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.

The result was keep. Majorly (hot!) 19:36, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unchurched Belt (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Original research. Just 272 Google hits, most of them Wikipedia mirrors. Just about the only non-Wikipedia use of the term I could find was from a single paper written in 1985, mentioned here. szyslak (t, c) 07:42, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I withdraw my original comment that the article is original research. I wrote it as I was looking through the first reference, which doesn't use the term. However, I still support deleting the article, as the term "unchurched belt" is little used outside Wikipedia and thus not notable. szyslak (t, c) 21:44, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to Religion in the United States. It's an interesting academic term (5 Google Scholar hits, all referencing the original paper) but mostly relevant as an illustration. --Dhartung | Talk 13:36, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Keep, because terms like this are helpful for people doing research on such topics. And on that, ta ta for now! :) --Wikipedian, Historian, and Friend? 16:57, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  Wikipedian, Historian, and Friend? (talk · contribs) just opined "strong keep" in 27 AFD discussions over a period of 35 minutes, several times with clearly disruptive rationales. Uncle G 17:01, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Not original research in the Wikipedia sense at all. The term was used in 1985 by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge according to "Accounting for the Uncounted", one of the references cited in the article. --Eastmain 18:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Keep or Merge The term is not original research as per Eastmain. However not sure how notable it is and if no more can be added a merge into Religion in the United States could be appropriate. Davewild 21:01, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, Stark and Bainbridge are well known authors.--Ioannes Pragensis 18:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - even if the term is not much used, the conclusion is an interesting one. It is not original research, since is is based on a statistical source which is cited. However it is a stub. That might warrant a merge, but certainly not a delete. Peterkingiron 15:04, 15 April 2007 (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.