Talk:Universal Life

Mistranslation

there seems to be a miss-translation in the 2nd line. "heimholungswerk jesu christi" has nothing to with "home healing"; "-home coming" would fit much better! — 212.80.242.69 27 October 2006 (was unsigned, undated)

More precisely "Jesus Christ's work of bringing home" (from German 'holen' = 'to fetch', 'holung' = 'fetching') — SomeHuman 19 Jan2007 10:03 (UTC)

Source

One so far unmentioned source describes a relatively new phenomenon in general: "While clergy still perform most weddings, the ceremonies are straying ever farther from tradition, reflecting a "do-it-yourself" attitude toward religious nuptials. The minister may be an old friend, a professor or Dad, ordained online for the occasion.". It also cites a claim by a director of an apparent branch of this 'Church': "The Universal Life Church of Modesto, Calif., has ordained from 18 million to 20 million people since 1962, chiefly for the purpose of officiating at weddings, said Andre Hensley, a director of the church".
Unless 'Universal Life' would indeed be sufficiently notable, it could be an Afd as it has no source except the topic's own website and one mentioned but untraceable "book" —though this lecture for "Sects: threat or challenge?"/same lecture (cf.Switzerland) I think to be the real source— by a theologian as mentioning it having 200x less members; one lecture for a specialized audience by this clearly professional tracker of sects and the like, is not notable by WP standards. Note that this 'Church' is not mentioned in the article on New religious movement which the present article claims its topic to be. — SomeHuman 19 Jan2007 09:22 (UTC)

I could be wrong about this, but I think the reason why the English article for Universelles Leben doesn't cite it's sources is because the user Rabin, I think, just translated the German article into English. This is because before the English article existed, I had made a translation request over at Wikipedia:German-English_translation_requests. As you can see, the German page de:Universelles Leben is much longer and more detailed than Universal Life. I think that maybe the article de:Universelles Leben]] does cite its sources, but I'm not sure (sadly I can't check this out because I only have 7 minutes left on this library computer!!!). Also, I think that an article is notable if it appears in several langauges (in this case Hungarian, Polish, German, and English). Also, I think that you may have gotten Universal Life Church mixed up with Universal Life. They are two seperate sects. Maybe I'll try to put up a warning at the top of the page that says something like, "Not to be confused with the Universal Life Church". There are a lot of articles written about Universal Life that you can find in search engines, but the problem is, you have to type in the German spelling "Universelles Leben". When you type in "Universal Life", you won't get much, because this cult is hardly known outside the German-speaking countries and Europe. You could also try typing the name "Gabriele Wittek" into a search engine. Make sure the search engine isn't limited to only English-language pages, because like I said, most pages are in the German-language. They do most of their proselytizing in Germany, from what I've read, so that's why almost all vegans living in Germany have heard of them, but hardly any vegans living in North America have heard of them (from what I've come to know from my own experience). I wish I could type more, but sadly I do not have access to my computer at home at the moment, and I don't have money to pay to go to an internet cafe. Libraries are free, but they restrict your time. Perhaps we can discuss this some other time.--Xandiar 02:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I already expected as much and therefore I did not yet put up the article as WP:Afd. Nevertheless, to my knowledge, the WP guidelines do not allow assuming sources in Wikipedia's of other languages, even if several have an article about it. These Wikipedia's may change their articles over time and so do the articles on the English Wikipedia. Thus an unprotected article will come to include new statements that are not sourced; and sentences that were properly sourced on another Wikipedia become modified on the English one and are then no longer sourced. Both make the article utterly unverifiable. Thus sources (best in English but if such are unavailable, in another language) are required.
An entirely different matter is the confusion between the translation of 'Universelles Leben' and 'Universal Life' as short for 'Universal Life Church'. I think the name in English translation, might perhaps occur more rarely even in English-language texts than the authentic German-language name; in that case the article should be renamed ('moved' in Wiki-terminology) towards the name in German. Anyway, the confusion (I was not all too sure about the American version being a different society or a more recent strain of the European one) should not be allowed and regardless the title, the other should be mentioned at top of the article. And it requires some cleanup.
In its present state, the article is a rather good candidate to become deleted, and either I or someone else is likely to put up an Afd proposal. At least I will give it (and you?) another month, and see how it evolves. — SomeHuman 20 Jan2007 03:03-03:28 (UTC)

Removed

I have removed two statements from the article:

Individual communities are named as "Places of original Christian meeting", and their members have intensive contact with each other. ... The original German name is missing, and the "intensive contact" bit is trivial.

Universal Life is financed solely through donations. ... unsubstantiated, and at odds with the fact that UL operates several enterprises.

Thanks, Maikel (talk) 13:02, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

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