These are some reflections on different aspects of Seventh-day Adventism, the denomination in which I was raised, and in which I spent sixteen years in ministry, nine of which were at the church’s North American Headquarters. I spell out the issues that caused me to leave as a college student, and those that prompted me to return after years in ministry … but the journey was not over. I am not going to tell the whole story of my personal pilgrimage here, you can read that elsewhere (There is some overlap, however; and I am not writing as a scholar, but from my personal perspective, so check out both and some of the links to get the full story!).
Seventh-day Adventist was founded in the 19th-century as an apocalyptic reform movement, preaching the soon return of Jesus but working for social transformation through abolitionism, non-resistance, and health reform. The early 20th century brought changes, as leaders chased after fundamentalism, nationalism, and evangelicalism, all to be recognized as an institutionalized mainstream denomination.
I have to wonder, what would Adventism look like today if it had retained that youthful passion for reform? What if it had remained a creative movement, open to the Spirit (and willing to admit error) instead of an authoritarian institution demanding compliance?
I have to start with the Adventism I first knew. The church of my youth (1960s and 70s) was legalistic. Pastors emphasized rules of correct fundamentalist behavior–the usual sort of thing: no movies, no cards, no dancing, no smoking, no drinking, no work or fun on the Sabbath. My mom was Adventist, my dad wasn’t. But my mom didn’t strictly impose the rules upon us; in fact, she was disfellowshipped for breaking a couple of those taboos when I was in high school. The pastor had no concern for her as a person–he didn’t bother to tell her it was going to happen, or even that it had happened.
All pastors weren’t like that, but so many embodied that spirit. They were chosen for having a certain set of skills. Adventist ministry was the denomination’s sales department, concerned more about numerical growth rather than pastoral care. Pastors in those days were over-worked, spending long hours doing individual Bible studies, teaching smoking cessation classes, conducting “Ingathering” campaigns (door-to-door solicitation for mission funds) or preaching prophecy seminars (giving precise answers to the mystic symbols in Daniel and Revelation), all to add to their baptismal headcount, tithe increases, and meeting the Ingathering goal, the measures by which they were judged by conference administrators. If found worthy, they would be ordained after several years of “labor in the field.”
During my junior year of high school I attended Broadview Academy, an Adventist boarding school in Illinois. That year I found a magazine in the academy library called “The Layworker,” published by George H. Rue, who still held on to the early teachings of Australian lay theologian Robert Brinsmead that he had championed a decade earlier. I saw an ad for free tapes by Robert Wieland on “The 1888 Message,” and I got them. I started reading century Adventist authors A.T. Jones and E. J. Waggoner, then Brinsmead’s Present Truth and Verdict magazines, Geoffrey Paxton’s book, The Shaking of Adventism, and the writings and tapes of Australian New Testament professor, Desmond Ford. This occupied the year I was out of school between high school and college, working various jobs and babysitting my little brothers (which gave me the money to buy lots of books).
In the summer of 1980, I went to Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster, MA, to begin preparation for ministry. I arrived to work for the summer just as things were being prepared for church administrators and theologians to discuss Desmond Ford’s teachings on “the sanctuary” at Glacier View Ranch in Colorado. It was a kangaroo court with rejection of his views inevitable, and Ford was subsequently stripped of his ministerial credentials and his ordination “annulled” (something that puzzled him, because the word suggests it was never valid). (For more on this chapter of Adventist history, you need the seven volume set of documentation published by Gillian Ford).
Having been raised in legalism, I was beginning to hear the good news of the Gospel preached clearly. At that point Ford and Brinsmead were pushing the same major points, derived from the writings of Paul and the major Protestant Reformers of the 16th century. We do not need to fear the judgment, they agreed, Jesus is our substitute and our advocate. We have passed through the judgment, and from death to life, and stand with Jesus in the new life of the Spirit and the freedom of the gospel. The atonement was completed at the cross, and Jesus ascended to be our High Priest and advocate at the Father’s right hand, entering “within the veil” as described by the book of Hebrews.
I heard Ford preach when he came to Lancaster and interviewed him for the school paper. Brinsmead was pushing harder against Adventism, with 1844 Re-Examined, then Sabbatarianism Re-Examined, and Judged by the Gospel. He was reading modern Lutheran theologians like Gerhard Forde, who was questioning the whole law-based system (“nomism”). I was research assistant for the chairman of our history department, Alwyn Fraser (an Aussie), who was teaching the church history survey. He asked me to get more familiar with Brinsmead’s story and transitions and its relationship to Ford. I interviewed some who were involved in the “Awakening.” I wrote to Norman Jarnes, Brinsmead’s editor in Fallbrook, CA, who put me in touch with Jack Zwemer, DDS. I had many long conversations with Jack. I went to California to check out Loma Linda as a place to do graduate study in church history, and Norman invited me down to Fallbrook for a few days, for conversations and to peruse their archives. Around this time Bob did a US tour, and I went out to Cleveland, and in between meetings got to spend a couple hours with Bob, Norman, and Jack in Bob’s hotel room. When Bob decided to walk away from Adventist debates, Norman sent me 30 boxes of Verdict files, books, tapes, etc. Most I ended up donating to the Atlantic Union College library (they should have been transferred to Andrews when AUC closed).
These issues were behind my decision to formally leave the church at the end of my junior year (the story is here). I didn’t want to hang at the edges of Adventism as a critic, however; my view of church and ministry was expanding. I have my Adventist college professors to thank for that. They introduced us to art, music, and ideas. They encouraged me to read more widely in church history and theology beyond Adventist debates. They took us to lectures in the Boston area by people like Francis Schaeffer, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Langdon Gilkey, and Charles Hartshorne. And I developed a desire to get to know other Christians. I remember a key moment: A professor took some classmates and me to a conference sponsored by the Evangelistic Association of New England (which is where we heard Francis Schaeffer). I looked around at the diverse crowd and thought, “Heaven will be like this.” A classmate next to me had a different reaction. He said, “If only these people knew the truth.” I resolved to start visiting other churches the following Sunday. I went to the First United Presbyterian Church in Clinton and found a welcoming community and a friendly pastor. I attended through my senior year and was asked to teach Sunday school for the youth.
I did a year of graduate study at Loma Linda University (more about that elsewhere), which showed me yet another face to Adventism. I was welcomed with my questions. My professors included Richard Rice, Charles Teel, and Paul Landa. Rice pushed the edge of the envelope on divine foreknowledge (he had recently published The Openness of God). After a year there, I transferred to the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. My Biblical classes were eye-opening. As someone raised in a very conservative denomination, I wrestled with the historical-critical method. To be clear, I had been introduced to it at as an undergraduate at Atlantic Union College. We used the RSV Oxford Annotated Bible for many classes. We read Gerhard von Rad’s Old Testament Theology for a class on the Prophets. We were introduced to Bultmann and other critics, and to the documentary hypothesis. This background prepared me well for a Lutheran seminary. The dean, Gerhard Krodel, reviewed my undergraduate transcript and asked, “What is ‘Early Old Testament’? Is that Pentateuch?” Yes, I said. “Do you know who JED and P are?” Yes, I said. “Good. You don’t have to take that again. But you need to do Gospels and the Epistles. You can’t have too many courses in the Gospels.”
I came to appreciate the insights of the historical-critical method into the background of the text and how it was reworked over the centuries within the community of faith. I learned that you can read creation narratives as poetry and myth without trying to squeeze science into six thousand years of Biblical history–but I struggled for a long time with how much time to allow. I tried to hold onto “intelligent design” and a longer (10,000-20,000 year) timeline for many years, only surrendering in the past five years or so when I studied the topic seriously from an evolutionary perspective.
I ministered in the ELCA for three years after ordination, then did lay ministry for the Catholic church for over a dozen years (I talk about those transitions here). I returned to the Adventist church in 2007, and I became an Adventist minister and chaplain. I eventually spent nine years as Assistant Director of Adventist Chaplaincy Ministries for the North American Division.
But I didn’t simply return to beliefs I had rejected. I went through a process of what today we call deconstruction. I felt the denomination had changed, and so had I. I reinterpreted the issues in Adventism, and how I looked at them. And my ministry in the community, and living far from the church headquarters when I worked there, gave me freedom to preach according to my conscience without worrying about censure.
I left Adventism amid conflicts over the Gospel, in which some took extreme positions on one side or the other. Adventism has been confused about the nature of the Gospel since the beginning. There have been attempts at renewal every few decades, but the emphasis upon obedience to the law and progressive sanctification and an investigative judgment that involves examining the books to see whether you really did overcome all ensure that legalism and perfectionism remain firmly entrenched (especially in the so-called “Last Generation Theology”). Some speak of faith in a muddled way, suggesting that “righteousness by faith = justification + sanctification.”
I believe the good news includes God’s forgiveness and justification, and also calls us to discipleship. God forgives us and justifies us freely in Jesus Christ, and the blood of Jesus is the only thing we will ever be able to lift before him. And he calls us to follow him. I don’t think it has to be complicated.
Contrary to some, I don’t see that there was a single “Reformation” doctrine of justification. Lutheran teaching isn’t the same as that of Reformed systematic theologians who have said the Gospel is only a declaration; it doesn’t do anything to us. In Luther’s commentary on Genesis, he points out that God’s word is creative, it creates whatever it declares: God says, “Sun, shine,” and the sun is there, and it shines. So when God declares us righteous, that word begins to make us righteous. John Calvin said essentially the same thing, “God doesn’t justify anyone that he doesn’t go on to sanctify.” But these were often overlooked.
But do we lift that up to God? No, to him we say, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” Throughout the years I remained self-consciously Lutheran in my theology of justification and in my understanding of the Lord’s Supper, seeing it as a continuation of the meals Jesus had with his disciples, and a place where he still says “for you, for the forgiveness of sins.” (For more, go here).
I’ve encountered Catholic apologists who attack Luther for supposedly saying that justification is a mere sprinkling of snow on dung that does nothing to change. I looked for a possible source for that and found it in Luther’s “Sermon on Our Blessed Hope.” Luther said,
“We see grain sowed in the ground. Reason now asks: What happens to the grain in winter that has been sowed in the ground? Is it not a dead, moldy, decayed thing, covered with frost and snow? But in its own time it grows from that dead, moldy, decayed grain into a beautiful green stalk, which flourishes like a forest and produces a full, fat ear on which there are 20, 30, 40 kernels, and thereby finds life where only death existed earlier. Thus God has done with heaven, earth, sun and moon, and does every year with the grain in the field. He calls to that which is nothing that it should become something and does this contrary to all reason. Can He not also do something which serves to glorify the children of God, even though it is contrary to all reason?”
And when we look at it in context, his intent is clearly not to say that justification is a dusting that doesn’t have any impact on our reality–instead, he’s talking about our hope of glorification, which cannot be seen, and can’t be understood by reason, but can only be believed.
Adventists were confused on the Trinity, and that continues. Early Adventists were Arians–they believed Jesus had a beginning. Some others have been tritheists, viewing “the godhead” as kind of a committee of equals who had to discuss which one would become incarnate. There are some of both in the church today. My college professors taught from the assumption that the Apostles and Nicene Creeds represented accurate summations of orthodox Christian faith. Some popular theologians today reject the “eternal generation of the Son” claiming it is subordinationist. They think that the creed which was written to refute Arius teaches Arianism! But by eliminating this, they lose the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity which focuses on the relationships between the three persons. They are left with three separate beings–tritheism.
When I left Adventism there were debates about the role of Ellen White, an early Adventist leader whom the church believes had the gift of prophecy. She plagiarized–there’s no question about it and no way to “put lipstick on a pig.” I think she was manipulated by those close to her. And she was blind to so many things. Adventists supported abolitionism, but she only acknowledged the existence of American Indians a handful of times, and then typically just by saying she observed them from the train as she passed—she never spoke against their genocide and never called for their evangelism, nor had a vision for missions in the West as she did for free Blacks in the South. She never criticized colonialism and was happy for the church to accept land (stolen from African natives) from Cecil Rhodes and to chastise A.T. Jones for complaining on the grounds of church/state separation. But White played a critical role for the fledgling church, maintaining its unity, fending off the extremes, and keeping it Trinitarian and evangelical (remember, her book, Steps to Christ, was published by Fleming H. Revell, who founded his namesake company together with his brother-in-law, Dwight L. Moody).
I wondered why an “inspired prophet of God” missed the Anabaptists in the Great Controversy, a book that warns of the dangers of mixing church and state, and tells the story of those who suffered martyrdom at the hands of Christians possessing political power. Ellen White had a couple paragraphs about Menno Simons but whole chapters on Zwingli with no criticism of him. No mention of his arguments with the Anabaptists—no mention of his participation in the drowning of Felix Manz. You would have thought she would decry Zwingli’s creation of a theocracy and his violence, and celebrate the Anabaptist teachings on separation of church and state and believer’s baptism—but she read Reformed sources, and was blinded by their perspective. Even on a visit to Zurich Ellen White only wanted to see the Zwingli sites and relics, and no one directed her to anything Anabaptist.
One of the most problematic statements by Ellen White comes in her book, Spiritual Gifts, vol. 3.
“But if there was one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood, it was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of GOD, and caused confusion everywhere. GOD purposed to destroy by a flood that powerful, long-lived race that had corrupted their ways before him. …
“Every species of animal which GOD had created were preserved in the ark. The confused species which GOD did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood. Since the flood there has been amalgamation of man and beast, as may be seen in the almost endless varieties of species of animals, and in certain races of men.”
Apologists have tried to explain this away, but the explanations fall flat. “Amalgamation of man and beast” before and after the flood “defaced the image of GOD” “as may be seen … in certain races of men.” That is blatant racism. And what were those “confused species” destroyed in the flood? Conservative Adventists tend to believe this is a reference to dinosaurs (and here); a conservative Adventist source documents that in her day and after “amalgamation of man and beast” was indeed understood to mean mixing of humans with animals.
As I studied spiritual writers through the centuries, Catholic and Protestant, I had a better context for understanding White as a mystic, one of many who claimed visions and wrote piously, but possessed no special divine inspiration. There was a simplicity to her faith that I could appreciate. I never forgot that she had taught that prayer is simply “the opening of the heart to God as to a friend.” But I could not accept her as a doctrinal authority–she herself insisted that “The Bible and the Bible only” was to be the foundation of teaching. And if you have the brightness of the “Greater Light” (the Bible) why would you need a “lesser light” (her writings)? You can’t use a flashlight on a sunny day!
I resumed the discipline of Sabbath as a spiritual practice to counter the busyness of modern life, but not the legalism or the belief that it was “the seal of God.”
I preached Jesus as high priest from the Book of Hebrews, but not Adventism’s unbiblical doctrines tying Leviticus 16 and Daniel 8 to the year 1844.
I preached healthy living, but I never taught that Leviticus 11 was binding on Christians. And in so doing I was closer to early Adventism than to that of the 20th century. They eschewed pork as unhealthy, but put the emphasis on health, being vegetarian if you can but otherwise eating the healthiest diet available. So you can read about Ellen White eating fresh venison on a cross-country trip, and enjoying the occasional tin of oysters. She was more balanced than many of her disciples. At the 1919 Bible Conference AG Daniels told of a missionary nurse far above the Arctic Circle in Norway who mainly ate boiled potatoes and wouldn’t touch the local diet of fish. Daniels said,
“I went at him with all the terror I could inspire for such foolishness…. And I got other brethren to join me. We told that man he would be buried up there if he tried to live that way. We talked with him straight about it. When I got back to this country I talked with Sister White about it, and she said, ‘Why don’t the people use common sense? Why don’t they know that we are to be governed by the places we are located?’”
It was after Ellen White’s death, and the coming of fundamentalism, that Adventists made proof-texting from Leviticus and Deuteronomy an official teaching, binding Christians to Mosaic dietary laws. In 1957, though, the authors of Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine, said:
“It is true we refrain from eating certain articles, as indicated in the query, but not because the law of Moses has any binding claims upon us. Far from it. We stand fast in the liberty with which God has set us free. It must be remembered that God recognized ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ animals at the time of the Flood, long before there was a law of Moses. We reason that if God saw fit at that time to counsel His people against certain articles of diet, these things were not best for human consumption; and since we are physically constituted in the same way as are the Jews and all other peoples, we believe such things are not the best for us to use today.”
(I found it funny that the critics of QOD never mention that correction!)
I preached the “blessed hope” of the return of Jesus, not the fear.
I appreciated that part of the Adventist eschatological perspective which reminds us that the greatest threat to Christianity is not from without but from within, especially the desire for worldly influence and power. Adventism, like Anabaptism, taught that the church took a wrong turn when it accepted Constantine’s patronage. It interpreted the book of Revelation as warning of the coming of Babylon, a woman (the unfaithful church) riding on a beast (political power). And so Adventists fought most of their history for strict separation of church and state.
I was in Adventist ministry for sixteen years. My practice of ministry in diverse settings increasingly informed my theology, and I found myself growing apart from an Adventism that was regressing into fundamentalism. My experiences in interfaith dialogue, teaching world religions, and ministering in different churches all served to make me a more effective chaplain in pluralistic settings. But Ted Wilson, the Adventist General Conference president, preached against ecumenism and warned against reading books by non-Adventists. I was passionate about social justice and peacekeeping, and he warned against these, too—but these were things I learned from the Adventist church!
In my work with chaplains, I became increasingly frustrated with the church’s rejection of women’s ordination, which consigned women in ministry to a second-class status. Towards the end of my time at NAD, women chaplains were told that, unlike men, they would have to be elected and serving as local elders to retain their credentials. Women friends of mine who lived in places where that was impossible were ghosted when they sought help.
As a chaplain, dedicated to ministry to all, my views on issues of human sexuality broadened by my experiences with family, friends, and colleagues who were LGBT+. This took some time. One of the reasons I had left the ELCA was because of its increasingly liberal statements on human sexuality. Those who know me may remember arguments I made after my return to Adventism against California’s Proposition 8, for example. Last year I was at a meeting of church leaders talking about LGBT+ issues and was appalled when I heard that denominational leaders at the highest levels refused to even sit down with LGBT+ church members to get to know them. One senior leader reportedly said of this unpastoral response, “I’m an administrator, not a pastor.” Ted Wilson often railed against “the gay agenda,” tweeting at one point, “Adultery, fornication, and LGBTQIA+ are in direct opposition to God’s law and heavenly plan for human sexuality.” That struck me as completely nonsensical–How is being born intersex (to take one example) a moral issue? (Check out the documentary, Every Body.)
I was stunned when the religious liberty department of the GC said nothing about Adventist leaders in Africa who supported brutal anti-gay legislation, turning their backs on separation of church and state to join with Catholics and fundamentalists to impose fundamentalist theology through legislation. The lawyers of the religious liberty department seem to have come alongside evangelicals, writing amicus briefs together with evangelical organizations with a different perspective on church/state relations. Adventists had helped to found Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and provided funding for decades, but stopped when Adventists saw their institutional interests as more aligned with evangelical arguments.
The influence of fundamentalism can be seen in the church’s changing statements on abortion. A statement in 1992 was nuanced. A new fundamentalist statement was adopted in 2019. During the discussion at the “Annual Council,” many rose to speak of concerns. Chaplains and physicians had concerns about the lack of pastoral concern for women in difficult places. The chair swept aside objections and said another document would come out with pastoral guidelines. This document was to be all law and no grace.
And then, during the pandemic, Adventist leaders in some places bought into rightwing anti-vax and anti-mask arguments in the name of “religious liberty,” decrying evidence-based medicine in favor of “natural cures.” And these voices were not just on the “lunatic fringe.” North American Division administrators were so concerned the NAD president, Alex Bryant, ordered NAD staff to say nothing in social media, pro or con, about vaccines. I was studying public health! I told my supervisor I was going to be engaged in civil disobedience on that one (though no one ever said anything).
In my work with veterans and chaplains, I was alarmed by some Adventist military chaplains who embraced Trumpism and militarism. The church’s historic position on non-resistance and non-combatant service was slowly disappearing, even among those who should be defending it. When I preached on this, I would sometimes hear people say afterwards, “But what about the violence of the OT?” as if the OT carries more weight than the teachings of Jesus. One pastor, a graduate of the Adventist seminary, was shocked to hear that the Adventist church had an anti-war position. He said he never heard that in his theology and church history classes in either college or seminary. (See more here)
And of course I read of the history of Adventists in Germany in WW1 and WW2 who totally embraced nationalism and militarism and encouraged members to fight for the fatherland. Louis Conradi was the main figure in WW1—and these church leaders were never disciplined. The church split, giving birth to the German Reform Movement, and no SDA leaders talked with them for the next hundred years (Robert Brinsmead’s family had roots in this movement). But Germany wasn’t an isolated case. US Adventist leaders also embraced nationalism in WW1. One of the things discussed in the 1919 Bible Conference was how the federal government coerced the GC into editing its publications, modifying Bible Readings for the Home Circle, and books by A. G. Daniels and Carlyle B. Haynes, to make sure that that “land beast” of Revelation 13 was something in the future, not the US then. Adventist publications and schools for German immigrants were shut down. Colporteurs were harassed.
This experience prompted Carlyle B. Haynes of the War Service Commission to push a policy of “conscientious cooperation” (a term he picked up from a reporter in the 1930s). Haynes rejected “pacifism” and insisted we were good Americans loyal to the government, anti-communist, willing to serve in any way that didn’t conflict with our private beliefs of not carrying weapons and resting on the Sabbath. He encouraged Adventists to volunteer as medics and helped up the Medical Cadet Corps to train Adventist academy and college students in the skills of Army medics. This started at Union College, working with the Nebraska National Guard, but spread nationally throughout the draft period (which ended in 1973). Haynes was also a staunch segregationist, seeing integration as a demonic and communist plot to undermine God’s word (he preached this at several churches and camp-meetings in the 1950s).
I was puzzled that contemporary Adventists never mentioned the non-combatant stance when talking about the ten commandments (pointing fingers at Christians who ignored one or more). I was puzzled that this perspective wasn’t better integrated into the Adventist message. One leading Adventist chaplain said, “Adventists were against the military because of the Sabbath, not violence” (not true—see the early arguments in the 1860s where it was clear the basis was keeping all the commandments of God and the Sermon on the Mount). Another argued like some evangelicals that there’s a difference between “murder” and “killing” and the latter, done for the military, is fine (a bogus distinction, and contrary to what early Adventists argued—you can’t nit-pick the OT when Jesus is clear).
I found a safe place attending scholarly meetings with fellow questioners and refreshed by time spent with chaplains. I will always be grateful to both, and to the publications like Spectrum and Adventist Today that published my thoughts. Many shared my frustration with one of the common threads of Adventism–its authoritarian streak. A church that started by rejecting creeds and denominationalism became a denomination with a creed and a hierarchy. The General Conference became the summit of authority, demanding “compliance” from all subordinate levels. Conferences behave in the same way towards churches and pastors, and those pastors often do the same to their churches. Debates about ordination are debates about order, conformity, and authority. The good pastor or administrator is the “company man” who implements policy and strengthens the organization.
I couldn’t be quiet. I distanced myself from this fear-based fundamentalist and authoritarian Adventism in published articles, presenting a hope-filled vision for church, the hope I still embrace (like this from 2021, which I later re-edited in the form of a confession of faith). But I came to realize during the pandemic that my time in Adventist ministry was nearing an end, and I gradually began to take steps to transition to a new setting of ministry–one that fully embraced Jesus’ message of peace, that rejected any form of nationalism, and which was content to preach and live the simplicity of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.
Pax et bonum 