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It was the Summer of 2005, and I was preparing to take my first major step away from home.  I had just graduated from Andrews Academy in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and my friends and I were preparing to kick off our college experience in an unconventional way.  About halfway through my senior year, a good friend of mine told me and some of our other mutual friends that he was going to go to the island of Puerto Rico (where his family is from) for college.  He suggested that we should think about joining him, but the application deadline was fast approaching.  At the time, my friends Joel, Ray and I were all pretty certain that we would start our college experience at Andrews University.  This new idea got our minds going, and the three of us decided to see what our family’s thought.  Much to each of our surprise (especially mine), our families signed off on the idea and ultimately we all applied and were accepted to start matriculating at Universidad Adventista de las Antillas in the Fall of 2005.

We floated through the rest of our senior year as this new adventure was all that the four of us could talk about.  What we did not know at that time was that we were about to get a crash course on race, color, and society’s complexion-based pecking order.  About half-way through that summer, the parents of our friend who broached the Puerto Rico idea had a family friend come stay with them for a number of weeks.  He was a pastor from the island who came to take some graduate courses at Andrews. Joel, Ray and I often spent time at their house, and we all got acquainted with this pastor, who seemed like a great guy.  It became apparent that we did not leave the same impression on him.

Those who grew up or attended school in Berrien Springs can attest that there is nothing to do there.  We have two stoplights, a Speedway gas station, a Taco Bell, that one restaurant that is named something different every 6 months, Kozy’s Chicken (which has some of the best vegetarian chicken ever, but is never open), Apple Valley…etc.  Oftentimes when Joel, Ray and I would be “going out” to “do something” we would have no idea where we were actually going when we left.  We would generally end up at someone’s house watching a movie, playing a video game, eating food, and staring at each other.  Those were the (kosher) options, and we rotated them in no particular order.

This lack of specificity led to a great deal of suspicion in the mind of this traveling pastor.  He developed a theory that Joel and I were drug dealers.  We never had specific plans, we were… well black, we just had to be selling drugs. This, of course, was not true.  We were neither drug dealers nor users and it put our friend’s family in a pretty awkward position.  After hearing about this (from another person who heard about his discussion with the family), we decided that it was best that we just confront the guy and ask him what his problem was in the most Christ-like way possible.

That Sabbath he was scheduled to preach at the local Spanish church, so Joel and I decided that we would try and talk to him after service.  We drove up to the church, which was around the corner from Joel’s house, and saw the pastor greeting church goers out front as they left.  We waited until he was done exchanging pleasantries, and approached him asking if we could talk.  My friend Joel went straight for the jugular, and told him what we had heard he said and then asked him why he said that.  A paraphrased version of his response would go something like: when I was growing up, I had two really close black friends, those were my n***** (he used that word, we let it ride), we would drive around smoking and doing drugs and causing mischief and when I see you two with ‘Sito (our friend) I am reminded of those days and I don’t like it!

After hearing his heartfelt story, we assured him that he was wrong, agreed to disagree (I guess we weren’t that convincing) and went our separate ways.  Joel and I just chalked it up to ignorance and left it at that.  It didn’t feel great, but there was no sense staying mad.  We dropped it and did not discuss it with our friend’s family. The pastor left a few weeks later and Joel, Ray, our friend and I started getting ready to make our trip to Puerto Rico.

We were all excited to begin this new adventure.  Our parents kept reminding us that we were starting school, not vacation (we should have listened).  Things changed when we attended the college church our first Sabbath on the island.  We were all excited to experience church in our new home….until we saw who was preaching.  It was the pastor who racially profiled Joel and me as drug dealers.  We came to find out that he was actually the Pastor of the college church.  Needless to say, this made it hard to attend church (at least that one).  We had no idea with whom he had spread his theory on campus (he was a very influential figure in the campus community).  It made it hard to trust people, particularly those who felt close to him (which was practically everyone).  All of this anxiety & mystery about fitting in due to one man’s theory, informed by his experience, regarding the color of our skin and what it meant about our character.

When I first got to Puerto Rico, I was reunited with a childhood friend of mine named Vince and began connecting with a lot of different people who are now life-long friends.  A lot of people assumed that we were all Dominican (because we are darker skinned) so we naturally clicked with several of the Dominican students who were attending the university in PR.  We started learning more about the tension between Dominicans and Puerto Ricans on the island—we felt that tension when we spent time with some of our friend’s local family members (who are Puerto Rican).  We felt a kinship with many of our Dominican classmates and in a lot of ways learned more about their culture than that of Puerto Ricans.

We eventually realized that the majority of the Dominican students that we connected with actually had American roots.  They were either born in the States or moved there when they were very young, so you could say that in some ways they had been “Americanized.”  This discovery led us to find, by the end of our year there, that we had come full circle.  We did not fit in with the majority of Puerto Ricans, so we gravitated towards the Dominicans—who were by-and-large American—which pretty much led to us to sit somewhere in the middle of this tension.  We were not “authentically” connected to anyone who was there, so we in a lot of ways naturally formed a small unit (mostly of other black kids with ties to the States) and went about our business.

We began to learn a lot about the various racial and ethnic tensions—not just between Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, but between Dominicans and any group that would consider them black.  Darker-skinned Dominicans that hung out with us could have easily been mistaken for being African-American.  They would make it clear that they were not, which in and of itself is fine, but I later learned how indicative it actually was of the island’s history of self-hate.  I say self-hate because as much as the conflict in the Hispaniola region is painted as a Dominican vs. Haitian one, the deeper overall issue is a distaste for blackness—especially being “mistakenly” identified as black.

Puerto Rican television often aired offensive (to me) movies (not documentaries) about Dominican families trying to make it to Puerto Rico on small rowboats.  Puerto Rico was portrayed as a land flowing with milk and honey, and the Dominicans were portrayed as desperate.  This led to Dominican students at the school broaching the subject of another group of people—with whom they begrudgingly share land—that do everything they can to sneak onto their side of the island in order to attain a better life.  It would always come off as strange to me that in the face of being portrayed negatively (and wrongly) by a country where the arrived legally to seek an education, they would respond by transferring that exact same negative portrayal onto their Haitian neighbors.

Any sporting event where Puerto Ricans and Dominicans were playing against each other was tense.  Whether it was intramurals at school, or the World Baseball Classic (which I attended), you could tell that the rivalry ran much deeper than the sporting event happening.  There seemed to always be an ongoing jockeying for position (it is unclear what position that was).  I walked away from that experience with both clarity and complexity.  It became clearer that issues pertaining to humans dividing themselves are more pervasive in the world at large than many of us would like to believe, but I still had more questions.  I was introduced to the complex and confusing idea of a group of people—who have been marginalized and ostracized by the other groups around them—putting forth so much effort to marginalize and ostracize persons in their same group.

The things I have expressed up until this point chronicle my personal (short) experience with these two cultures.  It by no means applies to all of the people that we met from those cultures. I have wonderful, life-long friends from both.  It helps in sharing the broader, historical perspective that I gleaned while being immersed fully into that context.  Much of what I share in the conclusion of this article is based on reports and studies that I have re-visited in recent days.

In November of 2013, the Constitutional Court in the Dominican Republic ruled to strip away the citizenship of several generations of Dominicans.  In effect it means: “Dominicans born after 1929 to parents who are not of Dominican ancestry are to have their citizenship revoked. The ruling affects an estimated 250,000 Dominican people of Haitian descent, including many who have had no personal connection with Haiti for several generations.”

It is important to clarify some misnomers pertaining to this ruling.  This ruling is not geared towards people who were born in Haiti and later migrated to DR—they have already been targeted by other actions/measures.  This ruling is directed at people who were born in DR and for all intents and purposes identify themselves (and should be by others), both in color and experience, as Dominican.

There are several articles and documentaries that break down the history of racial tension between Dominicans and Haitians much better than I can.  I recommend the Black in Latin America documentary.  In 1912, the Dominican government passed laws restricting the number of black-skinned people that could enter the country, but the sugar companies ignored those laws.  Many elite Dominicans brought in most of the first Haitians to live on the island and “employed” them as mill workers.  Most of the people who will be affected by this ruling are descendents of those under-paid Haitian workers who were denied basic amenities and were deprived of all civil rights.

America has its hands on some of that racially tense and bloody history of Hispanola.  The November 2013 ruling appeared to be a tipping point-like culmination of some recent and subsequent racially-charged incidents that have polarized DR.  In February of this year, a Dominican-Haitian citizen was found lynched in a public park in Santiago one day after a protest was held there calling for the deportation of Haitians.  Even though the majority of Dominicans would be considered “black” in this country, there is a huge distinction made locally between looking black and being black.  The government has opened deportation, or, as they have coined them “welcome centers” along the Haiti-DR border in preparation for this ethnic cleansing.  Army General Ruben Paulino, head of the Dominican Republic’s immigration agency, has said that they will begin patrolling neighborhoods known to have large numbers of “migrants” today: “If they aren’t registered, they will be repatriated.”

Dominican-born children of Haitian immigrants were refused copies of birth certificates by Dominican officials in 2005.  Officials have re-opened that process slightly, but it is deeply flawed and the backlogs are insane.  Many of the original Dominican-Haitians born in the 1920s were not born in official hospitals (due to their deplorable living conditions) and therefore do not have any of the documentation that would prevent their deportation.  That paperwork would be useless to them anyway because if they had it, it would certainly make it clear that at least one of his or her parents were from Haiti, which would lead to their citizenship getting revoked.  Even for Dominicans who are not of Haitian descent, being born in a hospital is the exception and not the rule.  They are not likely to have the documentation necessary to avoid a trip to the welcome centers.

So the question we are left with is this: how will the Dominican government enforce this?  In a country where the majority of the citizens do not have the documents that will be requested to prove their ancestry, how will officials decide who the “real” Dominicans are?  Cassandre Theano, who is a legal officer at the NY-based Open Society Foundations explained the process like this: 

In reality “cleaning” the Dominican registration rolls to root out fraud and non-citizens entails identifying Haitian-sounding names, then forcing Dominicans of Haitian descent to prove that they are citizens. People are concerned that they will be indiscriminately targeting people who are darker skinned, black Dominicans, Dominican Haitians and Haitian migrants. There is no science behind how they pick people. They literally look at you and decide whether you fit the profile or not.”

Needless to say this whole process is pretty alarming.  It led me to wonder what my church has to say. The Adventist church has 18,000,000+ members globally. The Dominican Republic is part of the Dominican Union Conference (“DUC”) which is housed under the Inter-American Division (“IAD”). The IAD has 12,326 churches and 3,615,843 members.  The DUC (which is essentially DR) has 732 churches and 300,807 members. To date, I have not seen or heard anything from these entities, churches, or members on the topic.  Now I refuse to be unfair.  The only resources I had available to me were their websites.  If anyone has said something (officially or unofficially), please let me know and I’ll update this article.  The larger purpose for me reporting this numbers is to show that we are represented well in the region.  How many of our members will be affected by this?  Do we know, and if not are we seeking that information?  What efforts is the church involved in, both globally and locally, to help Dominican-Hatians deal with the fallout that this ruling will create?

I am praying that our church has good answers to these questions. I know that there are several Dominican and Haitian (and other) Seventh-day Adventist members here in the states that are deeply concerned with what is going on in DR.  Will the NAD stand with the hundreds of thousands of members who feel connected to this issue? (**NAD update below)  As I have discussed in other articles, it is high time that we start speaking up and out about these issues as a church.  We have our own questionable history with race within our walls, so maybe that makes it hard to engage ourselves in what is happening on the other side of our windows.  Perhaps helping to eradicate the racial tension out there will give us a new viewpoint on what we are overlooking in-house.

Is skin that deep?  It may not be to you and me, but it would be naive of us to ignore it in the face of another reminder that all too often, it is the end-all-be-all. 

Joel’s and my story with that pastor had an  interesting ending.  After a week of prayer that was conducted by a visiting pastor from Florida, my friend Joel decided to be baptized. Soon after we learned that the week of prayer speaker was going to have the University pastor conduct all of the baptisms.  That would have been the end of that for me, but my friend was determined to follow through with his decision.

As awkward as that moment was – and it was – the pastor and I learned something from Joel that day: there are things much deeper than our skin that are truer indicators of who we are.  Skin may be deep to some, but it is the deeper matters of the heart which only God sees that ultimately determine our true value. 

**UPDATE: The NAD has released a statement in reponse to the recent shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC:

Michael Timothy Nixon is Legal & Policy Coordinator at The Fair Housing Justice Center in New York, NY. This article was originally posted on his website, michaeltnixon.com. It is reprinted here by permission, with minor edits for space and clarity.

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In 1978 heaven sent a cargo of pure grace to Norway. Her name war Jenny Nygaard, at that time twenty-nine years old. She had just finished ministerial training at Atlantic Union College in the United States and was about to become the first Seventh-day Adventist woman pastor in Norway. 

Jenny grew up in a caring family at the very edge of the ocean in the most wind-swept part of the west coast of Norway.  The coastline is otherwise dotted with islands that break the wind, but on this particular part of coast there is nothing to cushion the often fierce weather.  Her family was caring but Lutheran mostly in name.  Perhaps influenced by a sea-faring tradition Jenny went abroad, first to work at the Care House for Norwegian seamen in London, then to New York City, where she worked at a famous hair salon.  At her work, she met a woman who introduced her to Adventism.  Jenny accepted what she heard, embracing faith in Christ and the Seventh-day Adventist message.  She also had a new sense of calling that led her to Atlantic Union College.  And then, in 1978, she returned to Norway to take up ministerial work.  Her family was not happy about her choice of faith or vocation, but they did not doubt the depth of Jenny’s conviction.

Jenny Nygaard with her mother.

It was evident from the very beginning of her pastoral work that Jenny was pure grace. I say this advisedly, fully aware of the theological prestige of the word ‘grace.’  While there was no precedent for a woman pastor in the Adventist church in Norway, Jenny did not need a precedent.  Sometimes self-evidence is the strongest argument, and for Jenny the argument of self-evidence silenced whatever opposition there might have been.  She had a deep sense of calling; she had dignity; she exuded warmth and sweetness; and she communicated in an earnest, utterly disarming way.  When she stepped into the pulpit, the audience was hushed, often rapt. If possible, she was even more effective at the personal level, visiting people in the homes. I witnessed both first hand, seeing her involved in evangelistic work in the affluent communities west of Oslo. There is the embodiment of grace walking about, I often thought to myself.  Years later a couple that embraced the Adventist faith at that time would talk with gratitude of the pastors and people that guided them but always with Jenny in a special category. There were many influences—and then there was Jenny Nygaard. 

Cancer struck Jenny hard in 1982, but the ravages of the disease did not obliterate grace. During the treatment she was sustained by grace and by her sister Mary, always at her side. Anti-nausea medications were not as effective then as they are now, and the understanding of palliative measures was also much less adequate.  When Jenny came for her radiation treatment at the National Cancer Hospital in Oslo, the vomiting would begin in the lobby, sometimes in the parking lot. When the cancer infiltrated the spinal cord, Jenny had pain the like of which I have never seen in my considerable experience with cancer and terminal care of cancer patients. Transection of the dorsal column of the spinal cord was done, but even this could not curb the pain, and the hospital physicians at that time did not understand morphine and used it too sparingly. The pastor in Oslo at that time, Magdalon Lind, a former president of the Middle East-East Africa Division, visited Jenny faithfully in the hospital, sometimes guided to her room by audible expressions of excruciating pain. He said that Jenny’s suffering exceeded the suffering of Job. Jenny was at a loss herself under the tsunami of pain, but she said that sin is a worse reality than pain.  She lived grace, and she died as pure grace, emaciated, on May 23, 1983, not yet thirty-four years old.

I was asked to officiate at the funeral, as Jenny’s friend. I worked as a physician-evangelist at that time and had not planned to do funerals. But I could not say no to participate, to look for words of consolation and hope, to see the body of grace laid to rest on a windy, cold day at the graveyard a few kilometers from Jenny’s home, and then to reminisce about her life at her childhood home, looking out on the ocean. If you ever travel on one of the most scenic cruise experiences in the world up the coast of Norway, look toward the shore when the ship passes the Hustad Coast. There, not far from the shoreline, is Jenny’s grave.

A bond was created that day between Jenny’s sister, Mary, and Jenny’s mother and me. Perhaps there will be a day to tell the rest of the story, our story; what has happened during the intervening years.  But the reality that has given us a story to tell centers on the pure grace of Jenny, the first Seventh-day Adventist woman pastor in Norway. 

Ordination means different things to different people. In the Protestant tradition, ordination is not conferral of virtue, or office, or calling, or fitness, or task. Ordination, above all, is in Protestant thought recognition of virtue, calling, and fitness already there. God is in this sense the chief and exclusive Ordainer. The church cannot truly ordain; it can only recognize the God-given ordination that is evident in a person. Jenny Nygaard was ordained by heaven for an exceptional and complete ministry of grace. It was too brief, to be sure, but it sufficient to break the ice and to open our eyes to the fact that God’s call to pastoral ministry transcends gender. We saw it in the life of Jenny Nygaard, no further study or questions necessary then, no further study or questions necessary now. Self-evidence spoke. Discernment responded with the one word, ‘Amen.’ 

Sigve Tonstad, MD, PhD, is professor of religion and assistant professor of medicine at Loma Linda University and the author of several theological books. He was born and raised in Norway.

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In order to highlight the great feedback we often receive as comments to the articles on the Spectrum Website, the editorial team introduces what will be a regular Friday feature: The Best of the Comments. Spectrum editors will select comments representing the best in respectful discourse and furthering the conversations that begin with Spectrum's articles and news stories. Here are nine comments we especially appreciated this week with links to the articles under which the comments appeared. -Editors

Lake Union Conference Says Racism Led to Regional Conference, Formally Apologizes

blairrj​71 wrote:
"Well said and thank you pastor Livesay. It's refreshing to see a church leader admit past wrongs and engage with his constituency. Time to move forward and remove duplicated administration based on race."

Perspective: How Deep is Skin?

Garnett Weir wrote:
"This is indeed an excellent article by Michael Nixon. I just wonder what is the stance of the churches in the Dominican Republic ( not just SDA churches) towards this outrage. Chances are they will sit and do nothing because, perhaps, they too, see the Haitians as inferior beings. What a tragedy. Isn't this a matter the United Nations should address. The Dominicans can do what they wish, but the world should not let them get away with it. On November 6, 1962, the United Nations adopted Resolution No 1761 requesting member states to impose sanctions on South Africa because of their implementation of the Apartheid system. Economic sanctions, Sporting sanctions, Academic sanctions, Diplomatic isolation etc. eventually brought that South African Regime to its senses. The Dominican Republic should be given the same treatment until they reverse their ethnic cleansing policies."

At the Church’s Dying Edge

Andreas Bochmann wrote:
"Thank you, Loren, for a thoughtful, and thought provoking essay. I worship in a church with less than 20 in attendance, where my wife (well into her 50s) is the youngest church member, with an out of tune "bar piano" nobody can play anyway... Will it survive another decade? I don't know. What I do know is this: you will hardly find another church nearby with a Sabbath school discussion as lively, open and honest. Our church pastor (we see him about once a month) preaches exquisite, gospel oriented sermons of a quality that I rarely hear elsewhere. And as to church singing - since there is no organ, no piano being played ... the church sings to saxophone accompaniment occasionally with a bass added (think of the old German hymns in sax and bass). Beautiful. But the anticipatory pain lingers. And the pain of self-deception which seems to have become a hallmark of our church along with a megalomania that is not only lacking humility, but eye sight. Alas, like you, Loren, I don't have any answers to the dilemma. To some extent the view of more experienced members and colleagues comfort: it is God's church, not ours. Jesus is Lord.

Loren Seibold wrote:
"Thank you, Andreas, for your story about your little church. I know that feeling well. Have experienced it many times, even the singing to a solo instrument. I think your concluding thought, that the wiser in the church say, "This is God's church, and we leave it in His care" is a faithful response, and perhaps the best one, even if it is an admission of our own defeat. But aren't we all defeated in the end, without God's power? "Whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord," applies to congregations as well as to individuals. Let me just add one more thing here, out of a bit of frustration, that bothers me. If I had written a piece here about women's ordination, or creation and evolution, it would have 75 responses by now. To me, this is a more important discussion for us to have (especially since no one is talking about it, compared to these other things), but very few are interested. Why are we so anxious to pile on to the same old fights we've had for decades, but not a lot of interest in solving a problem that threatens to sink us as a denomination in this territory? Puzzling, isn't it?"

Ordination Herstories: Kendra Haloviak Valentine and Norma Osborn

Eric Webster wrote:
"One appreciates the testimonies of Kendra and Norma and also the fruit of their lives and ministries.
 No doubt those who set them apart to this ministry accepted the literal truth of Ephesians 4:11 in respect to the gifts of the Holy Spirit: "And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers." Those involved did not understand that these gifts were gender based. They accepted that any man or woman could be the recipient of these gifts. After all a woman amongst us had received the gift of prophecy. Why should a woman not be able to receive the gift of pastoring a flock?
Is it not rather strange that we do not find extended discussions as to the evils of women receiving the gift of teaching or the gift of evangelism. Can anyone supply me with a few documents as to why women may not be teachers or evangelists? But the moment we come to 'pastoring' the flock for qualified women it is as if we have flown a red flag to wild bulls."

Pacific Union Conference Announces GC Delegates: 42% Female

Victor Pilmoor wrote:
Very Good. 16/38 = 42.1%
In the British Union we managed 6/14 = 42.8% 
It's called 0.7% up-wo-manship

An Open Letter to the General Conference Delegates from Africa

djmush1000 wrote:
"This is the second article I have read urging Africans to vote yes and though this article is not as racist as the other one it does reek of elitism and assumes that we are a gigantic monolith and that our only reasons for Africans believing in male headship is culture or a faulty hermeneutic and as a young African i can only say that i am thoroughly disappointed with brother Quartey with perpetuating such elitism. I am an African and I take offense that my position on WO is perceived as cultural simply because I am an African. Once again the false analogy of slavery is invoked and I actually feel that it is Brother Quartey who is using a faulty hermenuetic employing false analogies and intellectual dishonesty. The generalisation employed in said artice are hurtful to say the least and It is interesting that most who are applauding this article are not even from Africa. I feel that the author of this article comes dangerously close to being the theological equivalent of an Unlce Tom."

Matthew Quartey (the article's author) wrote in reply:
"The Akans in Ghana have a proverb that doesn't translate well into English, but it goes something like this: A person cutting a path is not aware that the path behind him/her is crooked. The idea is that we tend to focus so intently on the task on hand that we don't see aspects of the same task that need some modification to make it better. And often it takes someone unconnected with the task to point out the rough edges. In essence, criticism, when done well and in good faith, add to the dialogue. So it is not enough to just tell the "path cutter" that his/her work is not good without specifying what is wrong with the path and where it needs straightening. I am having some difficulty identifying the elements in the Letter that are racist (even if partially so) or elitist or dishonest, or Uncle "Tomish". Citing examples help when loaded words are used to accuse as djmush does in his post."

Jeremy Vandieman wrote:
"when i think back on the culture of the south africa i was born into - many people see south africa as an historical racist enclave, but they don't always know how sexist it used to be - there is no question that women's ordination would not have led to decency and order in the church then and there, anymore than it would have in paul's world...but living in north america for several decades now - in the church, out of the church, and now in the church for good - i do see that there are circumstances in which a literal interpretation of phrases like "husband of one wife", 1 timothy 3:2, not only fails to achieve the good it intends to, but leads to an opposing, if not opposite, result...the world we live in today really is so disparate, a policy that accomplishes one thing in one place accomplishes an entirely different thing in another...given this reality, there can be only one effective solution to the problems posed by wo, and that is a yes vote in san antonio...a yes vote means male headship should continue where it is deemed the best approach to achieving decency and order in the church, and women's ordination should be allowed to proceed where it is clear it can be a blessing while maintaining decency and order in the church - and maintaining decency and order in the church is the over-riding consideration, 1 corinthians 14:40. . . .to me, any notion of male headship in the seventh-day adventist church can only mean that the significance of the holy spirit's choice of egw has not received adequate consideration...we have to understand that egw, in her role of guiding prophet, is half the reason the remnant church is the remnant church, revelation 12:17...this is an astounding level of honor and authority to place in one person, and the fact that that person was a woman must mean something...how can an ordination policy built on a literal understanding that women must not speak in church, teach, and exercise authority over men, 1 timothy 2:11-12, be meaningful in the face of the 70-yr ministry of egw, to which the ministry of only moses compares...when egw clearly says that women are sometimes better managers of a church than men, pastoral ministry:36, and the path to the exercise of that management is blocked because ordination is a prerequisite that is being systematically withheld, is that ordination policy in harmony with egw, or isn't it..."

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Richard Beck asks us to imagine spitting into a Dixie cup…and then drinking its contents.

Disgusting, right? Although this seems like the natural reaction to have, it’s actually rather odd, if you think about it. We swallow our own saliva all the time. “But,” as Beck notes, “the second saliva is expelled from the body it become something foreign and alien. It is no longer saliva—it is spit.”

Saliva and spit are practically identical in terms of physical composition. Yet, they are vastly different from a psychological standpoint—“We don’t mind swallowing what is on the ‘inside.’ But we are disgusted by swallowing something that is ‘outside,’ even if that something was on the ‘inside’ only a second ago.” Disgust, in other words, isn’t rational. It’s visceral, tapping into something more primal than the way we think. Yet, it impacts the way we act. We recoil against and reject things that are disgusting.

Sadly, we also recoil against and reject people we find disgusting. Lillian Smith shares the story of white social activists in the deep South breaking taboos of the day by eating with black women. Recounting her first meal, one of these church women admits to Smith that although she was intellectually she convinced about the equality of all people, she was “seized by an acute nausea which disappeared only when the meal was finished.” Upon reflection, she attributed this physiological reaction to an anxiety that was rooted in the “bottom of her personality” and had been formed during her childhood.   

In past summers, we’ve explored the intersections of the life of faith with disciplines like philosophy, science, sociology, and theology. This summer, we turn to the field of psychology and will be grappling with Richard Beck’s Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality. His reflections are especially timely considering some of the deep divisions that are evident in society, as well as in our own communities of faith.            

“Why do churches, ostensibly following a Messiah who broke bread with ‘tax collectors and sinners,’ so often retreat into practices of exclusion and the quarantine of gated communities?” Beck wonders. He suggests that it has a lot to do with the psychology of disgust. By understanding it, we can better understand the drive that shapes how we think about theological concepts like sin, salvation, and holiness. Beyond this, perhaps we can learn to regulate the propensity we have to thinking and acting in ways, which seems perfectly natural, but betrays the ideals we profess, much like the way, Beck suggests, we deal with the cravings we have for fatty and sugary foods we know are bad for us.   

The book is divided into four parts and eleven concise chapters. Our bloggers, including old and new friends, will guide our discussion in a series of ten posts. The schedule we’ll try our best to stick to is as follows:

Part 1:  Unclean

July 10: Ch. 1 - Darwin and Disgust: Ron Osborn
July 17: Ch. 2 - Contamination and Contagion: Karen Ong
 
Part 2:  Purity

July 24:  Ch. 3 - Morality and Metaphors: Jody Washburn
July 24:  Ch. 4 - Divinity and Dumbfounding: Jody Washburn
 
Part 3:  Hospitality

July 31:  Ch. 5 - Love and Boundaries: David Barrett
August 7: Ch. 6 - Monsters and Scapegoats: Will Johns
August 14: Ch. 7 - Contempt and Heresy: Robert Jacobson
August 21: Ch. 8 - Hospitality and Embrace: Michaela Lawrence Jeffery
 
Part 4:  Mortality

August 28: Ch. 9 - Body and Death: Lisa Clark Diller
Sept. 4: Ch. 10 - Sex and Privy: Keisha Mackenzie
Sept. 11: Chapter 11 - Need and Incarnation: Brenton Reading
 
Sept. 11: Conclusion: Elimination and Incarnation: Brenton Reading

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Zane Yi is Assitant Professor of Religion and Theological studies at Loma Linda University.

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In honor of Roy Branson, founder of Spectrum Magazine, we begin today republishing articles from the Spectrum archives that were written during the Branson era. This first article from 1970, Volume 2, Issue 4, by Branson and Herold Weiss led to an expansion of historical studies of Ellen G. White. A three part series in the Adventist Review later expanded the ideas in this article where Branson and Weiss argued for new methods of study. The article is particularly poignant this week, as the church commemorates the 100th anniversary of the death of Ellen White on July 16, 1915.

Most Seventh-day Adventists know that for some time we have been able to make Ellen G. White say almost anything we want. Her authority is universally recognized in the church, but what we make her say with authority often depends on who of us is quoting her. In the life of the church, therefore, she speaks with many accents. Sometimes on a single topic we make her voice blare out arguments on both sides of a debate.

Take the subject of health reform. One Ellen White talks reasonably about the advantages of temperate living. Another Ellen White fanatically demands that we eat only foods grown according to certain rigidly defined methods. Which is the real Ellen White?

Sometimes we make her march determinedly in opposite directions—as in our discussions of justification by faith versus perfection, or God’s sovereignty versus man's free will. As important a topic as the universality of salvation throws us into a dilemma when quotations extracted from her writings are simply strung together end-to-end. She appears on both the banner of those who say that the heathen who never hear the name of Christ will be as if they never were, and the banner of those who insist that every man is given light sufficient for a choice determining his eternal destiny.

The result of having so many Ellen Whites is that the Adventist church may soon have no Ellen White at all. Conceivably all that may be left will be a few members shouting at each other in her name; the great majority, having already despaired of understanding her, will only wonder what all the commotion is about.

It should be clear by now that among the top priorities of the church ought to be the establishment of more objective ways of understanding what Ellen White said. The church needs to see a coherent whole in her wide-ranging writings. To find a consistent method of interpretation for these writings should not be thought of as merely an intriguing academic possibility; it is an essential and immediate task for the church. Up to now, two main ways—both of them wanting—have been used to understand Mrs. White's thinking. One way has been to compile quotations taken at random from all her works, and then to group these quotations simply by topic. The other way has been to consider as more authoritative those statements that start with the words "I was shown," or some similar expression.

Both of these ways have sometimes proved useful, but they remain inadequate. A collection of quotations by topic often exaggerates the seeming contradictions among them. As a result, the consistent viewpoints Ellen White actually had are obscured, and her persuasiveness is diminished. On the other hand, to take as authoritative only the statements that cite a specific vision depreciates the value of the many things God "showed" her through the guidance of the Holy Spirit pervading her life. She was led by God even when she could not refer to a particular vision for a specific admonition.

The church has not sufficiently perceived the full significance of Ellen White's message by using these means. New methods are needed. What follows is a set of proposals to make possible a more consistent interpretation of these inspired writings.

The first step should be to discover the nature of Mrs. White's relationship to other authors. We know that she borrowed terms, phrases, and historical accounts from others. To find the real Ellen White we must undertake the vast, but absolutely necessary, task of learning exactly what kind of use she made of the work of these other writers. Sample cores have been taken,¹ but the vital information—the nature, selection, and use of the abundant material available to her and integrated by her in her writing—is still a mystery. Until we know more precisely which authors she respected sufficiently to rely on, we will not really know Ellen White or her ideas.

The second step should be to recover the social and intellectual milieu in which she lived and wrote. How can her testimony be understood until the economic, political, religious, and educational issues that were the context of her words are recognized? Unless we know what meaning specific words had in the culture of her day, how can we know her meaning in using
them?² Either Ellen White lives for us first in her own cultural situation or she does not live for us at all. Of course, if we hear her speak within a definite cultural milieu, we do not thereby confine the significance of her words to that context. Understanding her in terms of the nineteenth century does not mean that what she said is irrelevant to the twentieth century.
Actually, finding how her words pertained to the past century is a necessary step in establishing their relevance to our own. Like most things in nature, words do not live in a vacuum.

The third step should be to give close attention to the development of Ellen White's writings within her own lifetime, and also to the development of the church. What was first written as a small series of books grew through the years into the rather voluminous Conflict of the Ages series.

Personal letters became articles in church papers, only thereafter to be transformed into parts of books. Events in Mrs. White's life and currents in the church are relevant to understanding why her writings took the shape they did. Compilations of her writings published since her death should be examined in terms of the issues that confronted the church when the editors did their compiling.³

By taking the three foregoing steps we can know with more assurance what the real Ellen White said. By making certain that our investigations follow clearly defined guidelines, we can more completely free our interpretations of conflicting personal biases. When we compare what she took from her sources with what she ignored in them, we can see more clearly a trend in her thinking. By knowing the streams of thinking in which these sources fall, and by being aware of what other alternatives existed for her, we can see for the first time the significance of her choice of sources. By putting ourselves in the crosscurrents of her day, we can see why she used one argument on a topic at one time and another argument on the same topic at another time. Anything we learn about her and the church at every stage in the preparation of her writings can only help draw us further into her mind.

Our final step should then be to apply in our day the words she spoke in her day. We may never be able fully to recapture Ellen White's original intentions or the absolute truth of what she meant. But if the methods proposed here, or similar ones, were implemented, the church would be much closer to her ideas than it is now. Setting up objective criteria for interpretation would restrain individual prejudice and decrease confusion.

With relatively greater consensus on what she said, we would increasingly agree on what she would say today. Her influence, instead of waning, would then become more pervasive.
Using such methods would put the church in touch with a more vital and interesting Ellen White, with nuances and enthusiasms we do not recognize now. This more vibrant Ellen White would not always agree with her modern readers (any more than she did with her original readers), but she would be a more believable person. She would be seen as God's human spokesman—perhaps less magical and less awesome, but also less obscure and less ignored, and therefore actually more influential than she is now.

And if she were more vital and effective, she would thereby be actually more authoritative also. Rather than being an impersonal voice subject to our manipulation, she would become again the living, breathing person who drew men to God.

Following methods like those outlined here would open up far-reaching scholarly enterprises. No one Adventist during his entire life could accomplish the tasks that would emerge. Indeed, no single discipline has adequate tools to do the job alone. It is imperative, therefore, that Adventist scholars from various disciplines bring their different perspectives and insights and equipment to the challenge of understanding Ellen G. White.

This kind of interdisciplinary effort by the Adventist academic community could help more clearly to distinguish the essence of Adventism.

NOTES
1. An example is William S. Peterson's article in this issue: A Textual and Historical Study of Ellen White's Account of the French Revolution.

2. In an unpublished study, Ellen G. White and Fiction, John O. Waller examines the meaning of the word fiction in Mrs. White's time and relates his findings to her use of the term. Richard Rice's article, Adventists and Welfare Work: A Comparative Study (Spectrum 2, 52-63, winter 1970), recounts some of the attitudes and endeavors of social welfare activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and thus gives an idea of the issues that concerned Mrs. White when she commented on social welfare. The task of recreating the milieu in which Mrs. White and other early Adventists discussed interracial relations is attempted by Branson in Ellen G. White: Racist or Champion of Equality? Review and Herald, April 9, 16, and 23, 1970.

3. In his recent book, Ellen G. White and Church Race Relations (Washington, D. C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association 1970), Ronald D. Graybill has established the setting, in Mrs. White's life and in the work of the church, of her comments on race in Testimonies for the Church, volume nine (Washington, D. C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association 1970), pp. 199-226. Jonathan Butler, in Ellen G. White and the Chicago Mission (Spectrum 2, 41-51, Winter 1970), shows that a knowledge of the church's controversy with John Harvey Kellogg is essential to an understanding of Mrs. White's seemingly contradictory statements on inner-city mission work.

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I was disappointed, as many Spectrum readers probably were, at the results of the 2015 General Conference vote on women's ordination and the revisions to the Fundamental Beliefs on creation and the flood.  There was also a resolution on the agenda reaffirming confidence in the writings of Ellen White (page 71 of the official agenda).  Why, with so many issues facing the church, do we spend so much effort and time on issues that will only serve to divide the church?  Are there not more pressing issues for the Kingdom that we should address?

My interest was piqued by a book titled, "Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists."  It hasn't been until recently (the last twenty years) that Adventist scholars have explored the Wesleyan connection to Adventism.  There were two articles in the Spring 1995 issue of Spectrum Magazine, one by A. Greg Schneider and the other by Woodrow Whidden.  Whidden has also published articles by the Wesleyan Theological Journal and by the Biblical Research Institute on the Wesleyan connection to Adventism.  These are all available online.  While most attention by those within and outside Adventism tend to be focused on those doctrines unique to Adventism, such as the Sabbath, the sanctuary, the state of the dead, etc., the core soteriology (doctrine of salvation) is Wesleyan.  This came through Ellen White, whose family were members of the Methodist Episcopal denomination. So given the Wesleyan heritage of Adventism and the recent fundamentalist trajectory of the church, I was intrigued by the title of the book by Truesdale, Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists.

Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists was published in April 2012.

The book is a collection of essays by authors who are associated with the Church of the Nazarene.  Most of the articles are written by professional academics.  The book has an Introduction, eight chapters, and a Conclusion.  Chapter 1 is an introduction to fundamentalism.  Chapters 2-7 are how a fundamentalist approach differs from a Wesleyan approach when it comes to such issues as how we relate to the Scriptures (Chapter 2), how we relate to the opening chapters of Genesis and creation models (Chapter 3), how we relate to science in general (Chapter 6), etc. Chapters 2-7 are followed by a brief "Why it Matters" response on why the fundamentalist approach or the Wesleyan approach matters.  These responses appear to be written by people in a more pastoral role as a result of focus groups of lay persons and their reactions to that chapter.  So the book provides a good balance between the academic discussion and the practical implications from a lay person's perspective.

The term "fundamentalist" derives from a set of booklets published between 1920 and 1925.  The book notes that it is primarily using the term fundamentalist as it is used in American or British contexts.  "In the United States and Great Britain a fundamentalist response to perceived threats to orthodox Christian doctrine occurred in the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. It was a reaction to something broadly known as theological modernism."  The author cites one source and notes that fundamentalism had three characteristics: (1) a very strong emphasis on the inerrancy of the Bible; (2) a strong hostility to modern critical study of the Bible; and (3) an assurance that those who do not share the fundamentalists' religious viewpoint are not really true Christians. Later in the book, the author notes that this fundamentalist orientation originated and was promoted with those associated with a Calvinistic theology.  Thus it starts to become clear where the divergence between a Calvinistic and Wesleyan approach started.  While Adventists do not believe in an inerrancy (as defined in the book to mean verbal inspiration) in the Bible, for practical purposes, Adventists treat Ellen White as verbally inspired.  Adventists leadership is likewise critical of modern critical study, and Adventist leadership is ready to exclude Adventists who do not agree with their literalist viewpoints on Genesis.  Last August in St. George President Ted Wilson stated, "If one does not accept the recent six-day creation understanding then that person is actually not a 'Seventh-day-Adventist…'" So, according to how "fundamentalism" is defined in this book, it is alive and well within Adventism.  So how does this fundamentalist mindset affect one's theology and practice and why does it matter?  That is the question the rest of the book tries to answer.

Other than hopefully generating enough interest so people who read this review will purchase and read the book, I am not going to summarize each chapter.  I will offer a few teasers.

In Chapter 2, "The Wesleyan Doctrine of Scripture," M. Robert Mulholland notes that fundamentalists see scripture as a warehouse of information to form propositional statements about what the Bible teaches.  Wesleyans, on the other hand, "developed a doctrine of Scripture that focused on its rule in transforming the believer's inner being as the ground for reordering behavior." The author not only sees a direct conflict between a Wesleyan view of Scripture and a fundamentalist view, but also that a fundamentalist view destroys the very purpose the Wesleyans understand for the Bible.  "When the Bible is understood primarily as a body of propositional truths to be understood, accepted, and affirmed by believers, all too often the essential transformational dimension vanishes."

Chapter 3 addresses the issue of origins.  God has revealed himself both in the Bible and nature.  Robert Branson, the author of Chapter 3 asks, " Why would the God who has so grandly written his signature in creation and who has made known his redemptive purpose in Scripture place the two testimonies in opposition?"" The Bible eloquently proclaims that God is the Creator of all that exists. Must these two stories conflict? Must one story suffocate the other?"  The fundamentalist position is the young earth position that the earth was created in 6 literal 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago.  The author presents three options, the young earth creation (YEC), the concordance approach, which sees the creation in 6 long ages, and a functional approach, which is described in the book by John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One.  The author prefers this last approach.  That said, he feels that whether young earth, concordance, or functional, we should be able to find a common ground on "who" created the cosmos.  The fundamentalist approach demands an interpretation of Genesis that puts the scientific evidence in conflict with the Bible.  One must choose between a YEC fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis or science. Lest anybody think the YEC position is supported by science, the author does address some of the major scientific problems with the YEC approach. In the "Why it Matters" response, another notes, "I watch as fundamentalism obstructs a full engagement with the Bible's riches. At heart, fundamentalism represents a sincere desire to be faithful to God's Word and to Christian faith and practice. The problem is that good intentions do not necessarily lead to sound theology.""Being faithful to the Christian story means being open to the love of the risen Christ. It rules out arguing about the minutiae of Scripture or insisting on how it should be understood in all its details."

As a Seventh-day Adventist, I found this book timely in terms of the decisions at the 2015 General Conference.  The responses of Adventist leadership to the challenges faced by the church are a natural response of a fundamentalist approach to the Bible and practice.  The root of our problem is not our modifications of the Fundamental Beliefs, or our the refusal to allow the ordination of women, or our doubling down of stated support for Ellen White, but a fundamentalist approach to theology and practice.  It is sad, given our Wesleyan heritage, that we have adopted the strategy of fundamentalism from the Calvinist denominations and not a Wesleyan approach that values how our theology and practice lead to holier lives and productive wholesome relationships within the church.

Dennis Stevens is a retired electrical engineer and local elder residing in the Portland Oregon area with his wife Eira.

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Do you have to believe all 28 Fundamental Beliefs in order to be an Adventist? This is a common question pastors are asked. If you were to talk to most Adventists, they would admit that there is at least one Fundamental Belief they are uncomfortable with. My response to this question has always been three-fold:

1. If you want to be considered an Adventist, wh oam I to tell you that you aren’t? If you find the Adventist church provides you meaningful worship, fellowship, and service experiences please stay.

2. Please don’t aggressively promote your views and try to win over “converts” to your position. I’m fine with you expressing your opinion in discussions and conversation with others but please do it in a respectful way knowing the tension it will bring.

3. The church believes in progressive revelation and someday what you believe might actually become doctrine.

With the recent vote to not allow divisions to decide on ordaining women, I now have a fourth response:

4. Even the General Conference in Session doesn’t believe all 28 Fundamental Beliefs.

Not ordaining a pastor, simply on the basis of their gender, is a clear violation of Fundamental Belief #14, “Unity in the Body of Christ.” This comes through clearly in the summary paragraph of the belief:

“The church is one body with many members, called from every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. In Christ we are a new creation; distinctions of race, culture, learning, and nationality, and differences between high and low, rich and poor, male and female, must not be divisive among us. We are all equal in Christ, who by one Spirit has bonded us into one Fellowship with Him and with one another; we are to serve and be served without partiality or reservation. Through the revelation of Jesus Christ in the Scriptures we share the same faith and hope, and reach out in one witness to all. This unity has its source in the oneness of the triune God, who has adopted us as His children.”

This paragraph summary clearly states that distinctions, including gender, should not be divisive among us and that all of us are “equal in Christ.” Not ordaining women is a glaring violation of this belief.

As we read the opening paragraphs of the belief, we find it reflecting on how Jesus agonized over the state of his disciples, worried that they were more concerned about positions of power than serving others. We read:

“Jesus is Love. It was His sympathy that kept the masses following Him. Not understanding this unselfish love, His disciples were filled with strong prejudices toward non-Jews, women, "sinners," and the poor, which blinded them to the all encompassing love of Christ even toward these detested ones. When the disciples found Him conversing with a Samaritan woman of ill-repute, they had not yet learned that the fields, ripe for harvest, include grain of all varieties, ready to be reaped.

But Christ could not be swayed by tradition, public opinion, or even family control. His irrepressible love reached down and restored broken humanity. Such love, which would set them apart from the careless public, would be the evidence of being true disciples. As He loved, they were to love. The world would forever be able to distinguish Christians—not because of their profession, but because of the revelation of Christ's love in them (cf. John 13;34, 35).”

The statement tells us that prejudice comes from not understanding God’s “unselfish love.” It challenges us by telling us that if we are true disciples of Jesus, we will love as he loves and break down the selfish barriers and prejudices we previously held.

Later, the belief reflects on the fact that we are united into “one body” by the Holy Spirit and states:

“Calling them from every nationality and race, the Holy Spirit baptizes people into one body—the body of Christ, the church. As they grow into Christ cultural differences are no longer divisive. The Holy Spirit breaks down barriers between high and low, rich and poor, male and female. Realizing that in God's sight they are all equal, they hold one another in esteem.”

The belief also reflects on how far this unity extends. Does it mean that it removes all diversity in the body of Christ? It states:

“God's church, then, ought to reveal a unity of feeling, thought, and action. Does this mean that members should have identical feelings, thoughts, and actions? Does Biblical unity imply uniformity?

Biblical unity does not mean uniformity. The Biblical metaphor of the human body demonstrates that the church's unity exists in diversity.”

At the General Conference Session, there was lots of talk about the importance of the Holy Spirit being part of our lives and church. This belief clearly states that when the Holy Spirit is present, all barriers, including gender are broken down. Also, all the talk and arguments against a “yes” vote for the sake of unity were misguided because the church teaches “unity in diversity.”

The concept of male headship is soon debunked as well when we read:

“So while there are different temperaments in the church, all work under one Head. While there are many gifts, there is but one Spirit. Though the gifts differ, there is harmonious action. "It is the same God who works all in all" (1 Cor. 12:6).”

This General Conference Session featured lots of talk about the importance of mission, and framed the discussion of ordination as a distraction. However, the belief states that central to being united for mission is the Spirit removing all prejudices from our hearts. It reads:

“As the Spirit enters believers, He causes them to transcend human prejudices of culture, race, sex, color, nationality, and status (see Gal. 3:26-28). He accomplishes this by bringing Christ within the heart. Those whom He inhabits will focus on Jesus, not themselves. Their union with Christ establishes the bond of unity among themselves—the fruit of the indwelling Spirit. 

They will then minimize their differences and unite in mission to glorify Jesus.”

There is no doubt—the refusal to ordain anyone to pastoral ministry solely on the basis of gender is a clear violation of Fundamental Belief #14.

So, when even the highest governing body of the Adventist church itself doesn’t believe all 28 Fundamental Beliefs, I think it’s safe for individual members to remain in good and regular standing when they disagree with them as well.

As disappointing as the vote was at the General Conference Session, I’m thankful to know that even the General Conference in Session is willing to admit it doesn’t believe all 28 Fundamental Beliefs, just like the rest of us.

Trevan Osborn is an associate pastor at the Azure Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church in Grand Terrace, California.

Photo Credit: James Bokovoy/NAD

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Born and raised a Peruvian Adventist, I have wonderful memories of how a Latin-American church made me happy as a child. The son of a hardworking Adventist pastor, Rodrigo Gutierrez, and of a completely kind and dedicated pastor's wife, Orfilia Salazar, I will never be able to fully thank that church for having nurtured me all those precious years, through its various communities, including schools, Pathfinder clubs, choirs, camp meetings, evangelism campaigns, youth camps, inclusive worships and Bible studies. For the beautiful and inspiring Himnario Adventista and particularly for those few but wonderful years spent at the Miraflores Adventist Academy in Lima, Peru when, through people's care, attention, patience and dedication I entered life with trust and confidence.

But what is Latin-American Adventism and its twin-sister, African-Adventism today?

I think both represent the future of worldwide Adventism.  Adventism in particular, and Christianity in general, are irreversibly moving Southward. But they are making this coming new day an obscure day if they give the image they gave on Wednesday, July 8 in San Antonio, Texas.

A meaningful leadership of the worldwide Adventist community now and in the future can't be characterized purely by strength in numbers but rather by the humble, empathic and intelligent capacity of reading people's needs as rooted in specific territories and in diversified cultural contexts. Delegates from these two continents intervened with all the enthusiasm, involvement and radicalism they are capable of, but for the wrong cause: to prevent Northern-hemisphere Adventist church sisters from taking better care of the people they serve, by ordaining women pastors to a full ministry. In an unbelievably naive and bold mix of ideological argumentations, obsessive religious reasoning and repetitive biblical mantras they lost the Holy Spirit-led capacity of trusting and understanding before speaking and acting.

Solomon, in his descriptive speech about human pride in Proverbs 11:2, said: “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” Misled by a myopic and self-damaging religious and cultural pride they lost a unique occasion to say to the Adventist worldwide community, “we are mature for leading the church.” Unfortunately this didn't happen. Nobody was pushing them to ordain women to pastoral ministry in their territories but only to allow that possibility in other, different cultural contexts. And where prohibition already implies a violation of civil law and a contradictory and poor witness to the Spirit of Christ.

One of the foundational conditions of leadership, individually or as a church, is to have the capacity to overcome primary and secondary narcissism. Latin-American and African Adventism will need to learn, even with suffering and healing disappointments, that they do not represent the unique or “better” form of Adventism, but just one expression of it. And their “higher calling” doesn't consist in becoming gate-keepers of 19th or 20th century Adventism, with the help of nostalgic Westerns. The capacity for making other people's needs and concerns their own, and the parallel wisdom of not imposing on others their own worries and obsessions, is the best proof of administrative and spiritual maturity. And that is precisely what Latin-American and African Adventism didn't show and that is also what they urgently need to learn if they want to play a leading role in the worldwide Adventism of tomorrow. Twenty-first century Adventism will not be Latin-American or African but a multicultural and polycentric Adventism. One that is able to coexist together with its various faces, sensibilities and projects. And the maturity of this coming church will not reside in its capacity to resolve or dismantle this irreversible complexity but rather in the willingness to accept the inevitable tension it implies, and be motivated by it to build up a welcoming and inclusively motivating perspective.

Sure, Western Adventism has not left us Southerns a completely noble example to follow concerning the need for having an inclusive and open ethos. This Adventism, that still represents the official one, has never really fully overcome its refined and continuously updated Euro-centrism. According to a reductive cultural view, non-Western Adventists are lazy, sentimental, gullible, disorganized, ethically unreliable, too spontaneous, unable to think and to express reasonable thoughts. And for a few – also dirty and ugly. How can they incarnate God's perfect Grace and Kingdom? This Machiavellian-judgmental Spirit has even been somewhat successful in making the Adventist family believe that the main hindrance to the ordination of women pastors is the retrograde and medieval mindset of Latin-American and African Adventists. But actually the terms in which this hot issue has been proposed is completely foreign to non-Western cultures. So, while Western Adventism has successfully been exported to other continents – Latin-America, Africa or Asia – it refuses to acknowledge problems, like this one, as also its own. Much like during the “Cold War” when Western countries exported their conflicts into third world countries, as happened with Cuba, Korea or Vietnam.

All this means that in today's circumstances, for Latin-American and African Adventism, it's not enough to believe, praise and preach. We all need to start understanding what we do and say. And especially consider more accurately the structural implications of our religious ethos on us and on others, for the well being of the worldwide church. We need to break down the spellbinding mindset that still makes us believe that salvation and meaning are uniquely dependent on numbers, baptisms and diligent effort. When salvation arrives it often breaks down our mechanical religious thoughts and compulsive actions and gives us new light to start considering ourselves and others in more generous ways. The fact of voting so mechanically and so ideologically has pushed Latino-American and African Adventism into making three simple but deleterious mistakes.

First, an administrative mistake. Because we can't really pretend to have a democratic structure if we give up so easily the subsidiarity principle that allows specific territories to face the new challenges based on a better understanding of the specific context. We don't need to follow the same administrative rule everywhere to say we are united. The union has more to do with the general perspective and not necessarily with the specific rule.

Second, a cultural mistake. Because in that vote Latin-American and African Adventists were elevating their own culture to universality and pretending that all other cultures should follow theirs. Paradoxically that's precisely what non-Westerns have always criticized about Westerns. But in this case non-Westerns themselves were committing the same mistake.

Third, a hermeneutical mistake. Because Latin-American and African Adventists were so certain that, without any hesitation and doubt, they pretended they were not defending their own culture –but just what the Bible says. Not being able to distinguish between what we say and what the Bible says is the first sign of idolatry and universalization of a culture. 

Adventism can also be Latin-American and African, but it will remain poor if, short-sightedly, Latin-Americans and Africans remain only that.

Hanz Gutierrez is a Peruvian theologian, philosopher and physician. He is Chair of the Systematic Theology Department at the Italian Adventist Theological Faculty of “Villa Aurora” and director of the CECSUR (Cultural Center for Human and Religious Sciences) in Florence, Italy.

Photo Credit: James Bokovoy / North American Division

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I’ve been distracted lately. From some really important realizations.With all the many tweets and articles that came out of San Antonio, with all the reports of the quarrels about voting procedures and mechanisms, qualified leaders and rules of order, better wordings and loaded phrases, and with the discouraged reactions on one side and the ecstatic praises on the other, I’m afraid I’ve been angry and have forgotten five pivotal realities.

Reality #1: We exist in a vast profusion of cultures.
Our worldwide church fully represents this extensive diversity. There’s nothing we can do about it, short of creating thousands of independent, domestic groupings, and even then we’d still be divided locally. 

It shouldn’t surprise us that within these cultures we hold hugely different opinions and perspectives that have been forcefully shaped by the societies in which we live. Nor should we be surprised that we all consider our frames of reference to be more valid and authoritative than anyone else’s viewpoint. Our cultures influence the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the understandings we have for specific words, the “necessities” with which we surround ourselves, the music we prefer, the side of the road we drive on, and certainly our theological and political postures. 

Some of our cultures are hierarchical and authoritarian. Other cultures place a higher value on individualism and democratic equality (even in the way we cast votes). Some cultures prefer an unbroken attachment to their historical heritage (witness the recent U.S. discussion about the Confederate flag). Other segments esteem creativity, innovation, and change. If we live within a culture that speaks definitively of knowing God’s will for all, we will approach people differently than if we live in a more secular society (contrast the differences in Islamic countries and in modern-day Europe). It’s not a matter of one culture being correct and all others being wrong. Diversity is simply a matter of reality.

We always will take differing stances. To expect it to be otherwise, or to be bewildered by the resulting outcomes in an international, male dominated forum, virtually deprived of youthful voices and insights, is to reveal a woeful disconnect with the realities of the world in which we live.

Reality #2: We all interpret.
The days of priestly officials dictating the scope, meaning, and purpose of someone else’s words have receded into obscurity as surely as the hand copied Latin Bibles that once were chained to medieval pulpits. 

Our scriptures now exist in thousands of versions and paraphrases with the precise purpose of helping us understand those passages in words we comprehend. And even when we’re speaking the same language, our understanding is interpreted through our own experience and culture (consider the hundreds of hours spent on the theology of ordination by competent scholars, sincere theologians, and committed Bible students, only to come to widely differing conclusions, along with the discerning awareness that the issue is cultural, not theological). 

Interpretation is a fact of life. We interpret when we choose “better” English words with which to express our fundamental beliefs for all languages and dialects. I may prefer “global” to “worldwide,” or “human” to “man.” You may prefer yet another expression, or feel that less inclusive language is more historical. We interpret what Jesus meant when He gave us an evangelistic commission. We probably differ on how much “good news” is necessary for evangelism actually to qualify as gospel evangelism. My health routine may include items you consider peripheral or even unnecessary. We interpret the original messages of great works of art when we view them in museums. A pianist interprets a 200 year-old piece of music for a performance. 

We don’t have the original sources of the Bible, nor do we have irrevocable cliff notes written by the authors explaining what they meant. We interpret. It’s a reality.

Reality #3: We are selective.
We tend to pick and choose, sort and settle, nominate and elect only those things and people we find to be of the same mind. It doesn’t bode well for inclusivity, but that’s the way we usually operate.

Our sermons broadcast our reliance on selected authorities. Our bibliographies reveal our biases. We quote texts that agree with us and disregard passages that present different perspectives. Ignoring Paul’s counsel to clothe ourselves with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12), and Peter’s guidance to“show proper respect to everyone” (1 Peter 2:17), we applaud pronouncements with which we agree, as if the one speaking were repeating universally held absolute truths, and we hiss and boo even well-respected leaders who rise to support a contrasting perspective. 

We prefer to call this reality “discernment” when we’re the ones doing the selecting, but we call others “critical” and “judgmental” when they contradict us in exercising the same dynamic. We pretend to know people’s intentions when we assign to them the worst of motivations, often declaring that those others are moved by beastly powers or anti-Christ designs. We often favor sensational conspiracy theories from the Internet or the hallways, to well grounded, deeply researched, rational explanations. 

It’s not likely that we all will turn a corner on such unfortunate partialities at the same time, but shouldn’t we at least respectfully question presuppositions, clarify sources, and dispute conclusions that arise from trite stereotypes and overdone clichés?

Reality #4: We are woefully inconsistent.
We don’t always come across as well reasoned or balanced. Even with as many as 28 applications of our faith on the table one should be able to expect a high degree of evenly expressed narration and consistent commentary.

But not so! We prefer to use the words “unity” and “uniformity” only when the “right” word better elucidates the point we want to make. We vote to expunge certain phrases from our doctrine about Ellen White lest anyone accuse us of forming our beliefs from extra-biblical sources, but then we announce from the pulpit that our belief in a recent, 6,000 year-old creation is based on what Ellen White says. We point out the Bible’s recommended capital punishment for people of different sexual identity, but forget to mention that the same penalty is commanded for Sabbath breakers (Numbers 15:32-36) and disobedient children (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). 

What would have happened in San Antonio if all those delegates who signed a pledge to stay Christ-like in all their deliberations and responses had been expelled from the session when they acted otherwise? What if acting Christ-like was more important to us than exact doctrinal wordings and exclusive referendums? What if we called for prayer when we sincerely felt the need for guidance from the Holy Spirit instead of using it as an opportunity to preach our position without interruption, or as continued propaganda for our point of view, or as a pacifier to calm pent-up emotions?

What would happen if instead of being discouraged by what my friend Chris Blake calls “narrow interpretations and cultural proclivities,” we just determined to be more diligent in “the opening of the heart to God as a friend” (Steps to Christ, 93) without expectations or demands, to become more Christ-like, more respectful, and more active in proclaiming the gospel of our salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone? 

Reality #5: The end is near.
It’s beyond speculation; we are closer to the end of time than we were yesterday. But it’s not the Supreme Court of the United States that dictates the nearness. The financial crisis in Greece doesn’t determine our proximity to the Second Coming. The violent actions of ISIS, Boko Haram, and Charleston are not the determinative factors that indicate an impending end. We each are closer to the end because life is tenuous.

Beloved administrator and educator, Pat Habada, went to her rest at 86 after a lifetime of courageous battles. Roy Branson was 77 when he passed away at home. Gerry Chudleigh succumbed to cancer. I had a 58-year-old friend who stepped off a bathroom scale, fell, hit his head, and died. Recently, a woman who had just retired as a local Conference departmental director, slowed to a stop in a traffic jam on a freeway when an oncoming car failed to stop and rammed into her at 65-miles-per-hour, killing her instantly. A little girl, ten years old, died in the hospital after a routine procedure. An infant in a crib just didn’t wake up one morning. Life is fragile. Life expectancy is uncertain. There are no guarantees. The end may happen for any of us at any time, without prophetic fulfillments, or signs of impending change, or warnings of our demise.

As vital as is the Second Coming hope that sustains us while we strive to cope with real life, we dare not substitute our expectation of the eventual rescue from this enemy-held territory for the thrilling assurance that God is with us now and will never leave us as we go into all the world and tell the captivating story of Jesus. 

I am determined to be less distracted. Surely we all have better things to do with our time and money and energy than to travel across the world to get together to argue with each other and vehemently assert our individual interpretations, as if any of us had an absolute lock on understanding God’s will. 

If we could start over again, perhaps we could begin by agreeing “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly” with our God (Micah 6:8). That’s a spiritual reality we must never forget.

Stuart Tyner is a recently-retired pastor from the Southeastern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

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This is the first post in a ten-part series for Spectrum’s 2015 Summer Reading Group. Each post will be drawn from chapters of the book Unclean by Richard Beck. You can view the reading/posting schedule here.

Chapter One of Richard Beck’s Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality is titled “Darwin and Disgust.”  Beck is not referring to Darwin’s theory of natural selection but rather to a simple anthropological observation Darwin makes in his book, Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals.  Our feelings of disgust are often linked with the prospect of eating something toxic or polluted, and people across widely different cultures all show disgust the same way: by wrinkling their noses and raising their upper lips.  Disgust is a biological necessity that protects us from dangerous substances yet it is also a behavior that is culturally conditioned in ways that often make little rational sense from a purely nutritional standpoint.  According to Beck (building on the work of psychologist Paul Rozin), our natural though also frequently arbitrary food aversions represent the most basic or “core” form of disgust.

Beck believes that the phenomenon of “core disgust” illuminates the dynamics of disgust more generally.  What we are dealing with, whether in its innate biological or more elaborate and socially constructed forms, is a “boundary psychology.”  Beyond keeping us from ingesting unhealthy matter, the emotion of disgust serves “to mark and monitor interpersonal boundaries.” “From dawn to dusk, disgust regulates much of our lives: biologically, socially, morally, and religiously.”  Just as we spit out food that we fear may be polluted or contaminated, social disgust is built upon an “expulsive psychology.”  We might think of it as a kind of communal gag reflex aimed at maintaining group purity through various purging, exclusionary, or scapegoating mechanisms.

Beck does not discuss the possibility of necessary social disgust analogous to the protective role played by instinctive food aversions.  Nor does he consider in this brief opening chapter the curious ways in which disgust is often mingled with feelings of fascination and attraction.  Why is it, for example, that we take a strange pleasure from scenes in films (or, for that matter, in Christian art) that include elements of blood and gore, playing on our emotions of disgust?  Instead, he sketches the outlines of a reading of the New Testament in which Christ emerges as at once the victim of, and the victor over, social disgust.

In the Gospel narratives, Beck points out, much of Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees centers upon questions of purity and who should and should not be included, embraced, or welcomed within the community.  Christ repeatedly challenges the exclusionary practices of the religious gatekeepers of his day through his contact with “disgusting” and ritually unclean persons, including lepers, bleeding women, and persons possessed by demons.  Where the guardians of “right” religion seek to safeguard the purity of Israel by rigorously monitoring and regulating the boundaries of who is and who is not a “true” insider and member of the tribe, Christ promiscuously mingles with “sinners,” untouchables, and “polluted” ones of every stripe.  In doing so, he becomes himself polluted in the eyes of the religious authorities, an object of social disgust whose very presence is deemed a dangerous threat to the social body.

Even more provocatively, Beck suggests that the Lord’s Supper systematically “maps” onto many of our biological as well as social “disgust domains”.  At the center of Christian liturgy is the consumption of Christ’s body and blood in the emblems of the bread and wine. The Eucharistic meal is a “gritty” reminder of the earthiness of Christ’s incarnation, and it carries “scandalous, cannibalistic overtones”.  The language and symbols of communion seem almost deliberately aimed at provoking our feelings of disgust, for they confront us with the brutal realities not only of Christ’s death but also of our own mortality, which so much of our individual as well as social nose-wrinkling is a desperate attempt to stave off.  What is more, when we gather round the communion table we are forced to face the dangerous implications of following a Lord of the outcasts who was himself an outcast, despised and scapegoated by his own people.

There is a paradoxical fact of disgust that Beck does not consider in this chapter that seems to me to also be highly significant in Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees: disgust, the Gospels reveal, can itself be disgusting. 
 
In George Orwell’s novel, Burmese Days, the beautiful young Englishwoman Elizabeth Lackersteen is viscerally revolted by nearly everything she encounters in Asia—its food, its customs, its thinking, its dress.  Yet Elizabeth’s judgments on Burma and its “uncivilized” people stands as a damning indictment of her own racism and provincialism, and more broadly of the casual barbarism of British imperialism (which its administrators are incapable of seeing, inured as they are by colonialism’s self-insulating and self-flattering language rules).  We are left disgusted by her disgust.

Similarly, in the New Testament it is the keepers of purity and order—laboring tirelessly and no doubt sincerely to draw their circles of righteousness and purity ever clearer and tighter—who we find truly appalling.  It is they, not Jesus, who are ironically corrupting and destroying Israel from within.  And Christ’s disgust at the Pharisees is unmistakable:

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in…Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves…Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.   So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness…Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!  For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Matthew 23)

Beck’s reflections on Darwin and disgust leave members of the Adventist tradition with an urgent and unsettling question: What does Christ say to us in response to the triumphalist rhetoric and exclusionary logic that has come to define and disfigure so much of our church life?  Can the Adventist story only, inevitably, be a glorious forward march, ever onward and upward?  Or can the Adventist “house” no less than the house of Israel in the end be left desolate by God’s Spirit, abandoned to those gatekeepers who would have us believe that they alone are faithful readers of Scripture and disciples of Jesus?  Can Adventism come to be stamped with the mark of a terrible and even revolting tragedy?

To any outside observer, the sight of a person self-purging is disgusting.  It is disgusting too when an entire community comes to exhibit a kind of institutional and spiritual bulimia, glutting itself with new members while at the same time intentionally vomiting out many of its own children in a manic attempt to make itself more beautiful.  Administrators lament the fact that the church has lost approximately 40% of its members over the past 50 years—and they then proceed with renewed enthusiasm and even seeming relish to ratchet the screws ever tighter on anyone who does not think the “correct” thoughts according to the narrowest rules of biblical interpretation.  Career bureaucrats audaciously announce that this, their tenure in high office, might well be the final chapter in human history, the last General Conference session before the eschaton—apparently imagining that they possess the wisdom of saints and the courage of martyrs to lead God’s vanguard into the millennium.  They are chiefly disgusted by the evolutionists and homosexuals in their midst, and they are determined to make sure the world knows it.  What more does God require of us, after all, than that we purge ourselves of the Other who is the corrupting source of our impurity?

Adventist officials are not disgusted in any visible way by the things that most obviously stirred the righteous anger of the Hebrew prophets and of Jesus: poverty, injustice, oppression, religious hypocrisy, human suffering, abuse of power, and violence.  They were not, and they are not, shaken to their bones by the memory of Seventh-day Adventists hacking their fellow Adventists to death with purging zeal during the Rwandan genocide, pausing to rest on the Sabbath (in what was perhaps the most Adventist country in the world by share of the total population).  There is not, and there cannot be, a post-Rwanda eschatology for Adventists, for the script is already etched in stone and our own capacity for “expulsive psychology” and persecuting violence is no part of it—no matter how many facts of history prove otherwise.

There is much in Adventism that I fear can only be cause for divine disgust.  In candor, though, disgust is not the emotion I feel any longer when I hear reports of the latest pronouncements and power plays of Adventist officialdom.  What I feel above all is growing distance and tedium.  In the eschatological imaginings of Adventist fundamentalists, it is “lukewarm,” “liberal” believers—those lacking in sufficient evangelistic fervor and enthusiasm for what “we have always said”—who are corrupting the Remnant and thwarting Christ’s return.  Yet what is more enervating, more lukewarm, more insipidly Laodicean, than a people that collectively buries its theological talents in sands of nostalgia, imagining that the Master will one day return and praise them for their prudential caution?  Will he say, “Well done, good and faithful servants, you have been repetitive unto the end”?  Or will the Master be appalled and disgusted at those whose highest prophetic imagination is to fantasize decade after decade that they are the Last Generation Heroes of Salvation history—already possessing all of the theological riches they need for the final push to Zion, with everything to teach and nothing to learn from other Christians—when to all the world they are scandalously naked, impoverished, blind, and brutal in their utterly boring conceit?  Does Christ say to us, “Enter into my kingdom”?  Or does he say, “I will spit you out of My mouth”?

Ronald E. Osborn is a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Burma/Myanmar and a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Wellesley College.  He is the author of Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (IVP Academic, 2014) and Anarchy and Apocalypse: Essays on Faith, Violence, and Theodicy (Cascade Books, 2010).

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I came close to leaving the church.  For the past year and a half I have had awakenings that have shaken me to my core, and I have wrestled with questions that felt like I was being pinned down in the ring.  Like any wrestling match, it has been tense.  I have explored to the ends of my strength and where the edges of my faith have been.

It all started with a certain sermon from a certain “big name” within the Adventist denomination.  I missed the sermon altogether because of the busyness of my job as a high school pastor and chaplain.  After many people kept asking me about my thoughts on the sermon, I thought I better hear it, and with the aid of technology, it wasn’t too hard to find.  While watching it, I was more amused than anything.  I didn’t feel challenged at first by it.  But seeds of doubt were planted.  I began to question my calling.  I took my eyes off of my calling, off of Jesus, and began to look at myself. I began to view myself through the critic’s lens that certain people within the church were viewing me from.

Then more conversations surfaced. I found myself in a church for a constituency session – the same church I had grown up in as a child.  I sat there hearing people’s strong resistance against women in ministry, even people who had taught some church school classes when I was growing up…I’ll be honest:  it hurt.  And I felt angry that it hurt because it made me feel weak.  I felt I should be stronger.  So many feelings kept flooding me.  I felt that I had been duped into believing that I was called.  I felt like a kid who had been allowed to cook in the kitchen, only to be later told that my meal I had prepared had been secretly replaced by a more worthy chef.  I felt betrayed.  And I was angry that I felt hurt by this all.  Had I really been this naive?  And then I felt angry for letting it affect me so much – just do your job already!  And I did.  I kept working hard, trying to mask my pain with more work.  But I still felt it.

But then more blows came.  The Internet became a screaming voice of bigoted comments against women – comments cloaked in Bible verses and “righteous” anger towards women in ministry.  It surprised me, really.  I even received an email that used words that cut me down to the core.  And I began to ask myself,  Why am I here again?  Why do I work for this church?  Why am I putting up with this again?

That tension has been there a long time.  To be fair, I have been blown away by the other voices that have risen to the surface in support of me and other women in ministry.  I have been moved by my brothers in ministry who have had my back and who laugh with me about the ridiculous things people have said.  (It’s funny how laughter is a beautiful vehicle for pain and anger).  I even had my administration in the conference I work for personally send me a note stating that I was a valued member of the team.  And the students that I worked for and love so much, I couldn’t leave them.  But I still questioned my call.  I still felt like I was experiencing a death.

And I think I now know what that death has been.  My allegiance to “the church” has died.  Any pull that may have been there for the politics of religion has been slaughtered.  All the “right things to say” to be within the “right circles” has shattered.  The mask of the beast of human religion has been unveiled, and in disgust I want nothing to do with it.

So why am I still here?  Because something else has been surfacing.  And it’s the definition of what church really is. It’s the strengthening of my calling.  I am not here because of “the church.”  I am here because of Jesus the Christ.  I am here because I’ve been created for such a time as this. I am here because I have talents that have been bestowed upon me to make this world a different, better place.  A lot of the things that are happening within churches are wrong, and that’s why I need to stay.  Because if I leave, I am agreeing that I am not called.  If I leave, I am agreeing that the beast of human religion is stronger than the call of the Divine.  If I leave, they won.  If I leave, I am throwing in the towel and the dysfunction that has become the church to so many people will only get stronger.  And so I stay for the sake of the call – to call the church back to its true meaning.

Because, in reality, the church is not defined by what it has been. It is not defined by its location. It is not defined by its statutes.  It’s not defined by the General Conference President.  It’s not defined by Amazing Facts.  It’s not defined by 3ABN. These things can be good, but they do not define church.  The church is not defined by Christian music.  It’s not defined by a political party or a fundamentalist group. The church is not defined by its institutions, conferences and unions.  The church is not defined by the steeple or the tithe intake, or the attendance of people in the pews on the weekends.  The Church is defined by YOU.  It is defined by ME.  Its defined by the calling we’ve been given.  The church is defined by the radical message of Jesus the Christ, who was crucified by religion.  It is defined by radical love – love that is carried in human canisters like you and me.

There is a question I ask myself when I’m in a tough place, whether it’s a place of apathy or a place of indecision, or a place of hardship.  And the question is this:  If this were a movie, and I was the main character, what would I want myself to do in this situation?  And usually I want my character to do the thing that will be most challenging.  If the music was building and in the movie the camera panned in on my character, what would I be rooting for?  I would want her to do what she knows she has been created for.  I would want her to change history.  I would want her to make the hard decisions and then follow through.  For some who have been in my situation, that means to leave.  For others, it means to stay.  For me, that is what I am to do at this point.  And why should I leave – I’ve done nothing wrong. 

There may come a time when I am pushed out because of my calling.  There may come a time when I will be denounced not just because I’m a female, but because of the radical love of Jesus’ gospel.  There may come a time when I will be forced to choose between allegiance to the church or allegiance to Jesus Christ – but in all of these instances, I won’t be leaving the church, because the true church consists of people who’s only allegiance is to Jesus’ love and embodying that love to the world.  There may come a time where the decision will be forced that in order to be the true church we’ll have to “leave” the organized church.  Because I know, in many great characters that have come before, that when we follow Jesus the Christ and live His radical love in this world, be ready for a crucifixion.  But for now, in my story, in my journey, my character is supposed to stay within this setting.

I look at the people who have gone before me and who have faced a lot worse and who still pulled through.  I am awed by their tenacity to keep going, to change history, to reveal the evils of mankind and to lovingly encourage a better alternative.  They have brought light to us on our paths.  They are passing on the baton to others who will continue this race.  Their hands are in full swing, ready to release.  Their leg of the race is over, and they need someone to take up the baton.  If I leave, the baton will drop.

Imagine if the people who started this race had bowed out.  People like: Jesus the Christ.  Stephen, the first martyr. The Waldenses.  The martyrs in all of Christendom. Martin Luther. Ellen White.  St. Francis of Assisi.  Mother Teresa.  Martin Luther King, Jr. These are only a few.  These had the fortitude to not be lured by the politics of religion, but to shine the light on what love is, and how that love can change the world.  What if they had left when the going got tough?  What if they had said “Screw this!” and left for greener pastures?  It is because they kept going that we have an example and definition of what this radical love looks like.  It is because they leaned into the storm that we understand what the true meaning of church should be.  Without their example and sacrifice, we would have no way to measure the difference between religion and love.

I’m not sure what the future holds.  But I do know that this calling is my canvas.  This is my studio.  This is my pulpit.  And that I have been created for such a time as this…and so have you.  Regardless of whether or not I will always “work for the church,” this I know:  I will never leave the church because I am the church, and so are you. We, as humans alive at this time, are the church.  I have been called for such a time as this, and so have you.  As someone once said, “let’s stop complaining about the church we have experienced, and let’s become the church that we and God dream of.”

Krystalynn Martin is chaplain and pastor at Rio Lindo Academy in Northern California. She writes at Awakenings, where this article first appeared. It is shared here by permission.

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In the name of the Genesis creation story delegates to the 2015 General Conference session jabbed a thumb in the eye of Adventist scientists; then the session’s preachers mostly ignored—in effect, dismissed—the meaning of the story.  Despite pious-sounding words inserted into Belief #6—“recent,” for example, against overwhelming evidence to the contrary—the doctrine of creation was an orphan in San Antonio.

Besides that irony there was another, just as alarming: the General Conference theme announced the ultimate victory of Jesus—“Arise! Shine! Jesus is Coming!”—yet the session’s preachers mostly ignored the Jesus story.

If today’s General Conference Adventism (as I will call it) concerns itself at all with discipleship, it is, at most, half-discipleship.  The 12 preachers who spoke in the Alamodome were picked to accentuate the understanding now dominant among top administrators.  Judging from their sermons, General Conference Adventism comes down to two fixations: evangelism and the Second Coming; and each of these, as it turns out, is skewed toward otherworldliness.

The Bible teaches evangelism and Second Coming hope—let’s not forget that—but the Bible teaches other major themes largely ignored in San Antonio.  General Conference Adventism now rests, indeed, on a canon within the canon, a truncated Bible.  It embraces (but in an otherworldly way) the Pentateuch, the books of Daniel and Revelation, the apocalyptic passages in the Gospels and writings of Paul, and material from the letters to Titus and Timothy that can be pressed into the service of male headship.  It leaves out—in San Antonio this was simply glaring—the Hebrew prophets and most of the Gospels and letters of Paul.

There were doubtless small exceptions to what I’ve just said, and there was one major exception, the Tuesday morning sermon by Mathilde Frey, an Andrews University trained Romanian woman.  She spoke from John 14 about Jesus’ promise, for the here and now, of the Holy Spirit.  But except for passing remarks Thursday morning by the remarkable young evangelist, Taj Pacleb, you could not have guessed that the biblical version of mission involves taking care of creation, standing up for justice on earth, struggling for the wide human flourishing the Bible calls shalom or “peace.”  For General Conference Adventism, mission is evangelism and evangelism is (predictive) prophecy concerning the coming replacement of life on earth by life in heaven.  

The Bible exclaims, “How beautiful…are the feet of the messenger…who brings good news.” Further, it bids followers of Jesus to “Go…and make disciples of all nations…” (Isaiah 52:7; Matthew 28:19).  But in both Testaments love of and care for creation—a kind of sacred this-worldliness—belongs to the center of the human experience with God.  The divine covenant, Ezekiel declares in a crucial passage, is a “covenant of peace,” or human flourishing (Ezekiel 34:25f.).  God’s call to faithfulness prompts the prophets to say: “Seek Justice, rescue the oppressed” Isaiah 1:17); work for “the welfare [that is, the peace, or shalom] of the city where I have sent you” (Jeremiah 29:7).  And Jesus puts this very prophetic passion into the heart of the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he declares, “for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).

Is this new?  For all their otherworldliness, some Adventist pioneers joined the struggle against slavery.  One of them, Anson Byington, remarked wittily in an 1850 letter to The Advent Review that you should no more postpone a slave’s freedom until Jesus comes than postpone your “breakfast” until then.¹  But this aspect of pioneer spirituality, evident also in Ellen White, faded.  More recently, Roy Branson re-awakened Adventist seminarians to the vision of the Hebrew prophets at just the point when some of today’s GC leaders, including Ted Wilson, were studying for ministry at Andrews University.  Just a bit later Gottfried Oosterwal, by now himself a fresh voice at the Seminary, was arguing, in his widely read book Mission: Possible, that the church’s work is both rescue from sin and “the fight against disease, hunger, social injustice, and the evil structures of society…” The church’s work, he said, is “never completed just with proclamation.”²

Such views have stayed alive in Adventism, so that just this past year, Australians Nathan Brown and Joanna Darby published a book of essays entitled Do Justice: Our Call to Faithful Living.  But these views have little sway in today’s General Conference Adventism.  What is old and well-attested is largely ignored.  The Adventist Development and Relief Agency stands braced against the tide, but the Agency’s underlying convictions figure hardly at all in General Conference Adventism—not, that is, if you judge from the preaching in San Antonio.

A truncated Bible thus produces a truncated vision of the Christian life.  For many church members—certainly for many younger and highly educated members—this is simply baffling.  How could the actual message of Jesus—so redolent of the Hebrew prophets, so focused on our responsibilities today as well as our hopes for tomorrow—be so lost at a General Conference session?  How could this happen when our community’s signature Bible text (in Revelation 14) calls us to keep “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus”?

I could guess, but I do not know.  What I do know is that today’s General Conference Adventism is simply not the full Gospel.  Grace is both forgiveness and empowerment, and the empowerment enables us, like the once-blind beggar Bartimaeus, to follow Jesus.  If grace heals our anxieties, it also enables our discipleship.  And if discipleship turns ours eyes upon Jesus, it also aligns our hands and feet and voices with his hands and feet and voice.

The current leadership seems too rutted—and too self-satisfied—to catch on.  More than ever, therefore, women and men from other sectors of the church than the General Conference are going to have to step forward and actually define Adventism for today.  The best lay people, pastors and theologians are going to have to overwhelm bureaucratic communication channels by banding together, through websites and social media, for Adventist renewal.  And they are going to have to do this in the name, precisely, of biblical faithfulness and relevance.

All this may seem harsh, or self-righteous.  And it is certainly true that any iteration of the Adventist message will fall short, not least any attempt to fully align Second Coming hope with the sacred this-worldliness implied in the doctrine of Creation.  Here as in in many aspects of lived faith, the effort to communicate bumps up against intractable mystery: God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours.  But the effort must be made.  It is certainly no lapse into arrogance to resist half-discipleship and the truncated Bible on which it is based.

Everywhere the world is strife-torn.  Wherever the world is “modern,” it is doubt-ridden and (paradoxically) self-satisfied, not to mention impatient; it is particularly impatient with mere otherworldliness.  So if, in such a context, we specialize in otherworldliness, we doom evangelism and even pastoral care.  What is worse, we betray the very Gospel, just as we would if we abandoned Second Coming hope. 

Again, our best lay people, pastors and theologians are going to have to overwhelm—out-perform—bureaucratic communication channels if anything is going to be accomplished on this front.  Aligning Bible-based hope with Bible-based this-worldliness is one good starting place for conversation.  Half-discipleship is not what Jesus had in mind.
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1.  Douglas Morgan, Adventism and the American Republic, 28.
2.  Gottfried Oosterwal, Mission: Possible, 70, 71, 77.

Charles Scriven is Board Chair of Adventist Forum, which publishes Spectrum Magazine.

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James Standish, the Editor of the South Pacific Division's official magazine, Adventist Record, has written an apparently throw-caution-to-the-wind, nothing-left-to-lose editorial, provocatively entitled "Thoughts," lamenting what he saw take place at the San Antonio General Conference Session.

The editorial, bookended by a post-apocalyptic, dystopian depiction of the after-the-Adventists Alamodome (complete with Mötley Crüe soundtrack, seriously) and a confession of (tough) love for the Adventist Church, is the closest thing to castigation of the church I've ever seen printed in an official publication. Church papers celebrate, they don't critique. Maybe that's part of the reason Standish's article went viral on social media. He wrote something that many people were probably thinking, but few had the audacity to say out loud. It was almost as if the Adventist Corner of the Internet collectively said, "Wait, you can DO that???"

Standish framed his editorial as a "damn-the-torpedos," potentially career-risking article, and asked his audience for the space to say what he felt needed to be said. Melodrama aside, Standish offered several substantive critiques of the General Conference Session (the numbering 1-7 is mine, not his):

1. San Antonio produced winners and losers."There are men and women who left elated. Their views confirmed. Their anointing recognised. Their faith rejuvenated. And I am very, very glad for them. I wish I was one. I’m not," he wrote.

2. Overinflated, un-audited membership numbers skew the influence of some territories at General Conference Session. "One of the incentives to inflate numbers is that the number of delegates does, in part, turn on membership count. But that isn’t the only problem in the way delegates are selected. Globally, we desperately need a far more transparent, democratic process for selecting delegates. We also need fewer ex officio delegates."

3. Over-reliance on ex officio delegates bars women from being equally represented because...ordination."There is something troubling about a room of almost 2600 delegates debating the role of women in the Church, where only 17 per cent of the delegates are women. The result of the vote, by its nature, ensures that is the way it will likely continue as so many of the ex officio positions are reserved exclusively for the ordained. This produces a self-confirming circularity that is both unwise and unfair."

4. False Distinction between ordained women elders (OK) and ordained women pastors (not OK)."The distinction between the ordination of deacons and elders, and the ordination of pastors, is not biblical; it is administrative."

5. Adventism has drifted from its Radical Reformation roots. "We believe God speaks to all. But we voted to shut down the conscience of others. As a movement, we are drifting very dangerously into the hierarchicalism, formalism and dogmatism that our pioneers explicitly rejected."

6. For not being a credal church, we sure sound credal these days."We have no creed but the Bible. But we spent an inordinate amount of time debating jots and tittles in Fundamental Beliefs."

7. The GC Session cost the Church an estimated $45M (Standish's estimate). For What? "Imagine if we had a far simpler Session, and every five years we spent $45 million on coordinated evangelism in one of the largest cities in the world. Alternatively, imagine us using the $45 million to feed in the range of 25,000 hungry children, every day, for five years. It’s our choice. And I have to wonder what Christ would have us do?"

However one may feel about Standish's points themselves, the fact that he felt at liberty to speak freely as the editor of an official denominational magazine is immensely important. If speech within Adventist publications is limited to praising the church, journalism becomes a big palm frond-waving extraveganza, carried out at the cost of chopping off all the branches where new growth might otherwise emerge. (I am keenly aware of the risk that runs the opposite direction: All critique and no appreciation rots the whole tree from the inside out. Balance is needed.)

A healthy church is a church that permits, listens to, and learns from thoughtful critique like Standish's. Concerns are not the problem. People writing with their concerns is not the problem. A church that will not tolerate people with concerns is problematic. As Standish said, it shuts down the conscience of others. 

Jared Wright is Managing Editor of SpectrumMagazine.org.

Photo Credit: Tor Tjeransen

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The time has come. Every rapidly-growing organization will have to face the question of whether its structure is still befitting of its mission. Churches are no exception to this rule. The Seventh-day Adventist Church has oscillated for several decades between two forms of governance: centralism and/or federalism. As a church historian I have attentively observed that development.

Already at the 1995 Utrecht General Conference Session, Robert Folkenberg played the centralist card when he got voted in as “first officer,” not “primus inter pares” (first among equals). The church had presumably learned lessons from recent controversy over differing views on doctrine and didn’t want to face another Glacier View as happened with Desmond Ford. Robert Folkenberg oversaw a clear shift towards centralism. There was not yet an Adventist pope in sight, only some shady contours. That is why resistance within the General Conference administration was substantial. I still remember the long queue at the microphones. In vain, the motion was voted.

At the same General Conference Session an opposing motion was put forward—the North American Division’s motion to ordain women. Specifically, the motion was to leave it to the divisions to decide the matter, which was voted down. That motion clearly aimed for federalism. So two clearly opposing motions were being put forth at that session.

Every observer could see the problem that had arisen, so the General Conference, over the next few years, initiated several commissions to study this problem. For instance, at the 2004 Year-End Meeting a commission was organized to study steps towards an administrative restructuring of the church. The committee was asked to present its findings only six months later. The church clearly felt a sense of urgency. In autumn 2005 a permanent commission was even initiated. Jan Paulsen’s reason for this group was the rapid growth of the church. As he said: “there must be a better, more effective and efficient way of doing church.”

Against that backdrop we immediately hear a word that rings alarm bells for administrators (the NAD’s motion in 1995 was indeed aiming for self-determination): congregationalism. Why is that term so controversial? Congregationalism connotes deconstruction of an existing structure—in this case the dissolution of a worldwide Adventist Church structure, shifting power and resources towards the local church. That can hardly be a solution for our denomination, but something has to happen, and quickly. San Antonio doesn’t leave us with any other conclusion. We can’t allow theological and ecclesiological concerns to be determined by majority culture.

Our Church Manual lists different forms of church government and decides in favor of a representative form of church constitution. But it is precisely that model of governance that now faces its own limitations. By sheer quantity alone, delegates of certain regions can block any motion just doesn’t suit their theological convictions or cultural habits. Other regions have to acquiesce, even if their cultural environment is different. The vote on the motion to make women’s ordination regional has demonstrated that fact unequivocally.

What can we learn from church history? In Germany we have two dominant churches: the Roman-Catholic and the Lutheran Church. They have completely different forms of governance. The Roman-Catholic church champions a centralistic structure with a pope in Rome, while the Lutheran Church (or better, churches) favor a federalist solution. The different federal churches (Landeskirche) are allied under the roof of the “Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland” (EKD), with a president. The regional churches owe their existence to the influence of Luther himself. He determined the principalities of the different geographical regions to be the administrative heads of the church, since for protestant churches there was no longer a pope. But as the sovereigns lost power, something had to be done. So every regional church has its own structure. Sometimes headed by a bishop (e.g. Berlin-Brandenburg), sometimes a so-called president (e.g. Hessen-Nassau). These regional churches determine many of their practices independently. Their superstructure (EKD) provides the needed unity for public relations.

Both models of church governance have proven reliable. Both churches have millions of members and could serve as an example for us. However, in our case, a decision should be made soon, for the current situation is unsustainable and unbearable. The “representative” model is outdated, because it is not applicable to our church. It served us well in the first phase of our history, but the number of delegates alone gets us into trouble. Where would we find suitable venues to host business sessions for delegates if we don’t want to radically reduce their number? The San Antonio vote on women’s ordination has shown that it is irresponsible to allow one cultural group to enforce its views on another group that holds different cultural norms and convictions on the basis of numbers alone. We haven’t yet seen the damage that has been done by that vote. Today, only days after the vote, I have received the first reports of requests for the removal of membership. These people tell me: “The church of San Antonio is not my church anymore!” And we are not talking about frustrated female pastors.

So what should we do? Could church history help us? What we do not want is another pope, that is clear. The delegate structure has reached its limitations. I would suggest an Adventist version of congregationalist federalism: “Unionism.” Unio = to unite, or more clearer: union = alliance, bond (esp. of states or churches with similar confessions). And that is exactly what is meant. We should aim at building relatively independent regional churches: an Adventist Church in Europe, an Adventist Church in North-America, South-America, Africa etc. This world alliance could replace the now existing General Conference. What competence this world alliance or the regional Churches could or should have, should be left to experts. I just want to insert a practical solution from church history into the overdue discussion.

Now is the time: the “kairos” of Texas provides a real opportunity. Let us not stay deaf to the wake-up-call of history. If we tarry any longer, we will have to face schisms (another lessons from church history). If, for example, the already existing resolutions on women’s ordination in several fields will continue to be implemented (and there is no reason to doubt that that will be the case), then the organizational structure of our church will fail. That is exactly what my model aims to prevent. We have to change our form of organization. And in order to avoid the contentious term congregationalism, I have decided to speak of “unionism.” A continental (regional) church could make intelligent decisions on its own, not only as far as ordination is concerned. Our “Adventist Church in Europe,” for example, could determine its own week-of-prayer-edition, still championing the world-theme, but adapted to our cultural needs. The same applies to quotations and didactical questions of the Sabbath School quarterly.

The last day of business sessions in San Antonio saw just that kind of change to the Church Manual. Divisions were given the possibility to determine questions on their own without having to refer them on to the General Conference. This could be a first step. I appeal to all leaders of divisions and administrations, to initiate a bold structural change. If we don’t succeed in adapting our structure to accommodate healthy growth, we will soon witness qualitative and quantitative erosion. This kind of exodus has already begun in Europe and is beginning to be visible in the United States. The more cultural differences manifest themselves one-sidedly, the more minority groups will shrink in number. It is high time to initiate concrete steps. Whoever wants to keep our church from serious damage has to act—now!

Lothar E. Träder, Ph.D., is a retired pastor, teacher and former rector of Marienhöhe, an Adventist boarding school in Darmstadt, Hesse. He holds a doctorate in church history, and has served the Adventist Church in Germany in a variety of capacities over the past 50 years. Translated from German by Dennis Meier.

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This allegory is in NO way meant to minimize the horrific and complicated experience of people in abusive relationships. After personal experience with physical, sexual and emotional abuse in relationships, something about what I've been living through in the last few weeks is feeling a bit too familiar.

I have an abusive spouse: The Adventist Church. He's charming and influential. People see him as a humanitarian. And while he does so many good things for others, there's another side to him that few will ever see. He's convinced people that he's caring and that he loves me. I feel as if no one would believe me, even if they heard my side. But I'm taking that risk, and hoping you'll at least listen to my experience in this relationship.

He loves me, he tells me quite often. And yet somehow he keeps telling me to shut up, that I'm not meant to be so vocal about my thoughts. He tells me I'm valuable, and yet never values my opinion unless it's the same as his. Sometimes to make me feel heard, he'll ask what I think, but ultimately he makes the choices by himself and I am just to accept them. I can tell when he's not really listening. That's his role after all. He wants what's best for me, but unfortunately he makes it his responsibility to decide what that "best" really is.

He discourages me from talking too much to my neighbors, because I think he's afraid I'll get ideas from the ways that others live or realize the freedom given in other relationships. I know they're not perfect either, but they seem to have some things figured out that he doesn't. I think he's afraid of what they'll think if they really knew what was going on behind closed doors. He reminds me often that we shouldn't be like other couples. Some women are in charge in other families, but that's because they don't follow the natural order of things.

He tells me that I have a very special role in our relationship, though it's not the one I'm actually skilled to do. He reminds me that I have many ways to contribute to our home, but only within the options he has selected for me. I tried to speak out before, and I was accused of trying to undermine him, and sow the seeds of disunity in our family. Maybe I was trying to sow seeds of something. But only because I know that something needs to change.

I'm at my breaking point. I don't know whether to give in to my fight or flight instincts. Can he really change? Will I ever really feel respected in this relationship? Is it naive to think that change is even possible? I know there's love in there somewhere. But if it keeps being expressed the way it is now, I can't keep accepting it.

I've been in abusive relationships before. Thankfully I was able to leave them. I know many others who have not been able to escape.

Maybe this was my last slap in the face.

The author of this article is a woman employed by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

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This is the second post in a ten-part series for Spectrum’s 2015 Summer Reading Group. Each post will be drawn from chapters of the book Uncleanby Richard Beck. You can view the reading/posting schedule here.

We were all scared, the physician told us.  But failure was not an option.  If we did not prove that a hospital could safely and successfully treat an Ebola patient, we knew that the public panic would spiral out of control.

Last year, I attended a seminar by an intensive-care physician who had helped lead the team of nurses, physicians, and other personnel that cared for Dr. Craig Spencer during his battle with Ebola at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.  Through the summer prior to his arrival, the healthcare personnel had drilled endlessly with personal protective equipment for the inevitable arrival of an infected patient.  Several scares with suspected Ebola patients had further tested their preparedness.  But once Dr. Spencer arrived in the isolation unit, there was no longer room for error.  Nurses in Texas had likely become infected through errors using or removing their protective equipment, so the team at Bellevue could not afford to repeat those mistakes.

Despite assurances by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) that Ebola was known to spread only through contact with body fluids of a symptomatic patient, the public and media became hysterical when they learned Dr. Spencer had ridden the subway and gone bowling (even though he had followed CDC guidelines in simply monitoring his temperature daily).  Even the healthcare team experienced discrimination both during and after caring for Dr. Spencer – not only from the general public, but from other workers at the hospital.  Nurses were turned away at hair salons and had to deal with frightened neighbors; many slept in the hospital, refusing to go home for fear of infecting their families.  

My father was supposed to visit me that week, but after watching the news (and despite my assurances that New York was not in danger!), he cancelled his flight.  I was upset because I knew the risk was minimal to none.  Yet I could not blame anyone for being afraid of a disease that is incurable and often lethal.  But why did my father and most of the public act in a way that was at odds with what they knew intellectually?  Why was everyone so disgusted by Dr. Spencer even though he had followed the CDC guidance and had not put people at risk?  How do we think and feel about contagion, and why does it sometimes lead us to act in ways that seem irrational?  

* * *

In Chapter 2 (“Contamination and Contagion”) of Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, Richard Beck outlines the logic of contamination, examines its link to the emotion of disgust, and investigates potential problems that may arise when we apply contamination logic to social, moral, or religious situations.   As described in Chapter 1, disgust is more than just a feeling of distaste.  It is a most fundamentally a “food-aversion system” that monitors the boundary of the body and rejects offending substances, preventing us from ingesting potentially contaminated foods or placing toxic substances in or on our bodies.  It also monitors the environment for sources of contamination and pollution: we feel disgust at the sight or thought of things we deem contaminated such as dead bodies, vomit, or feces.

In the case of Ebola, our reflexive disgust and desire to avoid contact with those substances is appropriate and protective because the virus is in fact spread through contact with contaminated body fluids.  On the other hand, the public hysteria over the fact that Dr. Spencer rode the subway shortly before becoming symptomatic was unfounded because the Ebola virus is transmitted through body fluids, not air or surface contact.

While certainly fear, mistrust, and a lack of knowledge influenced the way the media and public responded to Dr. Spencer’s trek through public transit and to his caretakers, their response aptly illustrates how we think about contamination.  As described by Beck, the four major characteristics of contamination logic are as follows:

(1) Contact: Contagion is spread by any kind of contact.

(2) Dose-insensitivity: Any hint of a pollutant can cause harm, no matter the concentration.

(3) Permanence: Once contaminated, always contaminated.

(4) Negativity dominance: Pollutants are “stronger” and will contaminate a pure object, rather than the pure object purifying the contaminated object.

In the case of Ebola and many infectious diseases, our mental shortcuts (heuristics) about contamination are in some ways a reasonable approximation of how the disease is actually spread.  Ebola virus can be spread by contact with even a small amount of contaminated body fluids (contact contamination and dose-insensitivity), and blood containing the virus will contaminate a sterile glove (negativity dominant).  On the other hand, contamination is not necessarily permanent, as equipment can be sterilized and people who test negative for the virus are not contagious, or dominant: placing a virus-contaminated glove in autoclave, a machine that sterilizes equipment at high temperature and pressure, will render it noncontagious.

What the public reaction to Ebola demonstrates is that our subconscious understanding of contagion does not always match reality.  Our intuitive logic of contamination can be problematic or harmful even when applied to an infectious disease if the generalizations do not match the biological transmission mechanism.  In the case of Ebola, fear, ignorance, and erroneous reasoning led to public panic, discrimination against Dr. Spencer’s healthcare workers, and vilification of a man who had risked his life to treat Ebola patients.

* * *

The Bible uses many metaphors for goodness and evil, including metaphors of purity and contamination.  Yet if our heuristic understanding of contamination for an actual infectious disease can be so wrong, what problems can arise from invoking contamination logic and the accompanying emotion of disgust to situations of religion, faith, sin, and spirituality?

As described in Chapter 2 (and illustrated by the hysteria in New York over Ebola), the emotion of disgust is “governed by a unique set of rules [and] is often immune to reason and rationality.”  Beck describes several core characteristics of disgust: (1) it is a boundary psychology that (as outlined in Chapter 1) monitors the openings and borders of the body to prevent dangerous substances from entering (such as feeling disgust at the thought of placing chewing gum from a subway floor in one’s mouth); (2) it is expulsive, prompting withdrawal, avoidance, rejection, expulsion, or elimination of dangerous or polluted substances (vomiting out the aforementioned gum); (3) it is promiscuous in that during a “sensitive period” in early childhood it can become linked to variety of stimuli that are not necessarily related to food (such as a feeling of disgust at the thought of touching a sweater described as having been worn by Hitler); and (4) it involves magical thinking in that we assess contamination by making “causal judgments that defy the law of physics” (such as that brownies shaped to look like dog feces are contaminated and inedible).  

Beck notes in particular how similar the logic of contamination is to “sympathetic magic,” in which there is assumed to be a “causal connection” between similar objects (such as a voodoo doll and person) that has nothing to do with the laws of physics. For example, in one experiment, people refused to consume brownies shaped like dog feces or lemonade served from an unused and sterilized bedpan. A visual similarity was enough to trigger feelings of disgust.

Furthermore, the emotion of disgust also extends beyond food into the moral sphere.   In a second experiment, people refused to try a sweater described as having been worn by Hitler, and they even expressed discomfort at being in the same room as the sweater.  The experiment suggested that people “tend to think about evil as if it were a virus, a disease, or a contagion.  Evil is an object that can seep out of Hitler, into the sweater, and […] into you.” The problem, Beck notes, is that “When we do this the logic of contamination is imported into the moral discourse and judgment [and] we begin to worry about contact.”  

Beck warns that “although contamination monitoring is at root healthy and adaptive, we should worry when judgements of contamination are extended into the religious, moral, and social domains.”   The problem is that “just about any behavior judged to be sin could activate disgust psychology, subsequently importing contamination logic (e. g., contact fears) into the life of the church.”

* * *

Beck gives multiple examples of the dysfunction that may result from invoking the metaphor of contamination when speaking about sin.  In particular, sexual sins are almost exclusively characterized as violations of purity.  Because contamination logic implies that “once polluted, always polluted,” even a single sexual sin can become “emotionally traumatic due to the judgment that permanent, non-rehabilitative ruin has occurred.”  Because in church discourse, the terms virginity and purity are often used interchangeably, a person’s first experience of intercourse – particularly outside of the socially acceptable context of marriage, but perhaps even within it – is spoken of as a “loss of virginity” and therefore an irrevocable, permanent forfeiture of purity.  Thus, people struggling with past sexual choices may come to “carry an enormous load of guilt, shame, and self-loathing.”  Additionally, the oft-repeated idea that all sins are equal (dose-insensitivity) may perversely discourage attempts to change; if one sin and many are equivalent, and a single sin is enough to irrevocably lose purity, why bother fighting?

He further examines problems may occur when we apply contamination logic to social contact.  For example, the Pharisees criticized Jesus for eating with sinners (contact contamination) because they assumed that contact would contaminate Jesus (negativity dominance).  As Beck notes, this type of thinking is a problem for a missional church because contamination logic suggests that “contact with the world defiles the church”.  He observes, “Given this logic, the only move open to the church is withdrawal and quarantine, separation from the world.  In short, many missional failures are simply the product of the church following the intuitive logic of disgust psychology.”

* * *

Beck does not acknowledge that in some cases, the metaphor of purity/contamination may be appropriate, and I found myself wishing he had explored the reasons why this has become a dominant metaphor in our conversation about spirituality or sexuality.  Nevertheless, his incisive critique of allowing disgust to govern social, religious, or moral interactions speaks directly to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  

The Adventist church claims as its mandate the Great Commission to “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations” (Matthew 28:19)—and yet it encourages its members to attend Adventist schools, live in Adventist communities, socialize with Adventist people, and even work in Adventist institutions.  Even more paradoxically, as it pours time and treasure in striving to evangelize and attract more members, it simultaneously seeks to purge its ranks of those who fail to conform to its list of ideas.  In light of the recent events at the General Conference (including the rewording of the fundamental beliefs specifically to exclude alternate interpretations of marriage or creation), many of us may be wondering why the church—which is supposed to be the body of Christ, a hospital for sinners, and an embodiment of unconditional love on earth—is often instead judgmental and exclusionary.  

Beck argues that a subconscious invocation of disgust psychology and out-of-context application of contamination logic may in part be responsible for why churches cease to be welcoming and hospitable communities.  I would suggest that the Adventist church’s obsession with doctrinal, theological, and personal purity has handicapped its ability to reach out.  

Like the Pharisees, Adventists often isolate themselves from “the world,” fearing that attending secular schools or otherwise contacting “sinners” will result in becoming “worldly.” While this may not be an entirely unfounded worry, it becomes problematic when fear of contact or desire for purity results in a lack of hospitability to or even rejection of visitors or members who do not appear “holy” (or do not seem to becoming “holy” quickly enough). Thus, our attempts at “revival and reformation” can instead result in withdrawal and rejection or “hit-and-run” evangelism rather than long-term community engagement. How can a community that is trying so hard to be holy risk contamination by interacting with the outside world?

Beck suggests that the solution may partially lie in recognizing that “Jesus is… positivity dominant.  A missional church… [follows] Jesus into the world without fears of contamination.” And yet he warns that this is a “deeply counterintuitive position…  The missional church will always be swimming against the tide of disgust psychology, always tempted to separate, withdraw, and quarantine.”  

* * *

What I found most powerful and thought-provoking about Chapter 2 of Unclean was not Beck’s exposition on the problems with applying contamination logic to non-food/non-infection situations, but his exposition on the deep emotional response we have to objects or people we deem contaminated. Most of us know that heuristic thinking can lead us astray and attempt to refrain from stereotyping based on race, gender, or ethnicity. But what Unclean made clear is that the emotion of disgust—triggered by things we deem contaminated using a heuristic and error-prone logic—is largely independent of conscious thought. Things that we know to be perfectly safe (such as brownies in the shape of dog feces) can still trigger disgust. Disgust is a powerful motivator of action, even when we know our actions are irrational.   

What, then, is stronger than the emotion of disgust?  Love.

When we love, we do things we would once have found disgusting: change diapers, touch lepers, or don protective gear and treat vomiting, bleeding Ebola patients. Love was my father, on Christmas Eve, de-clogging a toilet filled with feces and menstrual blood that overflowed onto the bathroom floor.  

Yes, there is truth to the idea that ideas spread socially, and there is wisdom in the advice to avoid bad company. But the problem with invoking contamination logic and disgust psychology is that, in the overarching story of the universe, it is not correct. In fact, the entire message of the gospel overturns the logic of contamination: sin is not permanent, love overcomes hatred, and goodness wins in the end.  Rather than spending the majority of our energy monitoring our social borders, trying to expel heretics and avoid contamination, we need to understand the vision of the New Testament in which tares are allowed to grow with the wheat (Matthew 13:24-30) and Peter is commanded in a vision to break down barriers between Jews and the “unclean” Gentiles (“Do not call anything impure that God has made clean," Acts 10:15, NIV).  When the circumcised Jewish believers criticize him for socializing with Gentiles, he relays his vision about being commanded to “kill and eat” unclean animals and, upon waking, being commanded by the Holy Spirit to visit Cornelius Caesar, a believing Gentile.  He says to his critics, “So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed… who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?” (Acts 11:17, NIV).

I long for the church to view itself not a pure fortress on a hill—composed solely of doctrinally impeccable people defending themselves against the depredations of the sinful outside world – but rather like good family: a place where people know they are loved and feel safe to explore, make mistakes, change their minds, and grow in their imperfect understandings of the world.  The church is not wrong in thinking it has much to offer the world, but it would be wise to take the advice from Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”  People open themselves to listen only after they feel safe, secure, loved, and heard.

If the church truly wants to be a hospital for sinners and not just a club for saints, it needs to realize – like the brave healthcare workers of the Ebola epidemic—that caring for people in need involves contact and sometimes risk: risk of contagion, contamination, or change.  It might involve hearing ideas that are different, ideas that might even change the way we see the world.  It might involve moving to a city and actually getting to know some non-Adventist people.  It might involve some deep introspection as to why we are so very fearful of difference—and whether those fears are well-founded.  It might mean being worrying less about theological purity and behavioral perfection and more about loving mercy, acting justly, and walking humbly with God.

___________________

Karen Ong is a graduate student and physician/scientist-in-training in New York City who attended Adventist schools from kindergarten to college. During her time in New York, she has witnessed one small earthquake, two hurricanes, and preparation for Ebola. She studies mathematical epidemiology and researches the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospitals.

References:

Ortega, R. et al. “Putting On and Removing Personal Protective Equipment.” N Engl J Med 2015; 372:e16.

Spencer, C. “Having and Fighting Ebola — Public Health Lessons from a Clinician Turned Patient.”N Engl J Med 2015; 372:1089-1091.

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/human-transmission.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2805673/Ebola-panic-Brooklyn-Doctor-treated-patients-West-Africa-visited-hip-bowling-hotspot-ONE-DAY-rushed-hospital-103F-fever.html

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/10/06/neighbors-of-ebola-patient-facing-discrimination/

http://mg.co.za/article/2014-08-30-ebola-hysteria-causing-discrimination-against-patients-health-dept/

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Paging through past issues of Spectrum is like removing the contents of a time capsule. Here’s the 1980’s discussion of the Davenport bankruptcy case and its implications for the finances of the church. Here are the stories of discipline voted and then abandoned for the conflicts of interest of many key employees. What should be done? Here are the problems with the publishing industry, a near bankrupt Pacific Press, forced to sell its valuable property and moved to a different location to resolve its problems. To Spectrum editor Roy Branson, these problems of the church meant members “must assume responsibility for transforming recent reversals into occasions for renewal.”

His optimism in the face of disappointment was tied to the significance of worship and apocalyptic literature. In a 1988 article “Trumpet Blasts and Hosannas: A Once and Future Adventism” (1988, Vol. 18, No. 3), he meets disappointment head on.

“Many mistakenly think that the Apocalypse, so important for Adventist identity, merely points Christians to the future, to the second coming of Christ; that it is a detailed history of the future. Actually, the apocalyptic imagination spends more time drawing the heavenly realms-the sanctuary, the emerald throne, the risen and active Lord of thousands times thousands-into the Christians' present experience,” he wrote.

Recounting the cosmic loneliness of disappointment, first of his mother on the death of his father, but also in Adventist history, he calls upon contemporary church members  “to embody the apocalyptic vision: a community whose disappointments are overwhelmed by its experience of the divine; a church empowered by God's presence. The Adventist church is to be a visionary vanguard, revolutionaries of the imagination, propelled into action, shattering the routines of oppression with the shock of the holy.”

It is an invigorating read at times like these. The entire article can be read here: "Trumpet Blasts and Hosanas: A Once and Future Adventism."

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In San Antonio a few weeks ago, Church delegates voted modifications to the wording of Fundamental Belief #6 having to do with the Genesis story of creation. The innocent sounding word "recent" was added, declaring that the creation was recent. While there were other words added that probably deserve attention also, brevity requires that I keep the discussion to this one word. The silence from the Church at large is probably some indication that most members are either supportive or indifferent to this vote, yet for me as someone who would like to see the best interest of the Church advanced, it is difficult to envision how staking out a position that runs directly against an abundance of physical evidence will have a positive outcome for the Church. As we analyze the credibility of changes to this belief, it will be important to keep in mind the “what” and the “how” elements that pertain to all knowing. What do we know? How do we know it? And specifically, how do we know creation was recent?

These are not trite questions as some of the brightest minds on earth spend their lives studying the critical role “process” plays in the acquisition of knowledge. In my use of the word “knowledge” I am referring to understandings that have some correspondence to reality, assuring that the idea will stand the test of time. But it is the process itself that gets us there—the “how” in knowing that is critically important.

Unfortunately, many people today are inclined to push aside attention to process, for we live in a postmodern culture that is focused primarily on the “what.” The trend for many is to not be burdened with the detail, all that is wanted is the end conclusion. This is painfully obvious on talk radio and some of the cable news channels that spout all kinds of things without offering up any supporting data—or tangential at best. As a procedural matter, the “how” must be discussed first if the “what” is to have genuine credibility, otherwise we are left with nothing but more than cheap opinion.

If length were not a consideration it would be worth reviewing the reign of superstition and credulity down through history, as there are lessons to be learned. But as Enlightenment values gained currency, the undeniable power of sense and reason led to a paradigm shift. Central to this shift was the discovery that the world was governed by regularities that could be distilled to laws and principles. The power of this approach is now on full display by way of our modern technological world.

Yet, in spite of this, there are still voices who question the value of the Enlightenment thinking on issues where scriptural interpretations intersect with science. So, let’s spend a few moments reflecting on each of these values, and start by considering the role of the senses in human knowing. Most of the time we take them for granted, and it is not until we lose one or more of them that we discover their real importance. Most of us know people who have lost at least one of their senses—sight, hearing, taste, touch or smell. But what if a person lost all of their senses? What then?

Think about it, if we were to lose all of our five senses at once, we would be completely isolated from the rest of the world. We would have no sensory inputs, no sensor feedback mechanism. It would be the ultimate prison—merely an isolated mind in a sea of seeming nothingness. This, then is the point: whatever the limitations of the senses, they are extremely powerful, and we diminish their importance to our detriment.

Those who give reflection to the quest for knowledge and how it is acquired in any formal sort of way often put religious dogma in the category of mythology. Not infrequently religious people can be quite offended by this designation, and partly this is a function of not fully understanding the definitional usage. In common parlance the term “myth” references an idea or story that is not real. But as more formally used in academic circles, it refers to the tentative. When used in this broader way it becomes easier to see that myths can be profoundly true, but they can also be profoundly off base. Mythology often addresses purpose and meaning, and talks about what is ultimately real without the ability to deliver proof in the same way that empirical knowledge can. This is the reason why ethereal matters should hold a more tentative place in our thinking. It perhaps offers a clue as to why on those occasion when the ethereal has the capacity to be informed by sense data, there is wisdom in paying attention.

Let me provide a pragmatic example of real world problem religion in general faces. Consider the universe of religions that exist in the world today that offers up some explanation of reality. Objectively it would be a daunting task to evaluate all of them, particularly if we want to drill into the “how do we know” aspect of these master narratives. Even if such an inquiry were to be limited to just Christianity, there are still an estimated 40,000 or so permutations. Each offers a view of reality that differs in some respect from the others, with some of these formulations even being mutually exclusive. For this reason alone we know they can’t all be right. But which one is right and how would we know?

This brings us to Adventism. Most readers familiar with Adventist history will be aware that the Church was founded by individuals with a high interest in “right belief.” Adventists, from the beginning, wanted to put together a formulation of reality that had integrity. This involved a lot of study and debate, with the process extending over a period of many decades. During those earlier times “truth” was understood as a dynamic process and was often referred to as “present truth,” meaning, this is how the founders understood things at that time, with it being subject to new evidence affording a more mature and informed understanding at some later date.

But an interesting transformation took place as the community of believers gelled on understandings, the dynamic that started as “present truth” tended to fossilize—both formally and informally—into rigid dogma that was referred to as “the truth.” Colloquial language is now often sprinkled with expressions that suggest the unchanging nature of human understanding of the sacred—expressions such as, “being born into the truth,” “converting to the truth,” “having the truth,” and “sharing the truth.” Such phrasings tend to trivialize what humans know, particularly the ethereal realm of religious dogma, and they also treat doctrine inflexibly. When flexibility of understanding diminishes the less it can be counted as something dynamic.

In reflecting on this trend, it seems to me that perhaps the key to understanding the tendency towards rigid and inflexible beliefs and the diminishment of a dynamic truth is a latent tendency to elevate tradition, with it often acting as the gatekeeper. There is a bit of irony in all of this given the Church’s founders vehement opposition to both creeds and undue reliance upon tradition.

But when tradition is in control, the first level of analysis for a new idea goes to the question of whether it is compatible with the traditional understanding. It often becomes an obstacle in the way of serious analysis, but if a process is to be credible, tradition cannot just be the gatekeeper, it must also be a part of the analysis. In today’s Adventist Church, this does not seem to be happening.

Perhaps the most recent example of this new way of doing business was the Faith and Science Conference last year in St. George, Utah. In an open and honest inquiry it would have been expected that all of the leading scientists within the denomination (including those that have challenged the traditional Adventist interpretation on Genesis) would have been called in to dialogue with the theologians, with no preconceived end-result other than to find a way to elevate the best Adventist understanding of reality regarding Genesis. It is realistic to assume that optimal framing could only have occurred through a dynamic, rather than a closed, process.

By taking a hermeneutically narrow approach, Adventist dogma on Creation has done a number of things: 1) it has elevated an informal belief to a formal status; 2) in the process it has made doctrine in this area less open and flexible (the dynamic has been neutered); 3) it has declared by its action that the human senses contribute nothing of value; 4) by formally adopting this narrow interpretation, the Church now has a Fundamental Belief that is unaccountable to the senses—one of the elements most central to human knowing; 5) finally, it would appear that tradition has been the most important driver in arriving at the word “recent,” it being a stand-in term for the Adventist traditional understanding of Creation having occurred around 6000 years ago. While there are a few apologists for this view who are practicing scientists and perhaps argue that science is misinterpreting the data, it is important to remember that science is not practiced as a partisan sport, nor are the views of individual scientists considered dispositive—as the science disciplines are practiced by peer review. So the burden of proof is on the outliers. The end result is a Fundamental Belief that runs decisively against consensus science, with tradition apparently being the tail that wags the dog.

As a 4th generation Adventist, my own worldview was shaped early by the traditional Adventist interpretation of Genesis that purported to address the age of the earth. Yet we do not live in a vacuum, and we have been forced to confront some very inconvenient facts represented in nature. So much so that one of the Church’s leading scientists from the Geoscience Research Institute is quoted as saying: “We have no working ‘short creation’ [scientific] model and probably shouldn’t expect one.” Left unspoken was the fact that there is a working scientific model that fits a long chronology and it is based on multiple streams of data that are quite consistent.

The historic framework for the Adventist view that Creation was “recent” is quite well known among its members. While the term itself is ambiguous, Adventist history in this regard is not, given the numerous Ellen White citations that this event occurred about 6000 years ago. The point here is this, the word “recent” for Adventists is not a relative term. It is, in fact, quite specific.

If we were to trace this idea back, it appears to have come from Bishop James Ussher, a 16th century Anglican, who developed a biblical chronology that involved stringing the ages of the biblical Patriarchs end-to-end, and from that, deducing that creation occurred around 4004 BCE. This idea gained wide currency in earlier generations and probably partly as a result of it appearing in the margins of most King James Bibles printed up through the end of the nineteenth century. In addressing this methodology the late Siegfried Horn, a well-regarded professor at Andrews University, explained the folly of relying upon such methodologies.¹ The Bible was simply not written to provide humans with an answer to the question of when creation occurred.

Given the Church’s now adopted formal position that is specifically contrary to an overwhelming amount of physical data—and recognizing that the idea of the word “recent” comes directly from the views of Ellen White—likely influenced by Ussher—the elephant in the room must be confronted directly. The question that must be asked today is, "Since the Church is now staking its credibility and relevance in the world to views held by Ellen White 150 years ago, are there any examples of things Ellen White said that are unambiguously falsifiable?" If the answer is “NO” then perhaps we could conclude that the San Antonio update to Fundamental Belief 6 was reasonable. However, if the answer is “YES” then surely there is folly in what happened.

As we contemplate this question I am mindful that whatever the flaws of Ellen White, she was remarkable in many ways, and certainly deserving of respect. So what I am doing here is not so much attempting to diminish her genuine gifts, as to lay out the nature and basis of what has just taken place in San Antonio. The reality is, there are numerous examples of her having made incorrect statements, including some that come with the solemnity of “I was shown...” There is no need to dig up every example of error, as one good example should demonstrate the point I wish to make by the Church now formally positioning Ellen White against the considered wisdom of 21st century science.

Let us reflect, for example, on Ellen White’s statement regarding a conference she had attended where she said: “I was shown the company present at the Conference. Said the angel: ‘some food for worms...some will be alive and remain upon the earth to be translated at the coming of Jesus.’” See Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 1, and p. 131-132. This statement was made in 1856, and it should be obvious by now that no one at that conference is still alive, and therefore the statement turned out to be false.

As we consider the “what do we know” aspect of Fundamental Belief 6, it should be clear that the “how do we know it” part of the equation is critical, given this traditional view is in significant tension with physical data. We now find ourselves living in parallel worlds—one world that attempts to remain true to the fair reading of data, and the other being the world of dogma, literal readings and such. So how do we sort this all out?

For starters, this is a postmodern age. It is the age that primarily concerns itself with the “what” of belief. This is an age that allows Adventist to throw off the shackles of Enlightenment values. “How” questions for postmodernists now appear to be frivolous. Sense-based knowledge has been deemed as unimportant. No longer does God’s book of nature count as a worthwhile part of the equation.

There are a variety of postmodernist definitions, but the common thread, other than the rejection of the Enlightenment values, seems to be the tendency to hold “truth” to be relative to the holder. As Edward O. Wilson states in his book Consilience, for postmodernists, reality “is a state constructed by the mind, not perceived by it.” That’s a pretty important insight and probably bears pondering. As such, process is not terribly important to the postmodern, nor particularly sensory inputs. In such a world there may be a scientific reality, but for the postmodern Adventist, there is now an Adventist reality that doesn’t care much about the scientific reality.

There would seem to be no immediate penalties for postmodern Adventism. But those who now dismiss data will be forced to confront it at some point. First and foremost it will come up in evangelistic outreach because the targetable audience has been narrowed significantly. The present wording of Fundamental Belief 6 will be a red flag for many potential interests. How does the evangelist get around telling potential converts who reads the belief, they must put data aside if they are to make a decision for Jesus? This may not be a problem for other postmodern converts or those who suffer from an information deficit, but it will represent a barrier for the vast majority of those living in the first world. There will also eventually be a rendezvous with history, and from past history, itself, we already have a clue how this all turns out. Furthermore, the term “Adventist scientist” has now become a bit oxymoronic, and a somewhat endangered species.

Regardless of how the average member currently relates to this Fundamental Belief revision, real world data will not be going anywhere, and thus, neither will the controversy. In the meantime, those who know something about the evidentiary lay of the land will surely mourn the hermeneutical indifference shown to the sense realities. Meanwhile, we can hear echoes of “truth can be fair,” and “...we must walk in the increasing light,” and other such statements.² Reflectively, perhaps the biggest tragedies out of San Antonio related to the disrespect shown to the Church’s founding mother in light of her attitude towards truth, but also lost opportunities for turning reachable convert interests into the unreachable.

___________________________
1 Siegfried Horn's article first appeared in the print addition of Spectrum Vol. 10, No. 3, p. 15. It was also reprinted in the Spectrum website series, Bringing the Real World to Genesis, Apr. 30, 2014.

2 See, specifically Counsels to Writers and Editors, beginning the section around p. 33 and forward. Ellen White stated, “We must not look upon new light with suspicion; truth can be fair, but we must not think, "Well, we have all the truth, we understand the main pillars of our faith, and we may rest on this knowledge.""The truth is an advancing truth, and we must walk in the increasing light. When God's people are at ease, and satisfied with their present enlightenment, we may be sure that He will not favor them. It is His will that they should be ever moving forward, to receive the increased and ever-increasing light which is shining for them" (Counsel to Writers and Editors p. 33; 41); "There is no excuse for anyone in taking the position that there is no more truth to be revealed, and that all our expositions of Scripture are without an error. The fact that certain doctrines have been held as truth for many years by our people, is not a proof that our ideas are infallible. Age will not make error into truth, and truth can afford to be fair. No true doctrine will lose anything by close investigation," p. 35.

Jan M. Long, J.D., M.H.A., works for the County of Riverside, California.

General_Conference_Authority.jpg

The obvious answer to the question is yes. But unfortunately this answer does not address the real issues generally being raised when the question is asked. What is at stake in the context of this question is in reality, “What authority does the General Conference rightly and properly possess?”

Proper Authority
In order to place the question in perspective, consider for a moment a foolish comparison: Hard by the west side of the Alamodome in San Antonio, where the meetings of the recent General Conference Session were held, runs Interstate Highway 35. A steady stream of vehicles continued to rush by at the 60 mile per-hour speed limit as posted on that highway.

If the session voted to change that speed limit to 45 miles per hour, it would have no effect on the traffic, given that such an action is not within the jurisdiction of the General Conference. That decision resides with the City of San Antonio and the State of Texas. This may seem to be a ridiculous comparison, but for all its seemingly foolishness, it gets at the heart of the issue by asking what really is within the jurisdiction of the General Conference.

In an attempt to give authority to the application of actions voted by the General Conference, a statement Ellen White made in a private letter in 1875 is frequently quoted, in which she observed, “When the judgment of the General Conference, which is the highest authority that God has upon earth, is exercised, private judgment must not be maintained, but surrendered” (Testimonies for the Church, Volume 3, p. 492).

While this concept has merit, other observations she makes are rarely placed in context with it. In a letter written in 1896, some twenty years later, she stated, “The voice from Battle Creek, which has been regarded as authority in counseling how the work should be done, is no longer the voice of God” (Letter 4, 1896; Manuscript Releases, Volume 17, pp. 185, 186). Two years later she wrote, “It has been some years since I have considered the General Conference as the voice of God” (Letter 77, 1898; Manuscript Releases, Volume 17, p. 216).

As the 1901 General Conference session drew near, she said, “The voice of the conference ought to be the voice of God, but it is not” (Manuscript 37, 1901; Sermons and Talks, p. 159-160). And even after the 1901 reorganization of the General Conference and the establishment of union conferences, her concern continued to the 1903 session as well.

Her resistance to centralization was expressed in her opposition to what she called, “kingly authority,” which she rejected. “It has been a necessity to organize union conferences, that the General Conference shall not exercise dictation over all the separate conferences. The power vested in the Conference is not to be centered in one man, or two men, or six men; there is to be a council of men over the separate divisions. In the work of God no kingly authority is to be exercised by any human being, or by two or three. The representatives of the Conference, as it has been carried with authority for the last twenty years, shall be no longer justified in saying, ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we.’ The men in positions of trust have not been carrying the work wisely” (Manuscript 26, 1903).

Does this mean the General Conference has no authority? Certainly not. But the statement regarding it being the highest authority on earth, used as it often is to impose control over the church, is at best disingenuous, and perhaps, misleading. Even if at times it may be true, this on again, off again coverage is clearly spotty over time, and the question arises as to when and how we determine it to be such an authority.

Authority and Inerrancy
Being an authority does not convey inerrancy. That the General Conference in session can and does err in its judgement and actions is demonstrated by the issues of the 1888 session, which are still debated today over a century later. In addition, some actions taken in subsequent years since that time are certainly not above question. To assume everything voted by the session is the will of God is a mammoth leap of reason, to say nothing of theology. Perhaps, rather than a ringing endorsement of its authority, the comment should be taken as an apology, stating that this institution, with all its human foibles, is the best that we have to work with at any given time.

Assuming that every action taken at the session is the will of God for the world church, what does such a stance say about those who voted against the action? Were those who in good conscience voted in opposition to a given action, thus voting against the will of God? Clearly, many things voted at the session would not fall into the category of the will of God. Such matters as voting to close discussion, or times of meetings, or adjournment would not generally be considered will of God issues.

All this being the obvious case, it then needs to be determined just which things are in the jurisdiction of the General Conference and which are not. Though the list is much longer than given here, yet a few examples will serve to illustrate the point, as delineated in GC Working Policy B 05, point 6.

Different elements of organizational authority and responsibility are distributed among the various levels of denominational organization. For example, the decision as to who may/may not be a member of a local Seventh-day Adventist Church is entrusted to the members of the local church concerned; decision as to employment of local church pastors is entrusted to the local conference/mission; decisions regarding the ordination of ministers are entrusted to the union conference/mission; and the definition of denominational beliefs is entrusted to the General Conference in session. Thus each level of organization exercises a realm of final authority and responsibility that may have implications for other levels of organization.

Authority belongs to each of the four distinct levels of church structure which, as the policy states, is “a realm of final authority.” Thus the General Conference may not act upon issues relating to individual membership. Though in the Roman Catholic system, the Pope may excommunicate individual members, in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, neither the General Conference in session nor any level of church governance, other than the local congregation, may do so. Membership, as well as church officer election, belongs exclusively to the local congregation. And though the congregation as a constituency does not operate under a constitution and by-laws as the other constituent levels do, the Church Manual serves as its template for action.

Likewise, the staffing of pastoral positions, as well as conference level employees, is within the authority of the local conference and may not be countered by other levels of the denominational organization. Further, the structure of the church established in the 1901 and 1903 General Conference sessions, as clearly stated in policy B 05.6, places the authority for the ordination of ministers at the union conference level of church structure. While it is true that the general level does establish the criteria for both membership and ordination, it does not have authority as to who may be accepted as members or who may be employed or ordained, so long as they meet the criteria established.

So firmly are these authorities established as “a realm of final authority and responsibility” that it was deemed necessary to provide an exception in GC Working Policy L 45.4 in order to allow Division and General Conference Committees to authorize their own candidates for ordination through their respective executive committees, sparing them from the requirement to do so through union conference committees to which ordination is assigned. As we often observe, “it is the exception that proves the rule.”

Illustrative of the issues that arise when cross constituency meddling occurs, is the vote of the General Conference several decades ago “authorizing” the ordination of women as local church elders. While it may have been a good idea to encourage churches to do so, there was no cause to “authorize” the practice, since such authority for selecting elders rests with the local congregation and there was no prohibition for selecting women to such a post. How incongruous would it have been to vote to “authorize” the election of women as church clerks, or church treasurers, or Sabbath School superintendents when, likewise, no such prohibition existed for staffing these offices?

Furthermore, the argument for the need to keep the world church together regarding the ordination of women is shown to be without merit, given that GC Working Policy BA 60 10 states in a footnote to point 2, “*The exception clause, and any other statement above, shall not be used to reinterpret the action already taken by the world Church authorizing the ordination of women as local church elders in divisions where executive committees have given their approval.”

All this forces the question, why is it acceptable for the divisions to go their separate ways regarding the ordination of women as local elders, but it is not acceptable for them to do so regarding the ordination of ministers? To say that the one splits the church and the other does not, makes no sense. An additional argument advanced is that ordination to ministry is for the world church. But so is membership and ordination as an elder. Any person who has been accepted into membership is free to join any church worldwide by transfer, and anyone who has been ordained as an elder is eligible to hold such position in any church. This argument also makes no sense.

Fundamental Beliefs
The development of a statement of fundamental beliefs for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, though seemingly necessary, is fraught with difficulties, so much so that the founders of the church resisted the idea with strong statements of the perceived risks inherent in creedalism. The preamble to the Fundamental Beliefs seeks to allay these fears and risks, by saying “Seventh-day Adventists accept the Bible as their only creed and hold certain fundamental beliefs to be the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. These beliefs, as set forth here, constitute the church’s understanding and expression of the teaching of Scripture. Revision of these statements may be expected at a General Conference session when the church is led by the Holy Spirit to a fuller understanding of Bible truth or finds better language in which to express the teachings of God’s Holy Word.”Yet even beyond these caveats is the underlying problem of language itself. Though we are fond of the notion that words have exact meaning and are capable of conveying precise clarity on a given topic or idea, the reality is that people do not share exactly the same meaning of the words they employ in expressing themselves. Differences in culture, education and personal perceptual skills gives credence to the idea that words do not have meaning. Rather people have meaning which they impose on the words they use and hear.

To complicate matters further, the world church is made up of people from multiple nations and languages. Thus any statement of beliefs must be both presented and understood in multiple settings where people not only think different things, they also think the same things differently. Turning Fundamental Beliefs into a creed violates this principle of perception.

In addition to the language and perception problem is the authoritarian drift that such statements inherently possess. Vested in the General Conference level, as the policy indicates, is “the definition of denominational beliefs.” Yet even here we need to ask, are the 28 Fundamental Beliefs tests of membership, tests of fellowship, tests of leadership, or tests of employment? Must one accept all 28 statements (or whatever number there are of them at a given point) in their entirety to join the church? Or can a person be dis-fellowshipped for failure to accept them all?

Is it a requirement that all 28 be agreed to in order to hold office in the church? Or what about employment? Are these a requirement for ministers and teachers, but not necessarily for janitors or cafeteria employees? And can the church employ someone as an attorney, or financial advisor, or a musician, who does not accept all 28? Or for that matter, who may not even be a member? Furthermore, given that membership issues belong to the local church, who will enforce these matters, and how will it be done in a consistent manner?

The 28 beliefs as currently expressed would not have been believed or accepted by many of the early leaders of the church. A prime example of this is the doctrine of the Trinity. Many early Adventists held Arian beliefs regarding the life and ministry of Jesus. And this notion persisted well into the middle of the 1900’s, as demonstrated in the hymnal of the church printed and used during that era.

The well-known hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” which in its original Protestant form contained the verse, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity” was changed to fit the Arian perspective and was sung as, “God over all, who rules eternity.” In the current hymnal, it is returned to its original wording, reflecting the Trinitarian view. Does this mean that those of the Arian notion were not real Adventists? Were they unworthy of membership, or fellowship, or leadership, or employment? And if we overlook that divergence in the past, do we ignore it today?

Further to the point is the divide over the role of Ellen White in the church and the prophetic office. In the early days there were many who did not accept what is generally proffered today as her authority in the church. Not only was she not accepted in parts of Europe early on, but her time in Australia was devised by church leadership, not so much as a mission venture, but as a method of getting her out of North America and away from the General Conference leadership.

As the preamble maintains, the statement of beliefs is changed from time to time, as better understanding and language is used to more clearly convey the church’s shared perception of biblical truth. But by this very concept, the statements are demonstrated to be only an expression of beliefs at a given moment in time, of perceived truth found in Scripture. If the Bible is the only creed, as the preamble states, then we should not be writing into the Fundamental Beliefs wording and expressions that are not in the Bible. In this context, much has been made of the effort to insert into the fundamental beliefs, wording regarding creation that is not in scripture itself. And speculation abounds as to how insistence on this wording will play out in such matters as membership and employment.

Decision Making Process
As clearly demonstrated at the San Antonio General Conference Session, the process being followed to do the business of the church has become nearly non-functional. It does not take much rational thought process to realize that attempting to carry on an open floor discussion with over 2,500 people is not a viable way to do business. The system needs to be changed to reflect reality. A few examples will suffice to illustrate the point.

Given that all changes in the Church Manual require a vote from the session, an editing process was undertaken in which it was discussed at length whether the preposition “in” or “on” should be used in the document under consideration. Multiple speakers with varying linguistic backgrounds and native languages weighed in at length on the issue. Not only was the folly of such a discussion on the floor obvious, but the fact that the document would be translated into multiple languages made it even more absurd to spend the time of the world church on such matters.

Another similar editorial change that had to be voted by the session was the change of name for one of the divisions which was employed to more accurately reflect the territory and people it was serving. But rather than merely making such an obvious editorial adjustment in the text, it had to come to the floor for a vote, where it engendered useless discussion.

Perhaps the most abused process of a session seeking to have open floor discussion among thousands of delegates is the “Point of Order” request. In the San Antonio meeting this abuse was rampant. Whether it was based on ignorance of the rules of order in a democratic process, or an intentional attempt to subvert the process is difficult to assess. However, when speakers at the microphone calling for points of order nearly equal the number of those speaking to the issue before the body, it is clear that the process is broken.

Given that the chair ruled most of such requests as failing to meet the requirements of a point of order, it is evident that a better system needs to be devised. Rather than employing the services of one parliamentarian to advise the chair on process, it would be helpful to provide deputy or assistant parliamentarians on the floor to screen such point of order requests before spurious interruptions to the process consume the time of the business at hand.

Nomination and Election
The work of the Nominating Committee is, in particular, an unrealistic process. The members of this body are constituted by a caucus of the divisions/attached unions soon after the opening of the session. Upon being selected and voted by the session as its Nominating Committee, these individuals, who had no advance knowledge that they would be on the committee, then proceed to elect a chair and secretary from their midst, who likewise have no knowledge or time for preparation for such a responsibility in advance.

This large group of over 100 members, constituted of people from all over the world church, must embark on selecting for nomination, hundreds of individuals to serve not only in General Conference leadership positions, but in the thirteen division territories as well. Few on this committee have a knowledge of either the territories represented by the world church, or their needs and personnel for leadership.

After getting organized, the work of nomination begins, usually by the first Friday morning of the session. The first order of business is the nomination of the General Conference President, which is expected to be delivered to the floor of the session before noon. When presented, its acceptance is generally assumed and the vote called for quickly. This expected short time frame of a few hours on Friday morning of the session is in stark contrast to other nomination and leadership processes and requirements of the church.

The nomination of local church officers and leaders generally occurs over a period of time of a month or two of careful study, and once presented to the church body, the nominations require a first and second reading, separated generally by one week or more. The selection of a new pastor often extends into several months, or even a year of search. Leadership in such positions as principals and presidents of educational institutions generally follow a long and careful search process. In this context, it seems astonishing that we would expect the election of world church leadership to be pressed into a few hours on the first Friday of the General Conference Session.

To further complicate the dilemma of the Nominating Committee, it is tasked not only with providing for the election of General Conference leadership, but division leadership as well, given that divisions are not constituent entities and do not have such authority on their own. Thus members of the committee are expected to staff divisions which the bulk of the committee members know little or nothing about. So the divisions go into caucus and present a list of prospective officers and leaders to the Nominating Committee who basically “rubber stamp” the selections and pass them on to the floor of the session for their “rubber stamp” as well, given that they know even less about the individuals nominated than the members of the committee do. And one has to wonder why this matter is not just left with the divisions to decide on their own at a time and in a setting where much more informed and careful decisions can be made.

Perception and Reality
There is a persistent perception that the General Conference has a policy or vote forbidding the ordination of women to the gospel ministry, but such is not the case. No such action exists, nor has it existed in the history of the church, despite those who say that it does. The most prevalent of this notion of a prohibition is that the actions of the 1990, 1995 and 2015 sessions forbid the ordination of women. Following are the minutes of the actions at these three sessions:

1990 Session in Indianapolis: “The Commission, having listened to the arguments and presentations for and against the ordination of women; having sensed the needs and concerns of the world field; having carefully considered what is probably best and the least disruptive for the world church at this time; and recognizing the importance of our eschatological mission, the witness and image of our spiritual family, and the need for openness and unity in the Church, reports to the 1990 General Conference Session upon the recommendation of the 1989 Annual Council the following result of its deliberation:

1. While the Commission does not have a consensus as to whether or not the scriptures and the writing of Ellen G White explicitly advocate or deny the ordination of women to pastoral ministry, it concludes unanimously that these sources affirm a significant, wide ranging, and continuing ministry for women which is being expressed and will be evidenced in the varied and expanding gifts according to the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

2. Further, in view of the widespread lack of support for the ordination of women to the gospel ministry in the world Church and in view of the possible risk to disunity, dissension, and diversion from the mission of the Church, we do not approve the ordination of women to the gospel ministry.”

1995 Session in Utrecht: “The motion reads as follows: To refer to the General Conference session the North American Division request that the General Conference in session adopt provisions on ordination as outlined below:

The General Conference vests in each division the right to authorize ordination of individuals within its territory in harmony with established policies. In addition, where circumstances do not render it inadvisable, a division may authorize the ordination of qualified individuals without regard to gender. In divisions where the division executive committee takes specific actions approving the ordination of women to the gospel ministry, women may be ordained to serve in those divisions.” [Not voted.]

2015 Session in San Antonio: “The General Conference Executive Committee requests delegates in their sacred responsibility to God at the 2015 General Conference Session to respond to the following question:

After your thorough study of the Bible, the writings of Ellen G White, and the reports of the study commissions on ordination, and;  After your careful consideration of what is best for the Church and the fulfillment of its mission, Is it acceptable for division executive committees, as they may deem it appropriate in their territories, to make provision for the ordination of women to the gospel ministry? Yes or No.”

The action presented in all three of these sessions was to approve the ordination of women. The action failed on all three occasions. When a motion fails, it simply goes away. It does not create the opposite of the intent of the motion. Therefore, the result neither establishes nor forbids the practice of ordaining women in these sessions.

Three factors are significant in this issue. First, the ordination issue does not belong to either the division or the General Conference level. It is assigned by policy to the union conferences. As such, this was not an item that should be on the General Conference agenda without changing the basic structure of the Church. Second, there is not, nor has there been a policy against ordaining women to ministry. Since no such policy exists, there is no valid reason to vote on giving permission. We do not need to authorize that which is not forbidden. Finally, the failure of the vote to authorize such ordination on these three occasions, results in the action simply going away. And it is neither authorized nor forbidden. A motion that fails, results in no action.

It is accurate to say that both precedent and perception regarding such ordination lead to the opinion that it is not allowed. However, neither precedent not perception are policy. Given that these actions do not forbid the ordination of women to ministry, then as stated, the position of the church remains as it was before these actions. The question then is, what is that position? Ordination authority is clearly defined in General Conference policy. Regarding the approval of persons designated for ordination GC Working Policy B 05 states, “decisions regarding the ordination of ministers are entrusted to the union conference…” Regarding such decisions the policy further states, “each level of organization exercises a realm of final authority and responsibility…” Thus, in the selection and authorization of such individuals, the General Conference has no authority over the union conference decisions, so long as these decisions are in harmony with the criteria established for ordination by General Conference policy.

The General Conference Working Policy does establish the criteria for ordination. There are fifteen such criteria listed in GC Working Policy L 50, none of which refer in any way to gender. If, therefore, any individual approved by a union conference meets these fifteen criteria, the General Conference authority has been satisfied. Given that there is no gender reference in these requirements, the union conference is acting within its authority to ordain women as stated in GC Working Policy B 05. Policy exercises governance over both practice and perception. But in the case of gender issues in ordination, there is no policy. However, over a century of practice has created the perception that there is policy on this matter, and one hundred years of practice certainly does establish precedent. But it remains that policy is the issue in ordination, neither practice, precedent nor perception.

The actions of the three GC Sessions are not based on policy, leaving one to wonder what they were based on; practice, precedent, perception, or perhaps prejudice? But unless the General Conference changes its policy and takes away the authorization given in GC Working Policy B 05 to other levels of governance such as the local church regarding membership, or the local conference regarding employment, or the union conference regarding ordination, it is not free to intrude into these areas. Thus its attempt to counter the union authority in the area of ordination is a violation of its own policy.

If the General Conference wishes to address the issue of gender in ordination to ministry, it may do so, but only after changing its policy to a straight forward requirement that ordination is male gender exclusive, forbidding the ordination of females. There is no such policy presently in existence, nor has there been in the history of the church. Practice, precedent, perception and even prejudice do not constitute a policy. Only straight forward, clearly articulated policy governs the issue of gender inclusive ordination

The perception exists that the General Conference cannot violate policy, that whatever it does constitutes policy, but this is not so. The General Conference can violate policy just as well as any other level of the church, if and when it acts contrary to the provisions of policy. Unless and until the General Conference changes the policy by specific vote, any action contrary to that policy is a violation. Thus, the union conferences are not out of policy on this matter of gender inclusiveness in the ordination of ministers. The General Conference itself is out of policy by intruding where it does not have authority.

Correctives
What actions, therefore, need to be taken to address these policy and function disorders? The following is a suggestion of areas that need to be addressed:

1. Divisions should be made constituent levels of organization, and much of the business of the GC Session should be transferred to these levels. As the church nears the twenty million membership level, and as most divisions number over one million members, the leadership and authority for their work should be shifted to their own territory for better efficiency and understanding of needs.

2. Better methods of seeking input on issues should be found, rather than attempting to conduct open floor discussion with over two thousand people. The democratic process can still be accomplished by providing opportunity to vote on issues without open discussion in a time crunched environment.

3. Uniformity of action imposed on all divisions must not be confused with unity of purpose for the church as a whole. Diversity of behavior already exists in the church in such matters as life style, dress, Sabbath activity, polygamy, family relationships and a host of cultural, religious and traditional behaviors. Imposing the traditions and tastes of one area of the church on another, is not a method of securing unity. Rather it is a recipe for disunity, clearly demonstrated by the cheering, booing and hissing which accompanied perceived victories over votes taken at the recent session.

4. The process of hermeneutical interpretation and understanding of scripture is in jeopardy when narrow fundamentalist readings of scripture trump the council of the leading biblical scholars of the church and its seminaries. Picking and choosing parts of scripture to make a point while ignoring other parts – at times even in the same verse – is at best dangerous, and perhaps even dishonest. Such faulty biblical interpretation must stop.

5. Authority in the various constituent levels of the church must be clearly defined and adhered to. No part of the church is without its constituted authority and it must be seen as operating in “a realm of final authority” in its assigned responsibilities as policy states, lest we reverse the structure of the church developed in 1901 under the leadership of Ellen White and return to the “kingly powers” error so strongly opposed at that session.

6. The tendency toward ever expanding and explicit fundamental belief statements, with the potential of leading to creedalism, should be halted or reversed. Jesus summed it up with two simple but profound statements, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself.” The early Christian church summarized requirements in four restrictions, “abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.” We can do better than to continue to build an ever expanding and more tightly defining list of beliefs.

7. Address issues of broad scope for the mission of the church at these sessions, and avoid the minutia of such things as editing and wording of documents. Let such materials that must be processed by the session, be prepared with broad opportunity for input over adequate time frames, and vote them up or down without floor discussion.

8. Do not allow the session to be encumbered by those who, out of ignorance of process or intent to disrupt, or desire to be seen and heard, frustrate the purpose of the agenda and proper procedure.

9. Make it clear that practice, precedent, and perception are not policy. No matter how long an idea may have persisted, it is actual policy that governs the church at all levels. If we do not like the policy, change it. But do not violate it by usurping that which belongs to another constituency.

10. Construct the session program so that its purpose is to cast a large vision for the future of the church, rather than spending time addressing minutia that can be better handled by other levels of the church structure.

Dr. Gary Patterson is a retired field secretary of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. He served as senior pastor of some of the largest congregations in the denomination, a conference president in two conferences and assistant to the president of the North American Division.

This article first appeared in Adventist Today, and will be included in the forthcoming print edition of the Adventist Today magazine. It is re-printed here with permission.