Talk:Spiritualist Church

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[edit] Proposal to Merge

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)

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)
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)

[edit] Wonewoc, Wisconsin

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

[edit] External Links

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)


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)

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)
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)

[edit] List of Spiritualist Churches/Orgs

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)