Template talk:Evangelical Protestantism sidebar

Multiple issues

Why are we getting this template? Has it been discussed somewhere? I see multiple issues:

1. It already has an enormous 168 links - far too many for a curated series. Of these, only 31 are currently WP:BIDIRECTIONAL.
2. The title is wrong. Evangelical protestantism is ambiguous and could refer, for instance, to German protestantism in general, all of which churches are evangelical. The template is rather about Evangelicalism, which is more specific and better defined in the literature.
3. There seems to be a strong Pentecostal skew in the collation. That smacks of recentism. For a long time Pentecostals were not considered evangelical at all.
4. For some reason, even though it is about evangelicalism, it has almost nothing on the history of, well, evangelicalism. Whitefield, Wesley et al., are all missing. What history is there is american-centric and some of it is quite debatable.
5. The concepts section is problematic. Evangelicals have constantly redefined themselves, and outside of the Bebbington quadrilateral, it is quite hard to set any bounds on evangelicalism. Inerrancy is an interesting case in point. Clearly an evangelical doctrine, it is certainly not defining of evangelicals, being a doctrine that arose later.

I think this needs more thought. We don't need any more table stuff cluttering pages - especially table stuff offering 168 loosely coupled links and failing to pin down the subject it is actually about. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:24, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't think it's needed. Evangelicalism is a term that means different things to different people, and differs depending on the context. For instance, confessional Lutherans would consider themselves "evangelical" in belief, but most would not consider themselves "Evangelical." The navboxes for Protestantism and Pentecostalism are sufficient, this is just unnecessary. —Confession0791 ^talk 13:35, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I therefore have listed this at Templates for Discussion. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:59, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

It looks like this template isn't going anywhere, there simply isn't enough interest besides us in discussing it. The best thing we can do is reduce the Pentecostal bias and change the color scheme. —Confession0791 ^talk 13:28, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I'd have thought that, in the absence of any keep !votes, a soft delete would make sense. It can't be right that we have to keep a template if literally no-one says we want it. Templates for Discussion can take a while though. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:20, 19 August 2026 (UTC)