In August 2013, English Wikipedia volunteers promoted the Jesus article up to the highest quality level recognized on the site—featured. A bronze star now adorns the top right of the page, as it does for every featured article. Site-wide, there are over 4,000 featured articles out of 4,300,000+ total. That translates into less than 1 in 1000 odds that any random article will be featured. The accomplishment of bringing the Jesus article up to featured status is laudable because of the importance, highly-viewed, and highly-edited nature of the page. Along with other weighty topics such as global warming, George W. Bush, circumcision, and Muhammad, the Jesus article was rated as one of the 10 most controversial in an analysis to be published in 2014. Out of these 10 articles, only global warming is also of featured quality.
The article currently defines Jesus as "the central figure of Christianity, whom the teachings of most Christian denominations hold to be the Son of God." With over 370 footnotes, the article is an impressive display of the scholarly volunteerism that can characterize the Wikipedia project. As of this writing, there are 58 other articles in the featured article candidates queue, awaiting input, investigation, and determination to see if those articles might too be promoted to the featured level. Promotions are based upon volunteers deciding if the current version of the article meets the featured article criteria.
In the most recent week of statistics on the most popular articles of English Wikipeda, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:5000 the Jesus article was around number 600 in the list based upon page views. And out of the ~5,000 most popular articles of last week, 230 have the featured designation. The world can benefit from your knowledge and volunteer research, inquiry, and critical thought. Please join us in starting a new article or improving an existing entry, so that the free encyclopedia of Wikipedia can improve and grow.