Talk:Church Fathers

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. There is a clear consensus that "Church Fathers" is a proper name for the purposes of WP:NCCAPS and should be capitalized. I would like to remind those here who should know better of our policy that editors should always treat each other with consideration and respect. (closed by non-admin page mover) Toadspike [Talk] 13:56, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Church Fathers → Church fathersChurch fathers – Per WP:NCCAPS and evidence of usage (this ngram] and a search of google scholar here), this is far from always capped in sources. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:16, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

• Support – clearly not a proper noun/name. Dicklyon (talk) 05:34, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose, a proper name for maybe two thousand years (look at the External links, and uppercased on Britanniac, or check out any search engine top results). This is a better n-gram example. What we have here is the casing editors entering into the realm of religion, where historic uppercasings such as this are the long existing common names. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:56, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

  The search term the Church Fathers used in your ngram does not exclude expected title case uses such as titles of reference works; however, the search term church fathers were (see here) will tend to exclude expected title case uses. If it is only capped about half the time, this is clearly not necessary caps. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:07, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Support. The standard for capitalisation is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority. Ifly6 (talk) 15:06, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

The standard is to uppercase a proper name, which this certainly is and has been for millennium. Also see the n-grams for its main alternate name, Fathers of the Church (which can also include this one). Randy Kryn (talk) 15:08, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. Compare with Founding Fathers. Borsoka (talk) 15:27, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

  That one is also only about half capped in sources, with only a slight trend toward more caps since WP capped it 20 years ago. And there was certainly no consensus that it should be capped. Dicklyon (talk) 19:23, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose: Modern academic literature utilizes the capitalized form often enough to indicate that there is no pressing basis in neutrality or verifiability. The capitalized form is also certainly the most common form of the name. See Borsoka above for evidence of precedence for this formulation. ~ Pbritti (talk) 16:03, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

  By "no presssing basis" you just mean guidelines aren't worth following? The capitalized form is common, but not so common that it needs to be treated as a proper name. Prominent theologians such as Christopher Hall (theologian) even use it lowercase throughout a book with the capped form in its title, so it's hardly irreverent or unprecedented to do so. Michael Haykin also uses lowercase throughout. Also Bryan Litfin. Do they blaspheme? Dicklyon (talk) 19:02, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

  Please note that some book titles use all-caps or capitalize the first letter in every word. Sheriff U3 23:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

  Exactly so. And the n-gram stats count all the citations to those books, as well as the running heads within them, so the caps tend to be quite over-counted compared to what occurs in sentences, which is what we are really supposed to consider, per WP:NCCAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 05:24, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

  They were called Church Fathers before there were such things as books. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:46, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, and before there were upper and lower cases. And before the centuries in which English capitalized nouns like German does. So what's your point? Dicklyon (talk) 02:00, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Oppose. There's not a reason to change the name of this article to "Church fathers", especially considering "Church Fathers" is a proper, commonly recognized title for this group, and functions like a proper name. 69.71.12.195 (talk) 07:53, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Oppose – Sure, NCCAPS is a thing, but my argument rests on recognizability (a policy, outranking NCCAPS, a mere guideline). Priests are often referred to as "Father", and they are certainly associated with the church, so it's far from a stretch that Christian clergy can be known as "church fathers" (note the lowercase). However, this uppercased Church Fathers is instantly recognizable as referring to a group of specific people. Someone searching lowercase "church fathers" for its other usage would be quite ASTONISHed upon arriving here. 🐔 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 10:28, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Two problems with that: First, WP:RECOGNIZABILITY is unrelated to our capitalization policies and guidelines. Second, church fathers already redirects to this article. If there are other meanings, I'm not aware of them; I've never heard of a parish priest being called a church father; have you? Dicklyon (talk) 16:33, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Most non-capped forms of article title are redirects (new york etc); that is no argument. Johnbod (talk) 18:36, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Not an argument, just refuting the claim that a user searching for "church father" would be "quite astonished" to arrive at this article, given that that's already the case. Dicklyon (talk) 02:02, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Your refutation is wrong. A reader searching in the Vector 2022 search box will currently, if they type in the lowercased form, see the uppercased form as the first result. That would make them rethink their search and use some other term. Look at Tony1's confusion below. 🐔 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 10:33, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Support—Yuck: why on earth would we cap "church fathers"? Next we'll be capping "priests" and "parishioners". Tony (talk) 11:00, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

From your comment you may not know what 'Church Father' refers to. They are not equivalent to priests or parishioners (maybe read the article, which has been uppercased since its inception in 2003). By the way, Earth is uppercased as a proper name (as is Church Fathers). thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:05, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I think his point is that this kind of significaps is a slippery slope. If you look at n-gram stats in likely sentence context there's no reason to think this term is a proper name. Similarly, one can find lots of sources capping "Priest" and "Priests" but that doesn't make it a proper name. As with Founding Fathers, most of the capitalization is in titles. Dicklyon (talk) 16:28, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose, clearly necessary to avoid the kind of confusion that User:Tony1 evidently suffers from. Johnbod (talk) 18:33, 12 April 2025 (UTC)]]

  Just the kind of abusive rudeness we're used to from this person. Tony (talk) 10:31, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose: "Church Fathers" is historically established as an accepted proper name which specifically applies only to those people who have been collectively recognised as such. "Church fathers" or "church fathers" is non-specific and can mean something very different. Anglicanus (talk) 07:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

  While specificity is a property of a proper noun, it is not a defining property since specificity is also achieved by the definite article (the). The use of caps for distinction falls to MOS:SIGNIFCAPS and we don't do that. WP relies on usage to determine caps and the evidence of usage does not bare out this argument - ie that the lowercase is referring to something very different. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:52, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

  Of course lowercase is a different topic. Lowercase means priests, because the catholic church calls their priests 'father' (as Tony confused above - an example right here in this discussion). The Church Fathers, a well-known group of individuals,^[1] created and defined Christianity during its first several centuries and were later, as group, called Church Fathers. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:17, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

  Your assertion thar lowercase is a different topic is not supported by the sources, where the sources in the google scholar search using lowercase are clearly writing about the subject of this article. For example, the first google scholar result, Old Testament Interpretation in the Writings of the Church Fathers writes: The scriptures inherited from the Jews continued to be of prime importance to Christians throughout the age of the church fathers- the ecclesiastical writers of approximately the first six centuries ...; and elsewhere therein, ... from the full refutations of Marcion by Irenaeus and Tertullian ... The latter two are fathers of the church with sections in this article. I doubt that Tony1 has confused church fathers (the subject of this article) with garden variety priests. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:00, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

  Picking and choosing examples is easy, long-term historical usage for this common term is undeniable. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:09, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

  Pick and examine as many of the many lowercase examples in google scholar as you wish. They will not bare out your assertion that lowercase is a different topic. While capitalising church fathers is common (about 50% on raw data without allowance for expected title case uses such at headings and titles in references), that is not the standard applied by WP for capitalisation - as you well know. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:45, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

  Around in circles about a name that most Christians view as a common name and proper noun. In this case the Encyclopedia Britannica gets it right. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:36, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

• Strong oppose per Pbritti. Modern academic literature utilizes the capitalized form often enough to indicate that there is no pressing basis in neutrality or verifiability seems both accurate and cut-and-dry to me. The use of an N-gram here is deeply methodologically flawed as there are other circumstances in which those two words could be comfortably paired and the capitalized form is standard in academic literature to the best of my knowledge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Warrenmck (talk • contribs) 10:14, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

  Per the OP, the ngram evidence cross correlates with google scholar results and was a specific check to confirm that there were not other contexts that would significantly compromise the ngram evidence. There are not. Often enough is not the threshold used by WP per the prevailing P&G to determine capitalisation. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:23, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

  Yeah, I don't find that extremely convincing one way or the other; it's pretty much not possible to n-gram the contexts in which its used across the entirety of scholarly history. I do not find the use of theN-gram here sufficient to explain why this change is necessary when a: it's very clearly showing a majority still capitalize and b: there's a high degree of consistency when the Church Fathers are presented as the primary subject. What is motivating the need for this change? Because the capitalization is consistent enough in the literature not to just be able to point at WP:NCCAPS as sufficient. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 10:27, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

  The ngram raw result includes expected title case uses such as cited references. Allowing for this, caps is about 50% or less. It is far from consistently capped. This is confirmed against google scholar, which also confirms the context. The evidence and the prevailing P&G is telling us that it is not necessary to cap this and it shouldn't be capped. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:48, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

  I’m going to reiterate not understanding what’s motivating this. Church Fathers is clearly standard, and trying to N-gram this is far more complex than you seem losing to acknowledge? “Fathers” is also a verb, and the capitalized form will never be a verb. Even if none of those concerns were true, it still shows a majority use favouring Church Fathers. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 11:55, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

  It is a matter of style: no more, no less. See , and . No verbs here (to speak of). The ngram evidence is augmented by google scholar for both usage and context. Church Fathers is clearly not the necessary standard and a simple majority (which is questionable) is not the standard for caps per P&G. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:41, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

  Agreed. The P&G essentially directs a finding against capitalisation here. Ifly6 (talk) 15:44, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Strong Oppose - Firstly, the Church Fathers are referred to as a distinct group of people from the past (compare to Desert Fathers and Founding Fathers), not as if it were a job title "Church fathers". Secondly, Church Father is also occasionally used as a saint title, and it is nearly always capitalised in that way. 𝔅𝔦𝔰-𝔖𝔢𝔯𝔧𝔢𝔱𝔞? 19:25, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Oppose for all reasons stated above. The capitalized form (and its truncation "the Fathers") are standard usage. This is a distinct and authoritative group of theologians, not just any collection of priests. Compare to overlapping categories like Doctors of the Church, Three Holy Hierarchs, etc. Marisauna (talk) 16:22, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Using caps for distinction or importance falls to MOS:SIGNIFCAPS and we don't do that. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:52, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Strong Oppose Clearly a proper noun distinguishing members of this group from the way clergy could be considered lowercase "church fathers" per Chicdat. Putting aside debate over which ngram view is appropriate, a simple Google search for "Church Fathers" vs "church fathers" or "Church fathers" shows overwhelming use of the former proper noun. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 22:12, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Looking at the ngram provided with the nomination, we see that the uppercase is only slightly more common. That is before considering that ngrams over-report capitalisation in prose because the also capture expected uses of title case such as headings and titles of works in references. The claim is inconsistent with the actual evidence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cinderella157 (talk • contribs) 23:50, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

This should have been closed as "not moved" long ago. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:59, 27 April 2025 (UTC)