Talk:Spiritualist church

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Proposal to Merge[edit]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion was to 'no consensus to merge. -- Trevj (talk) 09:02, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Two people supported a merge of Spiritualist Church with Spiritualism, and two (myself included) opposed. It makes sense to separate the historical movement Spiritualism (1840s-1920s) from the current organization of Spiritualist Churches--the earlier movement had little organization and had a set of beliefs and practices quite different from the syncretic practices of the current churches. This page would be a good place for people familiar with current Spiritualist practice to contribute, and the Spiritualism page would be the best place for contributions for people interested in the history of the religious movement. This page does need a lot of work. Since it's about organized religion, there should be something about organizations, founding dates, memberships, etc., as well as about dogma and liturgy. Anthon.Eff 16:55, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that American Spiritualism was disorganised and lacked institutions, but there are many multi-volume works on the British denominations in the historic period. I shall edit and add some material on this subject, a very brief overview, but it might make more of the case for putting them back together. The article also starts almost incomprehensibly, without reference to Hydesville or the Fox Sisters? I really would advocate inclusion in the main Spiritualism article, which in turn needs to be properly crosss referenced to the wikipedia material on mediumship.

Er, why is there no Spiritualists National Union article? there was once?!

What I think: A friend has become a spiritualist, and so I checked the wiki page to understand a little more about his faith. I have, however, found the entry to be biased, stating belifs as fact and citation free. Ive done what little I can to clear thing up, but somebody with a little more (to say the least) knollige than me to do a clear out. tl;dr: This article is a bit shit. Somebody make it un-shit.


I'd say no to merge but yes to move to Christian Spiritualism --Lucyintheskywithdada (talk) 05:18, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Lucy, as discussed in the Spiritualism article talk page, you may be overestimating the dominance of Christian Spiritualism. It is entirely appropriate to have a section in this article titled something like "Basic forms of Spiritualist churches," and then including a subsection for Christian Spiritualist churches. An alternative might be for you to start an article about Christian Spiritualist churches. If you do so, plan on me keeping this current article, however.
The "Styles of Worship" section could be utilized for this purpose.
The "Spiritualist Creeds" section is problematic. For instance, the NSAC does not believe in the "fatherhood of God." Because there are several flavors of Spiritualism, with slightly different tenets, I think the "creeds" should be incorporated in the individual church type subsections. That way, the NSAC can be represented without speaking for Christians.
Anthon makes a good point about how granular the article should be. Talking about spiritualist camps is good, but it is probably not appropriate to attempt a list of all of the camps. The same for churches. Since organizing groups, such as the ISF and NSAC are addressed, each has a slightly different set of tenets, and those tenets should be addressed. That would mean that organizations that have two or more member churches should probably be listed unless they are only different in name.
"Training to be a Medium" could be complemented with "Training to be a healer."
Spiritism should be address so as to note the distinction.
This article could also benefit by a section on the modern foundation for Spiritualism, although that should be developed in the Spiritualism article. For instance, my wife, Lisa, has written a column for the NSAC Summit for a number of years now. Many of the old ones are at [1]. Almost all of the articles provide more current reason to say that "Spiritualism is the Science, Philosophy and Religion of continuous life, based upon the demonstrated fact of communication, by means of mediumship, with those who live in the Spirit World." Tom Butler (talk) 23:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the suffix 'ism' to mean a belief system that does not have a reasoned foundation. In this context 'spiritualism' can be construed in many definitions. Yes one can be a social phenomenon but it can also be construed in the more general sense of being a belief in a life of the spirit beyond rational explanation, requiring acceptance to a greater of lesser degree. To this extent it could be seen to be synonymous with religion which requires a degree of acceptance.121.219.58.9 (talk) 07:00, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wonewoc, Wisconsin[edit]

Wonewoc, Wisconsin has the Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp.I added this to the articleRFD 22:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

External Links[edit]

According to the guidelines (WP:EL) there are way too many external links in this article. Someone who has been putting in the links would be the best person to clean up a bit. Please read the guidelines first--they have some good suggestions. Thanks! Anthon.Eff 19:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]


I think a few people added links which had more to do with promoting mediums than actual church organisations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dwish (talk • contribs) 20:33, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've cleaned up the section somewhat based on our guidelines and policy - Removing links to individual churches, camps and psychics; deadlinks; personal publications; and most of the stuff that doesn't specifically talk about the spiritualist church, along with some of the more geographically restricted associations. There is a case for removing all of the associations, most of them provide limited encyclopedic information that would not be of interest to a general reader, but if we keep it to only the most prominent I think they could be useful. I'm still a bit unsure about the Spiritualist e-texts and the psychic investigator links. These seem a little less than encyclopedic, but I left them in as they seemed there were so few that seemed to provide information that was actually about the subject rather than simply examples of churches. But I wouldn't object if others thought they shouldn't be there. Other comments? -- SiobhanHansa 13:37, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There is a chronic spam problem. A few good editors have come and added real information and then left, without anyone ever taking over this article, defending it from the spammers, organizing the new material, etc. So if you are reading this, and you are knowledgeable about the Spiritualist Church, you are needed here! --Anthon.Eff 18:09, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of Spiritualist Churches/Orgs[edit]

Hi.

I set up a page for a List_of_Spiritualist_Organizations. I thought it would be good to run it up you flagpole to see if anyone wished to help.

BTW, are not some of those "See also" a little broad?

Thank you. --Lucyintheskywithdada (talk) 04:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the list. I have been a steady contributor to that page since you created it, and i have found it very useful as a source for references on various doctrinal and liturgical differences and similarities among the various branches of Spiritualist churches. Catherineyronwode (talk) 18:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Naramata, British Columbia[edit]

I just came across the name-origin info for Naramata in "Naramata (Community)". BC Geographical Names. and the founding and naming of the place is connected to the American Spiritualist Church. Naramata retains its spiritualist tradition, I've heard, but I don't know much more about it; perhaps someone here would care to indulge the topic.Skookum1 (talk) 21:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge[edit]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion was to no consensus to merge. -- Trevj (talk) 09:02, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Merge - Spiritualism into Spiritualist Church

I am proposing to merge these because they are the same organization. The product will be better than the current split. Also, the more general title "Spiritualism" should be reserved for the most general concept (people who believe that there is such a thing as spirit). More specific instances should have more specific titles (this particular monotheistic group). Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 01:28, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose:

  1. Spiritualism is not an "organization" and is not the same thing as the Spiritualist Church--the latter is a recent development, as you would doubtless have learned if you had bothered to read the Spiritualism article.
This kind of aspersion is uncivil. I am a good faith editor, and I did read it and have a different interpretation of things than you do. To the degree that there exists any material on the 'organization-less' movement with the same heritage, content should be moved to the section in Spiritualism (beliefs) titled Spiritualist Church. -GB
  1. Spiritualism is already overlong, and is therefore not the kind of article one should think of lumping together with another.
  2. The division into contemporary Spiritualist Church and historical Spiritualism occurred several years ago. It solved some problems--mainly the problem of everyone wanting to post their own personal beliefs to Spiritualism. Once Spiritualism gained a historical focus, it became possible to write an objective article on it.
  3. There was a major discussion (actually an edit war) several years ago over whether the more general title "Spiritualism" should be reserved for the most general concept (people who believe that there is such a thing as spirit). As a result, an article appeared called Spiritualism (beliefs), where you have a discussion of "the most general concept."--Anthon.Eff (talk) 12:44, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: The historical religion of Spiritualism and the current Spiritualist Churches are essentially the same religion, albeit in different forms - they have adapted, just as every religion adapts over time. They should of course be kept separate from the page on spiritualism as a worldwide belief in spirits.(Midnightblueowl (talk) 01:35, 13 December 2009 (UTC))[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose as the unorganized spiritualism movement was enormous and by far and away outnumbered any specific Church by populace as a cultural phenomenon. The unorganized movement affected various "scholars" right up through Freud and Jung. To merge that article into this one implies that the whole thing was organized... which it clearly was not. If anything were to merge it would be this article into Spiritualism and I do not support that either. - Steve3849 00:25, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Its been since September with no consensus and little recent discussion; I removed the merge tags. - Steve3849 00:30, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Upgrading Reflist, removing redundancy[edit]

Hi, all -- i am involved in upgrading this article to remove redundancy and to provide all in-line refs in accordance with recent Wikipedia standards. I started today but have to break for some meetings. I will return to this work-in-progress. Also, for those following page developments, i am the not-logged-in poster signed as "Ol' 64" above, opposing the merge of this article into the Spiritualism article. More later.... Catherineyronwode (talk) 18:35, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I have created a system of sub-head organization, done a partial rewrite in order to meld various writing styles into one "coice," created a lot more wiki-links (and linked from other articles into this one as well, and brought all refs up to inline ref status. Enjoy! Catherineyronwode (talk) 17:50, 21 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Need to focus on essentials[edit]

Shalom i just got here as well is this anything to do with Satanic origins just courious? I know i song on Solomon in the Bible or Torah goes like this a verse says:"Let us therefore catch the little foxes that spoil the vine" In the New Testament,Yeshua ha Meshiach is the Vine and the little foxes that spoil it is lies deceptions and the like.As long as i'm connected to the Vine i will bear much fruit but if i'm apart i will not and what fruit is left there the foxes with eat them and or they will rot> Now interesting a branch cannot survive with out the vine connecting...This is questionable the term "Spiritualist" One who knows the difference between good and evil spirits one who is a specialist in this matter?Like as a Psycologist is a specialist of a social aspect rather than a Phsychiatrist is one who specializes in the brain! Ok back to little foxes they destroy things like puppies when they are teething they chew everythinbg is why branches of the vine can get separated! Food for thought?The Truth will set one free! Yeshua is the "WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE! except Him as Savior John 3:16! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.171.163.160 (talk) 03:55, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just came here to see what the heck a Spiritualist is and what they believe and what they offer to the greater collective subject category of what I suppose is theology. The article has fundamental heading and organizational structure issues I'm not used to finding on Wikipedia. The first sentence in the article:
"A Spiritualist church is a church affiliated with the informal Spiritualist movement which began in the 1840s in America."
belongs under the heading of history since it doesn't provide a clue as to what the heck it is. The first sentence under the heading of Mediumship within the churches:
"Spiritualists believe that we all die physically and that some aspect of the personality or mind survives..."
Sounds like the article's misplaced topic sentence and the information that followed in that paragraph seems to be what is missing from the introduction.
Editors have valid concerns as well as good ideas but before the article can be find tuned it needs to provide the essentials. Divisions of the movement baseed on theological variations are of little interest to someone looking for an overview.
Best wishes, Mike W. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Illumined (talk • contribs) 09:05, 21 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have added some brief notes on healing , and how it was taught to me and is practiced here in New Zealand- marty. (discuss) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.0.48.125 (talk) 07:20, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Two Worlds[edit]

I noticed that the link for "Two Worlds", e.g. two worlds magazine was broken, I went to fix it when I ran into it being a protected page. -- 98.58.212.22 (talk) 16:42, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: Duplicate edit request. Liu1126 (talk) 16:58, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Archive[edit]

I did a little research and though unable to find anything useful in archive.org, there appears to be a complete archive of the magazine going back to the 1800's located at The Two Worlds (IAPSOP) I have no idea what to do to make this change but thought I would share the ink here -- 98.58.212.22 (talk) 16:42, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: If you're talking about the red wikilink for Two Worlds, that is because the Wikipedia article hasn't been created yet, but editors believe it would be useful to create it in the future. See Wikipedia:Red link for more information. Liu1126 (talk) 16:58, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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