Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Local Church controversy


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the debate was merge into Local churches. - ulayiti (talk)  12:26, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Local Church controversy
Important disclaimer: This AfD isn't intended to imply, that no criticism of Lord's recovery should be in Wikipedia.

This is obviously a POV-fork. This seems to be the lamentable stale-mate found in many of articles about so called sects: The main articles Lord's recovery, Witness Lee, Recovery Version of the Bible are in gloomy colors, not even mentioning the critical POV. The POV-fork is only critcism, and needs better sourcing. NPOV policy strongly discourages separate pro and con articles.

Pjacobi 15:15, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Delete cannot be verified MAZO 15:27, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment appears to be just a POV fork but support a merge with Local churches--MONGO 16:11, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as apparent POV fork. Merge the content if appropriate, I guess, but I am hesitant to do anythign but kill forks.  I should WP:AGF I know... Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|25px|  ]] AfD? 22:07, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as unverifiable POV fork. Stifle 02:20, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Merge into article local churches, article contains quite some information which can be verified (and some is referenced already). Alternatively keep and add a summary in the Local churches article, per POV fork There is also the point that this article contains quite some edit history since April 2004, which should not be deleted. Of course, the content should be cleaned up thoroughly regarding NPOV and sourcing, but that's IMO no reason for deletion.

WHY IS THIS PAGE NOT DELETED YET? Why is a page in such dispute allowed to exist. The idea of linking an offensive page with opinions masquerading as facts ... this list of controversial opinions (unproven, unsubstantiated, not referenced, and not verifiable), it would seem that some have a sheer glee in paralysis through analysis, they want this debate to drag on as long as they can hang their dirty laundry out each day to dry! Well I for one think integrity is not up for debate and think that this so-called debate is a strategy to let cheap shots masquerade as fact. It seems this page violates the basic tenant of posting in wikopedia, in that most of the controversy are opinions and not verifiable or certainly not unobjective view point. (RS)

I think that the controversy article is worth keeping as a subset of the main article, the Lord's Recovery, as there is information included in it that is not found in the main article. It might get pretty cumbersome to try to integrate it into the main article so keeping it separate is useful. However, there may be a few places where a NPOV approach is needed to clean it up, although I thought most sections did aim for a NPOV. (colinlavergne)

For my two cents, please note that the Local_Church article has had a long history of being blanked, vandalized, and contested in attempts to - in the words of sysop DJ Clayworth - canonize the movement. The forked article, Local Church controversy, was originally created by ongoing efforts to present the article on the Local_Church in the most positive possible light while only grudgingly admitting that concerns existed by people outside the movement - the same sorts of concerns that have arisen with articles on Scientology or the Jehovah's Witnesses for instance.

Personally, I feel that this fork was created under false pretenses and against the spirit of Wikipedia, and didn't want to put too much effort into editing a page that I had hoped would simply be deleted. If this article is to be deleted, I wouldn't mind taking the effort to clean up the mess in the controversy article so that it can be folded into another article that meets the standards desired by the Wikipedia community.

I propose that the existing article be significantly revised and folded back into the article on the Local_Church as a section of the article. I also propose that this discussion be posted in the Talk:Local_Church article, with a notice that this section was intentionally folded back into the original article and should remain there rather than being forked again into a new article. TheLocalChurch 21:26, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

As asked by Pjakobi, here some critical sources on the local church which I consider as reliable (though, of course, not neutral) - not complete, I'm in vacation away from my library. --Irmgard 22:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Johannes Aagaard, Neil Duddy and The Peculiar Teachings of The Local Church Aagaard is Professor for NRMs in Aarhus.
 * Local Church Fights for Evangelical ID Card Not neutral, but tells clearly who says what
 * ApologeticsIndex: The Local Church While Hein sure is not neutral, he presents lots of sources, usually on both sides.
 * Bautz on Watchman Nee German, neutral, reliable


 * merge Let us try it. I know that articles dealing with cults and controversial sects and new religious movements are problematic on Wikipedia, because they tend to degenerate into ugly and unencyclopedic battles between well-informed critics (mainly former members) and well-informed adherents, see e.g. Prem Rawat and Sathya Sai Baba. I do not know what to do about it. (I am myself an active critic in these two articles.) Andries 23:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.