Soc.Religion.Christian.Bible-Study
Please note that this Charter was approved by a UseNet Vote - I can't change it or correct "errors"!
The newsgroup, soc.religion.christian.bible-study, is for the
discussion of the Bible. For the purposes of this group, the
definition of "the Bible" will be as follows:
All books considered to be canonical (i.e. in the Bible) by any major Jewish or Christian group. In particular, this includes the 66 books in the "Authorized" or "King James" version of the Bible, which includes the Jewish canon (or Tanakh - determined by the council of Jamnia), plus those books and sections recognized by the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (also known as the "deuterocanonical books"), plus those additional books recognized by the Orthodox Churches.
This does not include works of the Book of Mormon, Science and Health, or the Qur'an. While some groups consider these books to also be the word of God, they treat them seperately from "the Bible". Other works, generally known as apocryphal, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Qumran texts, Nag Hammadi, Enoch, etc..., shed interesting light and will be considered to be "on topic" for the purposes of this newsgroup, but they will not be allowed to dominate the group since they are not the main focus of this newsgroup.
Books which were part of previous canon lists, such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache, are welcome topics of discussion, as are discussions of canonicity, so long as they do not devolve into denominational flame wars. This is a discussion about the Bible and it is not limited to any specific denominational position. This group will be moderated.
The proposed guidelines are as follows:
- Postings which are blatantly off-topic will be rejected. This is construed to mean "How do I get Lemmings to work on my WizBangoClone?", but not "How do I get my Bible Search Program to work on my MacMCMLXI?"
- Postings which are overly abusive of another person (whether that person is on the net or not) will be returned for rephrasing. This means that "Jason is a mindless twit" will be rejected, but "I don't see how Jason can say this after agreeing in post "madeup@wierdsite.org" that..." will not.
- Postings which attack denominational beliefs (whether directed towards an individual or not) will be rejected. This should NOT be construed to limit discussion to these topics but the writer should exercise great care so as to present the issues as fairly and calmly as possible, without resorting to "all the foos are idiots".
- Postings which are better suited for other newsgroups (such as the "flame sinks" of talk.abortion and talk.origins or the more general groups of soc.religion.christian or talk.religion. misc) will be guided there. This will require somewhat of a fine line. For example, discussions of exegetics of Genesis will touch on talk.origins territory. So long as they stay in the realm of biblical exegetics or study, they are germane to soc.religion.christian.bible-study. When they stray into issues of dating, or the geological record, they may be shunted towards talk.origins. This is not to say that such topics are always out of line, but that the scope of this newsgroup will be limited to biblical issues.
- Similarly, since the Bible assumes God's existence, postings debating this topic will be guided to one of the general religion groups. (Postings are not required to assume a particular position on God's existence, however.) Discussions regarding the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus will be allowed, however, as long as they do not degenerate to attacks on personal beliefs.
- Discussions which have degenerated into "is so" "is not" chains can be cut off or more tightly monitored for signal/noise ratios at the moderator's discretion.
- Posting must include complete sources of information for the convenience of others. Verse citations must include the bible designation (i.e. NIV, NKJV, NASB, etc...). Standard abbreviations can be found in the FAQ on that subject. Citations from scholarly or devotional works should include the author, title, publisher and date of publisher, and page numbers, if possible. The minimum info required is the author and book title. The moderator may return a posting for source citation, if warranted.
The duties of the moderator are as follows:
- To enforce the moderation guidelines given above.
- To maintain FAQ files on common discussion chains. These are not designed to "answer" common threads, but merely to provide those who join the group and restart a thread to be given a recap of the most cogent statements of the various positions without flooding the newsgroup.
- To append to each rejected posting an explanation of why it was rejected, and any changes that would need to be made in style, or topic, or newsgroup to be more appropriate.
Guidelines for the removal of a moderator are as follows:
- An RFD on the removal of the moderator must be posted to news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, and soc.religion.christian. bible-study, with the follow-ups sent to news.groups.
- Should there be a consensus that a vote is
appropriate, a CFV will be issued by a third party,
to last not less than two weeks and not more than 30
days. This ballot will include the following options:
a. Should the moderator be removed? (Y/N)
b. The new moderator should be: (names)
If more than 2/3 of the voters agree that the moderator should be removed, and there are no more than 100 no votes, then the top name in section b becomes the new moderator. Each ballot can contain a vote for one and only one new moderator.
Initial moderator: Steve Adams
