Every entity on this site carries a Christian Assessment. The assessment answers two questions. Question A is comparative and descriptive: what does this entity affirm and deny relative to the historic Christian faith? Question B is classificatory: is this a Christian worldview, and in which senses? This page states the criteria the assessment applies, so that every verdict on the site can be checked against a published standard. Criteria version 1.0.
The site's standpoint
The site is not a neutral arbiter, and this page does not pretend otherwise. The standpoint, quoted from our editorial statement:
This site is biased only toward Christ and His Word. It is not biased toward any particular denomination, doctrine, or theology of Christianity. It presents a general Christian world view centered on Scripture: the theology of Christ, as He is revealed to us through special and general revelation and through the Word of God alone.
An assessment made from a stated confessional standpoint, with its criteria published, can be checked and disputed on its evidence. An assessment pretending to neutrality cannot.
Why the site distinguishes five senses of Christian
The word Christian does more than one job in ordinary speech, and most arguments about whether some body is Christian are arguments between the senses, conducted as if there were only one. The assessment therefore gives a separate verdict for each sense, and no single verdict stands in for the others.
- Self-identification
- Does it consider itself Christian?
- Genealogical / descriptive
- Did it arise from the Christian tradition?
- Creedal / conciliar
- Does it affirm the ecumenical creeds?
- Ecclesial recognition
- Is it recognized as Christian by the historic Christian bodies?
- The site's own assessment
- This site's assessment
Self-identification is empirical: it is settled by the entity's own official statements, not by anyone's theology. The genealogical sense is historical: it asks where the entity came from. The creedal sense is theological: it measures the entity's own doctrinal statements against the ecumenical creeds. Ecclesial recognition records what the historic bodies themselves publish. The site's own assessment is editorial: it is what this site concludes from the standpoint stated above, and it is labeled as ours.
The criteria applied
For the creedal sense, the criterion set is the faith the ecumenical creeds encode: the canon of Scripture the historic church received; the Trinity; the incarnation, that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human; his bodily resurrection; and his finished saving work. A verdict of Affirmed in the creedal sense means the entity can affirm those doctrines in its own statements. Partially affirmed means the specific elements it affirms and the specific elements it does not are listed in the assessment itself.
Different bodies apply different criteria, and the assessment records that rather than smoothing it over. The Catholic Church applies apostolic succession and valid sacraments. Conciliar Protestant bodies apply the creeds. Evangelical bodies commonly apply a core gospel. The ecclesial recognition sense records recognition by five bodies:
- the Catholic Church
- the Eastern Orthodox Church
- the Oriental Orthodox churches
- conciliar Protestant bodies
- the WCC / National Council of Churches
The verdict vocabulary
Every sense of every assessment carries exactly one verdict from this controlled list. There are no free-text verdicts.
- Affirmed
- On the evidence, the criterion is met.
- Denied
- On the evidence, the criterion is not met.
- Contested
- There is serious, documented disagreement among qualified parties. The assessment records both positions with their sources, and a second, independent reviewer signs it.
- Partially affirmed
- Some elements of the criterion are met and some are not; the assessment lists which.
- Not applicable
- The criterion does not apply to this kind of entity.
- Not yet reviewed
- The assessment has not been completed. This is a visible state, not a silent gap: an entity stands in the review queue until its verdicts are supplied.
Question A: the ten loci
The comparative grid reads every entity across the same ten loci, in this order. Convergence is mandatory: an assessment that records only divergence is a polemic, and the build rejects it.
- Scripture and authority. What is the ultimate authority, and what is the canon?
- God. One, many, personal, impersonal, triune, or absent?
- Christ. Who is Jesus: divine, human, both, a prophet, a created being, a teacher, a myth?
- The human person. Created, fallen, image of God, atman, anatta, machine, or nothing in particular?
- The problem. What is wrong with the human condition: sin, ignorance, karma, oppression, illusion?
- The solution. What fixes it: grace, works, knowledge, liberation, therapy, technology?
- Salvation and destiny. What is the final end, and how is it reached?
- Ethics. What is the good, and what grounds it?
- Eschatology. What is the future of the world and the person?
- Revelation. Has God spoken, and how?
The hard cases
Some classifications are genuinely contested, and the site does not hide that. The hard-case register names those cases, documents both positions with their sources, and shows the placement disputed flag. A contested case carries a Contested verdict only with two named positions and a second reviewer.
What this assessment cannot settle
This assessment determines what this entity teaches and how that teaching relates to the historic Christian creeds. It does not determine whether any person is saved, whether God accepts their worship, whether they are sincere, or whether the criteria applied here are correct.
The review process
The verdicts are supplied by named theological reviewers with formal theological training, whose names and qualifications stand on this page when they are appointed. The developer who built this apparatus does not make the judgments. A second reviewer, independent of the first and never the same person, is required for every Contested verdict and every hard case. The criteria editor owns this page and its version; when the criteria version changes, every assessment made under the earlier version is flagged for review. Creating an entity creates its assessment record automatically, with every verdict at Not yet reviewed; the record appears in the assessment dashboard at once with a named owner.
The reviewers are not yet named. Their naming stands as a task with the site's founder. Until they are named and supply verdicts, every verdict on the site stands at Not yet reviewed, and each panel says so.
Version history
- Version 1.0, October 28, 2026: the criteria are first published, with the five senses, the ten loci, and the controlled verdict vocabulary.
This assessment is made from the standpoint described in our editorial statement and on this criteria page. It reports classifications; it does not rank sincerity, spiritual standing, or the eternal state of any person.