Theology/Denomination Tags

I started the Theology/Denominations Tags project to show what could be done, in the hope that Logos would take it on. Some years later, Logos have taken it on. Here are some thoughts on the progress they have made with it so far.

What Is Working Well

Fullness: The Logos Factbook entries go beyond the initial project in some ways.  The data/information about people stretches to bibliographies, links to works by and about the people, and is broken down in helpful ways (media, sermons, etc.)

Information on J I Packer is great, with instantly available pictures of him at different stages of life.  Similarly, there is a wealth of information on George Abbot, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, with linked dictionary entries, although he isn’t categorised as Anglican, never mind Church of England, despite being listed as an Archbishop of Canterbury.  Clearly, the entry has seen some focus, as it gives his dates of birth and death, going beyond the dictionary entries, which give only his year of birth and year of death.

Denomination: There was initially a reluctance to add much granularity.  My project tried to capture Stream (e.g., Anglican) and Denomination (e.g., Church of England).  It looks like this is now available for many people.  Thanks, Logos.

Subject vs Belief System: There was a question regarding whether I should have categorised resources about the Church of England under Church of England.  I suggested that this was a different category from resources coming from Church of England authors.  It is great to see that Logos reflects that difference, with “Subject: Church of England” quite different from “Belief System: Church of England”.

What Isn’t Working So Well

Country Missing: It would have been great if place could have featured for people.  For some people, this may require multiple entries, as people move, but most people have at least a Main Country, as in my initial project spreadsheet.

Data Hard to Find: While it is easy to find authors from the Anglican Church of Kenya.  (There’s only one: John Mbiti – type “Anglican” in the factbook filter text box, click on “Anglican Church of Kenya”.) It is harder to find authors from the Church of England, as there are so many.  (There is no category under People, so type “England”, click on Church of England”.)  It seems you have to click “More” many times before you can see Gordon J Wenham, for example, under Authors on the Church of England page.

Levels: Authors listed under Anglicanism only includes authors without any further granularity.  Hence, it does not include John Mbiti or the hundreds of authors in the Church of England, despite them being Anglican.

Data Issues

Clearly the data is incomplete and questionable in places, presumably having been automatically generated.  For example:

Douglas A – from Foster, G.H.& D.A. (2015) Renewing the world. Abilene, TX: Leafwood Publishers.

His name is Douglas A Foster, rather than Douglas A.  The citation is misleading, as the book is by Gary Holloway and Douglas A Foster.  The information page shows that it is by Foster Holloway, Gary Holloway and Douglas A.  What chance did the automatic process have with that kind of data accuracy?

Cohen A – curiously this person (?) has no associated media, works or anything else, and is simply listed as a person, neither male nor female, and with no other bibliographic information.  It’s hard to trace how this “person” was created.

Lin Aaron – co-wrote Afghanistan at transition: the lessons of the longest war, which is available from https://ebooks.faithlife.com/product/75423/afghanistan-at-transition-the-lessons-of-the-longest-war   Clearly, the entries are not limited to theology, biblical studies or religion.

“London, England”, Wales and Scotland are in the Factbook filter list, but not England, and there are more entries for London, Wales and Scotland added together than there are for Great Britain – another granularity issue?

In the library, if I filter on Belief System: Lutheranism, I don’t even get all of Luther’s Works, never mind many of the other Lutheran authors in my library.

It is unclear why “Assembly at Glasgow” comes under “Subject: Church of England”.  Glasgow is not in England, there is no mention of the Church of England in the resource and the reference to “General and Synodical Assemblies, Presbyteries, and Sessions” in the resource points to the non-Anglican, but Presbyterian, system it relates to, within the Church of Scotland.

These are only a few illustrative cases of the many problems caused by poor data.

Requests

Resource information: In the Library, clicking a resource allowed the Stream and Denomination to be seen in the initial project, as it also did in the Information screen for each resource.  This was really helpful.  It would be even better if Logos displayed the header data for each author on the information screen.  For example, for Warren W Wiersbe books, it could display “May 16, 1929 - . Baptist, Author, Man, Pastor, Teacher.  1929 –“, as per his Factbook entry.  This would be really helpful.

Searches Using Factbook Entries: Can Belief System and other Factbook categories (e.g., Person: Bishop, Person: Abolitionist, Places: London) be used for searches?  If not, can these be added?

Composite Filters/Searches: The project spreadsheet enabled a (relatively) quick search to be done for resources by Lutheran women, or Baptists born between 1800 and 1900.  I’m not sure how these kinds of composite searches can be done with the current Factbook, or elsewhere in Logos.  Could this be made possible?

With these three facilities and a great deal of work on the data, the initial project could probably be safely retired, although it would still be good if Logos displayed the data more transparently, so that searching, sorting and gaining an overview of the data were easier.

Verdict

Getting Better, Still Some Way to Go

Thanks Andrew for kickstarting this project, and for these helpful comments. Some selective responses:

...

Thanks, Sean.  Very helpful.

One of the most limiting issues is that filters are only positive: Resources with this attribute

I don't suppose it would be possible to include negative filters: Resources without this attribute (e.g., Anglican but not Church of England, or just NOT Subjects:Fiction)

This would be incredibly useful on the website, as well as in Logos.

The ANDNOT operator works in the Search and Library panels. You can put a * in front of ANDNOT in order to functionally create an initial NOT.

Thanks, SineNomine. That appears to work well.  It would be great if the graphical interface supported it as well (a tick or a cross next to each option in the filter?), but I can live with the text version.

Since Logos took on this data, I stopped updating the Denominations and Theology spreadsheet, but I’ve incorporated data from this project in another project, Bible Interpretation Choices at a Glance (feedback.faithlife.com/boards/logos-desktop-app/posts/bible-interpretation-choices-at-a-glance), so that the influence of denomination, theology, country, etc can be seen in Bible Interpretation Choices.

In doing so, I updated some entries and added nearly two hundred more, taking the total to well over 7000, so I thought I’d publish the updated spreadsheet here in case anyone finds it useful, especially as this project had over 1200 users at one point.

Here’s the 2023 version of the spreadsheet: Denominations and Theology 2023.xlsm

(Edit: For some reason this file is uploading as a .docx file, rather that the .xlsm file that it really is, so you may need to remove the final .docx from the file name to open it.  Thanks, Mattillo, for pointing this out.)

If you haven’t voted for the Bible Interpretation Choices at a Glance idea, you can do so at the link above, or find out more at: https://community.logos.com/forums/t/208162.aspx

Thanks.

Thanks, xnman.  I'm not sure whether this is a request for me or for Logos, but the problem has always been defining "Church of Christ".  As can be seen from the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Christ), it can refer to a number of different groups.

Within the spreadsheet, which provides rules for creating collections, you can find "Churches of Christ" (e.g. Michael Whitworth), "Churches of Christ in Christian Union" (e.g. David Case) and "Christian churches and churches of Christ" (e.g. Barry L. Davis).  If none of these is what you are looking for, then you may need to be more specific, and it may help to mention authors available in Logos, as this has been the guide for the spreadsheet.

Thanks, Mattillo.

I've tried to re-upload it, but it still thinks it's a Word document for some reason.  I'll happily fix it if anyone has any idea how.

It failed to upload as an attachment (I suspect it's too big), so I used the Insert Image from Amber option, if that's any help.