[WikiEN-l] A course in walled gardens?

Fri Jun 30 13:53:27 UTC 2006

On 6/30/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I've been looking round the articles relating to [[A Course In
> Miracles]] (ACIM).  One article details a court case pertaining to
> authorship, under the rather bizarre premise that since authorship was
> claimed to be Jesus, "channeled" through Helen Schucman, copyright did
> not apply. I've asked for some citations from sources outside the ACIM
> movement for this and other articles in this collection, and received
> this reply:
>
>  "But it is quite a challenge to find comments from people outside of
> the ACIM "world" when most outside of that insular world have never
>   even heard of ACIM. Most non-ACIM students couldn't be concerned
>   with whether Jesus is the literal or symbolic source, because most
>   non-ACIM students think the whole thing looks insane, cultish,
>   weird, etc."
>
> Now to my mind if there are no sources outside the movement we ought
> to be very wary about covering the subject at all.  This same editor
> added a section to [[forgiveness]] detailing ACIM's view of the
> concept which was larger than the section devoted to Bhuddism and
> about the same size as the one for Islam.  My view is that unless we
> have some reputable secondary sources external to the movement to draw
> on, we should not include it there at all (else we'll have to have a
> paragraph for Methylated Wesletarians and Jagism).
>
> Back to the article on the court case: I'd say it's a footnote to the
> book unless it's been covered extensively in the mainstream media,
> discussed in the Harvard Law Review as a ground-breaking case, cited
> as precedent in other cases or whatever.  The only cited source we
> have in that section is from the Foundation for A Course In Miracles,
> which was one of the parties to the dispute.  I am minded to merge.
>
> I don't want to let my natural scepticism run away with me here, how
> do others view this kind of apparent walled garden?

Quick request for clarification: Are you looking for any articles
relating to ACIM or articles specifically relating to the court case?
Or both?  Thanks. --LV