Wikipedia:WikiProject Jewish Christianity/Memorandum of Understanding

This page is a work in progress and likely needs substantial additions, editing, organization, and references. Please see the talk page!

Purpose

(See talk page for now.)

Procedure

Kindly discuss modifications on the talk page before making them. This MoU exists to prevent edit/revert wars; let's not make it another battleground itself.

Policies

These Wikipedia policies are relevant to this discussion. You should be aware of them.

• WP:OWN
• WP:NPOV, WP:WEIGHT
• WP:SOAPBOX
• WP:CIVIL
• WP:CONSENSUS, WP:DEMOCRACY
• WP:NOTTRUTH

Also see WP:BIAS and WP:WNP.

Points

• Messianic Judaism characterizes itself as a type of Judaism. Whether or not that is "true" is not a matter for WP debate.
• MJ is a distinct minority within Judaism. Most of mainstream Judaism believes (rightly or not, which again is not a matter for WP debate) MJ to be "non Jewish" or even heretical.
• Regardless, MJ is a viewpoint/philosophy/movement/"thing" that WP can document. MJ exists; it is real.
• As MJ claims to be a branch of Jewish culture, many MJ articles will reference (i.e. link to) articles of general Jewish interest. This is perfectly valid.
• Likewise, those articles may be expanded with information pertinent to Messianic views. This is also perfectly valid.
  • Granted the intent is not to give undue weight to a minority viewpoint or to soapbox, of course. But to give a viewpoint no weight at all (by censoring it altogether) is just as bad.
  • It is also legitimate to note, in these cases, that mainstream Judaism does not consider the Messianic views to be valid expressions of Judaism.
    • But these disclaimers should not be posed as denigration of the MJ view, either. No soapboxing from the other side—fair is fair.
  • MJ views in articles relating to Judaica should be accorded the same treatment as other minority Jewish views, commensurate with relevance and significance.
• MJ should not pass itself off as mainstream Jewish thought/practice. That's verifiably inaccurate. It may think itself to be perfectly acceptable (and it may be, but again that is not a matter for WP debate) but the fact remains that it is a small sect that is outside the boundaries of every major Jewish group.
• MJ should not be censored simply because it is unpopular.

See also

• WP:JUDAISM talk archive 14 – discussion of this topic elsewhere