Are questions on Christian practices off-topic (in light of the patriotic worship question)?

Question

I recently asked this question concerning a Christian practice in the USA associated with July 4th. This is certainly a Christian worship practice - an event within the calendar for certain churches in the USA and I was able to find an article relating to it that was not comical (which seems from Flimzy's comment to have been a bone of contention).

This question has now been described as off-topic. I would like to operate within the rules of the site however, this leaves me not understanding what they are. At the current rate, I will be able to vote to close and reopen some time next year and would like to be able to use that ability responsibly. Other questions I've asked concerning worship and practices have not been closed and there seem to be quite a number of questions even asked by the people who voted to close that I find indistinguishable in form from this one. I have read all the usual posts on what is and is not on-topic - I still do not get it. A lot of questions I'm likely to ask in the future are related to the worship/practices topics and I don't want to waste everyone's time in the future.

This is my understanding at present: it seems to me that either all Christian practice questions are off-topic (which seems to oddly limit the site and calls into question the religious-practices and practices tags - certainly this question and additionally this question, this question and many others should be deleted) or this Christian practice is off-topic (not sure why) or this question should not have been closed (in which case reopen it) or perhaps it is regarded as a slippery slope towards answering cultural questions (even though it is definitely not intended to be one and if there is a way to make this more abundantly clear I'd happily edit it to get it reopened)?

It would be fair to say I'm a bit annoyed that this question (which I regard as factually answerable and of genuine interest) is closed and I apologise if this is coming across. I'm aiming to open up a space to discuss this question and more widely worship and practices questions and how they are to be treated.

Answer 1

Part of the problem is that for this site the word "Christian" is not an adequate label. Just as Christendom is too broad to talk about "Christian belief", so it is too broad to talk about "Christian practice". We have scoping rules to help with this: most questions need a denominational or doctrinal restriction. It doesn't always have to be a denomination, but it does have to be a recognisable and identifiable group.

One of the questions you linked to is a history question. Those don't need scoping like this, although if the question is based on an false premise then you may need to give an overview based on different denominations. The other question had a denominational scoping.

Your recent question wasn't scoped like that. It had two references. One was to a satirical blog which was so short it really didn't give any indication what it was talking about. The second was better with a lot more details but it used different terms than what the question was talking about, and it was still highly anecdotal. Neither of those two references could be used to identify a Christian group, and that's why the question was put on hold.

And just a further note: the groups we want to be able to identify have to be more than coincidental. It would obviously be pretty dumb to ask for a comparison of the doctrine of churches which have average sermon lengths of 20 minutes compared to 25 minutes - there's no reason to think there's any point of commonality other than that. So similarly asking about all the churches in the US with services on July 4 or which are somewhat patriotic is too broad. Just because patriotic Americans have services on the same day doesn't mean that they do so with the same purpose, that their liturgies will be similar, that the topics of their sermons will be related, or anything else which could be the basis of a good question. There's definitely no way to know that they are what that blog was talking about!

But if, for example, there was an organisation called the Christian Patriots Fellowship which encouraged its member churches to hold annual services on July 4, was founded by three well known ministers, and published books promoting their beliefs, then that would be something you could ask a good question about.

Answer 2

The problem I see with the "Patriotic Worship" question is not that it's about Christian practices, but that it's about satirical, probably largely fictional practices of some unnamed group which may or may not be Christian.

The question is about a joke. There's no indication that the joke is even talking about Christians. And even if it is talking about Christians, there's no indication that it's talking about real Christians.

If the joke had been talking about "Jedi Worship" I'm sure you wouldn't be asking about it here, even if there are some Christians who practice something which might be considered worship in some sort of Jedi fashion.

It's a satirical comment, clearly not meant to be taken literally. Without much more context to clearly tie it to something specific and specifically Christian, I see it as off-topic.

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UPDATE

Since the edit to the question, it's not asking about a specific, defined practice: How are a certain type of song used in churches in the USA. It's still not a (in my experience) common practice, but it's well enough defined now that no guesswork is necessary.

At first blush I thought the question was still too broad, as there are thousands of churches in the USA, and the answer will vary greatly by congregation, denomination, and even who the worship leader/pastor is at any given time. But the last sentence saved it, making it, IMO, a suitably scoped "overview question":

... which denominations are the most likely to use them and does their usage peak around patriotic festivals such as Independence Day and Memorial Day?