Talk:World Mission Society Church of God

Troubling Topic, few independent reputable sources

This is a troubling topic, given that it appears to be a widespread religious organization (claiming over a million and a half "registered" members, and with web pages claiming locations all over the world -- particularly in Southeast Asia -- and throughout the U.S.), yet there is hardly any information about it online, from independent sources of any substance or repute.

Sadly, the most substantial source seems to be People Magazine and a few small-town / small-city newspapers, along with the student newspapers from a few colleges and unviersities. I found only one single academic treatise (apparently from a conservative Protestant theologian) that mentioned it.

Attempts to find information about it from the normal non-profit evaluation resources, such as charity and institution reviewers Better Business Bureau/Give.org, Guidestar and Charity Navigator have nothing on it -- at least one of them suggesting their inquiries were not responded to by the church.

These information gaps clearly suggest a secretive cult, or one that is simply lying about how large its membership actually is. I urge fellow Wikipedia editors to make an effort to find information from reputable major media and academic sources on this topic, and include it here.

~ Penlite (talk) 10:36, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

@Penlite: Thanks for your work on this article. There is a substantial amount of sources about the church in Korean. Sam Sailor 10:25, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

As wikipedia is primarily in English, links such as "真理研究小冊子 1" (in Korean). www.ncpcog.co.kr. Retrieved 2020-03-19." should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiitupandown (talk • contribs) 01:23, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

A bit late but this is false. Wikipedia accepts sources in any language. The automatic citation tool (or \{\{cite-web}} template) has a "translated title" field that lets you put in a translation, though. Mrfoogles (talk) 01:50, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Topic of Church in the first line.

In response to the first topic regarding it being referred to as a "Church." It absolutely fulfills the qualifications of being a church and is registered as such both in the U.S. and internationally. Just because it doesn't fit your idea of a church doesn't mean it's not. Realistically, a "Church" that keeps pagan teachings including Christmas, Easter, Sunday worship, and the image of the cross, is not a church but a temple of pagan gods, specifically the sun god. Yet they are still registered as "Churches." Please do research to confirm that all these teachings originated paganism and are still pagan, not Christian, because this is a well known fact acknowledge by both pagans and Christians - even the Christians that keep these teachings. Also note that in the time of Jesus, there was no such Church that kept these pagan teachings - they were adapted much later, and early Christians would've never acknowledge a group of people keeping pagan teachings as a Christian "Church." So for many other pages on "Churches," perhaps you should edit them as "religious movements" or as "pagan temples" because they definitely don't match the Bible's description of "Church" past that they acknowledge Jesus as Christ.

It is clearly explained from the beginning of the article that the Church believes in Second Coming Christ Ahnsahnghong and God the Mother in the flesh. It's not a secret. It's also explained that the same teachings the Early Church kept - Passover, Sabbath, the feasts of the new covenant, which are found in the Bible - are celebrated in this Church, because they believe in and follow the teachings of Jesus. These too are from the Bible, and not far fetched from a church at all. The Bible definitely testifies that Christ would have to come with a new name again, and there had to be a time of fulfillment. Of course it is your liberty to believe or not, but it doesn't mean it's not true or not a Church. The belief is based on the Bible. Christmas, Sunday, Easter, and the cross are practices that do not come from the Bible, yet people still call these organizations "Churches." Like everything, the majority usually prevails, even if it isn't factual. Please respect the fact that the organization is a Church, and a really spectacular one that is helping many people and making millions of people around the world very happy. All edits should be in good faith, not with malicious intent and negativity, deeming it a "cult" based on your own opinion. At the time when Jesus came in the flesh for the first time, they also called it a "cult" because it didn't fit the majority's standards and because they believed in a Jewish man who was a carpenter, taught people to eat his flesh and blood, and who hung around prostitutes and tax collectors, as God in the flesh (Acts 24:5). Now the "Jesus cult" has become the biggest religion in the world with over 2.2 billion followers.

There are many religions out there that I personally don't follow or agree with, or that I believe are dangerous or strange and I don't understand how people follow what they believe. But I keep that to myself, respect people who follow it, and don't spend time hunting up their wikipedia pages to see how I can try to turn people away from their religion or to make it look bad just because I don't agree with it. We live in a country where religious freedom is the first amendment in the constitution. People should be free to choose their religion based on the church, the Bible, and their beliefs, not based on wikipedia pages. To each his own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.99.206.157 (talk) 21:48, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I recently edited this back to saying New religious movement due to that being a much more descriptive label. I noticed that this person had edited it so that it would not say that term specifically, but this conflicts with the citation provided on that sentence, which regards the organization as a cult. Certainly many sources seem to regard this organization as a cult, but I do not find it appropriate to change the text of the article so that it does not match with the cited source. The organization is matter-of-factly a product of the 20th century, which qualifies it as a new religious movement. This label, while also used to describe cults, simply indicates that it is new and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious stances. Certainly, Joo-Cheol employs many views that are heterodoxical, such as nontrinitarianism, notions of humans existing as fallen angels that are reminiscent of Mormon cosmology, and verbatim mentions of a seventh-day sabbath and an already-transpired advent of Christ, clearly influenced by his time with the Seventh-day Adventist denomination in South Korea. These and more are examples or variants of well-known heresies and heterodoxies, which inherently makes the beliefs incompatible with the more dominant religious traditions in Christianity, such as most forms of Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy; thereby placing this religious movement necessarily on the periphery of the broader religious culture. I hope this helps to clarify why including more descriptive labels helps balance the point of view of the article by adding broader context and incorporating the information from the cited source. Penitence (talk) 04:43, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Sources and Good Intentions

@Penlite: With your statements, it is hard to believe that you are making edits in good faith and in efforts to help the project. Have you done any research through small-town and larger newspapers and news sources on all of the positive and good deeds done by the charge? Why are you persistent in finding only controversial evidence when there are hundreds and hundreds of articles about so many good deeds that members are doing while volunteering their time and helping other people on a grand scale, internationally? Why don't you look up those articles and list them on this page as much as you are spending time looking up controversial topics? The fact that you consider People magazine as a credible source already says a lot. The journalist's article in People magazine was based off of an ex-member's opinion yet was referenced as if it were credible and factual information. There was also a personal connection to encourage that article to be written by that former member and much ill-intent and drama behind it. Can you really conclude that is a reliable source and professional, fair journalism? Writing about one sour person's account?

References

Article as means of spreading propaganda, the need for Korean sources, and potentially requesting edit protection

I've noticed large swathes of this article cite the topic organization's main website, various media outlet sites that they own, newspapers that have published articles submitted to them directly from the church, or other means of directly or indirectly relying on the organization to accurately and neutrally portray itself. Obviously, much of this is the result of unregistered accounts and throwaways belonging to members of the cult, but there is so little scholarly or published works about the cult available in English that it is difficult to tell whether a newspaper has printed skewed (usually positively) representations of the cult in earnest or if they have gotten it from copying some source which traces back to the cult itself. The cult's website and any media it has directly influenced is not fit for this article for any purpose other than to outline how the cult views themselves. While this is of course necessary to include, I don't feel like there is enough reliable English material due to the cult's contamination of the pool of online articles through various means or lack of interest in the topic from reputable sources. What I mean is that there is a lot of sources that regard the cult excessively positively or excessively negatively, and the only large pool of resources that have extensive investigations and secondary and tertiary sources are almost entirely in Korean. I'm not personally familiar with the process for requesting an expert in a field to help with a topic, but I feel like this article treads into the territory of serving as a platform for the cult's propaganda in the first half of the article. As for evidence of the extent to which the cult has polluted the resource pool in English when trying to find relevant information about them, two of the newspaper sources on the first line that I could not outright prove were influenced are extremely similar to the cult's own news story about the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service, and seem to heavily copy a third party newspaper that seemingly unknowingly published the cult's article on their website. The initial claim in the article was that several churches won the award, which was mentioned in the article I removed, but this is impossible as most of them were in the United States and therefore not eligible for the award, as well as outright not being listed on the official government list of recipients publicly available online at the source I added. There is a tendency to weave in partial truths into many of the favorable/positive sources as is fairly common for cults, but almost all but the last two sections feature media that has in some way or another incorporated the cult's own publications about itself into them, which has influenced the POV of the article heavily. I will come back to the article later if I have the energy to sort through this junk and add things like common Christian orthodoxies and the ways the cults beliefs as listed on their site match up or differ from commonly held protestant beliefs because that's something I know a bit about, but in looking through all of their sites and affiliate/puppet organizations it feels like the article may scarcely be worth it. This is partially due to the heavy edit warring, vandalism, intentionally factually inaccurate sources and other shenanigans with the article. For example, at some point, I don't even know when, someone went and added this article to a list of vital articles. Obviously it will be dropped from that as the philosophy and religion subsection is filled out, but I feel like the extent to which this article is being messed with is perhaps not clear even from its borderline propaganda POV. I don't know how to do it, but I feel like the article should be at least semi-protected for 6 months due to the unregistered vandalism and misinformation. I would probably further subject edits to pending approval since the edits from cult members seem to come in waves and they've been very active since the start of this year. It's a bit draining for me to try to keep up with trying to set straight some of the damage done when checking that claims from an anti-cult researcher about the cult having large sums of dubiously sourced income has some verifiable basis. I watched through the whole 2017 UN CERF video to verify that Kim Joo-cheol was not a speaker at the high-pledge conference, despite actually being listed there on the UN CERF's list of donors with a large private donation. Maybe I'll come back and add stuff about that later, but it just feels so pointless while the article is constantly being vandalized and distorted by the cult members. Penitence (talk) 05:29, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

I deleted a lot of the self-sourced content on doctrines, so some of that should be better now. Mrfoogles (talk) 03:36, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

a troubled article

This continues to be a troubled article with edit warring over content.

The dispute appears to have its roots in a split in a previous church (see Ahn Sahng-hong for details), with two factions claiming to be a continuation of the original church. Therefore the dispute over who is the founder, and when they were formed.

A solution is unlikely without a reliable, authoritative, third party source. Too much here is unsourced, or sourced to the church itself. Or in Korean, so difficult to evaluate. So it may be best to reflect the disputed nature of the claims, rather than listing them as fact. --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 16:48, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

You only found out now. I am major editor in chinese wikipedia about the church and it has been labeled conflict of interest.--S59112024 (talk) 17:52, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Nothing

content://com.android.chrome.FileProvider/images/screenshot/1654592085627-898986249.jpg 120.89.104.37 (talk) 09:00, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Korean Language Sources

There are many sources that are currently are cited in Korean. The validity of these sources are difficult to confirm and therefore should be either translated or removed. Wikiitupandown (talk) 20:52, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

This is not how Wikipedia's policies on foreign-language sources works. There's a field in the auto-citation generator, "translated-title" or something similar, that lets you enter a translated title (even if you did use Google Translate). Apparently a lot of the sources that talk about the subject at all are in Korean. You just have to use an online translator. Mrfoogles (talk) 01:59, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Opinion

This article seems to deviate slightly from the WP:RNPOV policy. Currently, this article is primarily written from the perspective of established religious groups that evaluate this religion critically, which may introduce bias. In contrast, there is a lack of encyclopedic information about the religion, such as its origins, beliefs, and current status. This kind of article could potentially turn Wikipedia into a tool for religious discrimination, aimed at undermining the beliefs of minority religions. I believe that just as Wikipedia articles should not be used for promotional purposes, they should also refrain from promoting negative perceptions. I would like to suggest writing this article more encyclopedic. Spfvera (talk) 07:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm guessing this is about the word 'cult' in the lead. WP:NPOV stems from reliable sources first, and editors second. Since multiple reliable sources mention this, intentionally downplaying that by removing it from the lead would make the article less neutral, not more.

Additionally, Massimo Introvigne is not a reliable source for various reasons (not least his own use of sock puppets to spam Wikipedia in the past). If you know of specific sources, please propose them. Grayfell (talk) 06:51, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I apologize for misunderstanding your intent. I thought the issue was merely about changing the sources. I certainly agree that various Christian organizations refer to this group as a cult. However, I believe you are well aware of the issues inherent in the term 'cult.' Generally, 'cult' lacks a clear definition and is often used as a pejorative term based on subjective judgment. Although there have been many debates on how to define orthodoxy and cults, there is still no clear definition. So, recently, religious scholars tend to use the neutral term 'new religious movement' instead of 'cult.' Since the lead already mentions 'new religious movement,' which is a neutral term, I moved that content to the Criticism section. However, I do not want to insist on my opinion and argue about it. I would like to hear the opinions of other editors as well. Spfvera (talk) 08:45, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

The term cult, in the way many people change things on this page to, is almost always a used as a pejorative . Calling someone or something a cult or cult-like, has a very negative connotation and public image associated with it. As any religious group can be called a cult, it is best to use a neutral term to describe a group or person that is different than what some may consider the norm. A neutral point of view is often best when giving information. Lordkhain (talk) 02:05, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia attempts to summarizes reliable sources from a neutral point of view. This does NOT mean that Wikipedia needs to avoid unflattering language, because that would not be neutral, it would be partial. The article is not saying that this organizations is a cult in Wikipedia's voice, it is summarizing that other organizations (not just Christian organizations) have described it as a cult. This is information that a disinterested reader looking for a summary of this as a topic would reasonably expect to find in a neutral Wikipedia article. To downplay this would be a form of public relations, which is explicitly not what Wikipedia is for. Grayfell (talk) 06:26, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Major rewrite

I'm adding this section to note a concerning major rewrite by @Spfvera and @Newjptp that seems very pro-WMSCOG. Every source that criticizes the church has what it states described as "claims", and a number of sections have been entirely rewritten to minimize content that reflects negatively on the church. The fact that it is widely described as a cult was also removed from the lead by an anonymous IP editor, which was likely unrelated (I added it back). I also made the choice to move the 1988 doomsday prophecy back into the History section: it was changed to present it as a claim needing to be attributed to the heresy researchers stating it, giving them essentially equal weight as to the church itself. I think this is false balance: I don't know of any particular reason they would make that up, or that the church should be treated as reliable as them on this fact.

The evangelism section (I edited it somewhat to compensate for this) presented statements that they were not performing human trafficking to essentially attempt to refute and counterpoint other concerns about aggressive evangelism, which have been minimized in the article. Another section I added on aggressive evangelism has been entirely removed (although I may have accidentally cited the wrong source). Courts stating that they could not evaluate legally whether the group was a cult was also positioned as a counterpoint to the group's description as a cult in that part of the controversies section as well. In addition, the stained glass windows section has been entirely rewritten, replacing statements by a reputable news organization that they (at least at the time) replaced all stained-glass windows in their churches with apparently the fact that the church says that it does not.

All content involving criticism of the church in any way was moved into the Controversy section, which I have undone because Wikipedia articles are supposed to represent a fair balance between criticism and support with an eye to the facts: as described in above Wikipedia articles are allowed to reflect negatively on subjects sometimes. Tagging this article as having POV concerns. Mrfoogles (talk) 18:44, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree that Wikipedia articles are supposed to represent a fair balance between criticism and support, focusing on the facts. However, it seems that recent edits to this article prioritize critical perspectives by removing some reliable, fact-based positive information while emphasizing negative aspects.

For example, some universities have banned the church's evangelism on campus, but some university police have stated that there is nothing wrong with it. However, information reporting no issues has been removed, leaving only mentions of the bans. According to the New Zealand police website, the police stated that there has been no investigation into the church or the Elohim Academy concerning a report by ''Craccum''. Yet, this information was deleted, stating it as "original research." Meanwhile, a new paragraph was added that reiterated content from the ''Craccum'' article, even though it was already present in the controversies section. Moreover, information regarding two former members from South Korea suing the church for fraud was redundantly added to the 1988 section, despite already being mentioned in the controversy section.

Articles are allowed to reflect negatively on subjects sometimes; however, this does not mean that only negative content should be included. Spfvera (talk) 08:09, 23 September 2024 (UTC)