Talk:Prophetic gift of Ellen White

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This article was nominated for deletion on 2007-02-21. The result of the discussion was No consensus.

	Prophetic gift of Ellen White is part of WikiProject Seventh-day Adventist Church, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Seventh-day Adventist Church and Seventh-day Adventist Church-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.
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Article Grading: The following comments were left by the quality and importance raters: (edit · refresh) == 1. This article is redundant as there is already an article about EGW. 2. This article is not accurate nor balanced as it attempts to label Progressive(Liberal) Adventist opinions towards EGW as being that of mainstream adventism. 3. It also is weighted heavily with articles and references and links to detractors and critics and equivalent counterbalancing is not present. The Author of this particular piece is a self-identified "Progressive Adventist." That aforementiond established factoid could easily been deduced by reading this piece - without investigating the user profile. == —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 162.66.50.3 (talk • contribs) 19:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC) (UTC), also IP 162.66.50.4 In regards to point 1, the debate concerning White's prophetic gift is actually the most notable part of her life - e.g. noone argues about details of her life such as whether or not she died in 1915! Regarding point 2, I invite all authors to contribute towards the neutrality of the article. If you claim my own POV has affected me, please note that most of the descriptions of the critics and critical links were added by me, despite the fact that this is not my POV. I have tried to feature Douglass' book prominently, as IMO this is the closest to an "official" book regarding White as a prophet. If there is more detail given to progressive authors this reflects my own personal knowledge base, not a deliberate bias. Please contribute more details about "mainstream" authors (as you see them), as you probably know more about them than I do! Regards, Colin MacLaurin 05:02, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
WikiProject Seventh-day Adventist Church To-do: edit  Expand "Glacier View Controversy" section, to include more background, history, theological issues, and details of the Glacier View meeting itself Add to "Adventist Responses to Criticisms" section, ideally with material from Adventist scholars etc.

[edit] Section mergers with Ellen White

This page is about the nature of the inspiration of Ellen White and her writings. This is a much more specific topic than the general page Ellen White, but this is the particular point controverted. Two reasons for this page:

1. There is a lot of material for this page
2. This is the controverted point regarding her. Her existence, her life etc. are not disputed. But her writings/inspiration is what is disputed. Many articles and sections support or dispute her prophetic gift specifically. The existence of this page allows a natural wikilink to be created from these other articles. However a wikilink to the Ellen White page would be off topic. Again, this page would go in the Category:Seventh-day Adventist theology, because it describes a theological belief of the church. But the Ellen White page would not belong in this category. A related concept is the "Spirit of prophecy".

The main page would be left to describe her biography, family life, leadership influence upon the church, role in the 1888 meeting, and even a list of her writings and the major themes within. Colin MacLaurin 10:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure about the theology category link. I can't quite think of why but I see this page as separate from a discussion of the churches theology.

Apart from that, this page is valid according to the comments I made earlier about it. NPOV can easily hold under the title as is. The title does not stop evidence against the gift from being presented so it is not a POV fork. Ansell 12:25, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that any person should get two entries, and if you must keep them seperate, than I would say move this to Ellen White : The Prophetic Gift or something like that. It is almost like you are advertising for her by putting it under prophecy Mattbman 22:43, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually many people described in Wikipedia have several articles. Consider William Shakespeare for instance. There is a lot of content for Ellen G. White, and in fact the debate as to whether or not her prophetic gift was genuine is the most contentious issue regarding her. An article name change could be justified, but other articles on George W. Bush also use this style - Early life of George W. Bush and Professional life of George W. Bush. One policy stated, "Do not use an article name that suggests a hierarchy of articles". The policy Wikipedia:Summary style is relevant to this discussion. Colin MacLaurin 16:41, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Title

What is the best title for this article? Some have suggested it is currently POV, which is certainly not intended. As pointed out by anothers, article titles such as Papal infallibility could also sound POV. "Prophetic gift of Ellen White" is a little clumsy. How about a rename to Inspiration of Ellen White (which currently redirects here), which is a slightly less specific title, and shorter? The word "inspiration" could have a spiritual connotation to a religious person and/or supporter of White, or the entirely humanistic connotation of "creativity" to a critic. Another option would be to merge it into Spirit of Prophecy (Adventist), however I strongly disagree with this, as many Adventists themselves criticise the use of this term. Colin MacLaurin 05:11, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Additions - March 2007

Some of the basic points are helpful, but there is far too much information which is simply not relevant to the topic. Some of it might belong on other pages such as Victor Houteff. Please summarise it drastically. The material does not appear to abide by a neutral point of view.

The site www.gilead.net is linked to several times for the text of White's writings. The site is not a good choice, as it is not highly notable and also appears to represent the POV of Historic Adventism. Please link instead to the Ellen G. White Estate homepage, which is not only far more notable and more representative of mainstream Adventism, but is also the official Ellen White website. Colin MacLaurin 17:32, 27 March 2007 (UTC)