The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Universalism on Wikipedia

For better or worse, I’m finding a lot people (including myself) are finding out about Universalism be reading about it on Wikipedia. I realise that most people have many things vying for their time, but given the large audience and perceived authority (not necessarily well placed) of Wikipedia, may I humbly suggest, that we read/edit the material there for accuracy?

I’ve now “fixed” those two at least :sunglasses:

Cool! :smiley: Thanks for stepping up there Alex!

(I don’t have a clue how to edit a wikipedia page… but I notice that some of the language is still past tense. It held the Christian belief in trinitarianism, etc.)

For those who are interested, here’s the link:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitarian_Universalism

The article definitely needs a lot of editing–the whole “Universalism” topic is bit of a mess, and it would be good to get it more polished and organized. I like the idea of working on it, but I’m pretty busy right now, so I don’t know if/when I’ll actually have time to figure out how Wikipedia works.

Sonia

I was updating it for several years and stopped in 2009. I was tired of non-Christian Universalists deleting articles and introducing their ‘understanding’ of universalism from as being deceived unbelievers. Unfortunately, people look at wiki for their answers…so there really needs to be some responsible editing.

Thank you Craig for putting the time and effort into that, probably without any thanks. Sorry to hear that you’re discouraged by non-Christian Univeralists (both in regards to this and in your other recent posts) :frowning: I hope that the “Evangelical” nature of the predominate (I assume) Universalism on this forum can be of some encouragement to you.

Some of the changes I made have already been reverted. I’m new to Wikipedia, is it just a “back & forth” process or do I need to convince an “owner” in the page’s “Discussion” section??

Robin and Tom are also hopefully going to attempt to improve the Wikipedia articles when they have some time.

Not at all, you need to revert them back to your changes. There are some dedicated ANTI-UNIVERSALIST people purposely controlling Wikipedia’s articles on Universalism, introducing ‘Positions Against’ and adding such words as, “so-called” or “former” or “Heresy” etc or, “They claim”. etc.

I wrote the majority of the original articles on Wikipedia, only to see everything get twisted.

Interesting … I hope there’s some way of protesting that.
Sonia

I’m still getting the hang of Wikipedia but I’ve updated (so long as no one changes it after me!):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Universalism

I only added “revealed[42] as Robin Parry in 2009” to:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitarian_Universalism

And I created my first page (still a work in progress!):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Parry :mrgreen:

I came across you’re comments Craig, thanks again, especially now I’ve experience how much work it takes just to create a short article!

I hope you and Craig will be able to keep up the Wiki paging together, Alex, now that you’re on board!

Just remember to be as fair about the presentation as possible. It’s a publicly modded page, and allowing criticisms will help it be more reasonably balanced.

Besides, you can always respond to new criticisms posted on the pages. :smiley:

(Note: one thing I would suggest changing on the Trin-Un page, is the remark about ultra-universalists–those who reject all notions of post-mortem punishment, or who reject at least anything beyond the brief ‘punishment’ that might be said to attend an initial post-mortem transformation–being a very small minority. I don’t know what the relative percentage actually is, but they don’t seem to be a very small minority. They might even be a majority sometimes!)

I’ll try to be fair and I don’t mind criticisms, so long as they’re vaguely fair & logical :slight_smile:

Robin is reviewing the all 3 pages and has already added some information to the article on himself. However, someone has decided that the page might not meet notability guidelines (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability)! Please help me out with this as I don’t want the page deleted before I’ve even finished writing it :unamused:

There is lots of issues that need fixing but your note, Jason, is noted.

No worries on that Erin, Interesting how those who believe in Eternal Torment can be considered a notable concerning Unviersalism.

Well fixed what I could.

Thanks Craig :slight_smile:

…And there comes the ANTI-UNIVERSALISTS! LOL. It doesn’t take long for them to notice on their Wiki Watchlists, that StudentoftheWord has come back to clean up the articles to remove adversarial unsupported statements against Universalism.

I too am confused, like the others, why it’s named “Trinitarian Universalism.” I think one of the suggestions might be good, that it be renamed “Universalism (trinitarian)” since the concept doesn’t go under the former title. I also noticed, Student of the Word, that you said there’s a difference between “Christian Universalism” and “Universal Reconciliation.” Can you expound on that?

Maybe we could just come up with an entry for “Evangelical Universalism.” Now there’s an idea!

To differentiate it from Unitarian Universalism, I guess. However, I agree it might not be the most helpful title, particularly when the “Christian Universalism” says it has 3 “branches”, “Evangelical Universalism”, “Charismatic Universalism” and “Liberal Universalism” i.e. no mention of “Trinitarian Universalism” (although it’s mentioned elsewhere on the page)

Please correct me if I’m wrong but I think “Christian Universalism” contains “Universal Reconciliation” as a core belief, amongst other Christian believes. I could also imagine some people believing “Universal Reconciliation” who weren’t Christians e.g. some type of pantheism or pluralism?

I agree and I’ve seen it suggested before, however, the tricky thing is showing that it’s notable and different from the other types of Universalisms, through the use of external references. For example, I’ve had trouble even show Robin Parry was “notable”, even tho he has been involved with 9 books, is mentioned on several wikipages, has been interviewed, has two blogs and has inspired this forum! There might also be a potential “backlash” from Calvinist Evangelicals who often don’t recognise us as “Evangelicals”…

If we can gather external references here, then we could give it a go?

Make the article. It won’t be deleted, just make sure it is a original research article and very much referenced.

Universal Reconciliation is not the denomination of Christian Universalism. Universal Reconciliation is based on the doctrine of salvation and the problem of Hell; where as Christian Universalism is based on the Christian denomination and it’s history. or at least in it’s infancy. It may have changed as the Wiki is always changing.