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.
Delete. As per the nominator, this article is a WP:SYNTHESIS of disparate pieces of non-related material. The "Epidemic" section of the article, for example, discusses how the Ebola virus epidemic in Liberia was questioned by some Pentecostals. It makes no mention about how people of faith help educate the public about Ebola.[1] Regardless this section (like all the sections in the article) have NOTHING to do with a "crisis of faith". It's simply an WP:ATTACKPAGE against religion. desmay (talk) 21:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. This article was deleted in 2017. It was brought back without consensus. If any material was suggested, a redirect to Spiritual crisis or Crisis of absence of meaning seems more appropriate. I would argue what is the point of such an article in the first place? The Crisis article already addresses different types of crisis people face. It does look like a WP:COATRACK of these articles. People lose faith in stuff all the time (politics, family, friends, spouse, sports, the future, culture, etc) and at the same time they acquire faith in the same stuff too. The lead is not even sourced well in defining the topic article and the scope seem incredibly broad without any academic source. Some of the material seems more appropriate in depression or pessimism or nihilism. On top of that empirical studies show that many things in this article do not impact their faith in any consistent fashion. You can lose faith in "religion", but retain strong belief in God and vice versa. There are many layers to this. People lose faith in marriage but they still date extensively throughout their lives. People lose faith in government and do not vote, and yet they retain strong belief in political candidates. An easy one is God, in that belief in God is not impacted by tragedies [2]. People get over it and move on. on top of this, the focus of the article is too much on religion and ignores the disillusionment among the nonreligious with secularism, many of which can be found in List of converts to Christianity from nontheism. Ramos1990 (talk) 02:53, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep — the article's main points and overall structure come directly from academic sources, namely, Robert C Evans, Sydney Eisen, and Jennifer Michael Hecht. I find it odd to say the article is an attack on religion because it is quite clear that strengthened faith is a common outcome of a crisis of faith. It includes the examples of Job, Julia Wedgewood, Ellice Hopkins, Søren Kierkegaard, Richard Rubenstein, etc. Jno.skinner (talk) 19:52, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I agree with Jno.skinner, the article is in reasonably good shape overall and is largely well-referenced and not OR. The lead might need some cleanup to better summarize the article, and the section about Ebola could be removed (or improved with better references), but we don't need to delete the entire article to WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM —siroχo03:17, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I included Ebola in Liberia in an effort to achieve WP:GLOBAL perspective by including something from Africa. I would gladly see it replaced with some other account from that continent. Ideas? Jno.skinner (talk) 23:36, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's certainly a reasonable thought. I have no specific ideas, sorry. However, if there are any academic articles to back up the NYT claims it would be a stronger sign to include it as an example. —siroχo18:57, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I agree that this is something of a WP:COATRACK, but looking at the other articles that are mentioned I do think that the approach of this one ("faith") differs from what there is in WP:Existential crisis (which seems to be the closest to this). That article is couched in somewhat psychological terms, sometimes even scientific, and this one is more humanistic. I think there is room for both. I *am* concerned that this article primarily seems to be the work of one editor, and that there have been some violations of deletion policy. I would suggest bringing in other editors to make sure the content is created in a cooperative way. I do think that the Accounts section needs revision because there are aspects that I do not think belong there. Lamona (talk) 18:55, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The article is not well done and it violates Wikipedia:Attack page, NPOV and WP:COATRACK. For example, every one of its points can apply to irreligion, but you would never know this by reading the article. I also agree with Ramos1990 who wrote: "This article was deleted in 2017. It was brought back without consensus. If any material was suggested, a redirect to Spiritual crisis or Crisis of absence of meaning seems more appropriate. I would argue what is the point of such an article in the first place? The Crisis article already addresses different types of crisis people face." Knox490 (talk) 20:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Gonna have to divide my comment into two sections here:
On the article's topic — The concept is poorly defined, and there seems to be no real scope separating it from Spiritual crisis or Existential crisis with some content more properly belonging in the criticism of religion or apostasy articles. Some of it seems to think the article is titled 'reasons why people leave religions'. It is about 4 different topics WP:synthed together in a trench-coat. Or in WP:COATRACK term's additional topics.... grouped together to make it appear as if they were all examples of the same thing. Any notable content already falls under another article. For these reasons alone the article should be deleted.
On the article's content — contains a plethora of personal accounts/testimonies that are reminiscent of r/atheism. While the people who wrote them may well be notable, that doesn't mean they need to collated in one place and hosted by Wikipedia, that isn't our purpose.They should remain in that person's article. So the entire "accounts" section is problematic. The 'outcomes section' isn't too great either, again largely relying on individual examples/accounts including in one place an account of a fictional character's thoughts. A few sociological citations don't justify a WP:OR depiction of 4 outcomes. Anyone looking for a definition can pass over this page, the "Description" section leaves one less enlightened as to the term's meaning, which as presented in the article seems to be any kind of doubt in anything (but the article's actual content only focuses on crisis of religion). As for sourcing, the academic/research sources that are included simply consist of personal anecdotes/observations made by researchers. For all these reasons the article needs at the very least a WP:TNT.
Keep. The feeling of wanting to leave a religion is a well-sourced topic (obviously). Furthermore, if anything, spiritual crisis is less well-written and should be nominated instead. No POV issues with this article existing since a section can be made to how each different religion address that issue. बिनोद थारू (talk) 19:51, 5 November 2023 (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.