[Tagging] Denominations vs religions organisations
Minh Nguyen
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us
Mon Jan 18 17:31:05 UTC 2021
Vào lúc 05:28 2021-01-18, Matthew Woehlke đã viết:
> On 16/01/2021 19.35, Joseph Eisenberg wrote:
>> 1) Most commonly, it is used for the sub-category ('denomination') of a
>> religion. The top 20 tags are all like this.
>>
>> E.G>. the top religion=christian denominiations are: *catholic*,
>> *roman_catholic*, *baptist*, *orthodox*, *lutheran*, *anglican*,
>> *protestant*, *methodist*, *russian_orthodox*, *greek_orthodox*,
>> *evangelical*, *presbyterian*, *pentecostal*, *jehovahs_witness*,
>> *mormon*,
>> *seventh_day_adventist*, *reformed*, etc.
>
> Well... already I can see a number of issues in that list. "Lutheran"
> is, at least in the US, insufficiently specific (and *outside* the US,
> is often labeled "Evangelical", whereas "Evangelical" *in* the US means
> something completely different!), at least "Baptist" and "Orthodox" are
> similarly dodgy (the latter doubly so when the more appropriate
> Greek/Russian Orthodox are also in the list!), I'm not sure "Catholic"
> and "Roman Catholic" are actually different, and many Christians would
> argue whether Jehovah's Witnesses should even be labeled "Christian".
> (Mormons absolutely are not Christian any more than Muslims are; both
> have their own holy books that supersede the Christian Bible.)
Mormon churches claim to be Christian and they are commonly (if not
universally) described as Christian denominations in works of reference.
That should be good enough for us mappers; it isn't for us to
independently evaluate a sect's piety or arbitrate a schism. But this is
a very good reason for us to tag denominations precisely when possible,
so that a data consumer can choose to make such value judgments.
Long ago, the denomination=* key started out with just a few generic
values, probably because few mappers were familiar with the complexity
of denominations (not just in Christianity but in other religions as
well). denomination=catholic was originally the way to tag Roman
Catholic churches and schools, but these days it's very common to
clarify the rite, as in denomination=roman_catholic. The wiki page
attempts to reflect this increased granularity.
operator=* is not a good key for the rite, because it's more commonly
used to record a more immediate organizational relationship, such as a
church being run by a particular religious order or a school being run
by a certain diocese. As a Roman Catholic myself, if I'm traveling
through town, I wouldn't care whether a church in the search results is
run by a diocesan priest or by the Franciscans, but I would be quite
lost in a Ukrainian Greek Catholic service.
Recently, I tagged an SSPX chapel as
denomination=traditionalist_catholic rather than
denomination=society_of_saint_pius_x, since SSPX is typically described
as an order rather than a denomination. (It might have some doctrinal
nuance for all I know.) Yet common sense and user-friendliness would
justify a value other than denomination=catholic, which could easily be
confused with Roman Catholicism due to the historical usage mentioned
above. The local Roman Catholic newspapers regularly issue warnings to
avoid the SSPX chapel, so it's a practical distinction. I used
operator=* and operator:wikidata=* to clarify the affiliation in this
case, but I would be open to using denomination=society_of_saint_pius_x
instead if the "denomination" key isn't to be taken literally.
--
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us
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