Talk:Circuit rider (religious)

Old talk

I split up the original circuit rider page into three parts, and made it a disambiguation. I minimally tweaked the original text, which can be found in the original page's history. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson 06:08, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Not limited to Methodists

This isn't a strictly Methodist phenomenon, and should not be so limited. Gene Nygaard 12:03, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Circuit Preacher is a less familiar term to describe a circuit rider. Therefore, that page probably should be merged into this one. Skingski (talk) 19:06, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

"Circuit rider" and "Circuit preacher" are not synonymous.

Preaching circuits are still common throughout the United States and Canada. (The "Circuit preacher" article is wrong on this point, because it claims that preaching circuits are a thing of the past, except in the far west.) Preaching circuits can be found in many denominations and basically consist of an arrangement among two or more small, rural congregations to share the services of a Protestant minister or Catholic priest. (Perhaps there are also Jewish circuits.) In the United Methodist Church, clergy are "appointed" to a circuit (officially called a "two-point charge," "three-point charge," etc.), but the congregations must develop their own policies as to how they are going to share the pastor, just as they must in any other denomination.

In contrast, in the early days of the United States, the Methodist Episcopal church would appoint clergy to "circuits" that amounted to territories. There were existing congregations on these circuits, but the clergy would also lead worship in various homes, and would work to develop new congregations on the circuit. (Read some of the circuit rider autobiographies linked from the "Circuit rider" article.) The Methodist-type denominations (see the article on "Methodist Episcopal Church" for details) were uniquely suited to this kind of deployment of clergy. No other denomination was organized to send clergy out into the woods and closely supervise their work the way the Methodist Episcopal Church did.

It might be argued that circuit riders were the first attempt at the kind of rural ministry that led many denominations to develop preaching circuits among established rural congregations throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries, and if so, it would make sense to cross reference the two articles, but it does not make good sense to merge them.

Richard E. Davies (talk) 02:38, 21 July 2009 (UTC)Richard E. Davies

Richard, I understand your distinction, and could agree. To get more technical, a "Circuit Rider" could be a subcategory of "Circuit Preacher". The "Circuit Rider" usually speaks specifically of a "Circuit Preacher" that went on horseback in the early days of Methodism (and to a smaller degree, other groups used the same method). So I could see a distinction, but a merger could work for me also. Mikeatnip (talk) 13:59, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I think there are advantages to keeping this article strictly about Methodist circuit riders, and that the best way to ensure this would be to change the title, possibly simply as stated to "Methodist circuit rider" or some variant which includes the disambiguation required. Based on a few Google searches I have made, although it is clear that the title as it stands refers most strongly to a Methodist occupation, it doesn't refer exclusively to traveling preachers who practiced Methodism. Although not the same as a "genericized trademark", the title has been used as the name of a magazine published by the United Methodist Publishing House[1][2]. I see parallels to Chautauqua, but think that if the circuit preacher article were merged into this one it could loose its connection to Methodist and American history in an undesirable way.

On another subject, the article has some issues pertaining to WP:LAYOUT especially with regard to the section headings. I plan to spend some time today revising headings to bring the article more in line with Manual of Style guidelines. Sswonk (talk) 16:45, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

There are merits to all these points. So my thought at this point is:

• Since circuit preacher is not limited to Methodism, the title should not be changed. However, if the page is made sufficiently generic, then perhaps a link to a separate page specifically on Methodist circuit preachers could be justified.
• Since it appears that circuit rider is not synonymous with but a subtype/historical predecessor of circuit preacher, and since subtypes tend to get their own pages on wiki, perhaps it should be simply and accurately cross-referenced as suggested instead of merged.
• The proposed corrections on circuit preacher sound good too, Richard.

Skingski (talk) 18:43, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Re: your first point, where is it suggested that the title of "circuit preacher" be changed? It sounds like what you are saying is simply that "Circuit rider (religious)" should stay the title and other itinerant ministers should be included here. My point is that this article is exclusively about the occupation within American Methodism and should specifically not be "made sufficiently generic", with the title changed to reflect this. It's not clear which page is which in your bullet points. As a "brand", the two word phrase "circuit rider" is how the ministers are commonly referred to among Methodists, although not officially. Other similar ministerial pursuits in other religious groups often use other terminologies. Using this title to cover all traveling preachers in all ages will significantly dilute its importance as a term related to Methodism. Sswonk (talk) 19:09, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Sswonk, I miswrote. I meant to refer to your suggestion of a title change to "Methodist circuit rider". "Sufficiently generic" refers to this point then:

Dictionary.com defines "circuit rider (religious)" as a cleric or minister who travels from church to church - w/o specification to Methodism and you (and Gene Nygaard) note the term is no longer exclusive to (though still primarily affiliated with) Methodists from an online search.

So can we agree there is a historical use for the term exclusive to Methodists and a contemporary use not exclusive to Methodism? My thought is that we could have the "circuit rider(religious)" reflect the dictionary definition and contemporary usage and crossreference to a "Methodist circuit rider" or "circuit rider (Methodist)" page that delivers the historical content; or simply add the contempary non-Methodist-exclusive use of the term to the current page. Skingski (talk) 20:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I have edited both articles in an attempt to relate them to each other and to make the distinction between them clear. I hope it works well.Richard E. Davies (talk) 21:49, 21 July 2009 (UTC)Richard E. Davies

Of those two proposals, I'll agree that this page should not be renamed and the non-Methodist-exclusive use of the term be added here, but I'll defer to Richard to make the decision as he appears to have more knowledge about both subjects. Sswonk (talk) 00:42, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

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Recent revert

@Pbritti: This isn't my area of expertise, but it looks like neither of us have edited the article before. A little confused here - why is the other picture "more encyclopedic"? A photograph of an actual circuit rider I can see maybe being preferable, but the original picture is from a novel. It's exactly as made-up as the picture I found. And... OR? I was just describing what's in the image very directly. This isn't higher art criticism. I guess you can say that who knows what the vision of the glowing town above the log cabin is, but given that this is supposed to be the frontier (not known for mighty cool buildings) and the picture title is "The Vision of...", it's pretty obviously not physically there. Feel free to edit it down.

More generally, believe me, I understand the issue of inaccurate artwork, especially of historical stuff. I agree it's not remotely realistic (what kind of pastor rides around with his bible already open?). But... like... this sounds like every tour of religious themed art ever, where the museum docent talks about the glowing halos, or the buddha having one hand placed on the earth, or whatever. It's not out of place to have at least somewhere in the article.

For the "unreferenced additions", this isn't a FA. It's a start-class article with lots of currently-uncited-but-probably-true material. As best I can tell, what I wrote is true. I considered adding the reference I was using - the book I looked up, "American Idealism" - but that would be one of those slightly faux references in the sense that it's an example of that kind of American hagiography but not a scholar writing after the fact. I was indeed planning on looking into it further and adding more references later, so maybe give it a little more time? Or do you have reason to actually challenge the sense of the sentence? SnowFire (talk) 04:28, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@SnowFire: The earlier image is from a book on circuit riders contemporaneous from their heyday and exclusively captures a specific example of one without as many frills. It also wasn't presented with substantial, unsourced commentary on the image (not sure where you're getting the "cathedrals" comment from). Additionally, per WP:V, intentionally adding unreferenced content is bad, regardless of article class. ~ Pbritti (talk) 04:33, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@Pbritti: That's not correct. Edward Eggleston's article says "The Circuit Rider" is from 1874. That was already long after the era of real circuit riders, who were more a thing back when Appalachia is what counted as "the West". Note that the most famous circuit rider is Francis Asbury, who died in 1816. I get the impression they were mostly not a thing anymore by 1850 or so at the latest, and their heyday was more like 1790-1830. (And yes, I see there's a Catholic circuit rider in Texas in the article still active until 1872, but that isn't really on topic for what the article is mostly about, Methodists in what we'd now consider Appalachia and the Midwest.) And let me stress again that The Circuit Rider is a novel, not a non-fiction book. I doubt that depiction is realistic, either (no saddlebags? no pack? perfectly clean shaven?).

As far as WP:V, what you describe is very, very false. Really. The number one threat to Wikipedia is biting the newbies, and adding unreferenced material is often fine and encouraged per WP:BEBOLD. (I'm obviously not a newbie, but I hope you're not just doing this to new editors whenever they add anything without a reference.) The vast majority of casual edits improving articles don't come with sources, but are often times very very valuable. Sure, people should add references when possible, and when people add in info without sources it's more work for the next person to come along, but if an edit is beneficial, it's better to make the edit than not do it at all. I have very frequently dashed off some basic edits and come back later to straighten things up with more formal sources. And when teaching newbies at editathons, it's easy to scare them away if the presenter acts as if writing for Wikipedia is more like writing an academic journal article rather than just helping out. Anyway, one of the less explicit rules of Wikipedia is that the expectations vary for articles. For low-stakes topics (i.e. not BLPs) that are stubs / Start / C, things are way more freewheeling than in FAs or GAs. That's fine. That's how Wikipedia works. We're not Nupedia. (And I say this as someone who has two mostly finished articles waiting around in Google Docs I haven't pushed to the mainspace yet precisely out of the perfectionism you seem to demand everywhere, i.e. making sure absolutely everything is super-referenced.)

Okay, back on topic. If someone nominated this article for GA, then yes, my statement should be referenced. But everything else in that paragraph would need a reference, too - the other two sentences are defective self-cites, and already would flunk a GA review I conducted. Luckily we're not going for GA yet, so I just expanded that. I'm happy to rephrase to merely say something citier like "According to one 1928 book, circuit riders were super awesome emblems of America reconnecting with God after flirting with atheism after the Revolution or the like," as that is basically what the book says. (It is not subtle about this and lays it on thick.) But I think my original statement is accurate, too, because I don't think this book was alone. SnowFire (talk) 05:03, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

This text wall shows you should review WP:V, WP:ONUS, and WP:BATTLEGROUND. Barring referencing, the added content should remain off Wikipedia. Additionally, adding an image that far further postdates the subject and is far more romanticized is not a solution. ~ Pbritti (talk) 05:23, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Calling a good faith attempt to avoid snippy edit war summaries a "wall of text" is trying to pick a fight. Especially note the part about there was a source that I planned on including, but I was hesitant due to being contemporary with the time period described.

I've been on Wikipedia since 2006. Don't cite the deep magic at me. You're simply incorrect about WP:V - it sounds like you claim that anything without an immediate reference is invalid, which is not correct given that you didn't nuke all the other unsourced or poorly sourced statements. I don't care about this specific dispute, but I want to make sure you understand that the standard you describe would delete 90% of Wikipedia content, and I hope you're not attempting to enforce it elsewhere. I'm not even joking about the amount - most of Wikipedia is still the Wild West.

I will good faith assume that you are just contesting my sentence, although it would have been nice for you to offer a reason for it. If so, then yes, per WP:BURDEN, I'll only put it back with a good reference.

For the newer image, I remain baffled at your opposition. Who cares that it's a later image? They're both equally fictional. Would including the image but not in the lede be a satisfactory compromise? It's a public domain relevant example of a sentence in the article about them being treated super-highly in 1870-1920. SnowFire (talk) 06:09, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Please avoid text walls. Per the lead of V: "Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed". Per BURDEN, part of V: "All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution." Per ONUS, part of V: "While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included." No source has been provided here for the caption or the content added to the article body, so the material was removed and will remain so. Also, the image you provided is inferior based on all the reasons you have provided above. ~ Pbritti (talk) 14:45, 24 January 2024 (UTC)