Talk:Grace Communion International

Update Beliefs and practices

As the beliefs of the church has changed alot, I don't think it is good to have outdated beliefs in place of the church's current beliefs. Armstrong's teachings can be found at Armstrongism so a large section in this article is not needed. I'd be fine with a small section on the most important beliefs no longer practiced, but leave the rest to what they teach and practice now. Ltwin (talk) 03:14, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Much of this article is currently a history of Herbert Armstrong, the person, and not the denomination. The two are of course intertwined, but it seems unnecessary to have such a wholesale duplication of content. Why not just have a link to refer people to Herbert Armstrong?64.208.29.126 (talk) 21:23, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Grace Communion International and Worldwide Church of God should be different pages. GCI under Tkach and WCG under Armstrong are like two different churches. The teachings of WCG under Armstrong are of historic importance. WCG teachings still continues today as United Church of God, Living Church of God, and other groups. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mewilson777 (talk • contribs) 03:39, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. While there have been alot of changes, it is still the same organization. Ltwin (talk) 03:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I disagree that the history of Mr. Armstrong should be removed from here. This organization embodies what he taught and who he was so let it be.

GCI by its own admonition has no relation to WCG or Radio Church of God. The majority of GCI page is about WCG's almost century long history and sadly lacks its own profile. When HWA died, the new leadership of WCG, soon openly professed protestant evangelicalism and moved to eviscerate the purpose and history of WCG from the 501c3, eventually even changing the name of the organization from Worldwide Church of God to Grace Communioin Intl. The conservative Seventh Day Messianic WCG, as a main function, funded the free destribution of Bible based literature..they had a lot of it. The new administration initially edited and then shut down publication and moved the wearhouses of literature into dumpsters. They shut down the very famous preforming arts concert series held at Armstrong Auditorium and all humanitarian,international/domestic function of the AICF, citing financial requirement or claiming [ACIF] had no relation to the purpose of the church. The administration ballooned the number of students admited to the colleges and eventually closed them, and sold the church's properties. They moved the sabbath services to Sunday from Saturday, ceased observing Biblical holydays that WCG was known for, took up Evangelical holidays, ordained female ministers. They went to court and spent millions of dollars to stop another group from handing out free copies of one of Armstrong's books and ended up handing over most of the rest of the books to that group when said suit was taken to the Supreme Court; CGI intended to block the history of WCG. Most of the original membership left during all this, some went off into groups; it reasonably shouldn't matter to CGI what those groups are doing or how closely they kept to traditional WCG doctrine but the CGI page mentioned it in their first paragraph and through out the CGI page. The GCI sells a magazine, changed their name and are certified Evangelical. They took the money and ran, eviscerating and openly consuming the organization they took over. There is all this writing about the inner workings of WCG - which is largely slanderous and often related to nothing substantial; vacant and gossipy, not referencing actual WCG material (very rare), but their own material or that of others who disagreed with WCG. What is all this dog and pony show WCGArmstrong stuff? Why are wikis redirected to an evangelical group when they look up a historical WCG, RCG or to [WCGArmstrong] when they look up CGI and their programs. CGI needs to have its own profile, they were registered officially in 2009. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cpriceecirpc (talk • contribs) 13:51, 21 March 2015 (UTC) all this about vandalization, but these ridiculous, poorly done, squawking pages often, copy/pasted plagiarisms from other websites or materials written with intent to slander, without noticeable right purpose; are vandalization of wiki. They look often like some very young person randomly flipped through anti-ArmstrongWCG material and threw whatever up on to a page in horse-loads in order to have molested the subject them self. I don't normally see that on other wiki pages.20:23, 21 March 2015 (UTC)Cpriceecirpc (talk)

No mention of Bobby Fischer?

The church played a key role in Bobby Fischer’s descent from champion to mental illness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fielding99 (talk • contribs) 06:56, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Not a Sabbatarian church

Links at the bottom of the article refer to "Sabbath-keeping churches." This seems inappropriate since GCI is not a Sabbath-keeping church. (evidence can be seen at www.wcg.org/lit/law/sabbath/) Further, it seems misleading to include Worldwide Church of God among the list of Sabbath-keeping churches (non-Adventist) because the WCG rejected Sabbatarianism in 1995. If the link has to stay, it ought to say "Worldwide Church of God (before 1995)."64.208.29.126 (talk) 21:20, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Article May have been Vandalized

Check the most recent changes. I am not familiar enough with the subject to determine for myself. Zell Faze (talk) 23:05, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

It was vandalism and it's been reverted now. Ltwin (talk) 00:06, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Two questions

Re: “...the WCG under Armstrong had a significant, and often controversial, influence on 20th century religious broadcasting and publishing in the United States and Europe...”

1. If this statement is true, should the article be rated higher than Mid-importance on the project’s importance scale?

2. Does this statement need a reference?

Tithe of the second tithe (talk) 20:24, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it needs a reference. This whole article is in fact very light on references... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.9.1.157 (talk) 03:42, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Related denominations?

the section RELATED DENOMINATIONS should have a different name since United Church of God, Global, Philadelphia Church of God, etc., have nothing to do with Grace Communion. While all of them have the same founder, GCI rejected and mocked Mr. Armstrong. Currently, I dont believe we are related to Grace Communion. Just a thought... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dowabura (talk • contribs) 17:54, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Too bad if you're embarrassed by GCI. The fact is, you (whoever you are, if your a member of one of these bodies) are historically related. Ltwin (talk) 18:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Editing error?

The first sentence of the fifth paragraph under "History" (i.e., "1956, Armstrong met Stanley Rader at Ambassador college.") appears to suffer from an editing error. Always buy quality! (talk) 09:46, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Bias pervades article

I've tried to correct a few subtle biases in the article but even the selection of content seems to have alterior motives like defending or attacking certain doctrines or people. Real citations would likely help.

I think this defensive tone of writing has also lead to an inconsistancy. Did Armstrong put dates on prophecies or not? The article seems to suggest one answer then another.Ballaurena81 (talk) 06:20, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The bias is more than subtle, it is, as the title of this category says, pervasive. There also are numerous grammatical errors which undermine the authority of the article. This article should be flagged. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gbarrett50468 (talk • contribs)

Dear Gbarrett50468: You probably need to be specific. When you say "bias," I assume you are talking about lack of neutral point of view. If so, your feeling that the article should be "flagged" for lack of neutral point of view might be premature. Generally, the rule is that we don't flag articles because an editor feels the article does not represent a neutral point of view. We flag the article when there is a dispute in the talk page about whether the article has a neutral point of view. So, you need to have at least two people disagreeing in the talk page first. Since you just posted your comment, there cannot possibly be a dispute yet.

I will take a look at the article right now. Famspear (talk) 16:19, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

OK, the section on scandal is wildly non-neutral, with sourcing almost non-existent. I agree with user Gbarrett50468 that this article has serious problems. I've started to make some changes. Famspear (talk) 16:35, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Whew! What a mess! Some of the soapboxing had been added by an anonymous user at IP 62.102.211.110 on February 10, 2013. I've tried to preserve as much of this mess as I can. Someone even had repeated references to one of the characters as having survived a "fatal" heart attack. Famspear (talk) 17:24, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

The deleted material included this hilarity:

This is the reason that when you sign onto 501c3 tax exemption, you must sign over your constitutional rights to be exempt under the U.S. Constitution and you sign an agreement to "Voluntarily" bring yourself, (and your congregation) under the Government Rule under 501c3 tax status).

When old folks complain that there is something desperately wrong with our educational system, it is blather like this that tends to make one conclude that the old geezers are right.

Earth calling, kids! There is no "constitutional right" of a church to be exempt from taxation in the United States. Were we asleep during that ninth grade civics class? When you "sign onto" a 501(c)(3) tax exemption, you are not "signing over" a supposed "constitutional right" to be exempt from taxation. Churches are exempt from U.S. federal income taxation because Congress has enacted a statute making them exempt from that particular kind of tax. Famspear (talk) 17:37, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I am astounded that this article is still up given its multiple violations of Wikipedia guidelines. Much of it is written in dramatic, sensationalist prose in the style of an expose. There are several cases where the motives and thoughts of characters in the story are implied, and the article often goes beyond reporting facts to making moral judgments. None of this is normally considered acceptable in a reference work. And there is no documentation for many of the details reported. I don't have independent knowledge to contradict the claims made in the article. But I find it jarring to come to an article expecting an objective and well-documented presentation and finding instead a judgmental and often undocumented expose, giving me at times "insights" into the thoughts and motives of the players.Nairdainreverse (talk) 15:41, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

This article needs to be renamed and split up.

The article's main title is GCI, but most of it is about WCG. There is in fact almost nothing about the GCI itself in it. One organization may be legally a continuation of the other, but in reality the GCI is simply one of many descendants of the WCG; it shouldn't be treated any differently.

Yes, as an outsider (that is, as a typical Wikipedia reader), it seems obvious to me that there should be separate articles for the church led by Herbert W. Armstrong and the church led by Joseph Tkach. To me and probably most people, what you are doing here is like redirecting "Swedish Catholicism" to "Swedish Protestantism" on the theory that the Church of Sweden used to be Catholic but now it's Protestant. There may an organizational, historical connection, but it's not the same church. Redirecting Worldwide Church of God to Grace Communion International clearly tells the average reader that they still believe the same thing, which isn't true. Mdmcginn (talk) 02:11, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I would suggest that this article be renamed to WCG, and that a separate article be written for the current GCI, and that it contain simply a reference to the WCG article for any historical background rather than duplicating the same information. That is what other similar pages do (e.g. "United Church of God"), and they already appropriately link to "WCG", not to the misnamed "GCI". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.255.62.18 (talk) 14:09, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I'll second this request. The title of this article should be "Worldwide Church of God". That the legal title to the organization was taken over, the doctrines and name of the organization were changed could be mentioned in one minor section with links to a page specifically about the current GCI. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FEA8:1CA0:40:9D19:2B10:34F3:77C4 (talk) 22:00, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

"other churches that conformed to many, but not all, of Armstrong's teachings"

This claim is not referenced. Are there no successor-churches that claim to have "conformed" to all of HWA's teachings? --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 21:44, 11 February 2016 (UTC)--Richardson mcphillips (talk) 21:44, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Sourcing

Most of this is sourced the GCI itself, so really, we need to either strip the page of most of the material and replace it with third-party supported content, or find out of there actually are any outside sources that say any of this. There is also a lot of coverage out there on the controversies of this organization's past that have conveniently been left out, especially considering the level of unsourced content added... Isingness (talk) 17:48, 19 March 2017 (UTC)