:25, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The Yearbook is a widely recognized, frequently cited source for numbers. On that basis, I have to say that it clearly meets minimum WP:RS standards. Rdaenot's point seems to be that he finds them to be a questionable source for various reasons, and he could be right. If that is the case, then I suggest that he produce other numbers from other reliable sources. However, I cannot see the exclusion of the numbers from the Yearbook until and unless other statistics are produced. If other statistics are produced, then I would agree with Novaseminary that there might be a reasonable basis to perhaps include the other statistics as well, or, if some other source is clearly more reliable, to go with those other statistics. But we would need to be presented with the conflicting data first if we are to have reason to question the Yearbook statistics. John Carter (talk) 02:33, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

If the National Council of Churches used invalid information in the 2012 Yearbook, I would think that the leadership of the National Baptist Convention would have issued an official statement criticizing the National Council of Churches for publishing erroneous numbers. --Orlady (talk) 03:33, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I went ahead and reverted Rdaenot's latest reversion based on the emerging consensus here. Perhaps Rdaenot could help add references to some of the several entirely unsourced--at least with inline citations--sections of this article instead of focusing on this issue (or at least provide alternative sources for this issue rather than just personal knowledge). Novaseminary (talk) 04:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I had sources and Orlady deleted them. Rdaenot (talk) 13:23, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I deleted a few sources, but the sources I deleted were not used to support the vast amount of unreferenced content in this article. You had cited four different sources in support of the membership figure of 7.5 million. One of these was the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. website. That source is still cited. The other three were:

(1) A World Council of Churches webpage that was last updated in 2006 and that obtained its membership data from the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. (The website states: "Statistics of church membership, number of churches, congregations, pastors, etc. are those given by the churches and organizations, unless otherwise indicated. WCC member churches have various ways of defining their membership: state churches in which virtually every citizen is baptized and thus counted as a member, churches which include in their membership persons who are baptized but not actively participating, churches in which only adult baptized or communicant members are counted, etc. No attempt has been made to classify the membership figures in such categories, because agreed upon indicators to so do not exist.")

(2) An American Red Cross webpage that was last updated in 2009.

(3) An Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau promotional piece issued in 2012.

Of these three, only the World Council of Churches has possible credibility as an authority on the subject of the membership of the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. The other two sources are not authorities on the membership of Christian organizations, so they can be presumed to be simply repeating information from an NBC source. The fact that the World Council of Churches page is 7 years old and the WCC indicates that the information came from the denomination itself means that it is no more authoritative than the information from the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. website. Accordingly, no useful purpose is served in citing it. --Orlady (talk) 14:47, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

However, that WCC webpage about the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. is one of several sources that could be cited to support some other content in this article -- or to support expansions/revisions to the article. The National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. is an important Christian organization that deserves a better article than it has now. --Orlady (talk) 14:52, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches reference the organization as providing the membership numbers. The National Council of Churches' numbers conflict with the Organization. Therefore, the National Council of Churches numbers should not be taken as seriously as the World Council of Churches. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdaenot (talk • contribs) 17:45, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not exist to uncritically republish information that the subjects of articles display on their websites. Wikipedia does not reject presumptively authoritative reliable sources because some people don't like the implications of the data they report. If the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. protested the numbers reported by the National Council of Churches, that protest would presumably have been reported somewhere and would be worth discussing in the article. I've searched the web to find indications of such a protest, without success. Interestingly, I did find a 2008 book that states (on page 80) that the NBC USA Inc. has "a reported 5 million members" and footnotes that fact with the information (on page 113) that this is the number reported by the National Council of Churches, but "the Convention's Web site claims 7.5 million members". This kind of balanced unbiased presentation of the discordant information provided by multiple reliable sources is what several others of us have said this article should present. Your insistence that only the number on the website can possibly be good enough to report looks a lot like a non-neutral POV, which is contrary to [{WP:NPOV|Wikipedia policy]]. Please quit edit-warring to push your point of view. --Orlady (talk) 19:43, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I forgot to say that I also find that both the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches identify the NBC USA Inc. as a member of the National Council of Churches: [2], [3], [4], [5], and the National Council of Churches indicates that The Rev. Dr. Angelique K. Walker-Smith, Ecumenical Officer of the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc., is a member of the NCC governing board and chairs an NCC committee.[6] --Orlady (talk) 19:59, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

• FYI: I'm filing a report about this situation at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring. --Orlady (talk) 20:32, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Orlady if you were presenting a balanced and unbiased presentation then I wouldn't be having this discussion with you. You are not considering the facts of your own argument and in an unbalanced way insisting that the word of one organization is an authority over the issue at hand when clearly there are other sources to be included in this article. If the National Council of Churches' numbers do not meet the standards that they themselves claim they are derived then the organization's wikipedia page should not be bound to that contraversy. If anything, the page should reflect the concensus not the word of one organization on any aspect of another simply for the reason 'they've been around a long time'. I'm sorry but that is not balanced.. Rdaenot (talk) 01:13, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Not so. In the edits that you keep on reverting, I've been presenting two different numbers and saying where each number comes from. I've not attempted to say that one of them is right and other one is wrong. On the other hand, the effect of your repeated edit is to say that Wikipedis is so thoroughly convinced of the correctness of the NBC website that it isn't necessary even to acknowledge that other sources provide different numbers. You may be convinced, but I don't believe you can speak for Wikipedia in that fashion. --Orlady (talk) 02:37, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I should have been checking the page before adding the new section "Membership numbers". Anyway the World Council of churches states membership of the NBC being 5.000.000 (source below). What next? Shai-Huludim (talk) 18:13, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Morris and Lee source

This article by Aldon D. Morris and Shayne Lee, an academic article published within 2005 edited volume Church, Identity and Change, edited by David A. Roozen and James R. Nieman of Hartford Institute for Religious Research, appears to be a reliable source which covers issues and controversy within the NBC denomination, including careful coverage of former president Lyons' leadership, reforms, and scandal. This source is not used yet in this article.

I found it within bibliography section of Southern Baptist Convention article. I was wondering if it is correct to characterize NBC as being part of Southern Baptist church, by the way, am not sure of that yet. --doncram 20:12, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

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Membership numbers

The NBC gives an estimate for it's present membership of 7.5 million. We don't know nothing about the background of this estimate. Who estimated that on what basis? How old is the estimate? We neither hear about growth or decline or any statistical information for that matter. The world council of churches (https://www.oikoumene.org/en/member-churches/national-baptist-convention-of-america-inc) states the membership of the NBC being 5 million. That's a 2.5 million difference. How come? And why would a church not know the number of it's membership on a given date? Shai-Huludim (talk) 19:05, 30 July 2020 (UTC)