Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marthoma Family of Churches

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Saint Thomas Christian denominations. ✗plicit 11:04, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Marthoma Family of Churches

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Scholarly sources are not available to prove that this is a valid family of Christianity. Sources instead, list this church as an individual denomination within Protestantism. A single ecumenical source, which is known to self-report the claims of its member churches, is not enough to create a new Church family Macinderum (talk) 07:23, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The WCC is an ecumenical organization that largely self-reports the claims of its member churches. Check this WCC page for example, which says that membership figures for individual member churches, published by WCC, are provided by the churches themselves. Likewise, if the Mar Thoma Church claims that it is also a separate family of its own, then the WCC will report so. Ecumenism will fail, if the WCC starts to question the fanciful claims of its member churches.

Now let's look at what independent scholarly sources say about the Mar Thoma Syrian Church. The Association of Religion Data Archives groups the MTSC with Anglican churches (check proof). Using this source, the MTSC is placed in the Anglican family in pages 448-449 of The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics (2014). The Mar Thoma church has its origins in the Anglican missionary activity, among the Saint Thomas Christians of colonial India, and is in full communion with the Anglican Communion. The book Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (2014), published by Taylor & Francis, in page 488 lists the MTSC as an individual church of Protestant confession, and in page 489, says that the MTSC is within the Protestant Episcopalian (Anglican) tradition. Regarding the origins of MTSC the book says in page 568 that,

The Syrian Orthodox also became the target of Anglican missionary activity, as a result of which the Mar Thoma Church separated from the Orthodox in 1874, adopting the Anglican confession of faith and a reformed Syrian liturgy conforming to Protestant principles.

The book Christian Worship Worldwide (2007), published by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company in page 94, groups various Churches in Kerala into families, and places the MTSC within Protestantism. Thus, reliably published sources does not list the MTSC as a denominational family, but as an individual church within Protestantism.--Macinderum (talk) 10:20, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 10:41, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Saint Thomas Christian denominations, which is a more detailed article about the same concept. There are several different churches, including Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant ones, which trace their history back to Thomas the Apostle and the Syriac churches active in India. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 22:22, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect/Merge per reason from Metropolitan90. Chad The Goatman (talk) 23:19, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect -- I was going to suggest the target should be Mar Thoma Syrian Church, but Saint Thomas Christian denominations is clearly a better target. Probably nothing worth merging. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:29, 19 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Saint Thomas Christian denominations, this is a poorly scribed article citing the WCC admission. The communion exists as a distinct entity in India and in diaspora. --Whiteguru (talk) 09:06, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.