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I was just a teenager when the North American Division, in league with the General Conference, produced a book titled Issues: The Seventh-day Adventist Church and Certain Private Ministries (published in 1992. -Ed.). As I recall, the document condemned, along with other things, the acceptance and use of tithe money by self-supporting ministries in violation of General Conference policy.  

To my family and other friends within the wider self-supporting community, this threatening missive was no better than a papal bull. We considered it to be further confirmation that the denomination was in deep apostasy. At the very least, we suspected there were Jesuits calling the shots at the General Conference. If this wasn’t persecution, it was at least the precursor to persecution, we thought. What would the General Conference do next? Try to disfellowship everyone who worked for or sent tithe money to a self-supporting ministry? Suddenly, the more to fear from within than from without persecution scenarios were coming to life! Yet, we believed we were following our convictions and standing up for the right. The church was in apostasy and did not deserve our tithe. After all, hadn’t Ellen White once sent her tithe money to retired ministers for whom the denomination had failed to properly provide? 

Fast-forward a few years to 1994, the year that I entered Hartland College (one of the proscribed self-supporting institutions) as a first year pastoral evangelism student. Hartland was (and still is, I presume) a very spiritual place. My time there was filled with good memories, wonderful friends, and many spiritual highs. My appreciation for the Bible and the writings of Ellen White was deepened. Granted, there were some imbalances (e.g., some faculty tended to major in minors, and salvation as a gift wasn’t emphasized like it should have been), but it was a spiritual stepping-stone on my journey with God that I do not regret. 

Is an Apostate Church the Voice of God?

During my four years at Hartland, I listened to chapel talks and class lectures and read books in which college faculty emphasized that the church was in apostasy. Speakers at self-supporting convocations around the country preached that the church was in apostasy as long as things like female elders, celebration churches, and false doctrines about the human nature of Christ were condoned by the General Conference. Implicitly and explicitly, the message was that the General Conference was not the voice of God as long as the church continued in this apostate condition.

Therefore, it was taught, the “storehouse” into which to bring our tithe was not primarily the church but rather any self-supporting ministry that was doing the real work of proclaiming the undiluted, historic Three Angel’s Messages. One self-supporting ministry leader argued that not only did independent ministries have the right to receive tithe money, they must take tithe if they were to be obedient to the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy.  

While many self-supporting ministries (like my alma mater, Hartland College) have recently fallen into line with General Conference policy and no longer ostensibly receive or solicit tithe, there is no question that many Adventist church members currently divert their tithe money to independent ministries deemed more worthy than their local conference. (It’s also an open secret that some “supporting” ministries who do not solicit tithe funds may actually receive donations of tithe money – unwittingly, they would argue).  

In the 1990’s, most of the conservative historic Adventists I knew weren’t concerned about following the General Conference as the voice of God. If General Conference policy required them to violate their conscience, they would gladly stand on their interpretation of the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy above any man-made working policy or church manual (and perhaps rightly so, I would argue). Calls for church unity were fine, but unity could only be achieved if it was based on Bible truth, they argued, not on a man-made policy that contradicted what they believed the Bible taught. 

The North American Division and the General Conference responded in kind by publishing their book Issues, and what followed was basically the severing of any working relationship between these “rebellious” institutions and the worldwide church. The result? Self-supporting ministries grew and flourished. Instead of silencing or destroying them, these institutions felt emboldened to do the work of God in the face of opposition and reproach. They were Elijah, maligned and persecuted, fearlessly proclaiming an unpopular message to an apostate church.  

The New Schism

Fast-forward to 2016. Another schism is taking place in Adventism. This time, the divide is not between self-supporting ministries and the organized church but within the denomination itself. Some of the union conferences have chosen to allow the ordination of female pastors. They have done this because their constituency believes that the Bible not only allows for this but that it compels them to recognize the gifting of the Holy Spirit in someone’s life regardless of their gender. They argue that it is a violation of their conscience to do otherwise. Sound familiar? But in this more recent schism, the roles have been reversed. The “conservative” General Conference is accusing the “liberal” union conferences of rebellion against the voice of God. The argument is that since the General Conference voted in session against allowing the divisions to choose whether to permit ordination of female pastors, unions that are ordaining females are rebelling against General Conference policy. Thus, these unions are rebelling against the very voice of God on earth.

However you may choose to reconcile Ellen White’s various statements about the General Conference being God’s voice on earth, one thing that I’ve noticed is that most of us tend to use those statements selectively and as a club to batter those with whom we disagree. When we happen to agree with a General Conference policy, it’s the voice of God. When we disagree, most of us appreciate a little latitude to be free to believe and practice the truth as we see it revealed in God’s word. 

Which brings me to my point: The self-supporting tithe rebellion of the 1990’s should be instructive for conservative Adventists today whose fortunes have been reversed and now find themselves “in power.” They should be cautious to join a bandwagon that seeks to quash a movement of conviction just because it goes counter to their beliefs and, coincidentally, counter to General Conference policy. If they do join the bandwagon, they should at least be honest about whether their concern is really about following General Conference policy (which, by the way also allows for female local church elders and female commissioned pastors) or whether it is simply about using their newly acquired power to quash the convictions of others and advance what they believe is the truth.

If the Bible clearly defined “the storehouse” or told us “thou shalt not ordain women or let them do pastoral ministry,” then by all means, we should take a stand and, if necessary, split the church over these issues. But the Bible doesn't say these things so clearly, so perhaps we should learn from our history and give others a little latitude on issues that God has left to individual conscience. 

Once upon a time, long ago, another movement of conviction challenged the status quo. Those in power moved to quash the movement, but a wise man said the following: “I say to you now, stay away from these men and leave them alone. If this teaching and work is from men, it will come to nothing. If it is from God, you will not be able to stop it. You may even find yourselves fighting against God” (Acts 5:38-39, NLV).

Steve Allred graduated from Hartland College and subsequently "baptized" his heretical bachelor’s degree at Andrews University, where he received a Master of Divinity.  He served as an Adventist pastor for 14 years before recently stepping down to be a stay at home dad and practice law part time.

Image: Hartland Institute (formerly Hartland College) in Rapidan, Virginia and the new North American Division Headquarters in Columbia, Maryland.

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Stories depend for their effect on suspension of disbelief. A story is a conspiracy between storyteller and the audience. The best way of ruining a good story is to insist that it be read as history. You would not do that to the Wizard of Oz or the story of Cinderella, but if you are a biblical literalist, chances are you would do so to the stories of the Bible.

The problem that conservative Bible believers face is that they tend to believe that fiction, by definition, cannot be canonical unless it be prefaced by a “this is a story” disclaimer. You can, with great pleasure, read your way through the magic wardrobe and sit down to tea with a faun, but only in Narnia, not in Genesis. In the Garden of Eden, the fauns are real, and God spends his evenings there on foot enjoying the breeze at the end of yet another blistering hot day in the Middle East.

By insisting that Genesis be read as literal history, its stories are ruined—just like the Chronicles of Narnia would be should Lewis enthusiasts begin building replicas of the famous wardrobe and post pictures of the “actual” children evacuated to the estate in question during the Blitz and insist that they really did pass through the winter coats into the land of Aslan and the White Witch. Not only would it ruin the story, it would marinate it in merriment and ridicule.

The same goes for the stories of the Bible. Skeptics like myself are not offended by those who believe that there is indeed a God and that God created the world. Nor are we offended by a talking serpent or Noah’s Ark or the story of warfare in Heaven. We get the fact that stories play—and have played--- an enormous role in human history. But we find it very difficult to be patient with those who insist that stories be parsed scientifically simply because they are found in religiously authoritative scriptures.

The logical problems of reading Noah’s Flood as an historical account from 2400 BCE of how a huge crate containing millions of species of living beings bobbed on the waves of a cataclysmic flood for 12 months are well known and need not be repeated here. But those who insist on its historical truth exact an intellectual tax on the audience that few people today are willing to pay. The same goes for the idea that the illustrious tower builders of Babel were so advanced that God worried that the structure might break through the firmament and invade Heaven itself. In Narnia the tower would have made sense, a symbol of human hubris, but to outsiders in the land of fundamentalism, it comes across as an attempt at validating the worldview of Jack and the Beanstalk.

And I might add to the sins of these literary iconoclasts the shooting down of the Great Controversy story, so cherished by Jews and Christians in ages past. By turning this mythological story into history, you end you up with a logical tangle—and a theological—monstrosity, a ludicrous account of angels so infernally dumb as to think that they could rid the universe of its creator and plot against the very being that sustained their every breath. In the SDA world, where the story, as embellished by Ellen G. White, is put forward as an explanation of theodicy for why God does not interfere in the affairs of humans, you are supposed to believe that the angels and other inhabitants of the universe who chose not to take part in the putsch against the Almighty still are so morally and intellectually obtuse that after thousands of years in the cosmic bleachers they are not convinced that God is good and that Satan is evil. As a result, God—out of concern for his moral credibility---has to leave humanity marinated in suffering for maybe another eternity in the hope that the culpably dumb come to realize what humans have no problem grasping. Suffering is, of course, an enormous problem to come to terms with for those who believe that God is both Almighty and good, but surely there are better ways of advocating for his inactivity than reading this story literally.

For that is the strange thing: literalists are selective about which stories are to be read as history and which ones are be left alone to serve as inspiration and metaphor. Behemoth and Leviathan are left to their mythological fortunes, as are the Nephilim of Genesis 6 and the angels in chains awaiting the day of judgment (2 Peter and Jude). And might I add, all the dead people who tumbled out of their graves at the resurrection of Jesus in Matthew 27 and who were never heard from again, in spite of their enormous potential as witness for the validity of the new faith.

There are real stumbling blocks to faith as Paul explained in his first letter to the Corinthians. It would be a good idea to focus on them—if cognitive faith must be a priority--rather than insisting that every wardrobe in the Bible was made out of wood and lined with winter coats.

Set the stories free.

Aage Rendalen is a retired foreign language teacher who has served the Richmond Public School system in Virginia and is a frequent participant in conversations on SpectrumMagazine.org.

Image: The Downfall of Adam and Eve and their Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo Buonarroti. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

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Equality is firmly established as part of the Fundamental Beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. “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” (Belief #14).

Building further on this position of equality, General Conference Policy opposes discrimination stating, “The church rejects any system or philosophy which discriminates against anyone on the basis of race, color, or gender. The Church bases its positions on principles clearly enunciated in the Bible, the writings of Ellen G White, and the official pronouncements of the General Conference” (BA 60 05). Not only is this position firmly stated here, but it is represented as being supported by both scripture and Ellen White, leaving little room for argument.

This strong position is continued in the following section, BA 60 10, which addresses specifically employment issues. “The world Church supports nondiscrimination in employment practices and policies and upholds the principle that both men and women, without regard to race and color, shall be given full and equal opportunity within the Church to develop the knowledge and skills needed for the building up of the Church.”

Up to this point, the position holds together. But the next sentence undermines and contradicts the stance that both Fundamental Belief #14 and the preceding portion of policy BA 60 has clearly made and authoritatively supported. It states, “Positions of service and responsibility (except those requiring ordination to the gospel ministry*) on all levels of church activity shall be open to all on the basis of the individual’s qualifications.”

This statement has been represented at times as prohibiting the ordination of women to the gospel ministry. However, it is not a policy forbidding such ordination. Rather it is a policy granting permission to exercise discrimination against certain classes of people. It is significant to note that the policy does not state which among the three listed groups – gender, race and color – may fall into this exception of allowable discrimination. Therefore, it could conceivably be equally applied to any of the three categories, wherever such discrimination is being practiced.

The underlying premise of this policy is one of granting permission to discriminate where such a practice exists, and thus it establishes that such a practice actually is discriminatory. As such, the onus is on those who practice discrimination, not on those who do not. This then leaves those who do not practice discrimination free to proceed in harmony with the policy of openness in employment as it reads. One can only imagine the uproar that would ensue if this permission to discriminate were applied to the categories of “race and color” listed in the policy. Yet it leaves open the permission to follow such an application.

The asterisk in policy BA 60 10 leads to a footnote which further demonstrates its contradictory nature. “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 the division executive committees have given their approval.” The prohibition of ordaining women to ministry, in contrast to the approval and defense of ordaining them as elders, makes neither biblical nor logical sense. Rather, it makes the church look foolish and inconsistent at best, or outright, intentionally discriminatory.

Making such distinctions between the ordination of elders and ministers has no biblical or early church basis.  What the church today has come to recognize as “ordination” in the context of ministry, does not occur in scripture at all. Actually, the English word “ordain” is a Latin loanword which derives its meaning from practices of the church of the middle ages, long after the writing of Scripture.

How We Got Here

So how did we get to these confused and contradicting positions? For over a century, ordination policy in the Seventh-day Adventist Church remained mostly constant. Ministerial functions, such as baptisms, marriages, etc. were by policy to be performed only by Ordained Ministers who held such credentials. (GC Session Minutes, 1879). Licensed Ministers were excluded from administering such functions during the period of service prior to their ordination, which in general lasted about four years.

Without much question, this policy was accepted as being biblically and theologically founded. However, there is no such support for this stance. Rather, this stance was mostly a carry-over from the traditions of the Protestant churches from which the early Adventist believers had come. Furthermore, the ordination practice of these churches derived largely from the clergy practices of the Roman Church of the middle ages.

Then in the early 1980’s, personal income tax as levied by the Internal Revenue Service of the United States forced the General Conference to address the distinction between these two differing categories of licensed and ordained ministerial service. Traditionally, the IRS placed ministers in the “Self Employed” category which provided a tax status known as the “Parsonage Allowance.” Ruling that unless one is performing essentially all the functions of ministry, they are not eligible to qualify for this provision, and were to be classed as employees, thus placing ordination policy in a quandary.

The tax matter has often been represented as a break for pastors. However, the supposed benefit was largely reversed by the self-employed classification which required the individual to pay full Social Security taxes with no matching funds from the employer. Thus, the motivation to address the matter was not so much a favor to the licensed minister, as it was to the institution as employer, who would have been be required to pay half of the of SS tax for those not qualified as fully ministers.

It was in the early 1980’s when this issue began to be discussed and brought to the Annual Council. It was recommended that policy be changed to allow licensed ministers to administer baptisms and marriages prior to their ordination, which would satisfy the IRS requirement regarding performance of ministerial functions. As the matter was being considered, Neil Wilson presented the idea that there was great need to open such functions to all pastors in order to make these services available in areas where licensed ministers were working alone, without the assistance of ordained personnel nearby to help.

This appeared to be a rather flimsy excuse designed to resolve the tax issue, and I spoke to the matter saying that is seemed as though we were changing our theology of ordination – if indeed we had such a thing – in order to satisfy the IRS. This observation was not received with much favor, and the supposed need for pastoral services was repeated as being the issue.

The recommendation was voted, and following the vote, a leader of one of the divisions in Africa asked if this action applied to Licensed Ministers in his territory as well, where often pastors had as many as fifteen or twenty churches spread over significant distance traveled by foot. In answer, it was firmly stated that the action applied only in the United States, and not in other portions of the world field. I rose to speak again and said, “Thanks for making my point. It clearly is the IRS dictating our ordination policy.”

What this demonstrates is that the limitations regarding who may perform the functions and ordinances of the church, which we had assumed and accepted for decades, did not have a theological or biblical base. We did not have a theology of ordination which, given that it is not a biblical matter, was a reality. It is interesting, then, given the squishiness of our ordination policy, that the matter of the ordination of women would shortly become such a divisive issue.

What to Do With Women

It was about this same time that the ordination of women to ministry was beginning to significantly rise in discussion. Commission after commission, and study after study indicated that it was neither a biblical nor theological matter. In addition, more and more women were preparing for and entering pastoral ministry. At the 1985 General Conference Session, Neil Wilson observed, “It became a little bit difficult to justify the difference between the credentials given to young women and those given to young men, all things being equal. This was a rather difficult and embarrassing situation for the church.” (July 5, 1985).

Five years passed while this discrepancy regarding credentials continued to be discussed. Then the action of the 1990 GC Session addressing the role of women in ministry stated, there was not “a consensus as to whether or not the scriptures and the writings of Ellen G White explicitly advocate or deny the ordination of women to pastoral ministry,” but it went on to say that “significant, wide ranging and continuing ministry for women is being expressed and will be evident in the varied and expanding gifts according to the infilling of the Holy Spirit.” (July 11, 1990).

It was in this context that the matter was addressed, devising a new credential called “Commissioned Minister”. All this created a debate over what commissioned ministers are authorized to do in their ministerial functions. Again, the matter of the IRS and the Federal Government played into the issue. If women did not perform in substantially all the functions of ministry and receive the same pay for their service, we would be back in the same dilemma of tax matters as with licensed, but unordained ministers.

This category allowed for basically the same ministerial functions, but played a word game by making a distinction between “ordaining” and “commissioning” ministers, the former credential being for men and the latter for women. Yet allowing women to serve in exactly the same manner as men, while being given different credentials, was obviously nonsense. Thus, two functions of ordained ministers were restricted for commissioned ministers, the organizing of churches and the ordaining of church officers. This seemed to mollify some who objected to the ordination of women, while satisfying the IRS.

Ordination Authority Assignment

Yet all this still does not address the matter of the authority in deciding who may be ordained as defined in General Conference policy. Regarding the approval of persons designated for ordination, 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 decisions as long as these decisions are in harmony with the criteria established for ordination by General Conference policy.

There are fifteen such criteria listed in policy L 50, none of which refer in any way to gender. If, therefore, any individual approved by the union meets these criteria, the General Conference authority has been satisfied. Given that there is no gender reference in these fifteen requirements, the union is acting within its authority as stated in policy B 05. Policy exercises the ultimate governance over practice, and 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, not practice, precedent nor perception.

The point here is that these actions over time are not policy, nor were they formed on what is the stated basis of policy. Unless the policy is changed, no other segment of the church institution has authority over such choices regardless of practice, precedent or perception. Thus, any attempt to counter the union authority in the area of ordination is a violation of established policy.

If the General Conference wishes to address the issue of gender in ordination to ministry, it may do so, but only by changing its policy to a straightforward 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 straightforward, clearly articulated policy governs the issue of gender inclusive ordination.

There is a perception existing 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 it acts contrary to the provisions of policy. Unless and until the General Conference changes policy by vote, which it has not done, any action contrary to policy is a violation. Thus, the unions are not out of policy on this matter of gender inclusiveness in the ordination of ministers, the General Conference itself is out of policy.

The Unity Argument

A cornerstone of the argument against the ordination of women has been the requirement for the entire world field to stay together in unity in the matter of ordination, but policy itself demonstrates that this premise is a fallacy based on two seemingly unrelated matters.

The first is the ordination of women as local church elders. In the 1970’s, several leading churches in North America began the practice of electing and ordaining women to serve as elders. There was no policy preventing such choices, however precedent and practice during the preceding century of the church caused some consternation over the idea of women being ordained for such service. While it may have been a good idea for the General Conference to give counsel regarding this matter, it is an invasion into the territory of local church authority to officially grant permission for churches to do what was already in its purview.

Suppose it was proposed that the General Conference take an action to allow women to serve as church treasurer, or church clerk, or Sabbath School teacher, or director of the children’s Sabbath School Division. Such suggestions would likely be dismissed as irrelevant, given that there is no policy prohibiting such an appointment. Likewise, the granting of permission to ordain women as elders was an unneeded invasion of church authority.

Further, in the context of this action, divisions resistant to implementing this idea were granted a variance, allowing them to ignore the policy if they so chose. Thus, the notion of divisions needing to stay together in actions regarding the ordination of women is shown to be irrelevant. When this argument for unity is used to prevent variance regarding ordination to ministry, but is ignored for those who do not wish to ordain women as elders, the inconsistency is obvious. Likewise, the argument regarding ordination to ministry for the world church is also spurious, in that ordination as an elder is also for the world church. One ordained as either an elder or minister is eligible to serve in any church world-wide, where they are invited or assigned to do so, on the basis of the prior ordination.

Demonstrating this inconsistency, as previously noted, is the footnote to policy BA 60 10. “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 the division executive committees have given their approval.” It is distinctly stated here that divisions may go their separate ways on this issue, destroying any argument that they must all stay together on ordination matters.

The second is the opening of the performance of ministerial functions to Licensed Ministers. As noted above, this change in long standing policy and procedure was dictated by the IRS. But again it is clear that this change is addressed differently in the divisions. As Wilson stated when the action was taken, it only applied to the United States. Since that time, the application has been extended, but in limited fashion.

Policy L 25 05 states, “The authority for extending this responsibility belongs to the division committee which shall clearly outline for its territory the ministerial functions which may be delegated to licensed ministers….” Curiously, this provision has been applied in North America for over thirty years where broad coverage of Ordained Ministers is available, but the policy goes on to say that divisions should take into account, “The needs of the fields in its territory, taking into consideration the distribution of membership, the number of churches and the ministerial help available.”

Conclusion

It stands to reason then, that if ordination policy is subject to variation from time to time, as well as from division to division, and if such matters as territory and governmental requirements make possible a different application of these policies in different locations, then insisting on uniformity in the matter of ordination of women to ministry is invalid. The argument of unity fails to apply in the light of actual denominational decisions and policies. Furthermore, while it is valid for the church as an institution to establish criteria for its operation, it must be remembered that such actions are decisions of the institutional church, not biblical mandates.

Regarding institutional policies on the performance of ministerial functions, these decisions are not designated in scripture. The administering of baptism is not a function of deacons in GC Policy, yet in scripture Philip, a deacon, baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch. Likewise, Apollos, of whom there is scant reference in the New Testament, is recorded as baptizing members of the church in Corinth. In addition, the celebration of the communion service is in no way restricted to ordained personnel as it is GC Policy. Such requirements are not biblical.

The words of Wilson at the 1985 General Conference Session remain unfortunately true yet today. “It became a little bit difficult to justify the difference between the credentials given to young women and those given to young men, all things being equal. This was a rather difficult and embarrassing situation for the church.” Sadly, rather than correcting and alleviating that injustice and embarrassment over discrimination, church policy went on not only to permit, but even to codify it.

The words of policy thus explicitly and embarrassingly establish that discriminatory behavior is acceptable. Justifying such bigotry and prejudice in the name of sacred services would seem to be the wildest of conundrums.

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.

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Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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Denominational managers at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists have proposed a process of “endorsement” for higher education religion teachers. The process would be executed by Boards of Ministerial and Theological Education at the division level, all of which would be overseen by the International Board of Ministerial and Theological Education (IBMTE), a General Conference entity. Conceived as an endeavor to assure the integrity of the mission and message of the church, the process would actually be a stunning betrayal of Adventist identity.

As presently described in the IBMTE Manual, religion teachers would be required to submit in writing a willingness “to be supportive of and work within” the guidelines articulated in five denominational statements as follows:   1) “28 Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists,” 2) “Pastoral Ethics,” 3) “Code of Ethics for Seventh-day Adventist Educators,” 4) “Academic and Theological Freedom and Accountability,” and 5) “Methods of Bible Study.” Together these documents compose 35 pages of text. In addition, teachers would be required to submit copies of all of their publications for review, presumably to insure that they contain nothing that would constitute evidence that they could not support and work within the statements’ guidelines.

On September 16, 2016 the Presidents of Adventist Colleges and Universities in North America, in an unprecedented act, unanimously voted a statement saying they are “fundamentally unable to support the proposed IBMTE endorsement process.” The resolution is accompanied with two pages of reasons for this inability. The resolution also notes that the North American Division Association of Adventist Academic Administrators, the North American Division Ministerial Association and the North American Division administration do not support the process.

In October, the IBMTE Board met and made some changes to the process, such as having the process start at the academic institutions rather than at the IBMTE.

All of that notwithstanding, at the subsequent meeting of the General Conference Higher Education Cabinet, the presidents of Adventist colleges and universities in North America agreed to develop an alternative process. However, that alternative process is to be governed by the IBMTE even though it will, as suggested, commence at the level of each academic institution under the administration of its dean.

Finally, at the recent gathering of Adventist religion teachers in San Antonio, the chairs of religion departments attending the meeting expressed their own dissatisfaction with the proposed process and agreed to seek a conversation with church officials to address the concerns held by religion faculty at their various institutions.

As may be noted from this necessarily cursory recital of developments, most objections to the proposal have to do with the process. They pass over in silence the content of the documents that would be central to that process. Moreover the situation is fluid at the time of this writing. The alternative process devised for North America may render the content of the five Statements irrelevant to the actual procedures followed in granting denominational endorsement. If that turns out to be the solution to what is generally considered a serious problem facing the church and its religion scholars, integrity would be better served by simply abandoning the proposal to “endorse” faculty. It should not escape notice that being hired and continued in employment as a teacher of religion is an act of institutional endorsement on behalf of the denomination.

Focusing on the process—who does what, where and under what authority—seems to be obscuring the fact that the content of the documents that will establish faculty legitimacy is the much more important dimension of the proposed process. One may be able to appreciate that by noting the existence of two differing organizations of Adventist religion teachers. The organizations arose out of differences regarding “Methods of Bible Study.” Those differences were deemed to be irreconcilable and hence the emergence of the Adventist Theological Society. They are more pronounced today than they were when the Adventist Theological Society split from the majority body of Adventist religion teachers now known as the Adventist Society for Religious Studies. The two societies are about equal in membership today.

When careful attention is given to the IBMTE Manual and the five “Statements” teachers must support and abide by in their classrooms, their malignant defects are unmistakable.

1. The statements are self-contradictory

At the very outset of the 28 Fundamental Beliefs, the well-worn assertion that the Bible is “our only creed” appears and is immediately contradicted by the adumbration of the 28 Beliefs. If the Bible were our only creed it would be unnecessary to compose a creed to assure the correct understanding of our only creed.

The Preamble to “Methods of Bible Study” declares, “In recent decades the most prominent method in biblical studies has been known as the historical-critical method….Even a modified use of this method that retains the principle of criticism which subordinates the Bible to human reason is unacceptable to Adventists….In contrast with the historical-critical method and presuppositions, we believe it to be helpful to set forth principles of Bible study that are consistent with the teachings of the Scriptures themselves…”

Subsequently in a clear case that “subordinates the Bible to human reason” the statement instructs its readers that, “…in order not to misconstrue certain kinds of statements, it is important to recognize that they were addressed to peoples of Eastern cultures and expressed in their thought patterns.” One such expression that must not be misconstrued is found in Exodus 9:12 which reveals that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart. That biblical statement finds endorsement by Paul in Romans 9.  

But “Methods of Bible Study” knows better. The statement asserts, “…the inspired writers of the Scriptures commonly credit God with doing actively that which in Western thought we would say He permits or does not prevent from happening, for example, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.” So Western thought controls what Moses and Paul actually meant, since they said something the Westerners composing “Methods of Bible Study” do not now wish to say. Clearly, even modified use of the historical-critical method is “unacceptable to Adventists”—unless using it authorizes desirable divergence from plain Scriptural declarations.

2. The Ecclesiastical Authoritarianism of the Statements is Utterly Alien to the Soul of Adventism.

The most remarkable assertion of the five Statements is to be found in the one concerning “Academic and Theological Freedom and Accountability.” That assertion is, not coincidentally, reflective of the freedom the authors of these documents exhibit in their dictation of what Moses and Paul actually meant (but did not say) regarding God’s actions upon Pharaoh.

Under the heading “The Church and Its Institutions” the reader is informed, “…it is consistent with Adventist administrative practice to recognize the worker’s privilege to study the Bible for himself ...” No Adventist religion teacher, indeed no Adventist at all, can fail to be thoroughly shocked to learn that study of the Bible for herself is a privilege established by Adventist administrative practice.  

The authoritarianism permeating the five documents reaches its apogee in the claim that, “Freedom for the individual Christian grows out of his belonging to the community of Christ…One person may stimulate the community to study a question, but only God’s people and church as a whole can decide what is or is not true in the light of Scripture. No member or worker can ever serve as an infallible interpreter for anyone else” (emphasis mine).

The International Board of Ministerial and Theological Education is a late comer to the doctrine that Biblical truth is what the church says Biblical truth is. Must we conclude that Rome has reclaimed another one of her separated Protestant brethren? Moreover, not only is this ecclesiastical authoritarianism alien to the soul of Adventism, a soul that claims the mantle of Martin Luther who, with his individual interpretation of Scripture, defied his church as a whole, it is also burdened with vagueness. Indeed the entire collection of documents suffers from ineradicable vagueness.

3. Ineradicable vagueness afflicts the statements. 

While one cannot doubt that the court theologians drafting these statements assumed that “God’s people and church as a whole” is the Seventh-day Adventist Church, it is fair and necessary to ask just how this people and church are expected to exercise their magisterial power over biblical teaching. The document obviously needs greater elaboration.

As is well known to readers of this website, considerable energy and political maneuvering went in to modification of #6 (Creation) of the 28 Fundamental Beliefs voted at the last General Conference Session. The promoters of those modifications might be rather startled if they were to discover that a moderately clever and modestly informed seminarian could easily and honestly affirm the conceits of that reformulated statement while at the same time affirming the general contours of the standard account of natural history. Here too vagueness impairs content.

Consider belief #4 regarding the Son of God. That the vagueness afflicting every creed afflicts this creed as well may be illustrated by a conversation I had during the closing moments of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature.

Two Adventist religion teachers and I re-enacted (roughly speaking) the ancient conversation regarding the identity of Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, native of Bethlehem. Our exchange of ideas lasted less than ten minutes and more extensive engagement might have resolved our differences, although those differences appeared very early in the history of the church and have their committed representatives to this day.

I asserted that Jesus of Nazareth is the creator and redeemer of the world. I invoked John 1:1, 14 in support of my claim. I was immediately challenged on two fronts. The New Testament exegete declared that my citation does not in fact make my claim but merely asserts that the Logos is the creator and that incarnation is a revelation of the eternal logos in the medium of flesh. According to John, so I was told, Jesus was the revealer of the creator and redeemer, not himself creator or redeemer. The theologian in our trio offered a different “defeater” of my claim saying Jesus could not be the creator because he wasn’t born at the time of the creation. “He had Mary’s DNA after all!” When I suggested that the whole point of the notion of individual identity through time is to allow for new developments in a single identity, my dialog partners suggested I had fallen into Platonic dualism. No Adventist, they asserted, can make a distinction between an embodied and unembodied state of a single human person and be talking about the same person.

By failing to articulate the meaning of incarnation relative to individual identity as assumed in John 1:1 and in our ordinary and theological uses of concepts of individual identity, Belief #4 admits of numerous conflicting interpretations. It cannot be otherwise.  

Just how exquisitely complex and treacherous this project of insuring theological reliability is, and how impossible it is to formulate rules to yield desired behavior should be clear. Not to belabor the point, but what, after all, would a religion teacher be affirming to state that she will be “supportive of and work within the guidelines” expressed by the statements? Count on a broad range of understanding by individuals finding themselves capable of signing such an assurance. The range of those understandings exposes the last defect worthy of mention.  

4. The statements are corrupting because they are corrupt.

To say at the outset that our denomination has no creed other than the Bible and then produce 4,560 words exercising a magisterial right to determine what constitutes biblical truth (the 28 Fundamental Beliefs) is at best astonishingly inattentive and at worst cynically duplicitous. Corruption takes many forms. To be corrupt may be simply to be impaired by decay or disuse, inattention. More serious is the corruption of cynical deceit, saying what you know is obviously untrue.  

Corruption produces corruption. Put middle aged teachers under threat of employment termination and they will easily outdo moderately clever graduate students in their capacity to exploit vagueness. Challenge the political prerogatives of middle managers of the church and you will find them collaborating with teachers to defeat this ill-conceived process resting as it does on thoroughly defective statements.

It is no accident that the 28 Fundamental Beliefs are now deemed insufficient to defend the church from deviant religion teachers, a central purpose for which they were initially composed. After all, people who devote their working hours to obeying the great commandment to love God with all their minds should be expected to come to new understandings assuming that the infinite God they love cannot be encompassed in any formula. And just how can we dare to assume that the Holy Spirit has stopped guiding the faithful into greater understanding of the mystery and beauty of holiness? More documents are always required to make sure the Spirit speaks the truth.

Long before Immanuel Kant bequeathed to seekers for integrity his profound rule to guide their endeavors, Aristotle recognized that if we want to know what excellent behavior is we should consider people who behave excellently. Faithful people understand the uses and values of rules. More importantly their faithfulness is the one assurance that rules have any value at all.  

It is perfectly proper for our community of faith to insist that its religion teachers be devoted to the truth and disciplined in their investigation of it. The “one holy, catholic, apostolic church,” in which we Adventists properly claim membership, early confronted the necessity to be as clear as possible about its testimony to God’s saving act in Christ Jesus. We cannot afford to be less vigilant about our own witness.   

Vigilance is not served by careless, contradictory, self-deceptive formulations applied by remote hierarchies. There is no shortage of deeply informed, rigorous Adventist thinkers whose wisdom offers real assurance for preservation of integrity in theological instruction while remaining true to the historic Adventist suspicion of creeds and their tendency to suffocate intellectual love of God. It is to be passionately hoped that these thinkers will be pressed in to service to provide the church with resources for theological assessment that are distinguished by their brevity, fecundity, coherence and erudition.

Daryll Ward attended Andrews University, Tübingen University, and the University of Chicago (where he earned his PhD) and spent many years working in the field of addiction treatment, business ethics, and pastoring. He currently serves as Professor of Theology and Ethics at Kettering College.

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Sigve Tonstad is a medical doctor and a professor of theology. He is a prolific author whose books have gradually made him well known within the Anglophone Adventist world. When I was an Adventist, he was the one I wished I were, and even now, thirty-five years after our ideological paths diverged, I still strive to emulate the same values and ideals that he represents. What is so refreshing about Sigve (who, like his early mentor Carsten Johnson, is no fan of titles), is that he doesn’t allow concerns about career, prestige and orthodoxy get in the way of his quest for meaning, for trying to make sense of God, mankind and the world. To Sigve, scholarship is a means and not an end. I probably drive him to distraction with my brazen disagreements over ontology and theology and no doubt a number of other ‘ologies,’ but to me, Sigve is a model of what it means to be homo sapiens or, as he might put it, to shoulder the burden of being created in the image of God.

I recently read his book, God of Sense and Traditions of Non-Sense, and asked him to speak to some of the issues that he addresses in it. But first a few introductory questions.

When I came into the church in at the beginning of the 1970s, Adventism was buzzing with enthusiasm. To me, it seemed as if an entire generation of young people, especially in Scandinavia, but also here in the US, was genuinely excited about being Adventists. I don’t see any evidence of that today. Instead, it seems as if the Adventist church, like so much of mainstream Christianity, is in decline both here in the US and in Europe.

What happened?  

I agree with your impression. I think there are pockets of enthusiasm today, too, but overall there seems to be a loss of momentum. At the beginning of the 1970s, we had some highly educated, charismatic leaders in Scandinavia, Carsten Johnsen and Jens K. Jensen among them, who took young people seriously and made them feel good and even confident about being Seventh-day Adventists. The ideological and intellectual distinctive may have been different in the US, but Loma Linda University had characters like Jack Provonsha and A. Graham Maxwell who commanded respect and admiration. I remember Insight Magazine and extremely gifted writers like Tom Dybdahl, Jon Dybdahl, Chuck Scriven, Mike Jones, and others. There also seemed to be more bounce in magazines like the Adventist Review and Ministry. If I were to suggest a narrow and incomplete reason for the decline, I would point to the rise of official and independent television ministries and the decline of print media. For the latter, I include books as well as the magazines. I also think that the surviving magazines have less editorial independence—they are more than ever official organs of the administrative arm of the church. Spectrum is an exception. Television may have a place, but it is a superficial medium, far less suited to complex issues that require in-depth studying and careful documentation.  In my view, this shift has made Adventism more superficial, more populist, and less interesting.  

I have noticed over the years that you have always distinguished clearly between the Adventist Church and the organization appointed to lead it. How do you rate the General Conference on its leadership of the church through the years? 

I am a pessimist when it comes to leadership. Lord Acton’s dictum is one reason why. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In my view, it is easier (or too easy) for leaders in our type of organization to do harm than to do good. That is to say, the potential for top-level leadership to do good is limited, but the potential for harm is considerable. The good leader is in my view a person who recognizes the limitations of the office, allowing the church to flourish at the levels where the reality of church meets the road: in the local congregation, in the church operated-hospital, and in our schools. The pastor of the local church has by this criterion a greater potential for doing good than the administrator at the top level of the organization. I’ll try to be specific on three counts.

First, the leadership is primarily accountable to the members, not the other way around. This creates a logic that favors local autonomy. The cement or connective tissue of this type of organization is trust. If the top-level leadership signals that it distrusts scholars, for instance, we shall have insecurity, and the scholar’s voice will be subjected to the whims of the administrator.

The previous Roman Catholic pope, Benedict XVI, was the most highly educated pope in the entire history of the Roman Catholic Church and the author of many thoughtful books. The current pope is also highly educated, a man who reads books, if I may put it that way. Whatever opinion you and I may have of the RCC, these men have advanced the interests of that church.  In the Seventh-day Adventist organization, I hear rumors that we are about to add “education” to our list of Fundamental Beliefs—and this at a time when scholars and scholarship do not feel secure and may even feel threatened.

Second, given what the Seventh-day Adventist Church has become, I have the impression that top-level leaders feel more at home in the context of 3ABN or ASI than at the Theological Seminary at Andrews University or with the organ transplant program at Loma Linda University Medical Center. I think there is a communal correlation for this impression. The people at 3ABN are close to the denominational leadership and vice versa in ways that the Seminary isn’t. Similarly, the good people of ASI feel seen and heard by church leadership in ways that the highly specialized doctors at LLUMC don’t.

Third, the current issue of women’s ordination is just one example of leadership failure and loss of trust. It was unnecessary to second-guess the convictions of local congregations, pastors, and unions who concluded that the ordination of women was long overdue. Trust could have resolved what theology can’t. Top-level leadership will be rewarded for its lack of trust from the top down with lack of trust from the bottom up.  

You started out studying theology, then switched to medicine and then, in your late forties, you returned to theology again, getting a PhD in New Testament from St. Andrews University in Scotland. What led you to do that? And what was it like, as a biblical conservative, to work with professors who approached theology from a much more scientific and critical angle that what you would find in an Adventist university?

At the risk of being misunderstood, I am an interest- and conviction-driven person, not career-driven. My choices do not make sense if they are measured by a professional standard. I went to Middle East College to study theology because of my interest, not because I thought I could work as a pastor. One of my teachers paid me the courtesy of telling me that I did not have the right disposition for a pastor anyway! Then I studied medicine because Carsten Johnsen urged me to do it and because I believed the teacher who told me that I was not pastor material. In Oslo, I nevertheless spent ten good years in pastoral ministry.

My love for the Bible has been a constant ever since high school. I don’t think I ever “switched.” It has only been a matter of proportions. I completed an M.A. in Biblical Studies at Loma Linda University while doing my residency in Internal Medicine. Given that my medical identity is important to me—and perhaps not seen by those who think that I am mostly into theology—I was twice voted Resident of the Year by the teaching faculty at LLU. I am now teaching religion full-time at LLU, but I am about to return to my hospital job in Oslo because of my wife’s job situation. I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given, and medical work is wonderful. I went to Duke University and then to the University of St. Andrews in my late 40s because of a question that would not leave me alone. I had read in a Greek grammar that the faith language in Paul quite likely has been misunderstood—that Paul speaks of “the faithfulness of Jesus Christ” and not just of “faith in Jesus.” It puzzled me that scholars in the Adventist community did not find this distinction interesting.

The second point had to do with the Book of Revelation. I could not bear that this book—inside or outside the Adventist Church—has been the go-to text for a theology of retribution. These two factors motivated me to return to school to find out for myself. St. Andrews treated me very well despite differences in presuppositions. I am probably not mistaken if I claim that the academic standard at Duke or St. Andrews is more rigorous than in Adventist institutions.

I wrote my dissertation on Revelation.  My supervisor, Bruce Longenecker, who is now at Baylor University, told me that he will never read Revelation the same way again. He is the reason why I have been entrusted with the task of writing the Revelation volume in the Paideia New Testament Commentary series that is published by Baker Academic.  

I have for decades been saying that the riskiest thing a Bible believing Christian could do is to study theology from a scientific point of view. Your faith seems to be just as strong as it has always been, and in your books, you pay scant attention to the issues raised by so-called higher criticism while at the same time being very cognizant of them. Bart Ehrman lost his faith in the world of academics. You did not. How did you—and how do you--approach the faith-challenging aspects of biblical studies? 

This is a big and complex question. I am a very flawed person, but the academic study of a subject, whether theology or medicine, has for me only brought benefits. I loved basic science in medicine, and my wife keeps me posted on advances in mechanisms that become more and more fascinating the more there is to know. With regard to the Bible, I prefer to talk about my interest rather than my faith. Even so, meticulous study of Bible texts will in my view not harm anyone’s faith. Quite the contrary, the details will entice and sparkle more than the superficial view from afar. Bart Ehrman’s story is not my story.

Adventists may hold to something quite close to verbal inspiration in practice, but this has never been our theory, and it would be a bad theory if we were to adopt it. I have never believed in verbal inspiration, like Ehrman did. The term ‘higher criticism’ is a term that now mostly shows how badly out of touch the person using the term is. It has little or no explanatory power in practice. New Testament interpretation is a multi-disciplinary task that requires interest in history, original audience, social conditions, rhetoric, allusions to the Old Testament, narrative, and linguistic proficiency. No one ‘model’ is adequate, and no one ‘model’ controls the discipline. Moreover, the text trumps the models. The so-called ‘higher criticism’ has been in decline for decades—its use by church administrators today is a straw man used by people who clearly have not paid attention to what is going on. Let me be specific on two points. First, one of the ‘dedicated’ practitioners of ‘higher criticism’ might be the German New Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann, who died almost fifty years ago. There is much to criticize in Bultmann’s work today, but his view of New Testament anthropology is in many ways much closer to an ‘Adventist’ understanding that the view held by evangelicals, whose company many conservative Adventists love to keep. For all its ‘higher criticism,’ Bultmann’s commentary on the Gospel of John is a masterpiece—a standard-setter for the level of immersion to which a top-level scholar might aspire. I don’t agree with a number of his interpretations, but nothing good will be accomplished if some enterprising church administrator were to blacklist Bultmann. Second, academic study of the New Testament has on many points walked back many of the assumptions of the ‘higher critics’ without making method subservient to presuppositions. For me, the Gospel of John is perhaps the greatest example of the shift, this Gospel now the main contender for what Richard Bauckham calls “eyewitness testimony.” Detailed study of this Gospel is one of the things I love to do.  

Can you speak a bit about your approach to theology? Would it be wrong to call you a biblical rationalist?

It might be enough to mention three things. First, I am a reader of texts. My discipline—and my skill, if I have one—is to work a text from all angles. I tell the medical students in my classes that just as there can be different explanations for a given set of findings with respect to a patient (it is called ‘differential diagnosis’), there can be different explanations for a text. Nothing is completely self-explanatory. Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis is the best account of what I have in mind on this point. Second, I read, study, and write for personal reasons. The first reader of what I write is myself. I am not satisfied unless the writer (me) somehow manages to make sense to the reader (me). Third, I live in the Age of Genocide, after the Holocaust. This is the setting of my endeavors and my preoccupations. I don’t know about “biblical rationalist,” but I don’t do dialectics, like Karl Barth and others in that generation. I am hopeful on behalf of finding ‘sense.’ 

You point out that the backdrop to the synoptic Gospels is the anticipated apocalypse, the Day of the Lord when God’s messiah will re-establish the kingship of God on earth. To prepare people for the coming kingdom, Jesus urged his contemporaries to embrace the deeper ethics of their faith, warning them that theology is a poor substitute for values. In your book, God of Sense and Traditions of Non-Sense, you write more from the perspective of the Gospel of John (and the SDA pioneers), focusing primarily on the importance of theology, of thinking right about God. Can you expound on that?

I’ll try a short answer. If, as I concede, there is a ‘problem of suffering’ or a ‘problem of evil,’ I am looking for parameters for understanding the problem and for hope. The parameters are for me the biblical story of cosmic conflict. Evil cannot be understood only in terms of what human beings do. Hope, in turn, means that suffering must end. This leads to the biggest problem in the theological tradition because it does not promise an end to suffering. Indeed, at its most radical the tradition holds that most people who lived short and trying lives in this world will be subjected to torture throughout eternity. To understand this is impossible, of course, which is why I refer to it as Traditions of Non-Sense. “Right thinking about God,” as you put it, is everything but very hard to do. Many of the chapters in God of Sense aspire to show what “right thinking” might look like. The message of the Gospel of John is in that context a huge and shocking corrective to “wrong thinking.”  

The way I read your book, God of Sense, it is essentially an attempt to demonstrate that Origen of Alexandria was correct when he argued that the Bible offers “a coherent account of evil, both how it first came to exist and how it is being destroyed.” Origen is often dismissed as a purveyor of allegories and universalism, but you see in him a profoundly insightful theologian. What is it about Origin that fascinates you?

I had not thought much about Origen until I read Elaine Pagels’ book The Origin of Satan while studying in Scotland. Her view of Satan aside, she refers extensively to Origen’s view of the cosmic conflict in such books as First Principles and Contra Celsum. Origen (185-254 AD) was an extremely learned man who might be seen as the C. S. Lewis of his time. His output was prolific. Origen’s scriptural armamentarium for the story of cosmic conflict is virtually identical to what Seventh-day Adventists find in the writings of Ellen G. White. Many Adventists don’t know this, and I would be surprised to find a single administrator who knows it (I say this given that administrators seem eager to hold scholars in check). Here are three points for which Origen should be a person of interest. (1) His apology for the story of cosmic conflict—showing an approach to theology that is narratival, not doctrinal. (2) His understanding of freedom and repudiation of coercion. ‘Repudiation of coercion’ is an oxymoron because coercion was anathema to him and to the early Christians. All this changed with Augustine.  (3) His tendency to see salvation in medical terms. Human beings need healing, and most of all healing of their misperception of God.    

In the Jewish community, the Holocaust is the incarnation of evil. Among Christians it seems to be more of a footnote in the long history of human suffering. You are the only Christian theologian I know of who is preoccupied with the Holocaust. What is it about this bit of history that speaks louder to you than to most, if not all, of your colleagues? And as follow-up question, what is it about the current political situation both in Europe and the US that makes you worried that evil on that scale could once again manifest itself?

The Holocaust happened—that is why. I know that as a Seventh-day Adventist I am supposed to be interested in what happened in heaven in 1844, and I have taken an interest in that in the course of my life. More and more, however, my interest has gravitated to what happened on earth in 1944. I am not interested in the Holocaust for reasons of agenda, obligation, or anything else. More than forty years ago, I read Elie Wiesel’s Night, on the plane from Rome to Amsterdam. Like Francois Mauriac, who wrote the foreword in my version of the book, I broke down and wept. Since then, I have read many Holocaust books, two more during this quarter of teaching God and Human Suffering at LLU. And yes, I have many times broken down and wept. This preoccupation is inevitable. I don’t want these voices to speak in vain. In God of Sense I make it show by saying that the Holocaust is both an obligation and an opportunity. Hitler’s political brand dealt in resentment and in the creation of an unwanted ‘other.’ Nothing in Nazism is more significant than this. As for the current situation in Europe and the US, any politician that stirs up anger and resentment should be seen as a dangerous person. Such unattractive and potentially dangerous people are now voted into office, and Seventh-day Adventists are voting for them.

You argue that the God of the Bible is not a transcendent Greek deity who must forever remain an enigma to humans. God, you say, wants people to rise up and state their case, like Job did, and demand that God provide them with an understanding of the framing narrative of human existence, especially the nature of evil and why we suffer. And with Origen, you argue that God already has done so in the Bible. If so, why is that the majority of Christians can’t find these answers in the scriptures and conclude that “sense” is beyond reach.

If the goal is a causal account of evil, ‘sense’ is certainly out of reach. This applies to me, too. In fact, it is important to realize that we can’t have, don’t seek, and don’t want a causal account. But the majority of Christians are hostage to a flawed and even terrible theological tradition. In the Augustinian version, this tradition has two main elements, predestination and eternal punishment. The former means that the decision for heaven or hell is arbitrary and not in our hands. The latter means that I may end up suffering eternal punishment for a decision that I am powerless to change. Augustine argues that God is just to everyone, the punishment included, but God is merciful only to a few. It is not for us to understand this. This is why understanding is not on offer in the Christian tradition. I take issue with this tradition, as you can tell. Today, the problem of understanding is less likely to be in relation to predestination or eternal punishment. Perhaps it is the Holocaust. Perhaps it is the suffering of children, as it is for Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov. The theological tradition casts a shadow over these questions, too, because it has compromised the resources with which to talk about evil, and it has mostly been interested in personal salvation. This is also true for the Adventist community.

Aage Rendalen is a retired foreign language teacher who has served the Richmond Public School system in Virginia and is a frequent participant in conversations on SpectrumMagazine.org.

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Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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Tiffany Brown, new director of the REACH Columbia Union Urban Evangelism School, says this year's eight students are learning about Bible work, urban ministry, public speaking, cooking and more. But the school is not designed to launch them into any specific job; rather the aim is to train the students to be ambassadors for Christ in whatever career they choose.

Question: REACH Columbia Union Urban Evangelism School in Philadelphia completed its first year of teaching students last year under Director Tara VinCross. How did the year go? How many students did you have?

Answer: The year was successful! There were multiple amazing teachers that came and taught at the school. The students really grew and deepened their walk with Jesus Christ — so much so that many of them engaged in ministry right after graduation or shortly after the program ended. 

REACH Columbia Union Urban Evangelism School (REACH CU) had 13 students last year. Since it was the school’s first year, there were challenges, triumphs and many valuable lessons learned. 

Right now we have eight amazing students. 

You have been named as the new director after Tara VinCross's departure to California. How do you feel about your new job?

I think the school is pretty amazing, honestly. I am blessed to be a part of this ministry. We have an amazing cohort of students and a hard-working, dedicated and committed staff, and for that I am grateful. It’s exciting that I get a chance to use my passion for evangelism, my training in teaching, my background in literature evangelism, and my personality that enjoys working with youth and young people. 

Of course there are new challenges with this role, and I look forward to learning new things in the journey. 

How is REACH different than any other evangelism schools? Do you have a relationship with any others?

REACH CU is pretty unique, in that it is a one-year school, accredited through Washington Adventist University, and the students are not being trained for any specific job. The goal is to prepare them to be witnesses for Christ regardless of what they choose as a major. In fact, many students come here and discover what they want to do in college/university. They are seeking God’s will for their lives, and it’s exciting to see them become more grounded in their walk with Christ here and to find direction in their lives. 

We don’t have a partnership with other evangelism schools, but we appreciate the friendship that is forming with SOULS West. Our schools have some similarities and differences, but I appreciate our unified effort in training young people to have a passion for God. 

Are there other evangelism schools that are focused on urban evangelism the way that REACH is? Why do you feel urban evangelism is important? 

I don’t know of other urban evangelism schools. 

Urban evangelism is important because most people in the world live in or close to an urban setting. If we want to minister where the people are, it is important that we are intentional about reaching out to people in the city. 

What are your goals for REACH this year? What longer-term goals do you have for the project?

We aim to engage with the students throughout the year and mentor them to reach their personal goals for growth. I also hope they gain further insight as to what their calling and direction is in their lives. I can already see that God is leading them! 

We also plan to prepare the students for what they are doing after this school year. My goal is that they can easily transfer from REACH CU to a four-year Adventist college/university or that they can transfer to a community college and work as ministry interns with a church or ministry that interests them. 

In the future, I would love to see the students not only get a chance to engage in urban evangelism here in the US, but to also experience urban evangelism and ministry in an international setting. 

REACH is connected with a church plant in Philadelphia: the REACH church, where I believe you previously served as associate pastor. When I talked to Tara Vin Cross in late 2014, the church had 40 members. Has the church grown since then? What is it like? How has it changed? I believe you have a new church building? How does the synergy between the church and the school work?

The church, REACH Philadelphia (REACH) has about 46 members or so with a few additional regular attendees. 

The church is a young adult church, and honestly, I feel like it’s an awesome church. It’s a church made up of people who are mostly young professionals in their 20s and 30s. Our church has experienced change in life stages. A lot of our members used to be single, in undergrad or graduate school and have a lot of availability. We watched a lot of us grow through that and marry (each other, sometimes), have children, begin careers, move out of the area, move into the area, and experience life together. It’s been a pretty neat experience! We were extremely ambitious a few years ago trying to start multiple ministries, and now we make sure we can chew whatever we bite off. 

Yes, we bought a building that was a burnt-out bar/night club in 2014. It had to be completely gutted, and it’s still being renovated. We look forward to having our grand opening next year (2017)! 

The church and the school work really well together. Some of the personnel work in both entities, so that’s a blessing. Also, we are intentional about having times when the church and school members get together to do things that are simply social. That helps build relationships. The students also get involved in the worship service on Sabbaths and other ministries. 

How did you come to the REACH church? Can you tell me a little bit about your background? And how you became a pastor?

I came to Philadelphia as a student at Eastern University to study for my masters in International Development. As a student, I attended Chestnut Hill SDA Church, and that’s where I met Pastor Tara [VinCross] and many others. I attended the Friday night Bible study at Pastor Tara’s house as well. I needed to do an internship for my degree, and the university allowed me to intern at REACH. Thus I interviewed and then worked as an intern pastor, beginning in 2011 at the start of REACH Philadelphia. I stayed in this role for three years. 

After that, I transferred from being an intern pastor to a pastor of Community Development and Evangelism. 

I’ve had a passion for mission work and seeking the lost since I was in academy. I’m grateful for the Lord’s leading in my life and that I get the chance to serve Him in this capacity. 

I think I am probably safe in assuming that REACH is the only Adventist evangelism school that has had only women directors. Do you think you and Tara may have slightly different goals and focus for the school than a male director may have had? Do you think being a woman helps you in your job? Is there any area where you feel it is a hindrance?

I never thought of our gender as helping or hindering the school. I don’t think the goals of the school have anything to do with Pastor Tara’s gender or mine. I think our interest in seeing young people draw close to God and be mobilized as agents of restoration and hope have been the driving factor of our goals for the school. 

Where have last year's cohort of students ended up? Are they still studying? Working in ministry?

Six of the REACH graduates are back in the Philadelphia area.

Will Remigio really felt supported and connected here at our REACH Philadelphia church, so he is serving as a volunteer for the school as our Assistant Chef. He also is an Intern Director for REACH Success, the tutoring program of REACH Philadelphia. He’s doing a fantastic job. We’re so lucky to have him. He plans to continue his education at Temple University in January. This summer he also served as a canvassing leader and cook for the summer literature evangelism program, Pennsylvania Youth Challenge. 

Jeneva Godoy is a ministry intern of REACH Philadelphia, and she serves as the Children’s Ministry intern. She also is the Office Assistant for REACH Success. She is still well connected to the fabric of REACH. 

Kiersten Reed came to visit us for Thanksgiving break, and she landed a job here in Philadelphia. Therefore, she’s working in Philly and attending church at REACH now. She felt connected and emotionally supported as a student here, so she really wanted to return to REACH Philadelphia. 

Josh Garcia worked in Pennsylvania Youth Challenge (Youth Challenge/PYC/YC) this past summer, and he volunteers his time at the school. Before he did REACH CU, he was a member at REACH Philadelphia, and now he is back in the area and still serving as a leader in the church. 

Michael Tryonosky III attended a one-semester Bible college this summer and fall. He is from the outskirts of Philadelphia, and he is back home now, seeking employment. 

Rafael Ortiz recently returned to the Philadelphia area with Michael. Rafael looks forward to becoming more involved with Youth Challenge this coming summer and learning from the school’s current chef skills that would equip him for that role. 

As for the others: 

Becca is working in NYC, 

Jeremiah is working in Maryland, 

Jose returned to his family business in NJ, 

Dennis Jefferson transferred to Oakwood University, 

Junior canvassed this summer, but now he works and is taking classes on the West Coast,

Audreyanna is working for a firm in Washington DC. (She came to REACH CU as a college graduate),

Leland was a canvassing leader this summer and now he is a teacher’s assistant (He came to REACH CU as a college graduate).

What types of jobs is REACH intended to prepare students for?

REACH CU is a one-year school designed to aid any student (regardless of major) to work in their field and be an ambassador for Christ wherever they are. The Adventist church needs more mission-minded people, regardless of what job or career they end up in. So it really doesn’t matter which job our graduates go to once leaving the school. The school is not designed to launch students into any specific job, such as Bible workers or pastors. Rather, with their certificate from the school, they will be equipped to identify a need in a community and begin a ministry; be lay leaders of their churches; and just be witnesses for Christ wherever life leads them. 

That being said, the students receive training to work as literature evangelists, and some are trained to be leaders in a canvassing program. They also get a chance to practice starting a new (urban) ministry from scratch. They also get to learn a bit about Bible work, public evangelism, cooking, and many other things. But as I said, they are trained to be effective in any ministry and to have a good spiritual foundation for whatever career they choose.

Can you tell me a little bit about this year’s students?

We have eight amazing students, six of which are from the Columbia Union, including Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We also have a student from California and one from Indiana. Two are women and six are men.

This year’s students range in age from 18 to 26. Three have come straight out of high school, and the others are in their 20s. One of our students is a college graduate who graduated in May. Some have completed some college courses and were working before coming to REACH. 

What is an average day like for a student at the REACH school?

A team prepares a 9am breakfast every morning. The students then travel to REACH Philadelphia church (a storefront location). 

Worship begins at 10:30sm with songs of praise, prayer and a devotional. Then students attend class until 2:30pm with short breaks. 

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, some of the students tutor a child in reading or math for one hour. 

Sometimes the students go on a field trip in the afternoon to visit a church/urban ministry. 

In the evening, they focus on completing their homework assignments and doing their chores. 

How has the curriculum for REACH been developed, and who developed it? 

Students can earn 15 credits towards their degree, through a partnership with Washington Adventist University. The classes are the foundation around what the students learn: 

• Biblical Spirituality 
• Knowing and Sharing Christ
• Jesus and the Gospels
• The Theory and Practice of Urban Ministry 
• Mission to the Cities

Pastor Tara worked on the curriculum before the first year began. Other classes are included that prepare and equip the students for ministries life. The classes are delivered in an intensive manner, meaning the students learn from the same teacher.

Where do you see yourself in five years' time? Where do you see REACH evangelism school?

I see myself still engaged in ministry and serving God. That can possibly be in the REACH CU school or in another context. It depends on how the Lord leads. I still have a passion for international work, so I would like to see that become a part of my ministry. 

I see the evangelism school thriving with young adults, coming to deepen their relationship with God and finding their direction and calling in life. I also see more young people becoming actively engaged and empowered to be agents in ministry as a result of attending this school. It’s exciting to see last year’s cohort ready to engage in ministry as a result of all they learned from their year at REACH CU. 

Right now, the students are coming either before they enter a four-year college, after they have graduated from college, or after leaving a job. 

In the future, I see students taking a “gap year” from WAU, Andrews or other Adventist universities (similar to the way they might go study abroad for a year or take a year to work as a student missionary) to attend REACH CU and engage and learn in urban evangelism. 

I hope that we help young people find easy ways to enter into ministry, and be ambassadors for Christ wherever they are. 

Read Tara VinCross's interview with Spectrum when the REACH school opened in 2014.

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Venture-capitalist-turned-philanthropist Paul Dickau says ending hunger in San Bernardino is within reach. His nonprofit, Helping Hands Pantry, feeds up to 14,000 people a week and is giving away thousands of Christmas baskets this holiday season.

Question: You are chief executive of Helping Hands Pantry in San Bernardino, California. Will you serve Christmas dinner? What plans does Helping Hands have for Christmas?

Answer: We serve 10,000 to 14,000 people every week with the food and other household resources they need — not just meals. We already have given out 2,000 Christmas baskets to families, and we will take out Christmas meals to the homeless on Christmas along with the items we give them every day.We serve those in need 365 days a year, and Christmas is not a lot different.

How do you find the people who need to be fed? Do they come to you or do you go to them?

We go to the homeless where they congregate with our "Living on the Street" truck and trailer 365 days a year. The people who come to our pantry to get groceries are referred to us by the 211 San Bernardino County information call center and all of the other referral services: churches, community clinics, Inland Empire Health Plan, Molina Healthcare, our website, and numerous other sources.

Where does the food you serve come from? Where does your funding come from?

The food comes from a combination of the gardens where we grow vegetables, numerous local farmers, food distribution/logistics companies, and local retailers. Most of the funding comes from people who are personal friends and the local churches.

Where do you find volunteers? How much of a commitment do they give?

We find volunteers from many sources: local churches, the Internet, companies, civic organizations like Rotary Club, students, and members of the community. The commitment varies. Some come in for an hour here and there, and a few help out full time. Most average less than three hours per week, but for every hour that someone volunteers, there are 11 people in the community who receive the resources they need for that week.

You have said it is your goal to end hunger in San Bernardino. How will you do that? And when?

There is enough food going to waste and being disposed of in landfills to feed all of those in need. What we do is very simple: we collect food from folks who would prefer to donate it to us than to throw it away, sort, and package it, and give it away. All we have to do is keep doing what we are doing and continue our growth, and we will end hunger. 

“When?” is a good question. Right now we are working at over capacity for the facilities and infrastructure that we now have. Once we raise the funds to expand our infrastructure, we will be able to grow until the need is fully met.

What made you decide to start Helping Hands eight years ago? Weren't there already organizations feeding hungry people?

A few years prior to starting Helping Hands Pantry our church got involved in giving out food once a week on Sundays at a building near our location in Redlands, California. Three other churches used the same building to give out food on other days of the week. During this time, we came to see that even though we were helping more people than most pantries, we were still just helping a small percentage of the people who needed help. 

As we studied the problem and how we could do something more to help, it became clear that the current system and the way we were helping were not effective if we wanted to end the problem of hunger. Something had to change. Since we did not have the ability to change the system — but did have the ability to change what we were doing — we decided to change ourselves and the way we were doing things. This was the beginning of Helping Hands Pantry.  And others with a similar passion soon joined us.

You retired from a venture capitalist firm you started. Why did you decide to leave the world of finance?

The whole story is too long to share here. In short, it was a combination of my growing relationship with Christ and the knowledge that if I did not retire at that time that I probably never would, and there were other things that I wanted to do in life.

What advice would you have for someone who wants to help people who might be less fortunate or provide food for hungry people?

Find an organization that is already doing it well and join them and help. If you cannot find one that is truly working to end hunger in your community, come and work with me a while, and I will show how you can make that kind of a difference where you live.

What are you going to be doing this Christmas?

Personally, I will be up all night Christmas eve and morning preparing the meal for the homeless. I will then take a nap, followed by dinner with a missionary friend who is in southern California for a couple of weeks before starting a new assignment.

Do you attend the Redlands Adventist Church? Have you always been an Adventist? 

Yes, I am a member of the Redlands Seventh-day Adventist Church. I was baptized in 2004 into that congregation and the Adventist Church. I grew up as a Methodist. 

I notice that Helping Hands Pantry does not identify with any specific church. I assume that is deliberate.

Even before we became Helping Hands Pantry, we had many non-Adventist people involved with us. If you do something like this under the banner of any one congregation or denomination, you exclude a lot of people who will stay away. This includes both those who need the help and those who would help with the problem. If we are going to end hunger, we need to be inclusive of all of those who feel called to help. 

What do you think the Adventist church does well when it comes to helping people in need? What could it do better?

We have a wonderful medical mission to the world, but it seems that we miss the mark when it comes to those right next door. 

Of course, we do not miss it completely. Here in the Loma Linda/ Redlands/ San Bernardino area, we have wealth and surplus in the communities south of the freeway in Loma Linda, Redlands, and Grand Terrace and just on the other side of the freeway bordering these cities we have some of the greatest poverty in the United States. On the positive side, we have the SACHS Clinics and Helping Hands Pantry working to help our neighbors. (Before 2008, it was just the SACHS Clinic.) 

We need to do more to get out of the churches and into the communities that need all that we have to offer. Jesus brought the message of love for all and we need to show this. To do this we must do everything we can to be loving. This means we must stop excluding people in our own community because all of God's children are loved by God and welcome in God's Church. If they are kept from doing what they are called to do or if we make them feel unwelcome or judged in our congregations, we are not loving them. So we need to love all who come to us (including those who are already in our congregations), and then we need to take this unconditional love out to all of God's children in the community.

Paul C Dickau is executive director and president of Helping Hands Pantry which he started after a 20-year career in business and finance. He is a founding member of the Food Policy Advisory Council of San Bernardino County and serves on numerous other boards and committees. Paul Dickau received his B.S. from California State University San Bernardino and his M.Div MBA from La Sierra University. He lives in Loma Linda, California.

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Love gives. God’s love empowers creatures for their own good and for the good of others. The idea that God enables members of the Christian community to perform a variety of diverse but interconnected tasks is an inspiring and empowering one. This notion, the notion of spiritual gifts, occurs on several occasions in the Newer Testament. Its readers are invited to see God at work in a variety of ways, to identify God’s action as lying at the root of a variety of human capacities and activities that contribute to the life of the Christian church, including assistance, compassion, evangelism, exhortation, faith, giving, leadership, ministry, service, teaching, wisdom, apostleship, the discernment of spirits, healing, prophecy, knowledge, speaking in and interpreting tongues, and the ability to perform “deeds of power.”

The process of selecting pastors or appointing local church officers often seems mundane and prosaic. How does it help to talk about the capacities that enable people to fulfill the tasks associated with these positions as spiritual gifts? Are these gifts identical with our natural talents? Such questions are especially puzzling because of our increasing awareness of the role of interacting genetic, developmental, familial, and socio-cultural factors in shaping our abilities, and the evident absence from our experience of extraordinary, immediate divine acts that leave us gifted in ways we were not before. What is the difference between the spiritual gifts the Newer Testament and the Christian tradition maintain are conferred on Christians by God and the endowments received from our ancestors and our environment or developed by means of our own choices? And does the answer matter?

The Significance of Gift-Language

To speak of gifts when describing these endowments matters for several reasons. Viewing our capacities as gifts affects not only how we understand and use them but also how we understand ourselves.

The gift is among the most evocative metaphors available to us spiritually, morally, existentially.¹ For Christians, all of life, every aspect of ordered existence, is a gift. The presents we give each other are simply symbols, sacraments, of all the varied gifts we receive and offer—sometimes fitfully, sometimes with mixed motives, but sometimes in love and with power.

To say that something—anything—is a gift is to say both that it is a given, and that someone gave it. This is, first of all, to emphasize that a gift is something I did not produce. It is not the result of my achievement or my performance or my activity. It just is. Thus, I cannot take credit for it. I do not deserve acclaim for it. The givenness of the gift means that it cannot warrant pride or arrogance.

Not only is a gift a given; it is received from another. It is thus an occasion for gratitude. If it was given to me by someone, then I must recognize and appreciate and celebrate the giver’s generosity. Further, a gift plays a role in a relationship with the giver. Identifying a trait as a divine gift may underscore divine care for one’s life—perhaps, in some cases, particular concern for one as an individual.

Recognizing the divine generosity that lies at the root of a gift can highlight one’s special responsibility to use the gift in service to God. When, as in 1 Tim., a gift is seen as conferred directly through the activity of the community, its authority and one’s dependence on it may also be accentuated.

Acknowledging that one’s capacities are rooted in God’s action, and so in God’s love, can also highlight the distinctive potential contribution of one’s gifts to God’s ongoing activity in history. It may thus be a source of confidence and power—not only for individuals but for the church as a whole. The presence of spiritual gifts in the church may be understood as a sign that there is something distinctive that the church is in a position to do.

The sense that one’s contribution is distinctive may suggest that one’s role, though significant, is limited, and finds its meaning in relation to the correlative roles of others. If God is the giver, then divine purposes can be seen to underlie the distribution of gifts, and God can be understood as creating an interdependent community marked by mutual giving.² Further, just as the givenness of gifts means that they cannot warrant pride, so their function in preserving, extending, and enriching the community may imply that one need feel no regret at the lack of a given gift. Gifts are not given for our individual benefit alone, but for service to God’s world.

If God gives spiritual gifts, then perhaps we can expect these gifts to be made available. To believe that these gifts come from God is to believe that we can appropriately ask God for them, and that God will seek to provide them to meet our needs. Gift-language thus serves as a source of confidence in the provision of opportunities to touch the world effectively with God’s love.

This cluster of ideas—gift as trust and source of responsibility, gift as relational bond, gift as the product of something other than the recipient’s will, gift as intended for service, gift as an element of communal interdependence, gift-giving as a basis for hope—gives the idea of spiritual gift its distinctive character. It helps to explain why the use of gift-language matters as we try to understand the traits we might want to characterize as spiritual gifts. Accepting spiritual gifts as gifts means accepting the interdependence that unites us with the other members of the church, and of the wider society, in relationships of mutual giving. It also means recognizing and celebrating the unique contributions our gifts enable us to make to others. Acknowledging spiritual gifts—and others we wouldn’t normally label the same way, as well—as gifts leads naturally to gratitude toward God and, in turn, to generosity toward others.

Spiritual Gifts and Divine Action

It is clear that gift-language functions in a particular way, that it encourages particular attitudes or behaviors. But it does so because it also embodies an assumption—that our gifts are attributable to God. The understanding of divine action I have developed here suggests a model of how God might give us spiritual gifts and thus of the relationship between such gifts and natural talents.

Creation is the primary form of divine action. God exercises enormous influence simply as the designer of the basic patterns, structures, and processes that underlie the world’s operation. In addition, the fact that, as creator, God can anticipate the possibility of particular events in the world as a consequence of divine creative activity makes God responsible for those events which God not only anticipates but intends.

Therefore, even if, as deism unpersuasively maintains, God simply established the initial conditions for the operation of a world which proceeded along its course undisturbed, we could still reasonably speak of capacities for such activities as leadership, teaching, and exhortation as divine gifts. Anticipating the possibility that we would come into being and that we would possess particular endowments makes God responsible for these endowments as creator, provided God intends our possession of these gifts. On this basis alone, we can speak of natural talents as, at the same time, divine gifts.³

Special Providence as a Source of Spiritual Gifts

I believe we can say more than this, however. We can see God at work not only in the establishment of the initial conditions of the universe but also in its ongoing development, not only in the creation of human life but in the formation of particular genetic patterns over time. We can see God’s gentle but relentless persuasion in the growth of societies and cultures and in the birth and ongoing life of particular relationships. Thus, we can see God’s influence at work in and through those processes by means of which particular persons are formed and equipped for service. We can see the divine intention expressed in and through those events as a consequence of which we acquire our genetic endowments—at every level from the molecular to the societal and beyond. And we can see God at work in and through those processes by which we areformed—in the broadest sense—environmentally. In none of these cases will the divine intention probably be realized perfectly: fallibility and moral wrongdoing will take their respective tolls, and the reality of creation what God can accomplish in any given situation. Still, at all times and in all circumstances, God will be at work to shape our capacities.

Creation is an ongoing process that includes what God does through us as well as what God does in the non-human world. And since God is always at work in and through every event in the world, creation includes everything we do. God’s providential action takes place in and through ours; it is not, of course, simply identical with ours. But, with that qualifier, we can surely say that God creates in and through the social relationships and developmental processes that shape our gifts, as well as through our genes.⁴ Our natural talents are also our spiritual gifts.

Christian Spiritual Gifts as Fostered by Christian Belief and Christian Community

It would be possible simply to define a spiritual gift as an endowment arising from God’s work, intended for the service of God’s world, and used as part of God’s providence for this purpose. And this would capture most of what needs saying about the relationship between natural talents and spiritual gifts. But it needs to be qualified in light of a dynamic understanding of human nature. There is no reason to suppose that all human capacities are simply fixed in rigid fashion. And so Christian belief and Christian community can make a distinctive contribution to who we are.

As a result, we can make some sense of the way in which spiritual gifts might be thought to be related particularly to the church, as they seem to be in the Newer Testament. God can and surely does give gifts everywhere and to everyone. But life in the church will contribute to the shaping and reshaping of a person’s character, to the formation of a distinct structure of existence—the Christian structure of existence.⁵ Her identity and the way she sees and feels and thinks and acts will be affected, to one degree or another, by her immersion in the church. What she is inclined to do, what tasks she can perform joyfully—and thus effectively—will be different from what they would be if she were rooted in some other concrete community, or in no concrete community at all. Her awareness of options, and the attractiveness of those options, will be different because she is a Christian. She may be able to hear and respond to a divine call to which she would otherwise have been deaf. God may give a person a gift, then, by leading her into a community in which who she is is transformed. (This is not to deny the obvious point that God can give gifts to people who belong to other communities, or none, or that a person’s membership in some other community may facilitate God’s fostering of the development of particular gifts.)

Immersion in the church’s story, its practices, its beliefs, its common life can awaken new feelings and perspectives that condition the development of new gifts or bring dormant gifts to life. But God can also give us spiritual gifts through the church because the institutional structure of the church includes settings in which particular dispositions for service are fostered and particular opportunities for service are provided.

What God can do in the world is a function of the opportunities creaturely circumstances present to God. It is unlikely that God could lead a pre-Newtonian mathematician to articulate the essence of quantum cosmology, or that God could make someone with my physique and skill-set a professional basketball player. Some circumstances will present God with opportunities that others will not. Mother Theresa, for instance, probably would not have heard a call to serve the poor of India had she been a wife and mother rather than a nun. A church-based health care,development, or educational institution can foster the development of new gifts or the transformation of existing capacities in order to facilitate their contribution to the church’s work in the world. The opportunity to occupy a church office may have a similar effect. A person’s connection with the church may provide God with a chance to gift her in a distinctive way.

Belonging to the church will affect our inclinations and awaken our capacities. It will also change what we do because what we do will mean something new. The objective significance of a thing, an act, or an event depends upon its connection with other contemporary, past, or future things or acts or events. We know very little about a lawyer’s life, for instance, if we know only that she defends or prosecutes murder defendants. Who the defendants are, why she assists or confronts them in the courtroom, what will happen to them if they are convicted—a whole host of factors contribute to the meaning of a single act: typing a brief on a narrow point of law, rising to lodge an objection, questioning a witness. Similarly, the subjective meaning of an act to the actor will depend on how the actor relates what she does to a broader context, to an array of relevant circumstances. The subjective meaning of a thing or an event to a given perceiver will depend on how she relates what she perceives to other realities that give it significance. Meanings are not fixed by circumstances in isolation.

Thus, superficially similar acts done inside and outside the church may have different meanings, and thus be different acts.6 I may drive a truckload of food to a refugee camp in order to keep people alive so they can fight in the coming revolution; to curry favor with a demanding God; to express my gratitude for divine love; to express my love for vulnerable and infinitely valuable children of God; to fulfill my contract with Oxfam; to pay off a karmic debt; to poison the refugees living at the camp; or, no doubt, for a variety of other reasons. That I locate my actions within the Christian story may mean, then, that their significance varies markedly from what it might be in another setting. Their place in a particular story, together with my motives for doing them, may render them distinctive and different from similar acts performed by someone else. The point is not, of course, that God cannot touch the world with love through the things Muslims or secular humanists do, but only that what they do may not always be the same in meaning as what Christians do even if it is the same in immediate, overt content. This is another reason, then, that Christian’s gifts may be special and new.

When we develop and exercise gifts in the church, we must choose, at least in part, what to do. God cannot and does not choose for us. God can make no one a preacher, a teacher, an administrator, or anything else against that person’s will. But God can woo a person into the church, where she may develop new capacities. God can call her into circumstances where existing talents—themselves God’s gifts—can be offered up in service to God. And the very disposition with which she chooses has been affected since the first moment of her life by God’s activity: the energy and the inclination to respond to God’s many calls themselves reflect God’s ongoing, loving presence and influence.

The capacities and endowments of those outside the church are, of course, also God’s gifts. Biological, developmental, relational, and cultural factors mediate God’s gifts—truly but imperfectly—to all people. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights . . . .”⁷ The divine Word is spoken of as the “true light, which enlightens everyone . . . .”⁸ Generosity, insight, and all other good gifts come from God. But, if we find it useful to do so, we can speak of the gifts exercised within the church as spiritual gifts as a kind of shorthand, to acknowledge their origin and purpose, and because within the church their ground and goal are understood and proclaimed.

• Those to whom these gifts are given are aware that their lives and capacities are God’s gifts, and they acknowledge their gifts as given to further God’s purposes in the world.

• People who identify with the church therefore choose to use their gifts to further God’s purposes in particular ways.

• To the extent that the church has particularly valuable insights into God’s purposes, it may be able to provide particular assistance to its members in furthering those purposes.

Some of these gifts look relatively ordinary: the gift of leadership or teaching, say. Others are truly remarkable, apparently involving capacities, quite beyond those of ordinary persons, to know or understand or to touch the lives of others—special insight into God’s purposes or the needs of others, for instance, or the ability to heal diseases of mind and body.⁹ If God seeks to heal and perfect the world, then divine power will certainly seek to evoke such gifts for the benefit of creation. Persuasive divine providence cannot give just any gift to just any recipient. How receptive a person is to God’s influence will affect what spiritual gifts she receives; so will her heredity, her environment, and her own choices to develop in certain ways. The church’s shared memory, beginning at least as early as the letters of St. Paul and continuing today, gives evidence that God does impart remarkable gifts to people who are open to such gifts and who are equipped to receive and exercise them. Because they are God’s gifts to people—finite, fallible, morally broken people—spiritual gifts will not always be used wisely, much less flawlessly or infallibly. But God gives them nonetheless as a gift of love, to enrich the lives of the recipients and of those persons and communities whom they, in turn, can love.¹⁰

Spiritual gifts may be rooted in biology, psychological development, relationships, or social or cultural forces. They may be evoked or occasioned or fostered by the Christian story, Christians’ active sharing of their convictions, or the claims and needs of the institutional church. Whatever their source, they are, like the capacities of those outside the church, God’s gifts. Grounded in God’s unbounded love, unlimited presence, and ceaseless activity, these gifts enable us to give what we ourselves receive: inspiring, healing, and transforming love in all its forms.

Gary Chartier is Distinguished Professor of Law and Business Ethics and Associate Dean of the Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University.

NOTES:

1. See Stephen H. Webb, The Gifting God: A Trinitarian Ethics of Excess (New York: OUP 1996).
2. This seems to be St. Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians.
3. So Brümmer, “Farrer.”
4. Cp. Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God: A Reading of the Apostles’ Creed (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P 1993) 51-3. “Does not God make cities as well as stars? Is God’s self-gift, the Spirit‘s presence, less intimately and immediately constitutive of promises and symphonies than of plutonium and silt? . . . Does not God make cities as well as stars, symphonies as well as silt?”
5. See John B. Cobb, Jr., The Structure of Christian Existence (Philadelphia: Westminster 1967).
6. Stewart R. Sutherland makes this point nicely (the refugee camp example is his) in his contribution to The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology: Essays Presented to D. M. MacKinnon, ed. Brian Hebblethwaite and Sutherland (Cambridge: CUP 1982).
7. Jas. 1:17a; my italics.
8. Jn. 1:9a; my italics.
9. See Bruce G. Epperly, God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus (Louisville, KY: Westminster/Knox 2001).
10. Cp. Cobb, “Relativization“ 13-20.

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As a student at Andrews University at the end of the 1970s, I heard the names Vick, Weiss, and Hilgert mentioned, almost in a whisper, but they had been so effectively airbrushed out of the institutional history that I never learned why they were no longer there. Then Spectrum went online with its blog, and there was Dr. Herold Weiss, first in Spanish, then in English. I began reading his essays and studies in 2008 out of curiosity, and I was immediately fascinated by his ability to drill down to the exegetical bedrock of the biblical texts so that they could speak freely, unconstrained by the fundamentalist mandate that they speak with one voice in support of creed and tradition.

In an essay that I wrote some time back for Spectrum ("Tell Me Why I Should Become a Christian"), I asked the readers if it is possible to come up with a contemporary restatement of Christianity that might resonate with people searching for a meaningful faith, a faith that goes beyond the known facts without requiring you to believe against established facts. Dr. Weiss comes as close to doing that as I think anybody could. Faith to him is a way of living in obedience to the call of God in Christ, not a treasure chest of doctrines.

Dr. Weiss, you have argued that the library of texts we call the Bible is not “historical reports by the most trustworthy reporters, who depended on heavenly dictation for what they reported.” How would you describe the Bible?

The contents of the Bible make clear that they were written at a particular time by people who were children of their surroundings. To claim that the contents of the Bible were dictated from heaven to secretaries who recorded what they were dictated or shown is demonstrably wrongheaded.

Any claim to the inspiration of the Bible must take the whole Bible into account. Explanations of inspiration that are not applicable to large portions of the texts are unconvincing. It is quite clear that significant portions of the Bible are based on oral traditions that at times run in contradicting parallel courses and at other times are obviously literarily dependent on earlier written source. The Old Testament contains the struggles of a people who advanced theologically to the conviction that there is only one God who is to be worshipped by a way of life that is guided by justice, concern for the weak, and loyalty to the commitment to the One God rather than by cultic sacrificial practices. Of course the battle field of that struggle is full of the debris left by the participants in it. This means that the O.T. is a witness to the way in which the people of Israel during turbulent historical ups and downs under divine guidance and continuous self-criticism came to understand themselves as a people under God, and with ever new understandings of what God required of them, proclaimed the faithfulness of God towards them.  

The New Testament contains the documents that served to provide meaning to the experience of those who became the followers of Jesus before and after his crucifixion. They record the way in which these followers came to understand that Jesus’ life and death was an act of God that established a new way of life. The New Testament books make clear that from the very beginning Jesus’ followers found different ways to explain the significance of what had taken place among them. The N.T. testifies to the development of a theological consensus toward the end of the first century as the Movement about Jesus transformed itself into the Christian Church with an ecclesiastical structure that claimed authority over the Jesus tradition. The Bible, then, contains various visions of what people of faith understood to be God’s activity on their behalf. These writings become the Word of God to the faithful readers when the same Spirit who inspired the writers inspires the reader.

In your study of the creation motif in the Bible that ran on this website in 2010 and 2011 and which was later adapted into your book, Creation in Scripture (2012), you showed that Genesis is part of a wider web of biblical perspectives on creation. To what extent do they form a consistent view? And to follow up, what conclusion do you draw from your findings?

As you say, in my book I describe nine different ways in which biblical authors, or the writers of a particular literary school, conceive the creation. Each one has a significant thing to say about creation and the God who brought it about, but they work within different cultural matrixes. It is unreasonable to say that there is a language that is not culturally conditioned since language is nothing but a cultural tool. I think that any one reading these texts cannot ignore the significance of their differences. What they all have in common is their freedom to speak about creation in their own terms while confessing their faith in the Creator. Just as each one of these writers was free to express his faith in the Creator by casting it in terms of his culture, I am also free to express my faith in the Creator in terms of my culture, while fully aware that my understanding of creation is just as dated as each one of those used by the biblical writers also were. To absolutize one of these culturally conditioned understandings of creation, at the expense of all the others, is to do violence to the integrity of the biblical canon.

Fundamentalists, for lack of a better word, insist that there must be a one-to-one relationship between text and what it describes to qualify as “inspired” and worthy of faith. They argue that anything else is “fideism”—faith in faith—and ridicule those who believe, with Rudolf Bultmann, in the resurrection of the Christ of faith while denying that the historical Jesus rose bodily from his grave. What is your perspective on this issue?

As I have already said, to ask that faith be dependent on the ability to give a one-to-one correspondence between a biblical text and what it describes is theologically nonsense because it places the cart before the horse. As I understand it, Christian faith is not faith in the Bible. It is faith in God’s action in the Risen Christ. As Rudolf Bultmann insisted, to make the Bible the stumbling block on which faith is tested is the rational, rather than the cultic, version of “salvation by works.” Fundamentalists are twisting Bultmann’s writings when they say that Bultmann denied that Jesus rose from the dead. Bultmann repeatedly confessed “that” God raised Christ from the dead while following the apostle Paul’s notion that the resurrection does not bring out from the grave the perishable material body that had been buried. The glorified resurrection body is a spiritual body. He also said that he could not describe “how” God raised him from the dead. I am in full agreement with that.

To say that those Christians who deny that one’s faith is to be placed on the Bible have faith in faith is another fundamentalist scarecrow. The biblical authors expressed their faith in God. I identify myself as a member of their faith tradition who also wishes to express my faith in God, even as I, instructed by their writings, conceive God in terms of my own culture fully aware that all human understandings of God are wide of the mark (as the Book of Job magisterially argues). To say that I place my faith in the faith of others is absurd. This is specially the case when faith is understood correctly as obedience to God’s call. Fundamentalists misrepresent Christianity by making it the depository of “superior” knowledge. Christianity is not a way of knowing what is only available to the select few. It is a way of being in God’s world as an answer to God’s call.

Many educated Adventists—and Christians in general—struggle with the same biblical issues that you were forced to deal with early in your career and which led you to pursue your scholarly work outside the Adventist church. In your 2010 book, Finding My Way in Christianity, you describe how you resolved this conflict in favor of faith. What advice do you have for those who find themselves today where you were fifty years ago? And let me add, how do you remain part of a faith community whose approach to theology differs from your own?

My book is an attempt to make the point that, contrary to what Fundamentalists say, it is not necessary to be a fundamentalist in order to be a Christian. In fact, outside of that ideology one can be a healthier Christian. I dressed my argument in the story of my spiritual pilgrimage only because I thought it would be more palatable to the post-modern generation. Unfortunately, I think that these days the Adventist Church is going through a period of testing more severe than the one I faced in the mid-sixties. The ecclesiastical authorities are doubling down on an anti-scientific cosmology, a patriarchal social order, and a concentration of political power. These developments can only produce much uncalled-for pain and suffering. At the moment the future of the Adventist church does not look bright on account of the myopia at the governing structures.

The task of theology is to relate God, the world, and the human family in a way that makes sense. Christians do that using the Bible as the model text. To claim that theology is built on nonsense is absurd. The ecclesiastical authorities are doing precisely that by pretending that the Bible is not culturally conditioned and doubling down on it. Educated Adventists find this nonsensical because they can read the Bible for themselves. As a result, they are leaving the church as if it were a sinking ship. That is true also of those graduating from Adventist universities.

My advice to them is to recognize that the community of faith is not sustained by doctrines but by a serious desire to do God’s will. The Gospel is not about knowledge but about power, and the power of the Spirit that blows from whichever direction it wishes is the agent that energizes the life of Christians. Christianity is the religion of the power of the Spirit that pours God’s love in human hearts so that they may love one another in community. It is not the religion of a book even if a book plays a most important role in it. If those who walk together have the same way of seeing things, they will have a very boring walk. They only have to agree to walk together in the same direction. In the process, they may come to learn from each as to how to read the book.

As a professor in the Adventist classroom, I saw it as my duty to be true to the Bible, not to any denominational doctrine. When I realized that seeing my role in this way made my life in the classroom very unsatisfying because I did not have the support that an institution of higher learning must give to its professors, I resigned and sought employment where I could fulfill my vocation to be a professor of Scripture. I must confess that I was extremely fortunate to find employment immediately. If the Bible turns out not to be what fundamentalists claim, that is not a reason for throwing out the window the baby with the bath water. The Bible is still a witness to the way in which the faith of Abraham in the promise of God was expressed by a long series of followers. The list of those people of faith found in Hebrews 11 includes people and identifies activities that I find offensive. Is that a good reason for me to abandon my faith in God? Not at all. Why? Because I know for a fact that my faith is also quite contaminated by my narrow vision and weak will. These days we are going through a most significant cosmological shift, as I suggested in my book. This only means that we must find new ways to give expression to our faith in out Creator, and live, as the apostle Paul advises us, “discerning what is the will of God” for our times (Rom. 12: 2).  I am able to remain an Adventist because I think that Christianity is lived in community and I do not see any point in changing denominations.  Adventism is in my blood, and I feel I understand what makes my fellow Adventists tick.

You have written—and that was an eye-opener to me—that the Old Testament lacks the Christian concept of the “Fall” and its corollary doctrine of original sin. If I understand you correctly, the story of Adam and Eve is about the consequences of disobedience rather than the need for moral redemption and that the chosen people’s ability—as opposed to their willingness—to obey the will of God is not questioned. Those who read the Hebrew Scriptures from a Christian perspective would beg to differ and point to the Jewish sacrificial system as an indication that the Hebrews were anticipating a Savior from sin and not only forgiveness for sins. Do you see Jewish redemption and Christian salvation as overlapping concepts, and if not, what is the difference?

The long list of the type of sacrifices to be offered makes it quite clear that the sacrificial system was for the remission of actual sins. Also to be noted in this connection is that there is no sacrifice prescribed for the breaking of the Ten Commandments or for moral sins. The paradigmatic sin in the Old Testament is the rebellion of the people at the foot of Mt. Sinai when they worshipped the golden calf. The prophets repeatedly refer to this sin as the beginning of all that is wrong with Israel. Other than the story in Genesis 2, there is no mention of the sin of Adam and Eve in the Old Testament. The notion of a cosmic Fall of creation only comes with the rise of apocalypticism in the intertestamental period. This development also introduced the notion of a resurrection from the dead.

The prophets, beginning with Amos around 750 B.C.E., introduced the notion of the Day of the Lord as a new beginning within historical existence. The different references to a Messiah (Anointed) who would restore Israel to its historical vocation portray him as primarily a political figure. The apocalyptic versions of Messiah expand his role to priestly functions, but primarily he remains a warrior who eventually rules over his kingdom. This apocalyptic vision informs Paul’s projection that the Risen Christ must fight and subject all the cosmic powers of evil before he can rule over all things and become able to raise the righteous to be glorified in spiritual bodies. This description, as well as the ones in the Book of Revelation, does presuppose that salvation is from the “Fall.” In the O.T., salvation is living in peace and prosperity in the Promised Land where everyone is obedient because, as Jeremiah says, God has written the Law in their hearts.

That there is something wrong in the human make-up which makes it difficult, maybe impossible, for human beings to do what they have been created to do (according to Genesis1, they were created to oversee the creation for an absent God; according to Genesis 2, they were created to obey God) is taken for granted by all the prophets. The degree to which this impaired condition affects human life is conceived differently by different authors. The Wisdom Literature affirms God’s absolute control over all of creation and considers human beings fully capable of doing the right thing. Jeremiah, the most introspective of the prophets, laments the inability of humans to do the good and envisions the reception of a new heart to correct the situation. Isaiah declares that all have sinned. Through the O.T. “life, salvation, wellbeing” is not a personal hope  but a national hope. Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the late Psalms begin to make individual applications of the national hope. They do not, however, envision a cosmic restoration from the effects of a Fall about which they knew nothing. Neither does the sacrificial system of the O.T. envision a Savior from the Fall. Sacrifices were prescribed primarily for the remission of the guilt attached to cultic transgressions of purity laws.

In the New Testament writings, the present historical reality is seen within an apocalyptic framework. This means that redemption must undo the damage caused by the Fall. The reign of Messiah cannot be a historical reality; therefore, the Day of Christ must destroy the historical reality in which humans now live. With the exception of the Book of Daniel, that is not the case in the O.T., where there is no expectation of a resurrection.

You grew up in a Catholic country, and you spent the greater part of your academic career teaching at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana. What are the greatest misunderstandings about Catholicism that you encounter among Protestants in general and Adventists in particular?

As a young person in Uruguay and Argentina, I grew up with the notion that we Adventists were firmly established on a moral platform high above what any Catholic could ever attain. Catholics, by definition, were people without morals. Since they lived in open depravity, there was no way they could be saved by God. Besides they were superstitious and idolaters. This was surely due to their dependence on the Catechism, where the day of Rest has been changed, rather than the Bible. Obviously, they were in great need to be redeemed from their sins. This view of Catholics was challenged by my friendship with a fellow student on my second year of secondary school. He had transferred to the public school from the Catholic seminary. Our fellow students decided that he and I should have an open debate for their benefit. Our debate proved my self-confidence and sense of superiority totally wrong.

In the USA, I was somewhat astonished to find out two things: One, that Catholics were the largest single denomination in the country and, two, that Catholic bashing was the most popular sport among Adventists and Evangelicals in general. There is a difference between prejudice and bashing. The prevalence of a conspiracy mentality among Adventists in the USA is a lamentable flaw. Few mental disorders are more pernicious than the conspiracy syndrome. That the Bible’s prophesies support or demand Catholic bashing can only be claimed by those who are controlled by a sick ideology rather than the love of Christ (2 Cor. 5: 14). Unfortunately, it is a recurring phenomenon in Adventist pulpits that are open to television audiences, not only the one occupied by Doug Bachelor but even the one commanded by Dwight Nelson. One does not have to be Catholic to abhor such prejudicial preaching. Obviously, we have forgotten that for some time we were just as good at Turkey bashing.

Adventists and Evangelicals seem to think that the Catholic Church is built on the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope, obviously ignoring that this doctrine came into being in 1880, and is heavily curtailed by very specific canon laws. My experience at Saint Mary’s College left no doubt that Catholics have very critical attitudes toward the Pope as well as toward the authority of the Congregation for the Preservation of the Faith. The way they see the Bishop of Rome also informs the way they see their local Bishops. As to their concern for morals, I will say that there is a significant difference between North American Catholics and Latin American Catholics. In this country, Catholics are drilled on ethical conduct and are educated with the nuances of moral reasoning that no Protestant baptismal class or college I know about can match.

Also to be noted is that Catholicism is a very polymorphic phenomenon with various internal traditions. It is not a monolithic institution. The “Superior” of an Order of priests or nuns and the Bishops are the ones who set the tone of what is allowed, and the differences among the Orders and bishoprics is significant. In my experience, in the USA the Order of the Holy Cross is probably the most progressive. That is why the University of Notre Dame, owned by the Congregation of the Fathers of the Holy Cross, and Saint Mary’s College, owned by the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, are, I think, the most open Catholic institutions in the USA. When some years back, the Vatican sought to make the University of Notre Dame a pontifical university, the Fathers of the Holy Cross vigorously resisted the papal embrace. Eventually, Catholic University in Washington, D.C., became the pontifical university in the USA.

The Roman Catholic Church has found it a lot easier to deal with thorny issues such as evolution than evangelical Christians. Why do you think that is? Also, before Vatican II, New Testament studies were dominated by Protestants while after the Council, the field was largely taken over by Catholic theologians. Do you agree, and if so, why do you think that that is the case?

The Enlightenment and the rise of rationalism and the scientific study of nature posed a problem to all Christian denominations. Catholicism reacted in 1880 with the First Vatican Council and the anti- modernist movement that brought havoc to Catholic institutions of learning. Like Fundamentalist Protestants, Catholics adopted the Evangelical doctrine of Verbal Inspiration and came up with the very carefully described dogma of the infallibility of the Pope with which to confront evolution.

One of the famous cases produced by this reaction was the defrocking of Father Alfred Loisy in France, a world-famous New Testament scholar at the beginning of the XX century. In that atmosphere, Father Teilard de Chardin kept in a safe what he wrote, even while his Superior knew that he was integrating evolution into a Christian worldview. His fellow Jesuits published his writings posthumously. In the USA, however, in the 1930s, John McKenzy, Raymond E. Brown, and others began to do serious biblical research and publish scholarly studies in the Old and the New Testaments under heavy ecclesiastical pressure but with the support of their Superiors.

With the new beginnings brought about by the Second Vatican Council, when Protestants were redefined as “separated brethren” and the study of the Scriptures was given priority, Catholicism experienced a renaissance that transformed it into a full participant in the intellectual life of the times. In this new atmosphere, I was hired as a professor in a Catholic Department of Religious Studies in 1969 and after one year was made Chair of the Department. The Spirit of the Second Vatican Council that had as its aim to bring about an “aggiornamento” (bringing things up to date) also produced the official recognition of the validity of scientific methods for the study of both Nature and the Scriptures. On that account, as you say, Catholics are among the most prominent biblical scholars around the world. I would not say that Catholics have taken over the field, but they certainly have been fully involved at the higher circles of biblical studies.

Would that the Adventist Church came to realize its need for an “aggiornamento.” It would appear that biblical scholars working under very strict ideological restraints in evangelical colleges and universities find it easier to survive under the control of denominational cultures than under the demands of scholarly disciplines. There are studies that have demonstrated this. Protestant graduate students who have written very serious scholarly dissertations to earn a doctoral degree seem to be quite comfortable teaching at their denominational institutions and become defenders of Verbal Inspiration. Their dissertations do not get published. Denominational cultures seem to be more powerful than academic cultures when it comes to pastors who attended non-denominational seminaries. Catholic culture, on the other hand, is very much in favor of scholarly work. The traditions of scholarly work are firmly ingrained in the life of the Catholic Church even though at times they have faced anti-intellectual opposing currents.

You could no doubt have leveraged your personal encounter with the authoritarian side of Adventism and its fundamentalist tendencies into a highly readable attack on the denomination. Instead, you did not let a conflict with fundamentalism distract you from your work as a theologian.

Long ago I learned two rules that have served me well over the years. One, do not pass rules you cannot enforce, and, two, do not fight battles you cannot win. Nothing is gained by anyone who launches attacks against long-held doctrines. In my view, while Desmond Ford had every right to present his understanding of the Gospel, and very good reasons to defend it as forcefully as he could, he made a mistake by attacking the Adventist traditional understanding. Doctrinal changes take place over time as traditional doctrines become irrelevant and die of natural causes in abandoned fields. Doctrines do not get killed with their boots on in the battle field. Fundamentalists will not cease being fundamentalists because someone convinced them of the errors produced by such hubristic view of the Bible. Therefore, I have not been engaged in doctrinal battles. My concern is that fundamentalists who become aware on their own of the fallacy in their use of the Bible tend to give up on Christianity altogether. I wrote my book, Finding My Way in Christianity, in order to argue that it is quite legitimate and very satisfying to be a non-fundamentalist Christian. Doing biblical theology is for me a most important and most fulfilling way to live out my vocation, especially while doing it as a service to the faith community in which I was born.

Aage Rendalen is a retired foreign language teacher who has served the Richmond Public School system in Virginia and is a frequent participant in conversations on SpectrumMagazine.org.

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Fekede Gemechu, the man behind Ethiopia's Kalala Learning Village, talks about how the school and clinic started in 1996 and the thousands of students and community members who have been served by the social business.

Question: How did the Kalala Learning Village in Ethiopia begin? 

Answer: During the late 1970s and 1980s, Ethiopia went through a long period of civil war. I was in medical school and postgraduate programs in the United States during those decades. The war ended, and a new government came into power in 1991. 

Shortly after that, I returned to Ethiopia to see what I could do to fulfil my promise to the two missionary doctors, Carl J. Houmann and Robert G. Rigsby (both Loma Linda University School of Medicine 1954), who sponsored my education in the United States. My plan was to work at the Empress Zewditu Adventist Hospital in Addis Ababa where Drs. Houmann and Rigsby expected me to serve. 

But I found out that the hospital had been taken over by the government. For several years, our appeal to the authorities to return the hospital to the Seventh-day Adventist Church was denied. I was also dismayed to see the post-civil war devastation, poverty, and starvation throughout the country. It was very discouraging. 

However my late wife, Azeb, suggested that we make education, rather than health service, our mission. Because of the long civil war, the country was paralyzed in severe poverty. We felt that the first important step toward poverty reduction is education. In addition, I felt that I was still obligated to the promise that I made to my sponsors to “give back” in some way.

We found a community of farm workers to the east of Addis Ababa who were very eager to have a school in their area. 

Thus, on a small hill called Kalala, we started a two-room school and called it the Kalala Learning Village. The primary school was officially named “Shibu Ejersa,” after the first farmer/settler at Kalala and the ancestor of most of the people in the vicinity. Because of that name, the community identified with the school and became very supportive of our programs.

When did the school open?

It was in 1996 that we had our first group of 1^st and 2^nd graders.

How is the school different than other local schools? 

The Kalala Learning Village is not just a set of classrooms. We wanted to develop a community resource center where children and adults come to discover their natural talents and free themselves from the bondage of diseases and harmful cultural traditions. 

The school was opened to both children and young adults. At first, girls were restricted from coming to school because the parents felt that the girls would be more useful on the farm. Forced early marriage was common. But after we held a series of meetings with the leaders of the community, the girls were allowed to go to school. 

Local authorities who attended the community meetings told the parents that they would go to jail if they forced a child into early marriage. 

In addition to basic education, we tried to bring together many key components of community development: infrastructure improvement (clean water, electricity, roads for children to come to school), physical and spiritual health promotion, skill enhancement, and social capital enrichment. 

The core mission of the Kalala Learning Village was (and is) to build a productive and healthy future for every person in our community.

Do children board there, or are there only day students? 

The Kalala Learning Village is not a boarding school, but we have allowed 12 to 15 children to live on campus. These were not orphans, but the parents left most of them in our care because they could not care for them or educate them.  

How many teachers are there?

Since we have approximately 1,000 students in kindergarten through ninth grade, our school staff, which includes, administrators, teachers, supervisors and other support staff add up to about 80 employees. 

Are they local or do they come from the US or other places?

All members of our school staff are local. We have had some student missionaries from the United States and Europe who stayed and worked (volunteered) with us for several months at a time.

How many children have graduated from the Kalala Learning Village school? What have they gone on to do? 

Thirty-five to 40 students graduate from the eighth grade every year.  Several hundred (perhaps as many as 500) have gone on to government high schools and colleges. Many are working for various companies and organizations in Addis Ababa. 

The children who grew up on the Kalala campus have proven to be excellent students. Some are pursuing careers in engineering, veterinary medicine, agriculture, and accounting. Two are on track to go to a medical school. 

This year, we started the Kalala high school. We have named it the Kalala Academy of Science and Technology because we chose to emphasize science, mathematics, English, and computer technology. There are 52 students in the ninth grade. All of them graduated from eighth grade having successfully passed the State examination with scores in the upper 90 percentiles.

And how many people does the health clinic serve?

The clinic, which we refer to as the Summit Medium Clinic, provides basic health care, i.e., some aspects of family medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics. The clinic is run by local nurses. We have a midwife who manages uncomplicated pregnancies and deliveries. We have a small laboratory, an ultrasound and EKG machines. We do family planning counseling, testing and counseling for HIV, a once-a-week free clinic for patients with diabetes and hypertension. There is an adjacent drugstore. 

Most of the people in the vicinity are poor and are not accustomed to seeking health care. We see about 3,000 to 3,600 patients a year. When we get a visit from medical mission groups, such as those from Florida Hospital, which often happens twice a year, we see more patients in one week than we regularly do in three months.

How is the Kalala Learning Village funded? Is it partly administered from the U.S.? 

We raise funds through a 501c3 charity, the International Medical and Academic Alliance, that we established in the United States at about the same time as we started the Learning Village.  

We are an independent ministry, not a church-owned Seventh-day Adventist institution. We do work closely with the local Adventist church and other organizations such as the United Way Kaiser Permanente Employees, the Pathfinders group in Germany, a Baptist group from Oklahoma, and so on.

We receive our largest financial support for the clinic from the Florida Hospital Global Mission Initiatives, based in Orlando. We are one of many “FOOTPRINT Projects” that Florida Hospital serves around the world. Lars Houmann, chief operating officer of Adventist Health System, who was actually born in Ethiopia, and whose father, Dr. Carl Houmann, sponsored my education in the United States, is the executive sponsor of the health services at the Kalala Learning Village. In terms of administration, we have an onsite Administration and Finance Committee that manages the day-to-day activities of the Kalala Learning Village. 

The Kalala Learning Village has industries where students can work. How successful have the industries been?

From the very beginning, we wanted to develop micro-industries, like the early Adventist school in the United States had, as a way of giving the students the chance to earn their tuition, to provide jobs for parents of some children — and more importantly, to give our on-campus resident students something to do. 

We have a small dairy, grinding mill, sewing business, beekeeping, small-scale poultry, sheep rearing, etc. The dairy and grinding mill are doing well, but the others need more encouragement. We are now expanding our poultry, upgrading our café’ and bakery. Our kids who grew up on campus are now old enough to manage these school-based micro-industries by themselves. 

Can you tell us about your background?

I was born in the western part of Ethiopia in a town called Gimbie, very close to an Adventist mission school and hospital. I had most of my early education in Adventist schools. After high school, Dr. Houmann and Dr. Rigsby sponsored me to come to Walla Walla College.

I graduated from Walla Walla in 1966, and went on to Loma Linda University to become a physician and then University of Maryland for surgical training. Because of the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia, I had to change my plan about working in Ethiopia. I joined the Southern California Permanente Surgical Group where I worked for many years.  

I believe you were honured as Walla Walla's alumnus of the year last year, particularly for your work on this project in Ethiopia.

Yes, surprisingly.

Do you believe your Learning Village model could be replicated other places?

I think it is reproducible, particularly our emphasis on “L-E-A-R-N ing: 

• “L” refers to learning about the Love of God, accepting the Message of Hope
• “E” stands for Education: Kindergarten through college and beyond
• “A” refers to awareness or knowledge; i.e., awareness of our God-given talents and capabilities and developing those talents towards careers that serve others
• “R” stands for restoration of health (physical, mental, spiritual). We endeavor to provide essential health services, health education, life style counseling, and opportunities for spiritual growth.
• “N” refers to networking or building social capital. We believe in community development from the ground up and being part of the community.

What have been the biggest difficulties the project has faced?

The need is sometimes overwhelming; it is difficult to know where to put your limited resources. How do you make the project self-sufficient and self-sustaining so that you don’t continue to depend on outside help? 

The biggest successes? 

Success is the gleaming eyes of every child who comes to school every day. Success is the smiling face of a new mother who takes her newborn home after an uneventful delivery. For us, there is no big or small success; every improvement, every graduation, every baptism is a success.

Where do you see the Kalala Learning Village heading in the next few years? 

We actually have big dreams. Our long-term goal is to merge our education and health programs into a training institution in the field of Health Sciences.  Ethiopia is badly in need of well trained allied health professionals: nurses, laboratory, sonography and radiology technicians. 

In five or six years, we envision a college of Health Sciences right next to a multi-specialty surgical hospital. 

In our succession planning, we envision the time when our boys and girls who grew up on campus and some of our alumni will return to Kalala to become leaders and managers of the Kalala Learning Village.

Photo: Fekede Gemechu with a Kalala student who, as part of a six-student team, won first prize in a science, arts, and craft competition of 120 schools. 

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Can we hold something in the back of our head that we are absolutely sure about, and that most of the brethren stand with us on?—can we hold those things back and be true to ourselves? And furthermore, are we safe in doing it? Is it well to let our people in general go on holding to the verbal inspiration of the Testimonies? When we do that, aren’t we preparing for a crisis that will be very serious some day? It seems to me that the best thing for us to do is to cautiously and very carefully educate our people to see just where we really should stand to be consistent Protestants, to be consistent with the Testimonies themselves, and to be consistent with what we know we must do, as intelligent men, as we have decided in these meetings.  J. N. Anderson. 1919 Bible Conference.

On Thursday, October 23, 1980, the captivating headline across the front page of the Los Angeles Times read “Seventh-day Adventist Controversy Plagiarism Found in Prophet Books.”¹ The Adventist Church was jolted in the public media by wrenching skepticism and doubt about the verity of its prophetess. Only this time, the defense of Ellen White’s legacy, glued to the pedestal of church authority, would have to rely on refutations and defenses provided by “Stewards of the Lord” (to use Mrs. White’s phrase). Syndicated in the Associated Press, the article traveled worldwide and swept into other media—some estimated that the “plagiarism story” was published in hundreds of newspapers and magazines.²

The L.A. Times religion news reporter, John Dart, had been researching Spectrum, Claremont Dialogue, Adventist Review, Ministry, and apologetical statements from the Ellen G. White Estate discussing the crisis created by Ronald L. Numbers’ Prophetess of Health (1976). Prophetess of Health was widely read by the curious, and many readers had become unsettled by the evidence that Ellen White’s health messages had been shaped or borrowed from contemporary health reformers—and did not require a supernatural explanation. When it came time to interview sources, Dart already knew much about White’s liberal borrowing (a euphemism for plagiarism) and the lively debate over the nature of her inspiration that had emerged during the past few years.³ Dart began his article by stating that he believed the main reason for her prodigious output could be explained by plagiarism.⁴ In a church body where “most persons...believed that White’s words came to her directly from God,” he continued; thinking that the Spirit of Prophecy was a “word thief” struck at the very heart of Adventism.

Ellen White typically denied any literary dependency. Paraphrasing White herself, Dart wrote, “She was dependent on the spirit of the Lord in receiving and writing her views.” He also quoted from one of her letters: “Yet the words I employ in describing what I have seen are my own, unless they be spoken to me by an angel, which I always enclose in marks of quotation.” From another letter, written by White in 1906, Dart quoted White explaining that “all who believe the Lord has spoken through Sister White and has given her a message will be safe from the many delusions that will come in these last days.” Dart went on to give several examples of literary borrowing in the prophet’s books, noting that “[Walter] Rea is completing a manuscript for a book based on his research on White . . . that he has not found any major work by White that did not use a previously published source.” Rea, shockingly, identified White as “a plagiarist.”⁵

Robert Olson, secretary of the Ellen G. White Estate, said, “The church is not denying the accumulating evidence of White’s copying…. But Olson also said he puts credence in a theory advanced by Adventist Warren H. Johns (then associate editor of Ministry Magazine) that White had a photographic memory and unconsciously used the phrasings and word choices of other writers in many cases.”⁶

Historian Ronald L. Numbers (University of Wisconsin) explained to Dart that White’s psychological profile failed to support her claims of divine inspiration: “When you look at her visions, hallucinations, depression and loss of speech, if she weren’t a religious leader, you would have had her in therapy.”

“Nonetheless,” Dart pointed out, “delegates to the International Adventist convention in Dallas approved a resolution affirming White as inspired in the same sense as were the Bible prophets and as the Lord’s messenger her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth.” For most Adventists, the L.A. Times article was probably the first time that the church’s prophet had been exposed in the public view to plagiarism since the first newspaper article on Ellen White’s use of sources appeared beyond memory in the Healdsburg Enterprise on March 13 and 20, 1889.

General Conference President Neal C. Wilson was quoted as defensively admitting that most of Rea’s incontrovertible evidence was already known “while acknowledging that White used sources more extensively than previously recognized.”

Prior to the L.A. Times' story, in January 1980, Wilson had appointed an ad hoc committee to study Rea’s findings and reported in the Adventist Review that “the degree of borrowed material and literary dependence is of alarming proportions.” The committee recognized that if church members found this out without proper preparation it could prove to be disastrous. Wilson cautioned the Rea-study committee against using such terms as “literary dependency and extensive borrowing and paraphrasing.” In the L.A. Times interview Wilson used a little-known defense about how this borrowing might have happened. He explained to Dart that “the Holy Spirit helps the messenger to select his material carefully….The prophet’s use of existing materials does not necessarily mean that the prophet is dependent on these sources.” Dart quoted Wilson as saying that “originality is not a test of inspiration.” He added, “The Holy Spirit helps the messenger to select his materials carefully….The prophet’s use of existing materials does not necessarily mean that the prophet is dependent on these sources.”

As soon as Walter Rea’s wife Helen read the L.A. Times article over breakfast that Thursday morning, her reaction was immediate without equivocation. Helen put down the newspaper, looked at Walter, and said: “Now you will be fired.” He turned and asked, “What for?”

It was difficult to find the newspaper in newsstands around Loma Linda that day. The next day the same article appeared in the Washington Post.

The core of the L.A. Times article centered on recent literary discoveries attributed to Elder Walter T. Rea. In this case, the source criticism came from inside the church rather than from outside. Responding to Dart’s interview, Rea said, “The important thing is that she and the denomination always claimed that she didn’t copy and that she wasn’t influenced by anyone.”

Before Rea “spilled the beans,” he had been an able and flamboyant Adventist pastor in the Southern California Conference, the pastor of a 350-member congregation in Long Beach.

As expected, the L.A. Times article triggered a defensive and emotional reaction from the church.⁷ Within a few days, Mrs. White’s grandson Arthur White wrote a letter to his children commenting on the L.A. Times story. “Last Thursday and Friday probably you read either in the Los Angeles Times or the Washington Star that Ellen G. White, your great-grandmother, plagiarized much of what was published in her many books.

“So you see that Ellen White’s use of the writings of others in helping her express what she wanted to say was quite in keeping with what others were doing.... There is no use trying to correct it in the press. Better let folks forget it.”⁸

While all of this was going on, a scandal erupted over the bankruptcy of Donald Davenport, an investor of substantial funds from individual administrators and ministers in the church and funds of the Adventist church. Davenport’s wife was a member of Rea’s church along with Jerry Wiley, Associate Dean of the Law School at the University of Southern California. Both would play an important role in unfolding future events in the life of their pastor in what became known as the Davenport Affair (see below).

A year later President Wilson was interviewed in Christianity Today. The literary borrowing problem was narrowed to “Satan’s subtle sophistry and cunningness.”⁹ Over the course of the next few years, great lengths would be taken by the church to refute the so-called evidence of plagiarism or to simply brush aside the facts and provide new meanings regarding White’s inspiration.¹⁰

After the L.A. Times article appeared, the faithful (including “big names of my denomination”) came calling to Rea’s Long Beach home. “People from all over Adventism are calling or coming, and I’ve had over a thousand people in my home sitting around the table…. I have letters from the world, phone calls from over the globe.”¹¹

There was already considerable upheaval in the life of the church. The sheer intensity of the Merikay Silver discriminatory lawsuit at Pacific Press over wages, the financial losses in the Davenport bankruptcy, intellectual attack on the Seventh-day Adventist belief in the Investigative Judgment from Desmond Ford, the source indebtedness in the health reform writings, and now the widespread markings of plagiarism in other manuscripts and books was enough to sow seeds of discord among pew sitters.^{12 "}What is going to happen? Where is our authority and identity?"¹³

A journalist in the South Bend Tribune reported, “Neal Wilson is afraid. He doesn’t want to be known as the president who let the denomination blow apart.”¹⁴

Preparing to Visit Walter Rea September 2011

In 2011, a minister friend of my father and long-time sympathizer to Walter Rea told me that Rea had just recovered from triple bypass surgery. I asked if he thought Rea might accept an interview. Calling Rea on the telephone (he does not have access to the internet) and assuring him that I wanted to create a story of his intellectual journey, he approved my interview request but warned me of possible interruptions throughout the day because he was taking care of his ailing wife.

It was nearly thirty-one years since the explosive L.A. Times exposé. Rea was in his eighties—older and wiser—and I was told he had become more cautious with considerable realignment of his former religious beliefs. However, he had not recanted his criticism of Ellen White’s authority or renounced his book (The White Lie).

Before going to see Rea I researched the archives in the Heritage Room at Loma Linda University to determine the depth and nature of the apologetic pleadings that followed the publication of Rea’s “debunking book.” The White Lie has been translated into five languages and is available on the Internet for free. At least one Adventist theologian writing in Spectrum at the time that The White Lie was published hoped that Rea’s “research will help Seventh-day Adventist deal more realistically with Ellen White and better understand the phenomenon of inspiration.” This was something I wanted to discuss with Rea: “What was his impression on how much change had been effected on the overall impact of Mrs. White’s inspiration?”¹⁵

I learned that before his sourcing research, Rea was known for assembling Ellen G. White statements into Bible biographies and selling these books in Adventist bookstores. Over time Ray completed three volumes based on White’s works and sold these in many Adventist Book and Bible Houses. Some schools in North America used these same volumes. It was not unusual for him to bring White’s books to the pulpit and read quotations during his Sabbath sermons to reinforce his preaching. Before getting sideways to Adventist leadership, Rea served on the conference committee and was a delegate to the Vienna General Conference. Going into the 70s, Rea was considered by some a hidebound, Ellen White fundamentalist.¹⁶

It looked like the Ellen G. White Estate (hereafter White Estate) reluctantly conceded most of Rea’s major points on literary borrowing except that Mrs. White was not guilty of “any copyright infringement” based on the opinion of attorney Vincent Ramik.¹⁷ Also, in a broader sense, articles written by academics in Spectrum and Adventist Today led many church intellectuals to abandon the inerrant and infallible inspiration theory held for many decades.¹⁸

As expected, fundamentalists continued shoring up belief in the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of the prophetess’s writings.¹⁹ However, the doors were flung open during the Numbers/Rea era to bring about general melancholy over the awareness of frequent borrowing and its impact on inspiration.²⁰ As Robert W. Olson, then secretary for the White Estates, explained, “Maybe I don’t like the idea of a prophet’s copying from somebody else, or borrowing, or whatever you want to call it. But whether you like it or not, if the Bible writers did it, then I can’t question Ellen White for being like the Bible writers in this respect.”²¹ The trustworthiness of the Bible also came into question.

It seemed a little peculiar that White’s plagiarism (assuming that literary borrowing is equivalent to plagiarism) was defended most vigorously by invoking the memorandum of understanding created by Catholic attorney Vincent L. Ramik, hired by the church to render an opinion on whether or not Ellen White was a plagiarist. Invoking nineteenth-century plagiarism standards, Ramik reassured the church with the assertion that Ellen White was no different than her contemporaries who employed free use of earlier works to improve their own. He claimed that copyright laws were feeble in the nineteenth-century.²² Ramik was not hired to address the ethics of Ellen White’s claims that her writings were her own even though Ramik conceded plagiarism was at work. Best-selling historians and writers have countered the Ramik’s view that plagiarism gained the widespread acceptance in the nineteenth-century.²³

The discussion that follows seeks to place Ellen White’s writings within the broader sweep of Adventist heritage and the full scope of the historical revisionists as seen in the discoveries of Walter T. Rea. Did he provoke the controversy in the L.A.Times and Washington Post and how did Rea’s book that followed two years later, come into existence?

Interviewing Walter Rea at His Home in Patterson, California

I met Rea in his large study adjacent to his home (actually another home converted to a study). As I entered his study, I noticed award plaques, recognitions, and diplomas on the wall above his desk. Rea acquired two bachelor’s degrees in theology and speech and three Master’s degrees in history, speech, and theology. Looking around his study, it was obvious he was still involved in continuing research on how Ellen White put her narratives together. This was evidenced by scattered religious volumes on the tables. Some were held opened by weights or rubber bands.

Rea was energetic, witty, personable, gracious, and spry at eighty-eight years. His appearance was your average, bald-headed, spectacles-wearing, genteel grandfather wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a long-sleeve shirt. During the day he offered me Mountain Dew—his favorite drink. He drove me back and forth to my RV in a bright yellow Ford pickup. Rea lives on ten acres of orchards near the edge of Patterson, California.

Because Rea was taking care of his wife in the adjoining home, he gave me two notebooks to read while he was out of his office. Once he returned, Rea was not vague in answering my questions and provided a running stream of impressions overlooked by Adventist apologists trying to undermine Rea. He was relentless in his own defense. During our time, together he was also interrupted by telephone calls and individuals who required his signature (he served as Foreman on the Stanislaus Grand Jury). He explained that he was involved in several organizations as a volunteer where he gives expert accounting and management advice, including the Patterson Cemetery.

While interviewing him, I observed that he has an excellent memory and recalled many happy times in the ministry. His most pleasant were the twenty-plus years spent in junior camps teaching young people archery. Today, he is secure financially. And I should add he possesses a fine sense of drama, a bit high-strung (perhaps because of attention deficit), with induced restlessness and presumably an inherited disorder in the way he skips around and organizes his documents. Rea with his present wife attends the Turlock Seventh-day Adventist church. Unlike Dr. Desmond Ford, Rea’s ordination has not been annulled or called into question.

Fear of Rea writing a book on his Davenport findings caused the church administration to abnegate his retirement when he was discharged even though his years of service qualified him legally. Rea hired James Walters, an Adventist lawyer, to regain his church-affiliated sustentation. After two years of negotiations his retirement and medical coverage were reinstated, but it came with a non-binding stipulation that Rea would not publish another book (by then The White Lie had appeared).²⁴ Like many his age, Rea has had his share of disappointments. His first wife Helen passed away in 1996. About two year later, he married Eleanore Whitchurch who also was widowed. They were friends in college.

Rea was not raised an Adventist. He ran away from home around high school age and enrolled in Lodi Academy, finishing in 1941. At Pacific Union College, he learned to type by practicing with Messages to Young People. As a theology major, he began collecting Ellen White statements he could use in future sermons. Graduating in three years from Pacific Union College, in the winter quarter of 1944, he was called into the ministry of the Central California Conference. He held evangelistic meetings and established the first company in Lompoc, California. His career involved building new schools, new churches, and baptizing new members. He was ordained to the ministry in July 1949. After ordination, he was called to the Florida Conference, continuing to build schools, baptizing 25 to 30 members each year, and conducting weeks of prayer in the boarding schools. In Orlando, Florida, he grew the congregation of 92 to 600 members. In 1958 he came back to California, first to the Pomona church for nine years. When the Conference was financially struggling with the Alhambra church, he was moved in order to solve the nearly $200,000 debt to the San Gabriel Academy. After nine years, he was moved to the Long Beach church, which also faced major financial problems and declining membership. Rea had a reputation for building up churches and schools and for resolving debts.

While in Orlando, Florida Rea was given a book published by Ellen White. It was titled Sketches from the Life of Paul, published in 1883. When he showed this book to a church member, he was told that the problem with the book was that it had been copied from another book with the same title. Rea began a comparison study and found some of the literary borrowing in this book unsettling.

After transferring to California, Rea met the Welleley P. Magan Family—members of his congregation. At the death of Wellesley’s father, his widow Lillian Magan gave Rea a book from the Magan family library—Elisha the Prophet (1882) by Alfred Edersheim. On the flyleaf was White’s signature.

I asked Rea to trace the events leading up to his expanding awareness that Ellen White had appropriated or adapted the literary works of others to give her own writings their beautiful stylistic and poetical power. He replied, “It was a chance encounter. I was enrolled in a Ph.D program at the University of Southern California. One day on the second floor of the library, I happened to see Alfred Edersheim’s The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, published in 1883. Almost immediately, I was struck by the parallels between Edersheim and The Desire of Ages." He said he noticed also the chapter titles and illustrations published in 1890 in White’s Patriarchs and Prophets.

I asked him, “What was your perception or definition concerning the inspiration of Ellen White at the time and her use of sources without attribution?”

Without sounding pompous, with a slight delay while clearing his throat, and speaking in his finest preacher’s voice, he said, “I thought that Ellen G. White was divine, a voice from God, and everything that she wrote came straight from God. And I was no different than most other churchgoing Adventists.” Then he handed me an article written by Arthur L. White, a grandson of Ellen White which revealed what the church was teaching at the time he was a student at Pacific Union College.

Arthur White’s statement said, “Mrs. White guarded against reading that which might have a bearing on her initial presentation of a basic topic. In this light it is easy to understand her declaration in 1887: ‘I have not been in the habit of reading any doctrinal articles in the paper, that my mind should not have any understanding of anyone’s ideas and views, and that not a mold of any man’s theories should have any connection with that which I write.’”²⁵

“There you have it; that was what I absolutely believed,” Rea said. Following his discovery, Rea researched deeper into the implications of the very familiarity of the words, chapter titles, illustrations, patterns of thought, even biblical texts out of context, found in Edersheim, Harris, Melville and other authors when compared with the “originality of White’s writings. Finally, it struck him. “At this point, I was so dumbfounded that I went home, closed the door to my study, sat at my desk and wept!”

“But Walter,” I said, “many college educated in the church, who questioned the White Estate’s promotions of Ellen White’s inspiration, saw her prophetic gift in a broader interpretation than merely receiving and reporting of visions. Much of her writings were not directly attributable to visions.”

“I know.” he said, “The trouble was she led us to believe that her prophetic gift was not an on-then-off inspiration. We took the whole of her writing as divinely inspired. How would you know when she said, 'I have been shown,' or 'it has been clearly presented to me'? How would you know that she was borrowing the very words that followed were from a passage in an article or book? Nearly everyone in my era believed in complete inspiration; otherwise, you end up with circumstantial inspiration.”

After contemplating what this all meant to him, he began to reflect (I should say with a certain sadness) on the “sheer recklessness of plagiarism by Ellen White while claiming to be a prophet of God and still appropriating the works of others to save time or to create a better article or book to increase her fame.” Rea went on to elaborate. “She was asked at one point, when confronted about her copying, who had been harmed? Well, I suppose you could say that plagiarism could do no harm to anyone today because the copyrights are extinguished. But now, of course, it is not what has been copied that harms the church, but what the copying and her explicit and implicit denials reveal about the character of Mrs. White.”

I asked him if he remembered how his theology professors at Pacific Union College educated or indoctrinated him and his colleagues in preparation for the ministry concerning the church’s trademark for the Spirit of Prophecy. He rose from his desk and handed me a quotation from the Adventist Review. “I don’t remember anyone occupying any doubt on the subject of verbal or even inerrant inspiration.” He handed me another quote to reinforce the point.

“If the messages borne by Ellen G. White had their origin in surrounding minds or influences; if the messages on organization can be traced to the ideas of James White or George I. Butler; if the counsels on health had their origin in the minds of Drs. Jackson, Trall, or Kellogg; if the instruction on education was based upon the ideas of G. H. Bell or W. W. Prescott; if the high standards upheld in the Ellen G. White articles and books were inspired by the strong men of the cause—then the Spirit of Prophecy counsels can mean no more to us than some very good ideas and helpful advice!”²⁶

Ray continued, “We all believed what Mrs. White’s grandson was telling us at the time, and none of our professors objected to his accounts although now I suspect they knew better,” he said. “If she was God inspired, why would she copy others and in the future possibly raise doubts about her unique claims? I found many instances in long letters to individuals where she would copy entire paragraphs from non-Adventist sources to make her letters appear more stylish.These letters were used by her literary assistants to create articles in the Signs of the Times or compiled into the Testimonies and then rewritten again to enter her books. Each time changes were made by her literary assistants, so unless you have the original letters, you will only begin to see downstream the cycle of varying degrees of paraphrasing that is occurring from the letter plagiarisms. And another thing—many of the unique health things we thought she wrote were already in the writings of her contemporaries. Ron Numbers showed that in Prophetess of Health. We were told she was a hundred years ahead of her time on health—what nonsense.”

At times our conversations consisted of a series of interruptions because Rea moved quickly from one idea to the next. Often, it seemed there was something left out before we advanced to the next topic. It seemed to me his own truths were his life and the companion of his thoughts and insights. In this respect, Rea was certainly still vigorous and sure. At one point, I tried to get him to elaborate an important concept he found in his research. It had to do with a subtle emphasis or direction of the copying that Mrs. White employed to bolster the confidence of her readers compared to her borrowed source. So, I asked Rea if he could provide an example of improving sentences from others that entered her illuminations and then were used to produce greater assurances to her readers. He wanted to know more and after further discussions caught on to what I was asking.

Using an example from Calvin Stowe’s (Origin and History of the Books of the Bible) in her appropriations for inspiration, Rea pointed to the phrase written by Stowe: “For the time being the utterances of the man are the word of God.” But when Mrs. White copied this phrase, she simply wrote, “The utterances of the man are the word of God.” In this instance, Mrs. White preferred to leave out ‘for the time being’ from Stowe in her parallel probably because Stowe is limiting the word of God in which inspiration acts upon the prophet.”²⁷

“Clearly, she had similar views with Stowe, but her indebtedness would often be more objective, positive, and definite. As in other examples of literary indebtedness where the source might be more tentative, she used less imagination and provide a stronger subjective flavor.”

Rea bolstered his persuasive intellectual claims for finding literary parallels by saying that he had “spent more than thirty years as a hard-core devotee of Ellen White.” At this point, it seemed to me that Rea’s memory and temperament were like a fifth string on a banjo. They fit him for an even greater role in detecting literary parallels, something his critics have ignored or failed to take into account as to how he sees more appropriations of original works than others.

His discoveries were done without a computer. Rea types out his letters and manuscripts the old fashion way at 50-60 words a minute on a typewriter and has never taken up the Internet, Google, email, or modern software to detect literary dependency. I asked him if he was familiar with computer software used by professors to detect when student plagiarize their offerings for a grade. We talked about Turnitin®, but he said he did his appraisals from reading Ellen White and estimating the amount of copying. He admitted that the 50 to 90 percent paraphrasing or copying was just an impression.

I picked up Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing lying on the table and randomly opened to the middle of the book and began reading. He stopped me halfway through and began quoting the rest of the page with only a few errors. I was impressed!

There was more to our discussions, so I will summarize. Rea has abandoned any sustainable belief that Ellen White was a “true prophet.” He accepted her pioneer role as pastoral or historic. He talked volubly about the need for cultural and social change and financial transparency in the church. Ministers are afraid to express themselves. During our conversation, he frequently drew my attention to certain representative passages in the books or church papers scattered about the room or in file cabinets to emphasize his arguments.

Based on the amount of fresh discoveries he continues to find, it is clear he is still sympathetic to his continuing convictions that “the heart of Mrs. White’s Adventist literary output was a derivative from others.” Recently, he sent a copy of his literary evidence to the White Estate, indicating where he claimed every paragraph in The Great Controversy has a parallel connection to different authors through plagiary passages without attribution.²⁸

I thought it would be helpful to review the events that led up to his dismissal as a pastor in trying to understand the “venom and sarcasm” in The White Lie. And I suppose at this point some readers would like to know if he still considered himself an Adventist. He is what may be called a DNA Adventist—as a fallen pastor, he is unfit to lead an Adventist congregation. Now that his ship has sailed, so to speak, into a real-life Proustian storm, would he have done anything differently?

Events Leading Up to Rea’s Plagiary Discovery

In the late 70s, once Rea was persuaded of the potential for widespread copying, he began systematic gathering more examples and sending parallel comparisons and similarities to the White Estate; addressed to his friend Elder Robert W. Olson, Secretary of the White Estate. He explained, “Bob Olson and I were classmates at PUC, and he artfully encouraged me to keep sending him my materials. But unbeknownst to me, the White Estate was planning strategies to persuade believers to withstand the discomforting evidence I was discovering and about to release to the public.” Rea accidentally learned about the details of this strategy a few months later.

Rea’s persistent estimates of the rising amounts of borrowing in Ellen White’s most appreciated works eventually attracted the attention of General Conference president Neal Wilson (Wilson and Rea were classmates at PUC). After taking up Rea’s request to review his findings, Wilson, in conjunction with the General Conference President’s Executive Advisory or PREXAD, agreed to appoint a group of administrators and scholars to study Rea’s evidence. Arthur White vigorously opposed this undertaking!

Wilson encouraged Rea to gather up his data and present his evidence without limitations to a committee of scholars he would appoint. In the letter to summons the review committee, Wilson explained: “We do not really know, and I believe that we should know. I would like to be able to clearly face people, critics or friends, and say that we have looked at the evidence. Elder Rea indicates he has supporting evidence, and that it is overwhelmingly convincing.” At this point Rea, told me how excited he was. All of his research was going to pay off. He was going to get a professional hearing from church scholars. “I felt I really had a chance to educate the scholars in the church about the extent of the borrowings.”

This article is the first in a two-part report. The second part will be published next week on the Spectrum Website.

T. Joe Willey received his PhD in neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley and taught at Loma Linda Medical School, Walla Walla College and La Sierra University.  He was a fellow with Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles at the University of New York, Buffalo, and served as a research fellow at the Brain Research Institute at UCLA, Los Angeles.

NOTES:

1. The first newspaper criticism of Ellen White was reported by The Church of God (Seventh Day) after splitting from the Seventh-day Adventist church. This account accused White of suppressing some of her earlier writings. The controversy made it into the newspapers in 1866 in Battle Creek and San Francisco.  See Ron Graybill. Visions and Revisions Part II. Editing the Testimonies. Ministry. April 1994. p. 8.

2. See: Steve Maynard. The White Controversy. Three professors say writings—even though borrowed—still play a role in Adventism today. Walla Walla City News. December 4, 1981. A False Prophetess? Newsweek. January 19, 1981, and The Church of Liberal Borrowings. Time. August 2, 1982.

3. The Editor. Ellen White and Literary Dependency. Ministry. June, 1980. 

4. In addition to Walter Rea, Dart also interviewed Robert Olson from the White Estate, Dr. Donald McAdams, president of Southwestern Adventist College; Marilyn Thomsen, communications secretary for Southern California Conference; and Dr. Fred Veltman, chairman of the religion department at Pacific Union College. Quotations from GC President Neal Wilson came from statements in the Review and Herald.

5. See: Richard A. Posner. The Little Book of Plagiarism. Pantheon Books. 2007. p. 37. “The stigma of plagiarism seems never to fade completely, not because it is an especially heinous offense but because it is embarrassingly second rate.”

6. Richard A. Posner. Ibid. p. 97. “This unconscious plagiarism is referred to as cryptomnesia. The plagiarist has read something he remembers without remembering he has read it.  Psychologists have investigated the phenomenon and have found no evidence that people can recite entire passages written by someone else yet believe they are their own.”

7. See Press Release from the Seventh-day Adventist Church. November 5, 1980. “The Seventh-day Adventist Church is not about to disregard Ellen White’s books or lessen its convictions regarding her work as a true prophetess of God, [Robert] Olson concluded.”

8. Arthur White. Ellen G. White and Her Writings. Adventist Review. November 27, 1980.Reprinted.

9. Beset by Critics, Adventist Official Cites “Satanic Influence.” Christianity Today. November 20, 1981.

10. The first to appear after the LA Times article was the announcement of tapes and presentations available through the White Estate. See “Documents on E. G. White Sources.” Adventist Review. November 6, 1980. Various Authors. The Inspiration and Authority of the Ellen G. White Writings. Ministry. August 1982. Note: Herbert E. Douglass in Messenger of the Lord (Pacific Press) does not mention Walter Rea or The White Lie.

11.  Ralph Hinman, Jr. Deposed Pastor See Adventist Split. Long Beach Independent Press. Section A. Page 8. January 31, 1981.

12.  Douglas Hackleman. Who Watches? Who Cares: Misadventures in Stewardship. 2008.

13. Ralph Hinman, Jr. Ibid. Page A8.

14. South Bend Tribune. November 21, 1982.

15.  Alden Thompson. The Imperfect Speech of Inspiration. Spectrum. 1982. 12(4). p. 48.

16. Eric Anderson, et.al. Must the Crisis Continue? Spectrum. 1981. Vol. 11(3). p. 44.

17. Ronald Graybill. E. G. White’s Literary Work: An Update. Presentation Worship Services at the General Conference. November 15-19, 1981.  Ronald Graybill. The “I Saw” Parallels in Ellen White’s Writings.  Adventist Review.  July 29, 1982.  Robert W. Olson.  Ellen White’s Denials. Ministry. February, 1991. Leonard Brand and Don. S. McMahon. The Prophet and Her Critics. Pacific Press  Publ. Assoc. 2005, Graeme Bradford. More Than a Prophet. Biblical Perspectives. 2006.

18. Various Authors. The Inspiration and Authority of the Ellen G. White Writings. Ministry. August, 1982.

19. “And while I do not hold her writings to be equal in authority with the Bible (although inspired in the fullest sense of the word by the same Holy Spirit.” J. R. Spangler. The Two Mind-Sets. Ministry. June 1982. p. 5.

20. Warren H. Johns. Ellen White: Prophet or Plagiarist? Ministry. June, 1982.

21. J. R. Spangler. Ellen White and Literary Dependency. Ministry. June 1980. p. 5.

22. The facts are that it is still literary deceit.

23. Richard A. Posner. Ibid. p. 26. “Paraphrasing or creative imitation is used to throw the reader off the scent of literary copying.”

24.  Rea showed me the outline and several unfinished chapters of this book titled, “Pirates of Privilege.” The book details his involvement from the beginnings of the Davenport bankruptcy and participation of church leadership in the debacle.

25. Arthur L. White. “Who Told Sister White. Review and Herald. Part II.” May 21, 1959. p. 7.

26. Ibid. Part I. May 14, 1959. p. 6.

27. There were other differences between Stowe and Ellen White on the subject of inspiration. For example, Mrs. White omitted Stowe’s denials of thought inspiration. To deny inspiration of the thoughts is to deny inspiration of the prophet. Both Stowe and White held to a theory of progressive revelation and the human character of the writings in the Bible. Almost fifty percent of Mrs. White’s MS 24 (1880) (Selected Messages. Book One. 1958. P. 19-21. shows strong parallel to Professor Stowe’s Origin and History of the Books of the Bible. Hartford, CN: Hartford Publ. Co. 1867.

28. Don McAdams during the January 28-29, 1980 Glendale meeting predicted that this would be the case. Walter Rea presently claims that he has confirmed McAdams suspicion.

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Walter_Rea.jpg

This is the second part of a two part series of conversations between T. Joe Willey and former Seventh-day Adventist pastor and author of The White Lie, Walter T. Rea. Read the first part of this series here.

The Glendale Meeting January 1980

The ad hoc committee of nineteen individuals (well-known throughout Adventism) was balanced across some of the culture bearers’ familiarity with earlier research on Ellen White’s use of literary sources. The committee met in Glendale, California, for two days on January 28 and 29, 1980.¹ At this meeting, Rea presented a detailed examination of some of the things he had discovered. The group invited Rea to remain in the afternoon of the second day to answer questions. Robert Olson was appointed secretary of this committee. After reviewing Rea’s evidence, the Glendale group unanimously voted several recommendations to be conveyed to President Wilson and PREXAD.

Firstly, the committee expressed its “appreciation to Elder Rea for the enormous amount of work he had done” and “gratitude to Elder Neal Wilson and PREXAD . . . for their readiness to consider our recommendations.” The six important recommendations that followed were voted unanimously with cool, wistful elegance, and the wording pleased Rea very much.

The recommendations included this: “That we recognize that Ellen White, in her writing, used various sources more extensively than we had previously believed. In a number of her books the similarity between Ellen White and other authors is great enough to require the serious attention of our church leaders in order to determine the degree and significance of her dependence on other writers. And as soon as possible, a plan be developed for thoroughly informing our church administrators and immediate study be given to a plan for educating the church on the subject of inspiration and Ellen White’s use of sources including articles in the Adventist Review, Ministry magazine and though the Sabbath School lessons.”

They also recommended “that the leadership of the church and the White Estate continue to educate SDA believers, workers and administrators as to the methods used by prophets to reveal God’s will to His church through the inspired writings of both scripture and the messages of Ellen G. White.”

One General Conference member on the committee spoke up and urged that they should “all agree not to cover up.” After passing these recommendations back to Washington, a month later PREXAD abolished the Glendale committee, saying it had no further assignment, and it was not heard from again. The literary scholars met only once.

On February 5, 1980, president Wilson called available members of the General Conference Committee to discuss the literary criticisms introduced by Rea through the Glendale committee. The minutes summarized five general items that emerged from the morning discussions that would set the strategic accommodations or theory of inspiration in the future.² Rea handed me a list of recommendations from PREXAD. The General Conference recognized five things:

(1)  There had been a significant use of literary sources by Ellen White;

(2)  Use of literary sources is consistent with the Seventh-day Adventist view of inspiration;

(3)  The church should be informed and at the same time educated on the doctrine of inspiration;

(4)  Walter T. Rea has done a considerable research but it is felt he should not be the one to communicate to the membership either the research or a view of inspiration; and

(5)  General Conference members were united in their continued confidence in Ellen White as the special messenger of the Lord to the Church. 

Less than two weeks later, the president of Southern California Conference, Elder Harold Calkins, and a member of Glendale committee, released the following statement in the Pacific Union Recorder:“The committee did not discover dependence on other authors in the Spirit of Prophecy writings.” This was exactly opposite from what he and the others voted in Glendale.³ It was also the beginning of double-talk that would haunt Rea throughout the rest of his career as a literary authority of Ellen White’s writings. Jerry Wiley wrote to Calkins, asking him to explain this false statement. Calkins did not respond.

As the Glendale Committee’s recommendations began to seep into the consciousness of Adventism, some adherents sent letters to the White Estate asking for clarification. In one query letter, Olson defended his position, “I think you have somehow gotten the wrong impression of that meeting, because it took no particular courage on my part to vote the way I did. All of the votes of the committee were unanimous. There was no problem with any of the actions that were taken. When we acknowledged that Ellen White had engaged in a certain amount of literary borrowing, we were not diminishing her authority as a prophet in the least. The brethren here in the General Conference do recognize that most of our people do not understand how inspired writings were developed, not only in the case of Ellen White, but also in the case of the Bible authors.”⁴

From item 4 above, one could surmise that the GC brethren had accepted Rea’s unequivocal and undeniable evidence but not Rea’s enthusiasm for educating and bringing about change in the world of inspiration for Ellen White. Once removed from his ongoing study, the stubborn pastor from Long Beach could only watch the renewing of fervor in the cultural support of previous teachings on the inspiration of the prophetess. The General Conference and White Estate began to expend greater energy in shoring up previous convictions. You can actually see the waves of resistance moving back and forth across the articles published by the church during the next five years.⁵ Even so, the question of the extent of her borrowings bothered many believers because they wondered how uninspired material, even fictional, became inspired through borrowing. To bolster her writing habits, Ellen White never explained what the Holy Spirit actually communicated to her on the topic of literary borrowing even though son William implied she had received such communications from God.

Resisting Writing the White Lie

Rea continued to quietly add to White’s writing parallels after the Glendale Conference. He was no longer in the limelight. Bruce Weaver, a seminary student under ministerial appointment by the Arkansas/Louisiana conference, discovered an unmarked file folder on a table in the reading room in the James White Library at Andrews University. The folder contained examples of Rea’s literary criticisms of the prophetess writings. The White Estate’s foiling plans were in the folder discussing who could be trusted on Andrews University faculty to help blunt the impact of Rea’s findings. Weaver copied this file and sent it to Rea. Consequently, Rea was not surprised when Arthur L. White explained the counter evidence by pushing directly into the heart of Rea’s arguments and began to prepare the church in the Adventist Review for what might be expected from Rea’s sourcing revelations. When it was discovered that Weaver had copied this file, he was dismissed as a graduate student and his ministerial appointment was revoked for passing the sensitive materials to Rea.⁶

To preempt the revelations of Rea, the church rushed to publish The White Truth which was intended to defend the inspirational integrity of Ellen White. It is important to note that TheWhite Truth (1981) was published prior to The White Lie’s appearance in 1982. This book did not mention Walter Rea by name. The author of The White Truth was an investor in Davenport.⁷

Embarrassed Adventists accused Rea of approaching the LA Times for the interview. The religious editor at the Times, John Dart told Spectrum that “the interview was not initiated or suggested by Rea.” (Vol. 11, Number 3. p. 49). Rumors had it that Rea was going to be fired. A month after the LA Times article (November, 1980), Rea was asked to meet with the local Conference Committee. Concerned, Rea offered a compromise as an attempt to keep his job. Rea assured the committee that he had not initiated the interview or supplied background information used in the interview. He agreed to work with any committee to study the matter of White’s borrowing. He agreed not to speak publicly on the subject or talk to “anyone in the peanut gallery as Elder Calkins put it.” Also, Rea agreed not to publish any book on White as long as he was employed. After Rea was fired, he felt he was released from any of these stipulations. Rea’s book was written in 1982 and was first titled “Too Close to Call,” but later changed to The White Lie.⁸

Critics bashed Rea’s book as “grossly exaggerated.” Ministry magazine recommended those “honestly searching for the truth about Ellen White should make their way through Rea’s book, even if the journey is a little jarring at times.” Doug Morgan, historian from Columbia Union College (now Washington Adventist University), said, We do need to at least pay attention to him. Is it possible that those who have overused or misused Mrs. White are making her of “none effect,” who have lynched the very lady they profess to adore as Rea charges?⁹ Some critics went so far as to say that The White Lie was written in a strident personal tone throughout the book.

Historian Jonathan Butler felt that Rea “reacts with the harshness of a man who feels not only misunderstood but abused.”¹⁰ I told Rea that maybe Butler was on to something that might have led Rea to explode against his colleagues in the ministry as “the super-salesmen of the psychic,” referred quite often in The White Lie. Was there something in the way he was treated by church leadership that provoked Rea’s withering belligerence toward his friends in the ministry?¹¹ Listening to Rea’s account after the LA Times, it seemed possible that Rea was also somewhat naïve about what he had written. I told him he reminded me of someone who tipped over a beehive and then wondered why he got stung and had to run for cover.

The church was facing three tumultuous issues, of which Rea and The White Lie was only one. The other two problems were associated with Desmond Ford’s criticism of the investigative judgment and Donald Davenport’s financial scandal. Rea told me that he thought he was fixed in the stream of the ill-gotten “Ford Davenport Rea” (FDR) exposure. He sincerely came to believe that the real reason for his dismissal was his early involvement in exposing the Davenport misconducts, not his research on Ellen White’s literary dependency.

Mrs. Davenport was a member of Rea’s church and brought the “court-sealed records” of investors for Rea’s help in determining if her husband was hiding assets. Seeing the list of church investors, Rea brought in Jerry Wiley, and together they began to write letters to church leaders involved with Davenport, seeking to embarrass them. Bringing this to light did not help Rea’s reputation at the time, especially in the letters he wrote to the General Conference president Robert Pierson and Pacific Union Conference president Walter Blehm. Rea would go on to write a rough draft of The Pirates of Privilege that deals with Davenport. But it was not published by agreement to his sustentation restoration.

Around March of 1980, after being advised that Pacific Union College professor Dr. Fred Veltman would be assigned the continuing literary analysis of White (in The Desire of Ages project), Rea cut back on his own literary criticism and assumed a more vigorous pastor’s role in his church. Rumors that Rea was going to be fired continued.

In a letter addressed to Rea in July, 1980, Wilson raised his own concerns about Rea’s future. “You and I have been a part of the Seventh-day Adventist ministry long enough, Walter, to know that ordination becomes a binding, sacred agreement. It indicates our full acceptance of all the vital truths and teachings of this church, including the fact that the gift of prophecy was manifested through the ministry of Ellen White, and that this is an identifying mark of the remnant church. . . .To many it appears as though you have been carrying on activities which tear down the very things that you are supposed to build up.”¹²

After the LA Times article, the conference leadership decided that Rea’s research had carried him too far into labeling the denomination’s highly respected pioneer Ellen White a plagiarist. Rea was fifty-eight years old. Had he not shared his results, it is likely he would have retired from the ministry under the natural order of things. As it was, Rea thought the church was punishing him because he spoke out publicly which was against the church’s wishes and opening the awareness of financial improprieties in Davenport.¹³ He naively thought his discoveries would launch a different Ellen White the prophet project and more visibility to financial affairs. Eventually the leadership’s decision to discipline Rea was not because his information was incorrect or because he failed to perform his ministerial duties. The month before Rea was disciplined, he told a reporter from the Chicago Tribune that he knew his firing was coming because he had “spilled the beans.” Around this time, Rea became frightened because “there have been some threats against my life.” He was reluctant to discuss the details with the reporter,¹⁴ and he did not reveal these threats to me.

Late in coming, believers had a new concern. Did it really matter that its prophetess, a self-described “messenger of God,” was a plagiarist? She had given the impression that her messages came directly from God, not paraphrased or copied from others. Wasn’t that good enough? Maybe she thought that God owned everything and that she could utilize what was available for her own writings? Her grandson tried to use the most common defense: “Ellen White in actuality used very little from other authors, and it was no injury to them. There was no misrepresentation in the matter.”¹⁵ But in the end . . .

Rea learned that as a local pastor he was not to become influential on such matters, but a simple passenger on the voyage of life as a pastor, and only allowed to remain on board without touching the helm or handling the riggings. That task was assigned to professor Fred Veltman, someone the administration could trust. After several years of research, Veltman also discovered that there was clear evidence from Ellen White’s personal handwriting that she had composed textual materials on the Desire of Ages and that these handwritten materials showed that she took literary expressions from the works of other authors without giving them credit. Generally, Veltman found the closer one is able to move back through the textual tradition to White’s own hand, the greater is the degree of literary dependency. Veltman’s conclusion was that White used approximately 31 percent from outside sources in parts of The Desire of Ages. Perhaps his most important concluding remarks were these:

“How do you harmonize Ellen White’s use of sources with her statements to the contrary? I must admit at the start that in my judgment this is the most serious problem to be faced in connection with Ellen White’s literary dependency. It strikes at the heart of her honesty, her integrity, and therefore her trustworthiness.”¹⁶

Rea could go along with that as he was saying the same thing.

Walter T. Rea was born on July 12, 1922 and passed away August 30, 2014, leaving behind two children, a son and a daughter. He was 92 years old.

T. Joe Willey received his PhD in neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley and taught at Loma Linda Medical School, Walla Walla College, and La Sierra University.  He was a fellow with Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles at the University of New York, Buffalo, and served as a research fellow at the Brain Research Institute at UCLA, Los Angeles.

NOTES:

1.  Ad hoc committee members included, Ralph Thompson (Chair), Robert Olson (Secretary), Walter Blehm, Harold Calkins, Herbert Douglass, Fred Harder, William Johnsson, Harold Lance, W. R. Lesher, Donald McAdams, Jack Provonsha, Walter Rea, W. L. Richards, Ottilie Stafford, Fred Veltman, Louis Venden, John Waller, Mervyn Warren and Jerry Wiley.  Also present the second day (Jan. 29), Galen Richardson, Jim Wagner, Ron Graybill and James Nix.

2.  Minutes of Meeting. General Conference Committee. GC Archives. February 5, 1980. 80-31.

3.  Cited from a letter from Jerry Wiley (associate dean USC Law School) to Harold Calkins March 18, 1980. “I have thought for some time about the short piece you printed in the February 11, 1980 Pacific Union Recorder, and I simply cannot harmonize the committee’s action with your statement … My memory of the meeting is in direct conflict with what you wrote in the Recorder.”  Sent also to Neal Wilson.

4. Letter from Robert Olson, Secretary, EGW Estate to Eryl A. Cummings, February 21, 1980.  

5.  The Truth About the White Lie. Ministry Insert. August, 1982.  

6.  In the fall of 1978 Bruce Weaver copied a list of books in Ellen White’s library at the time of her death. He systematically purchased copies he could find in used book stores and acquired copies from the libraries and examined them for evidence of plagiarism. He left Adventism in early 1982. For fanaticism in early Adventism; see Bruce Weaver. Incident in Atkinson: The Arrest and Trial of Isreal Dammon. Adventist Currents. Vol. 3, No (1), 1988.  

7.  John J. Robertson. The White Truth. Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publ. Assoc. 1981. 112 p. See L. A. Times.  anuary 16, 1982/Part II. p. 5.  

8.  The New York Times stated; Walter Rea has inflamed the issues confronting the cult with incontrovertible evidence he provides in The White Lie. Time Magazine stated; The White Lie is a bombshell which has shocked the church.  

9.  Doug Morgan. The White Lie. College People. (Summer, 1982):32-33.  

10.  Jonathan Butler. Prophet or Plagiarist: A Dichotomy. Spectrum. 1982. 12(4). p. 44.  

11.  He was friends with Neal Wilson and Robert Olson at Pacific Union College.  

12.  Letter to Walter Rea from Neal Wilson. July 2, 1980.  

13.  Adventist Minister is Unfrocked after Calling Prophet Plagiarist. The Washington Post. Friday, December 12, 1980.  

14.  Ronald Yates. “Church Jolted by Plagiarism Charge.” Chicago Tribune. Sunday, November 23, 1980. p. 12.  

15.  John Dart. “Plagiarizing Prophets: Are Words Tainted?” Los Angeles Times. Part 2, p. 5. December 24, 1980.  

16.  Fred Veltman. The Desire of Ages Project. Ministry. December 1990. 

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Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

JobAndDuck.jpg

The lesson studies on Job are over, and there’s a new quarter beginning, but some scenes from Job just keep echoing in my head. Reading the endless discussions between Job and his friends is a little like reading a play. A very wordy dark comedy, perhaps.

Job: I am so miserable, I wish I could die.
Eliphaz: Job, you must have sinned. You should confess.
Bildad: God is fair and just—he blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked.
Zophar: If you repent, God will bless you again.
Job: But I haven’t done anything wrong—why is God hounding me this way?

That’s the abridged version.¹ Of course, the joke is that most of the advice Job’s friends give is in fact true—or at least, it is certainly what we would call “biblical.” All through the books of Moses, the major and minor prophets, and all through the Old Testament, the words of Job’s friends echo and re-echo: God blesses the good and curses the bad. If you repent your sins, God will relent, forgive, and bless again. I can picture old Bildad whipping out his Bible, turning to 2 Chronicles 7:14 (or Isaiah 55:6 and 7, or Proverbs 28:13—how many examples do you want?) and saying, “Come on, Job—is the Bible God’s Word, or is it not? Does God mean what He says, or does He not?”² If Job were adapted as an opera, I could imagine Job’s friends punctuating their long, didactic arias with a harmonious leitmotif of “Trust and Obey.”

And I cannot help feeling a bit of sympathy for the four friends when God turns to them in the last chapter and says, “I am angry with you . . . because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). Huh? I can hear them protesting: “But God, we got it right from Moses, and Isaiah, and . . . so, God, let me get this straight—were you just kidding when you said all that stuff about punishing the wicked and needing to repent?”

I will come back to Job & Company, but let me digress. I study late nineteenth-century drama, especially plays by Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. Talk about wordy plays—many of his scenes have little or no action, and consist mostly of characters sitting around like Job and his friends, having conversations (written in an era when shouting, swooning, fighting, and explosions were the usual order of stage business). First-time viewers in the 1890s complained that his plays were “dull, undramatic, verbose, tedious, and utterly uninteresting.”³

My mind has been going back to Ibsen often amid the Sabbath School lessons of the past few months. Ibsen was an iconoclast. His plays challenged the values that most of his contemporaries revered—masculine strength, feminine submission, marital affection, respectability, democracy. Not that Ibsen thought these values were always bad, but he argued that his society tended to treat these standards as idols. By insisting that these standards mustbe upheld for allpeople in allcircumstances, people covered up their weaknesses and shameful secrets rather than seeking to correct them—whitewashing the tombs, as Jesus would say.

Again and again, Ibsen’s plays show characters attempting to conform to society’s standards, appearing righteous and upstanding, but in fact caught in a desperate attempt to keep up appearances. The antidotes for this, the plays imply, are “truth and freedom”—people need not only to acknowledge when they fall short of the standard but also to recognize when the standards themselves are flawed—or at least, when they are understood or applied in flawed ways. The Pillars of Society shows a man who for years has kept his reputation as a model citizen by allowing another man to be blamed for his philanderings and shady business dealings. In A Doll’s House, a seemingly happy married couple realizes that they neither understand nor respect one another, and the wife shocks her husband (and the audience) by leaving him. In Ghosts, a wife does the opposite: she stays with her drunken, unfaithful, and syphilitic husband to keep up a virtuous married façade, and her reward is to have a son who inherits his father’s disease and to watch in horror as that disease gradually destroys his body and brain. The Enemy of the People depicts the people of a spa town who discover that the springs and public baths that undergird the town’s tourist industry are contaminated with industrial waste; nearly all agree to keep the pollution a secret to protect the local economy, and the one dissenter who calls for the necessary but costly repairs is branded an anti-democrat, an “enemy of the people.” Again and again, Ibsen presents honesty, independence, and willingness to challenge social convention as costly, dangerous, and desperately needed correctives to hypocrisy. This idea, to some viewers, seemed simply an across-the-board rejection of marriage, family, gender norms, and religion, a promotion of free love and anarchy. Some viewers attacked his plays as immoral while others (the Ibsenites, as their opponents mockingly branded them) applauded and embraced him as a realist, a lone truth-teller in a hypocritical world.

But in The Wild Duck, his next play after The Enemy of the People,Ibsen bewildered his admirers and detractors alike by apparently turning his attack against his own idea of “truth and freedom.” The play depicts Gregers Werle, a man who declares himself devoted to truth at all costs, promising to drain society’s swamp of lies and pretense. He discovers that the wife of his friend Hjalmar Ekdal has long ago had an affair with his (Gregers’s) father, and that Hedvig, the Ekdals’ child, is in fact the illegitimate daughter of old Mr. Werle. He thinks he is doing Hjalmar a favor by announcing these facts and forcing the family to “face the truth,” but he is amazed to find that no one thanks him. The wife berates Gregers for telling on her, the husband melodramatically threatens to kill the man who has dishonored him, and young Hedvig, helplessly watching her family fall to pieces, finally shoots herself. The tragedy of the little girl’s death is rendered darkly comic by the reaction of Gregers, who continues to wonder at the family’s ingratitude, their failure to appreciate their newfound freedom to “live the truth,” now that he has forcibly exposed their lies. It is as if, after his earlier plays’ celebration of authenticity and attack on respectable hypocrisy, Ibsen thought his admirers needed a caution: “Listen to my lessons, but be careful how you apply them: ‘Living the truth’ is an admirable aspiration, but ‘living the truth’ does not mean blurting out other people’s dark secrets willy-nilly.” For the fanatical Ibsenites, Ibsen created Gregers Werle, the arch-Ibsenite, as a caricature and a warning.

I see the book of Job, similarly, as a warning with a whiff of satire—Job’s friends might be read as caricatures of fundamentalist readers of scripture who, like Gregers, tended to take their creator’s words a little too seriously—or, perhaps, with the wrong kind of seriousness. God, like Ibsen (if I can make the analogy without irreverence), knew that some of His disciples tended to apply His ideas over-zealously, without thinking critically about where those directives might fit the situation and where they might not. Maybe I should say that the author of Job saw this problem, and, under divine inspiration, crafted the narrative in a way that would highlight the laughable tragedy of this well-meaning but blinkered biblical literalism and the needless frustration and harm it causes (he must have some reason for spending thirty-something chapters on this maddening dialogue, after all). We speak of God as Father, God as Shepherd, God as Savior, God as King. Might the book of Job be (among other things) a revelation of another facet of God’s character—a subversive, shrewd, and even playful God, God as Satirist?

Mary Christian holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Indiana University, specializing in drama and Victorian studies. She leads the music ministry and at the Bloomington Seventh-day Adventist church and is an active member of IU's Adventist Christian Fellowship chapter. 

NOTES:
1. I’m taking a leaf from the book of Archibald MacLeish, who, in J. B., gives barely three pages to Job’s friends’ admonitions.
2. Yes, I know those passages of the Bible were not available to Job’s friends. But if they were . . .
3. Clement Scott, review of Ghosts, published in The Daily Telegraph, London, 14 March 1891.

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Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

Reinder_Bruinsma.jpg

Reinder Bruinsma may be retired as far as career goes, but at 74, this former pastor, teacher, and high-ranking administrator has viewed retirement as freedom to double down on what he loves most. He preaches, writes books, translates scholarly tomes, and from time to time, joins his local hiking club for a 10-mile hike along the canals. And when he is not doing that, he will be lecturing or presenting papers at conferences in his own country and all over Europe. He and his wife Aafje live in The Netherlands where people know how to pronounce his name.

Dr. Bruinsma has been particularly concerned about reaching out to those who find themselves on the periphery of the church: “For me, building bridges remains a sacred task. What can I do to help those who hardly know any doubt and who have no major concerns about the way the church operates to realize that the doubts and concerns of others are very real and touch their entire being?”

You have written that the Adventist church today is divided into two main groups: those who are comfortable in the church and those who are not. If I understand you correctly, you also see this as a worldwide phenomenon although the issues may vary. Could you elaborate on this?

It is, of course, difficult to provide a one-page analysis of what is happening in the Seventh-day Adventist Church today. There are different kinds of fault lines in Adventism. Firstly, there is a widening chasm between the South and the North. Then there are those who mostly look to the past for inspiration and security, and there are those who are more focused on the future and who want to find creative ways of keeping, or making, their faith relevant for the Twenty-first century. In addition, we may differentiate between sections of the church that tend to read the Bible in a "plain," literal way and to promote a "conservative" theology, while another segment of the church prefers a different kind of hermeneutic and feels more akin to a "progressive" or "liberal" kind of theology. Such fault lines intersect at different points. But, yes, I feel that there is perhaps a deeper, and possibly more significant, division among Adventist believers.

On the one side are those who feel comfortable with their church. They want to keep Adventism the way it is and do not want change; if anything, many in this group want to strengthen the traditional identity of Adventism. They support the kind of leadership that wants to protect the past, and many welcome measures to ensure that the Adventist teachings are defined into ever-greater detail and that leaders, in particular those who have teaching and editorial responsibilities in the church, adhere to these. To a large extent, this segment of Adventism also supports the traditional eschatology and retains the "us" (the remnant) and "them" ("apostate" churches) end-time view.

On the other side are those who feel less and less comfortable with that approach. They want to see change; they want anaggiornamento (bringing up to date) that ensures that the church—what it does and believes, and how it translates and communicates its convictions—remains relevant to the present and relates to the society and culture they live in. They want a much greater freedom in what church members can believe as long as they support the really basic doctrines of the church. They feel very uncomfortable with the way current top church leadership tries to tighten rules and regulations and to get an even firmer grip on what may be said and written in the church; they no longer want to think in terms of "us" and "them," but they want to recognize and appreciate real Christianity where they see it. The tragedy is that many have become so uncomfortable that they have already left or find themselves "on the margins" of the church.

You have for a long time been reaching out to those who find themselves on the periphery of the church. You have written a number of books addressing this concern such as It's Time to Stop Rehearsing What We Believe and Start Looking at What Difference It Makes(1998), Present Truth Revisited: An Adventist Perspective on Postmodernism(2014) and Facing Doubt: A Book for Adventist Believers "on the Margins" (2016). The last book was received very well, especially in Europe, where secularization is decimating the Christian church, but Adventist church leaders, especially those at the hierarchical pinnacle of the church, reacted very differently.

Indeed, I have become increasingly concerned about the disturbing fact that so many Adventists have given up on their church, and about the possibly just-as-large group of people who are still in the church but who wonder whether they will have the courage (and the interest) to stick with the church as they know it.

You mention some titles of books, in which I have addressed issues that are related to this concern. It is interesting that you should remember the small book that the Pacific Press published now almost twenty years ago (It's Time to Stop Rehearsing What We Believe and Start Looking at What Difference It Makes). It was inspired by an extraordinary experience I had. I visited a church member who was terminally ill. He was more conservative than most ultra-conservatives and knew exactly what God wanted from all of us. But on his deathbed, he engineered a very dishonest financial deal. That made me think and ask myself this question: To what extent do the doctrines we profess actually influence the way we live? After all, Christ told us that the Truth will set us free. In other words, the Truth is not just a set of intellectual propositions, but it must do something for us. So, I took all 27 Fundamental Beliefs (the 28th had not yet been added) and in as many short chapters, I asked myself in each case: what difference does this doctrine make in the way I live? How does it make me a better, more loving, more mature, and more pleasant Christian? That approach appeared to ring a bell with many readers. I received more positive reactions from readers of this book (that has now long been out of print) than I had received on anything else I had previously written.

My book AnAdventist Perspective on Postmodernism had to be published privately as an e-book. Several denominational publishing houses said they liked the manuscript but felt that it was not "opportune" for them (that word was actually used several times) to publish it. I felt increasingly that there were things about the world around me (and especially about the new generation, including my own children), which I did not understand. That led me to become heavily interested in the rise of postmodernism and in how postmodernism has influenced Christianity, definitely including the Adventist Church. For a number of years, I did a lot of lecturing to students and other audiences about this topic and tried to help hem understand some of the present tensions in the church that had much to do with the dichotomy between modern and postmodern Adventism.

But, currently, much of my attention is focused on the topic of my latest book Facing Doubt: A Book for Adventist Believers "on the Margins." It has so far appeared in English and in my mother tongue (Dutch). Editions in French, Russian, and Danish are soon to appear, and I hope some other languages, such as German and Portuguese, will follow. I have not even tried to have it published by denominational publishers, knowing that this would not be possible even if the leaders of these institutions themselves might have been interested in its publication. The denominational channels for promotion and distribution are likewise not available for this book, so I have had to rely mainly on the social media. Spectrumand Adventist Today have been very supportive, and the word about the book has spread widely. Amazon.com is the main channel for the distribution of the English edition, but many other on-line bookstores, in different parts of the world, also carry the book.

In this book I want to address the large numbers of men and women who are "on the margins" of the church—many who have left the church but still have many—social and other—ties to their former spiritual home, and those who have serious doubts, especially with regard to some of the traditional Adventist views and who find that the church allows them less and less breathing space. And I address the group that feels uneasy about the way the official church forces certain standpoints on its members (and its educational institutions). Among these are the issue of hermeneutics (how do we read the Bible?) and of a six-day literal creation week, aspects of the sanctuary doctrine and related issues, and the discrimination of women and of people with a "different" sexual orientation.

I have made myself rather vulnerable in the book by freely speaking also about my own doubts and concerns. At the same time, I want to appeal to my readers not to give up on their church but to find ways of constructively dealing with their doubts and concerns and to simply take the freedom to think for themselves and not let others determine whether they are ‘genuine’ Adventists or not.

Can you describe the reaction to your book and what surprised you the most about it?

I have received, as was to be expected, some very negative comments. Some have (often without actually having read the book) stated that the honest thing for me to do would be to hand in my credentials as a Seventh-day Adventist minister, considering that—in their view—I no longer believe in some fundamental Adventist teachings and actively seek to undermine the faith of church members around the world! Readers of this website may remember the scathing review by Clifford Goldstein, who at the General Conference level is responsible for the creation of the adult Sabbath School materials. His review was, I think, very unfair and based on a biased reading of only part of the book. But such criticisms have been very limited in number. The reactions of the leadership at the General Conference and the Division levels have been mostly in the category of total silence. However, through my social network, I have heard that some have (silently) welcomed the book and have told colleagues that they agree with many of the things I say.

I do understand that church leaders are in a very difficult position. More than a few of them are not happy with recent developments in the church, but they can only continue to lead and have a mitigating influence if they move very carefully. Moreover, their constituencies are often quite polarized and openly endorsing such a book would not help them in their work. For that reason I have not asked any church leader—and many of them are among my friends or at least good acquaintances—to openly endorse the book since I do not want to make things more complicated for them than they already are.

By and large, the reactions that I have received are mostly positive. Both people "in the pew" and ministers tell me that they recognize their own dilemma in the book and that they find it helpful that someone brings it out into the open and helps fellow-believers to face their doubts and concerns in a constructive and positive way.

From the feedback I receive, I must conclude that the book has so far not reached many people who are already at considerable distance from the church and that it also largely fails to reach the younger generation. Maybe someone else (younger than I am) must take up the challenge to deal with this topic in a way that will touch the millennials. On the other hand, it has been surprising to get so many reactions from people who say that they are probably regarded by their fellow-believers as solid Adventists, but that, in fact, many of the things I raise have been troubling them for a long time. This group, in particular, seems to appreciate the book.

As far as I can tell, you like the concept of “unity in diversity.” How much diversity can unity absorb?

It would still be true to say that Adventism displays a remarkable degree of unity. At the same time it cannot be denied that Adventism also manifests an ever-growing measure of diversity.

Any worldwide church must face the challenge Adventism is facing: enormous ethnic and cultural diversity and an inevitable variety of theological thought. Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism—just to mention two examples—must, like Adventism, also deal with very significant diversity within their ranks. Most denominations, even when their presence is largely confined to one country or one area of the world, have different theological streams, or modalities, which may roughly be labeled as "conservative" versus "liberal." And in at least some denominations the gap between the two is much wider than in Adventism.

Adventism has spread over the world and has found a response among all "peoples, nations and tongues." The Adventist public has, over time, also become much more varied. Today, we see a church with large numbers of highly educated people and with men and women of all walks of life. Many Adventists have become aware of what other Christians are thinking and realize that their questions and concerns are often very similar to theirs. Moreover, many Adventist church members realize they must find answers to questions the founders of the church did not ask and address.

It would be unnatural and very unhealthy if the church would be a monolithic, never changing structure, displaying strict uniformity in the way it manifests itself in the world, addresses different issues (some of which may be more acute in particular parts of the world than elsewhere), worships in the same ways and adheres in every detail to the same kind of theology.

You are right when you say that I seem to "like" the idea of "unity in diversity." However, not only do I like it, but I strongly believe that the future of Adventism as a world movement is threatened if this idea isnot wholeheartedly embraced. Diversity is essential if the church is not to become a museum that only displays interesting things from the past, with guards everywhere to ensure that the visitor does not touch anything. The church must be a living organism. Significantly, one of the preferred biblical metaphors for the church is the term "body." That image sharply underlines the fundamental value of diversity. We must certainly continue to emphasize the unity of the body of Christ. But I am reminded of something I read somewhere: The oneness of the flock is in the fact that we have one shepherd, not in the fact that all sheep are clones.

How much diversity can the church tolerate without falling apart? I would suggest that we need to agree on some basics. In the last chapter of my recent book, I have listed a number of the things that are "basic" for me. And, with all the diversity that I notice, I observe a fundamental unity in our church with regard to these "basics." Let me briefly mention some aspects.

Not for a moment do I want to deny the very real challenges of the theological diversity among us. But I do not want this to make me blind to the strong degree of unity that continues to prevail in the Adventist faith community. Whatever labels we may give each other, it is gratifying to see that there is more that binds us than what divides us. When we look at what proponents from different currents within Adventism tell us they believe, we notice that they are held together by important basic convictions. I know there are different perspectives on the inspiration of the Bible, but I know of no Adventist theologian who does not, in some way, take the Bible very seriously. I realize we have differences in Christology, but I know of no Adventist colleague for whom Christ is nothing but a human person and who does not believe that he is our present Mediator and that in the "near" future he will return to this earth. We may hold different theories of the atonement, but all of us believe that salvation is in Christ and that we are saved by grace. I know of no serious Adventist theologian who denies the value of the Sabbath and still calls himself or herself a Seventh-day Adventist. I hear everywhere within Adventism about the same holistic view of human nature and "conditional immortality." In spite of many different theories about the end-time events, I do not think there are many (if any) Adventists who have rejected the biblical teaching that human history, as we know it, will end and that Adventists have a special mission in preparation for that. And for all, it is clear that faith affects lifestyle and that stewardship and discipleship are close twins. With this kind of underlying unity, we can handle, and even celebrate, the diversity that our faith community experiences.

It has been said that authority is like soap: the more you use it, the less you have left. Are you concerned that church leaders—and you have been one--like so much of society these days will be tempted to dispense with dialogue in favor of brute force to resolve issues that divide the community?

No organization can function without a clear line of authority. But here is one of the areas where the distance between modernism and postmodernism is very pronounced. In segments of the church that are still mostly "modern," authority automatically follows election or appointment to an office. In that paradigm, the key words are obedience and compliance. In other segments of the church—in particular, but not exclusively, in the Western world—authority must be earned. The keywords are trust, authenticity, role-modeling, and a willingness to listen and to dialogue.

Enforcement does not result in compliance and peace but in alienation. This is, I believe, what is sadly happening in the church. At the General Conference level and in a number of divisions and "lower" church entities, a "modern" type of leadership and of exercising authority is still seen as the kind of strong leadership that the church needs. As a result, the authority of these leaders is eroding in sections of the church where the more postmodern idea of authority has become prevalent and the older, often authoritarian, leadership style only brings aversion.

I found the Scandinavian approach to women’s ordination fascinating. First Denmark, then Norway, and later on others, decided to do away with ordination—period. As far as I know, ordination originally was the church’s way, in an age of “heresy,” of letting Christians know who had its blessing when it came to administering the sacraments and representing the community of believers. You have a Ph.D. in church history; in your opinion, is ordination a question of organizational power, a working policy of sorts, or does it fall within the realm of theology?

The Scandinavian approach to the ordination of female pastors cannot be the final answer. It is walking a tightrope between the pressures that come from above (the church’s hierarchy) and from below (a majority of the members). Some temporary solutions can, however, help members live with the dilemma for the time being.

The issue of the ordination of women has become a symbol for the two major parties that have formed in the church on this topic. The underlying questions are these: How do we read the Bible? and How does living in a culture that differs from the culture of Bible times influence how we interpret the biblical data? And there clearly is the fear of a "slippery slope." What will be the next thing on the liberal agenda once women’s ordination is conceded?

I have no problem with ordaining people for a particular church office although I find no biblical basis for the precise way we should "set people apart." We are all part of the New Testament priesthood that comprises all believers, but some are clearly given a special—often full-time, and/or paid—assignment in the church.  It would seem appropriate to have some ceremony to mark this. The "laying on of hands" seems a fitting symbol. The problem arises when the church decides that it will not allow for the ordination of women to the ministry in the very same way as it has arranged for the ordination of men. At the top of the church, this has become more and more a matter of policy compliance and of organizational power rather than of principle. It disregards one of the Fundamental Beliefs that underlines the fundamental equality of the genders. It goes against the moral compass of many Adventist believers, young and old. The church has made a mess of this issue. Who is able to explain that ordaining female elders and female deacons is all right while ordaining female ministers is not? Are there different kinds of blessings involved?

But I remain hopeful that the leaders in Silver Spring will fairly soon understand that they must find a way to solve this issue, even it this may mean ‘losing face.’ If they do, it will, I am sure, be appreciated by many as an act of courage and true leadership and will help to restore at least some of their credibility.

You have focused on the dynamic aspect of Adventism as a movement and not a static entity, a society of sorts for the preservation and promotion of 19th-century religion. One of the aspects of 19th-century Protestantism, especially in the U.S., was the deep-seated suspicion, if not outright hostility, with which denominations interacted. Orthodoxy, which every Christian group defined in its own dogmatic terms, wasde factothe conduit through which God’s free grace was communicated to sinners, and dogmatic disagreements were, to a large extent, interpreted as hostility directed at God and his clear word. Is it time to move beyond dogmatic hostility and embrace other believers, including Catholics, as fellow Christians?

I have long been a fervent believer in the fact that we must leave our traditional "us" and "them" mentality behind and that we must no longer foster a church culture in which we are the "good" ones, and everybody else is, at least ultimately, "bad." The idea that Seventh-day Adventists are the remnant people who will make it to the kingdom, while everybody else is part of "Babylon," no longer convinces large groups of our church members. If we look into our history, we can understand that this traditional perspective emerged, which expressed itself, in particular, in a strong anti-Catholicism. The Adventist believers were not alone in this line of thinking. Other Protestant denominations were frequently even more anti-Catholic than Adventists, and Ellen White’s words about Roman Catholicism were often milder than those of many other American Protestant authors of the late 19th century. Adventists have, however, been unable to change their anti-popery tune after Ellen White put the anti-Catholic rhetoric in concrete in her book The Great Controversy. I have frequently suggested that we must learn to read her writings—includingThe Great Controversy—against the background of her times rather than as a recipe for our approach more than a century later.

Christianity is in our present world in a crisis. It is rapidly losing influence. This is also true of the Roman Catholic Church in many parts of the world. Today, the greatest danger for Adventism does not come from fellow-Christians, however much we may disagree with them on many points. The greatest challenge today comes from the growth and spread of non-Christian religions and—especially in the Western world—from rampant secularization.

This does not mean that we can never criticize other Christians for what they believe—but we should do so only after we have made a sincere effort to actually understand what they believe. And we must base our opinion on what they say and do today—and not mainly on centuries-old sources. Moreover, we must make sure that we know how we, as Adventist Christians, can learn from others and can contribute to a better understanding of God’s Word by placing important specific accents in our sharing of the gospel. And we must get much better at doing this in the kind of language that people today understand and that reverberates with them.

I fully accept that there will be a remnant. But rather than arrogantly claiming that my church is that remnant, I must focus on how I can be sure that I belong to that remnant and how I can live and speak in such a way that others around me will be drawn to follow their Lord in such a way that they will also be recognized by God as part of that remnant.

You are currently doing research for a book on the variety of perfectionism called "Last Generation Theology"—the idea developed by M.L.Andreasen that the redemption of the earth is held hostage by Adventists who fail to reach God’s standard of holiness. What led you to take an interest in this strand of theology?

LGT (last generation theology) is not something new. As you state in your question, it was developed by M.L. Andreasen although he borrowed ideas from earlier Adventist authors. Today the LGT is becoming more popular than ever and is embraced by many of our prominent speakers and leaders, often without calling it by that name. It is based on a few premises that I believe are unbiblical and detrimental to our individual spiritual life and that of the church. One of these premises is that Christ took, when he was incarnated, post-fall human nature. He was like Adam after our first parents surrendered to sin. Yet Christ succeeded where Adam failed. With all the evil inclinations and "propensities" that human beings are subject to, he was able to live a sinless life. Therefore, the argument is, we have no excuse to keep on sinning. It ought to be possible for us to arrive at the point where we have gained complete victory over sin. This may seem very unlikely, but the LGT proponents believe that those who live just before the Second Coming will come to this point. This must happen, it is claimed—mostly on the basis of a few selectively chosen statements made by Ellen White—for it is a condition for Christ’s return. He will not come back until "his character is perfectly reflected" in his remnant people of the last generation.

I (and many with me) believe that this theory is based on a very selective reading of Bible texts and Ellen White statements and that it has many flaws. It stresses the fact that the timing of Christ’s return depends on our efforts. It thus sends us on a guilt trip: we are the reason why Christ has not yet come! My reading of the Bible tells me that many factors are involved, but that the timing of this momentous event is fully in God’s hands. Furthermore, my study of theology tells me that I must be very reluctant in defining Christ’s human nature. What happened in Christ—God becoming man—is and remains beyond our understanding. Christ was—and is—somehow Godandman. He is unique, and no one else can be compared with him. My knowledge of Adventist history informs me that, when people suggest that perfection is within our reach, our human role in our salvation is usually emphasized to the detriment of the basic principle of salvation by grace and faith alone and that this inevitably leads to legalism.

Bart Ehrman here in the U.S. and Harry Kuitert in The Netherlands are prominent examples of theologians who lose faith after decades in academia, but their reasons, which receive a lot of attention, are not the reasons why so many Christians abandon faith. As you have pointed out, it is the lack of relevance that is the main challenge facing the Christian religion, at least in the western world. People do not abandon church because they lose faith in the doctrines of the church but because they do not see how they contribute meaning to their lives. How do you approach this problem?

It is true that doctrinal dissent is not the main reason why people abandon Adventism. I am convinced, however, that it frequently does play a role. Why people decide that Adventism is no longer relevant for them is usually rather difficult to pinpoint. Trends in their local church, the lack of space to be who they are and to approach things in their own way can often play an important role. The sense of no longer feeling at home in the congregation to which they belonged or disagreements with fellow-believers may also be important factors. But doctrines often are also somehow part of the equation.

Faith is not the same as assent to a list of doctrines. Faith is trust in the Object of our faith—the Lord of our life. Faith is a willingness to become disciples of Christ and to enjoy a relationship with the One we want to follow. Theology and doctrines must help us as we try to understand what is involved in having faith and in growing in faith. Doctrines are for faith what grammar is for a language. But doctrines must always remain just a tool for putting into words what we believe about God and his involvement with the world and with us.

Theology—doctrinal truth—is always a work in progress. As the times are changing and as we must relate to different cultures, we must ask new questions and look for answers that are relevant for us today. This is what I see as the pursuit of  "present" truth. We must always realize that we stand on the shoulders of men and women of the past, yet we must break new ground and realize that we never know the full Truth. Everything we say about God is tentative and preliminary. As soon as we have said something about God, we must take a step back and admit: This is how I understand it at present, but I know this is just my limited, human view that can never grasp how it really is.

The problem with people like Harry Kuitert (I know him better than Bart Ehrman) is that he gradually came to the position that everything we say about Above comes from below. In his old age, he has come to the point where he has lost the concept of revelation.

I just read an excellent biography of Harry Kuitert, and I have read a number of his books. I have many experiences that are similar to his. I am not quite as old as he is. I believe he is now 92 years old, and I am, at 74, much younger. Kuitert has continued writing books until very recently, and I hope that I will also still be given a good number of years to write some more books. But, like him, I have revised many of my earlier ideas. Like him, I have gradually moved away from my rather fundamentalist beginnings, and I must admit that there are many questions to which I no longer have the answers. But I do not agree with the idea that everything we say about God emerges from our human imagination. I continue to believe that the great God, our Creator (how he did this, I do not profess to know), has graciously decided that he wanted to communicate with us. Unlike Kuitert, I believe in divine revelation. This does not mean for me that a book dropped down from heaven, that it is inerrant, and that everything in it is historically accurate. It must be read as a divine-human effort to communicate essential information about God and about his determination to rescue us from the earthly mess we are in. In spite of the many questions I have for which I do not find ready answers, I believe that what God has revealed is enough to live a life of faith and that it offers sufficient ground for me to continue my journey of faith in "the Adventist way."

See also the constrasting Spectrum reviews of Reinder Bruinsma's Facing Doubt written by Tom de Bruin and Clifford Goldstein.

Aage Rendalen is a retired foreign language teacher who has served the Richmond Public School system in Virginia and is a frequent participant in conversations on SpectrumMagazine.org.

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Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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If the Adventist Church had a policy that denied ordination to people of certain ethnicities, would we allow that policy to stand? The simple and unequivocal answer is “no.” So why are we comfortable allowing discrimination against women? One might expect a critique of General Conference policy right now, but that is not coming. I am actually very disappointed in myself and in those of us who support women’s ordination because the position we have taken would still allow for discrimination.

We knew that there was no real chance that the world church would vote in favor of women’s ordination. The tactical decision we made was to ask the church to allow for variances in ordination practice based on culture. We can call this the cultural accommodation argument. We reasoned that it is a cultural issue and that in those parts of the world where it would be inappropriate administators would not have to ordain women. However, here in North America, it is essential that we do ordain women based on our culture.

It is time for a wakeup call. We must get rid of this argument altogether.

Why would we allow for the world church to enact gender discrimination in some parts of the world as long as we get our way here? Who will stand up for the women in Africa, South America, and Asia who are sensing God’s call in their lives? We lost our way when we pushed for ordination equality in North America and parts of Europe and decided it was acceptable for our brothers around the world to continue to discriminate as long as it did not affect us.

I now strongly urge all of us to stop the campaign for the General Conference to allow Unions or Divisions to decide ordination for themselves. Instead, I call on the entire World Church to stop discrimination against women immediately.

We have done a great job detailing why ordination equality has biblical support. As many have noted, discrimination stands clearly against Fundamental Belief #14. If we have strong biblical support for equality and a fundamental belief compelling us to treat women and men equally, we cannot then also say it is optional to practice what we believe. It is time to stop using the cultural accommodation argument and embrace the strength of our position and hold firmly to upholding the beliefs and values of the Adventist Church.

We must state clearly the reasons why treating all people equally is of vital importance to the Gospel. Every time I hear people—whether in support of women’s ordination or against it—call this a “distraction” or say that “it is not a salvation” issue, I get more and more upset. I am upset because we have failed them. We have not stated clearly enough that how we treat people is central to the Gospel and part of our salvation. I am not going to call women’s ordination a “salvation issue,” but treating all people equally and respectfully is of primary importance for those in a saved relationship with Jesus.

By equivocating on the issue, I believe we have lost support of those who believe women should be ordained but are not “all-in” on the issue. We also have signaled to those who are opposed to women’s ordination that it is not central to our beliefs and values because we are comfortable with discrimination as long as it does not affect us. The anti-women’s ordination crowd has rejected the cultural accommodation argument, and it is time we rejected it as well.

We have allowed this issue to devolve into a policy debate. We are digging into working policies and trying to find loopholes in the system. We are making historical arguments about the roles of unions to show that situations like this are the reason they were created in the first place. I find these arguments well-presented and compelling. However, I am worried they detract from the larger issue: the Adventist Church discriminates solely on the basis on gender.

Ultimately, this is not a policy issue. It is a moral, ethical, and biblical issue and cultural accommodation was never the answer. Full equality immediately is the answer.

So, let us advocate fully for equality in ministry in every part of the world. Let us clearly state that we have a biblical, moral, and ethical mandate to treat all people equally. Because of this mandate, some unions have had to take the lead in equal ordination  and reject world policy that goes against Scripture and our fundamental beliefs. Let us not equivocate around the issue and get into legal or policy debates but make it known this is central to our faith. Let us passionately make the case that equality is central to the Gospel, and discrimination must end today, not just in North America but around the world.

Trevan Osborn is Associate Pastor at the Azure Hills Church in Grand Terrace, California.

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Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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Adventist Forum will grow this weekend in the Southeastern United States. Ronald Lawson has worked to create a new Forum chapter based in Asheville, North Carolina. Professor emeritus at Queens College, CUNY, Lawson brings with him considerable academic prowess and forty years' experience as president of the Metro New York Adventist Forum. In this Spectrum Conversation, Lawson discusses his involvement in creating some of the earliest Adventist Forum chapters and his hopes for this youngest chapter.

How long did you participate in and serve as president of the Metro New York Forum chapter?

I participated from my third Sabbath in New York City (Sept. 1971), until I left for Asheville in Sept. 2015–44 years. Indeed, I still participate, via internet, once per month when the visiting speaker is there, since those currently in charge (they have not elected a president to replace me) call me for suggestions for speakers, and I of course suggest speakers I want to hear. Fritz Guy was there this month, Lowell Cooper last month. I was president from 1975 until 2015, 40 years. 

For you, what is the compelling thing about belonging to a local Adventist Forum chapter? Why should someone consider it?

At the Metro NY Adventist Forum we in fact became an independent congregation, with the blessing of Neal Wilson, then GC VP for North America. The group was founded in 1968 by Adventist graduate students at Columbia U. and the Juilliard School, seeking fellowship, the opportunity to discuss issues raised in their classes and current puzzling church issues.

The initial idea was to become a church or a company attached to the conference, but the issue of which conference (at a time when they were very segregated) was inevitably raised, for the membership was multi-racial. In 1968, the year Martin Luther King was assassinated, this was a serious problem for graduate students. So they wrote to Wilson asking to be affiliated at the Union level, in order to avoid the racial choice. 

He spent a day with them, announced that the church did not have the flexibility to allow what they had suggested, and instead he suggested that they be an independent congregation that set out to maintain positive ties to the church. We were thus able to develop a form of worship that fitted our needs, with the best of classical music (we had a supply of fine organists among our members), choosing the best hymns in the hymnal, and developed an array of liturgies that highlighted the reading of the Scriptures for the day in the Protestant Lexicon (a Psalm, and readings from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Epistles, and one of the Gospels). We also always had an opportunity for questions and discussion after every sermon (we call those "presentations"). 

We found that we often had differing points of view, but this never led to unpleasantness, but rather opportunities to learn from one another, for we came to trust and love each other. We brought in an exciting Adventist speaker once per month, and had plenty of talent among our own ranks for the other weeks. Frankly, I doubt if I would still be an Adventist if I had not found that Forum chapter--it fed me, provided a support group and my closest friends. Members who moved away often reported not being able to find an Adventist church that worked for them. 

When I moved to Asheville I was nervous lest that be my fate also. I checked out all the churches that were within a reasonable driving distance, and settled on a very welcoming congregation with decent music, and soon became involved in helping to provide that music. But I noticed in all the churches I attended that the content of sermons and Sabbath School classes avoided issues, and therefore I felt unfed spiritually—the same old stuff, very repetitious. The churches here are divided by music, involvement in helping to meet the needs of the community (e.g. feeding the homeless vs more inward-looking), and location. 

The tone of meetings is unadventurous, for most of the members are rather to very orthodox, and those who are more liberal muzzle themselves for fear of making waves. Since I fall into the latter group, I felt a great need for an opportunity for open discussion that a Forum chapter would provide. Our early activities led me to others who had the same need. 

How did this new chapter in North Carolina come about? Where and when does it meet?

The new chapter had a rather unusual beginning. My friend Daneen Akers, who with her husband has made two amazing films, "Seventh Gay Adventists" and "Enough Room at the Table" that speak to the isolation of LGBTQ Adventists, was going to spend some time at Southern Adventist U with her father, and she wrote to Cathee Sweet, whom I did not know, and me suggesting that she could come to Asheville to show her new film if we could find a location and an audience. This was planned as a one-time meeting, which we advertised as being "a safe space" to all would feel comfortable attending. Those present were a real mix: a few LGBTQ folk, family members and friends of such folk, others who wanted to express support for such Adventists, as well as some curious to see the film. 

We decided to meet at another time to get to know one another, and there decided to show both films again, hoping to attract more people. By the time of the third showing of a film we knew and cared for one another, and realized that it was not only LGBTQ Adventists who needed a safe space where they could discuss issues and support one another. 

We invited Herb Montgomery, who runs an independent ministry in WV to come speak, and to our surprise discovered that he had a following here, which brought more people to us. At that time we decided that the best way of meeting our needs was to form a Forum chapter, which I had told them about.

So far we have met in a variety of places—twice in a room rented from the downtown UCC church, which is known for being very liberal, twice at a private school. But the first was quite costly, and the second, which was donated to us because they support gay issues, would not be eager to sully its secular status by hosting religious meetings. So this week's meeting will be at my house—I am fortunate in having a large living room as well as a grand piano and an electronic organ. Another couple who are active on our committee also have a house of suitable size. So we do not yet have a permanent home. 

What are some of your goals for this new Forum chapter?

We are determined to welcome those who need us, and to provide all with a safe space. We are already a multi-racial group, and our goals are to support and love those Adventists who need support, and to be fed spiritually through open, non-judgmental discussion. We do not yet have the funds to bring in speakers from afar, but we have several local speakers in mind, Adventists and non-Adventists, and are seeking to establish our status so that gifts to us are tax-deductible. So far most of our active members come from three of the 16 churches here. We know that other churches must contain Adventists who sorely feel the need of such a community. We would like very much to invite those who already know about the Forums through reading the Spectrum Website.

What is it about Adventist community and the fellowship of Adventist believers that you personally find appealing? What has kept you actively engaged for as many years as you have been?

I grew up in a home where both parents were active Adventists, and this shaped me—Adventism is my community, even though it has often caused me pain. But I have made amazing friends there, of high quality, and it provided me with many opportunities. I was SS organist at 13, started a choir in my home church (Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia) when I was 15—we sang every week until I went away to University at 18. There I was asked to form a choir in the Brisbane Central Church, which I led for 7 years, and at university I was one of the key players in the formation of the Queensland University SDA Society (QUSDAS) in 1962. 

Under my leadership that really became a prototype of a Forum Chapter, as we wrestled with the issues that were being raised by our studies, and the friends I made there are still a core group of my friends. At University, through my first Sociology of Religion course, I came to a new understanding of the dynamics of Adventism, and wanted to explore that further and share it with my fellow-believers. I was prevented by my advisor from making that the subject of my dissertation ("Do you want to get a job when you are done?"), so I vowed to return to the topic when my career allowed it—and in 1984, by then a tenured, Full Professor of sociology and history, I felt the time had come. Being overly ambitious, my research took to, over some years as I waited for sabbatical leaves and some funding to allow this, I interviewed over 4,000 Adventists in 60 countries. 

I discovered that wherever I went I found community among Adventists—I spoke the lingo, therefore I was welcome. This is a truly amazing facet of Adventism. 

Having published many papers in both academic journals and Spectrum, I am now, in retirement, writing what is planned as a series of four books about global Adventism and its issues. The title of the first will be "Apocalypse Postponed." But what has kept me involved is the congregational sense of community, and especially the open, caring friends I made among Adventists, especially first in QUSDAS, then in the Forum chapter in NYC, and now here in the nascent chapter in Asheville. It is the ties I have found, the support I have received, the truly remarkable, loving people I have been privileged to count among my friends, a serious approach to life and to helping others, and the shared lifestyle. 

To finish with one example that amazes me weekly: I am very difficult to feed, for I am celiac, so that my food must not be contaminated by gluten, and I have many other allergies, such as lactose, onion and garlic, beans, including soy, and lentils. Yet those who provide the food for the weekly potluck at North Asheville Church, somehow make sure that there is always sufficient food that I can eat. They have really made me feel loved and at home as a result.

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Wintley Phipps, best known for his vocal music, has recorded more than 25 studio albums and has sung for six U.S. presidents. He has met with giants of our age from Nelson Mandela to Mother Teresa. For the last 20 years, a large part of his focus has been on the U.S. Dream Academy, an organization he set up to support the children of people in prison.

In this exclusive interview with Spectrum, Wintley Phipps reflects on his four decades of ministry in the Adventist church, his mission from God, and what our political leaders should be thinking about now.

Question: Tell me about the U.S. Dream Academy. How many children are you serving now?

Answer: About 800 children a year. We have been around since 1998, so almost 20 years. Over 10,000 children have come through our program. 

What goals do you have for the Dream Academy?

We want to help young people build a character based on the character of God. God gave us a framework — a divine plan for the development of a Christian character. There are the eight character traits listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7: faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. We have built an assessment around those character dimensions to help people to grow. 

It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars every month to do this work, and we pray often that God will send people to help us make a difference in the lives of children of prisoners.

Can you tell me a little bit more about how it all came about? 

I’d like to start at the beginning and really tell you the story. I was born in Trinidad and reared in Montreal, Canada. I was born into a troubled home. I used to get away from my parents’ troubles by going to the back of the house, turning my red tricycle up on its side, using the wheel as a steering wheel, and dreaming I was flying to faraway places in the world, meeting important people, and doing important things. Even as a child, I was searching for meaning and significance. 

When we moved to Montreal, my father would take us to the airport to say goodbye to departing friends. I would stuff a handful of luggage tags into my pocket. Then I would fill them out: Wintley Phipps, Flight 393 London or Flight 768 Paris. I have always been a dreamer.

Then I turned to music as the real ticket to see my dreams come true. It was really pop music I was into. 

I didn’t have any voice teachers when I was growing up. I found my voice teacher on the radio when I was 14 years old. I would practice sounding just like my voice teacher on the radio. 

Much later, I bought concert tickets to hear him and plane tickets to get there. I wrote him a letter and told him he was my musical inspiration, my musical North Star. I told him all I had done: I had sung for six presidents of the US; I was the last one to sing “Amazing Grace” for Mother Teresa before she died. I told him I wanted to thank him.

And then I got an e-mail saying “Sir Tom Jones would like to see you when you come to Las Vegas.”

Your “voice teacher” was Tom Jones!

When we got into the Green Room, I broke into song. “It’s not unusual, to be loved by anyone. . . .” 

His eyes got big.

When I was 16 and 17, I had a lot of heroes in the pop world. I was able to see many of those heroes.  But when I was a 17-year-old student at Kingsway College [an Adventist academy in Ontario, Canada], I surrendered my life to the Lord. 

What happened?

I told the Dean I was thinking about leaving school, and he asked if that was what I really wanted to do. He suggested that rather than focus on what I wanted, I should do what God wanted for once.

So I decided I would do whatever God wanted. I prayed: “God, I would like to travel and use my talents for you even if you decide that my singing should be on the back of a garbage truck.”

The very next day a man approached me and asked if I was Wintley Phipps. When I said I was, he told me he was part of the Canadian Heritage Singers, and they wanted me to sing and travel with them.

I was dumbfounded. I had never seen a prayer answered like that.

I walked the campus in deep conviction, and I listened for God like I had never listened before.

I believe that when I listened, God said to me: “I see your dreams. Give me those dreams, and I will turn them into something amazing.”

God is the ultimate dreamer. When God dreams, stars sparkle. When he dreamed for me, those were big dreams.

I believe that God spoke to me. He said that if I would be faithful, he would take my life down an unusual path. He said three things: He would give me a chance to speak truth to people of influence and power. He said that I should be prepared to articulate issues of religious freedom. And he said he would use my musical gift to give me the opportunity to sing everywhere. 

Of course, I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want anyone to think I had a messianic complex.

But everything he showed me, I have been able to live it. Each of those three things, I have done.

At that time, I never dreamt my music would reach millions and millions around the world. [The YouTube video of Wintley Phipps’ singing “Amazing Grace” in Carnegie Hall has more than 15 million views from around the world.] 

After seeing me online, a member of the European Parliament called and invited me to come and sing there.

I sat at a breakfast table with President Ronald Reagan.

Just a couple of months ago, President Jimmy Carter asked me to come and speak at his Boys and Girls Clubs in Georgia.

I met President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office.

Yes, there is no doubt I was given the opportunity to speak truth to people of influence and power.

I believe you met Bill Clinton more than once?

In 1990, I was singing in Birmingham, Alabama, when someone said that the Governor was coming. I straightened my tie. Then Bill Clinton walked in. Since we were in Alabama, I just assumed he was the Governor of Alabama. I kept talking to him about Alabama until it finally dawned on me that he was actually the governor of Arkansas — not Alabama. 

After that, I didn’t see him until four months before the presidential election in 1992. When I spoke to him, I said, “You probably don’t remember me. . . .” But he did! 

I sang for his first prayer breakfast as president. Afterward, he sent me a note of thanks and signed it: “The Governor of Alabama”!

During the Lewinsky scandal, I sent him a note and suggested that he take a look at Psalms 69 which God had impressed me to do. That Psalm, written by David, says: “Oh God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee. . . . They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me.” 

At another function later, his Labor Secretary told me that the President had called some of his Cabinet members together. They were angry with Clinton, but he began to read to them from Psalms 69. Then he wrote his first speech where he really came clean about his indiscretions and untruths.

I was invited to be there to hear him give this speech. As I was sitting in that East room, I realized that everything God had showed me as a young man, I was living. I was being used to help nudge the President of the United States to truthfulness in a time of incredible personal and public difficulty.

Clinton sent me a note afterward, saying that he appreciated my counsel and prayers.

You can imagine how I feel, living what God showed me. There was no way I could have personally orchestrated this situation. Nobody could just plan to have breakfast with the next six presidents of the United States. And yet that is what God has done for me.

God has taught me some lessons along the way, including this: Treat people with respect even if you don’t know who they are, where they are going, or how they can help you.

Here is an example. A young lady in Baltimore, Maryland, heard me sing and said she wanted to talk to me afterward. She told me that she was having some trouble at work and felt unsure about what to do but that she had been inspired by my music. We prayed together. Not long after that she moved to Chicago to host a morning TV talk show — that woman was Oprah Winfrey. 

Now, when Oprah has given me the chance to be on her show, many generous donors have stepped up to help the Dream Academy.

We have a little expression in the black community: “Look at God.” He has an amazing ability to do things we could never do on our own. 

One day about 40 years ago, I took my first church assignment. I became the associate pastor of the Dupont Church in Washington, D.C. Later I moved to the Capitol Hill Church — the little church down the street from the U.S. Congress. It was a small church when I started there. One day, I looked out at the congregation and whom did I see but Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in our Adventist church.

A little over 30 years ago, I saw a man on an Amtrak train from Baltimore to Philadelphia who looked like he needed a friend. I asked if I could sit next to him. I learned that his name was Chuck Colson, and he was one of the most important people in Republican politics. He was Richard Nixon’s hatchet man. Many people believe he was the mastermind behind the Watergate scandal. He was sent to prison and had a Saul to Paul experience. He dedicated his life to one thing: working to help prisoners and their families. He began Prison Fellowship — the largest prison ministry in the world. 

After I met him, he began taking me with him to visit prisons. He would speak, and I would sing.

Those experiences shook me. I had been raised in an Adventist cocoon and had not seen many of the difficult social realities that so many people — especially African Americans — are forced to deal with.

The number of black inmates struck me.

At a women’s prison, a pregnant woman introduced herself to me and informed me that my wife was her aunt. We had no idea that this relative was incarcerated. That really struck home.

Chuck Colson placed me on his board of directors where I sat next to some of the country’s biggest names and best minds. There I was exposed to something many Adventist pastors never are. I saw first-hand how you build and run a not-for-profit para church ministry with integrity. I learned how to build a board and how to be accountable. That was not something I was  taught at the seminary.

While serving on the board, an alarming statistic surfaced: 60% to 70% of all those who end up in prison are the children of prisoners or have a family history of incarceration.

(The United States has 5% of world’s population but over 20% of world’s prison population.)

America has 2.3 million prisoners and almost 5 million under court supervision on probation or parole. That is over 7 million people who have been incarcerated in the U.S. If we figure an average of three children each, that is some 20 million children who are the children of people in the prison system.

I decided I wanted to start a ministry to try to break this cycle of intergenerational incarceration. Chuck Colson’s organization helped me start. What can we do to break this cycle of incarceration among children? I studied the research, brought in experts, and two things became clear:

1. The density of caring adults in a child’s life must be increased
2. Interactive tutorial academic support makes a difference

There is a direct link between school failure and incarceration. In the US, 60% of all black boys who don’t graduate from high school will be in prison by the age of 30. 

I wanted to focus on three pillars:

1.Dream Building: Create opportunities for them to dream and for their dreams to become real
2. Academic skill building
3. Character building

The Dream Academy is now almost 20 years old with seven centers around the U.S.: Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Houston, Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, and Orlando. We have 40-something employees around the country. We also have many, many volunteers and mentors. We raise about $250,000 every month to operate the Dream Academy. We have been blessed with benefactors who see the need.

We have also been funded by the Department of Justice which funds only a few of the community organizations that send proposals.

Thousands have come through our program. In Orlando, where the high school graduation rate is about 70%, 92% of our Dream Academy students have completed high school. We prepare them for school success.

Of course, as fast we make deposits of common sense, character, and virtue, there is a degenerate culture around them making withdrawals. Our kids live in some of the toughest neighborhoods in America. I walked home with students in Orlando one day. It floored me. We have no idea the gauntlet some of these kids have to go through just to get home.

So was your discovery that a member of your wife’s family was in prison a catalyst for you to get even more involved in helping the families of prisoners?

Yes, that was part of it. 

I believe African Americans are disproportionately impacted by incarceration because they are the only group that did not come to the U.S. as families. Every other group who arrived in the U.S. arrived in families. African Americans didn’t have that. My wife is 63 years old, and her grandfather was a slave in America. Her father was born in the late 1800s. His father was born a slave. It really wasn’t that long ago. 

It is critical to understand that storms always take out trees with the weakest roots first. I believe African Americans have weak family roots in this country. Alex Haley, the author of Roots, was one of my dear friends, and he did such a service to black people in this country. He began to help us connect to the somewhere we came from.

So yes, that had a strong impact on my decision to start the Dream Academy. But there was another driving impact for me. As a church, our focus has not been this group of young people: prisoners and their families. Our focus has been on educating the public about our truths. We don’t have a lot of on-the-ground social work. Yes, our church has prison ministries, but very few have focused on the children of prisoners. So when I saw this opportunity to help young people in the name of my church and to make a difference in the lives of the most marginalized young people in this country, that really excited and encouraged me. 

How well do you think the Adventist church does at impacting the world we live in? Do we tend to be too insular? Should we play a greater role in politics and policy?

I think we have every right to be wary of politics as a church. But I don’t think we should ever distance ourselves in terms of ministry from leaders and political leaders. It has been my ministry to minister to political leaders, regardless of their party affiliation. 

For example, I had to sing at a function in Washington, D.C. where President Bill Clinton spoke, and that same night I rushed across town to sing to the Republicans. When I announced that I had just sung to the President, there were boos. Those changed to laughter and applause when I said that I always go where people need the Lord. After a short pause, I continued: “And that is why I am here.”

Of course, the truth is that they all need the Lord, no matter who the leaders in Congress are. I have stayed connected to both sides of the aisle. I don’t know too many people who can say they have sung at the inauguration of both a Republican and Democratic president. 

God gave me this destiny — He has orchestrated some amazing meetings. One day in 1997, I squeezed onto an elevator, when I heard a voice from the back introduce himself as Sam Brownback from Kansas. [Currently Kansas Governor; previously Republican congressman and senator from Kansas.] Brownback asked what I was doing the next day, then he  asked me to sing "Amazing Grace" at a program for Mother Teresa in the Capitol. It turned out she died only a few months later.

While in the Capitol I felt a a tap on my shoulder and was told that the Speaker of the House wanted to see me. I was taken to an office, and then Newt Gingrich walked in. He told me that my music had touched his life. He said he wanted to make a difference in the lives of America’s youth who are at risk and falling behind. He asked me to call together leaders from around the country and put our heads together to see what we could do to help. I could hardly believe it. I told him that was a dream of mine, too, and that I was already working on something. I was able to give him a 10-page presentation about helping the families of prisoners. He condensed my proposal down to just one page and made arrangements to go to the Oval Office to present my plan to President Clinton the next day.

I spent some time then knocking on doors in Washington, D.C. to raise money. In 1998, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah (who is actually a prolific songwriter, having written for Gladys Knight and other big names), agreed to host a fundraising dinner for the project. Senator Hillary Clinton stepped up to co-host. With bipartisan support, we raised $1.6 million at that dinner.

I could never have done those things myself. God told me that if I would be faithful, He would do it.

You have had wonderful opportunities to meet many influential people. You are one of the best-known Adventists outside the church. But the church itself has not created this mission for you. You have represented the Adventist church around the world but not in an official capacity. Maybe the church is not organized to make good use of people’s gifts to reach the wider world.

I was on Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power television program more than any other singer in the history of their ministry. For 25 years I had the honour and privilege of working with Billy Graham. They were world-famous evangelists — but not Adventists. 

Our Daily Bread Ministries [non-Adventist] has sponsored the last 10 albums I have recorded. 

We have a system where a committee decides who uses their gifts?

A respected Adventist leader once told me: “The way you get to serve in this church is that after years of service, you are rewarded with a position. Let me level with you: You need a patron saint in the field. You have to get in with the man who hires and fires. Remember, it is not a call from God unless the committee votes it.”

In 1995, I was voted into the General Conference as Associate Director for Public Affairs and Religious Liberty. I served as the Church’s representative to Congress, the White House, and the United Nations. 

Yet you were called to the General Conference because of the opportunities and recognition you had been given outside the church.

Yes. And frankly, I thought the fulfilment of God’s plan lay in reaching the General Conference which is what I did. But not everyone was happy about it.

I remember my first big meeting after I was named Associate Director for Public Affairs and Religious Liberty. I was leaving  with lots of plans in my head. I waited for the elevator, and when the door opened, I joined one of the top administrators at the General Conference who was already on the elevator. When the doors closed, he told me that he would do everything in his power to get me out of that position. 

Why?

Elder Robert Folkenberg was General Conference president at the time, and Alfred McClure was head of the North American Division. They had seen the unique relationships and access I had with political leaders and saw it as an opportunity for the church.

But I went from being the pastor of a church straight into the General Conference without serving in a conference, union, or division position. That almost never happens. Some said I leapfrogged over those who had been carrying the load and doing the work quietly. I was not viewed as someone who could do the work in the traditional way.

And those people created a difficult tenure for me. I only served one term.

Sometimes it seems the church is too focused on its own internal politics. We lose sight of the bigger picture and forget that the world is so much bigger than the Adventist church.

I have been so blessed working with the Dream Academy for the last 20 years.

And I still work on building relationships.

A great Adventist diplomat said to me once: “It’s hard to make friends when you need them.” I always try to remember that it’s critical to develop relationships with people even when you don’t know where they are going. 

I have met many people before they reached their pinnacle of political achievement. And that gives you access. 

What keeps you in the Adventist church?

Three things:

1. I truly believe that if Christ lived today he would teach and live by what the Seventh-day Adventist Church believes and teaches. I believe that those principles and biblical teachings would be part of his life — not his whole life of course, but part of his life.
2.  The Seventh-day Adventist Church was how I came to Christ. I was led to Christ by some young Adventist Christians at Kingsway College.
3.  I have an unflinching commitment and loyalty to the legacy and teachings and destiny of the church and its role in the world.

So all of those things have kept you within a system and a church that could not figure out a way to really use your gifts for music and relationship-building in a wider context. 

This church is an anvil that has worn out many hammers. When I look at the arc of history, I don’t see much good coming from people who have opposed it and left it. People have told me I could start my own church. But my loyalty is unflinching.

I didn’t see you singing at the inauguration of Donald Trump.

No, I was not asked. I never know when or how or if it might happen, but if there is an opportunity to provide ministry, I will.

What are you praying for as the Senate deliberates Cabinet appointments and begins dismantling President Obama’s healthcare plan?

The thing I am praying for most is leaders of Christ-like character. That is America’s greatest need. We have come through a very nasty season. 

I have actually heard some preachers say that we need meanness and toughness — that God doesn’t ask our nation to turn the other cheek or forgive our enemies. But I believe we need a president, congressmen, congresswomen, and senators who have Christlike character. Christlike dimensions of character include faith, self-control, kindness, love, and patience.

And frankly, it is my prayer that we will see a Christ-like character even more in our Adventist members and the leaders of our church. This is a great need among all of us.

And I stand at the head of the pack. I want to reveal the character of Christ in everything I do. There is an opportunity for us to present our truth and doctrine in the light of God’s character.

For example, we teach that the Sabbath is the sign “between me and thee” but don’t often teach what it is supposed to be a sign of. It is supposed to be a sign that “I, the Lord doth sanctify thee.” Ellen White says the Sabbath is the sign of sanctification — defined as harmony and oneness with the character of God.

So if the Sabbath is supposed to be a sign of God’s character, what does it say if you keep the Sabbath and yet don’t have his character?

This is true for our prophecy, too: what does it matter if you know the details, but in your character, are not prepared for the fulfilment of that prophecy? We must always reflect, resemble, and reveal the character of Christ.

Are you friends with Ben Carson, the Adventist who has gone the farthest in national U.S. politics?

I have been friends with Ben Carson for over 35 years.

What advice would you offer Ben Carson as he takes up his appointment by the new president as head of the U.S.  Department of Housing and Urban Development?

I would say the same thing that I say to anyone in public office: “Remember there is a title higher than the presidency: the honor of being a Christ-like Christian.”

My encouragement to him all through this process has been to focus on staying Christ-like. That has not been easy when Trump’s campaign showed that the one who wins does not necessarily adhere to those principles. It’s undoubtedly hard to stay Christ-like, to stay kind and patient and loving, and to choose to be at your best when the other person is not at their best. My counsel to Carson has always been to remember that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said.

In the end, when all is said and done, the fact that you have “President of the U.S.” beside your name does not impress God in the least. The only thing that is impressive to God is that you in your character resemble his Son. Never lose sight of the most important goal: resemble, reflect, and reveal the character of Jesus.

Of the many people I have been blessed to know, the ones who have touched me, and whom I remember most, are not the ones with the biggest titles. They are the ones who had a Christ-like character. Mother Teresa I will never forget.

Who else remains large in your memory?

On February 8, 1990, I landed in South Africa with a delegation. The next day, I was in the office of President F.W. de Klerk in Cape Town. He said to us: “You have come a long way to tell us that apartheid is wrong. You are preaching to the choir. We know it’s wrong.”

What he didn’t tell us was that he had a meeting with Nelson Mandela the following day to discuss his release from prison.

Because we just happened to be in South Africa at that time, I was in the crowd that welcomed Mandela when he was released on February 11 after spending 27 years behind bars. That was an experience that will stay with me always. Nelson Mandela was unquestionably an icon and a tremendous human being — a giant of a man. I was fortunate to meet him a few times subsequently.

Are you still pastoring?

I have always stayed connected to a pulpit but not full-time. My title is pulpit pastor. I primarily provide leadership and speak on a regular basis. But others on the pastoral staff do much of the day-to-day work of a pastor.

You are involved in so many different things: preaching, recording, singing in concerts, speaking, mentoring, fundraising, the Dream Academy. How do you have time to do so much?

When I was getting ready to graduate from college at Oakwood, I realized that because of some miscommunication, two of the courses I still needed to graduate were both held at the exact same time. I wanted to graduate, so I signed up for both courses. One day I would go to class A and send a tape recorder to class B, then the next day I would switch off. I did that the whole semester. I got a B in one of the classes and a C in the other, and I graduated. I was taking a full load, traveling, singing concerts, yet I managed to complete two courses offered at the same time. The college president asked how I had done it?

I said: “I did my balanced best.” That meant that I could not give any one thing 100%, but if I spread my best around, like the loaves and fishes, God would bless it.

Wherever I have been, my churches have grown. The Dream Academy has grown and been sustained through millions of dollars a year, much of it generously donated. God has provided.

And what are you most proud of?

I have to tell you that I saw so many church leaders running around the world winning souls but losing their own families. So I decided early on that if I was going to be gone for more than four or five days, we would all go. My wife and three sons have now been with me on every continent except Antarctica. When I am invited places, I tell my hosts that my wife has to come too. Linda and I were on six continents in less than six months in 2014!

Out of everything you have heard me say, what I am most proud and grateful for is that I have been able to take my family everywhere I have been. That is really my proudest achievement. 

What are your sons doing now? Are they all grown up?

Our oldest just got engaged; we are happy and grateful. Our middle son is working on his dissertation in hospital administration and works at Florida Hospital. Our youngest is in law school.

Can you tell us what have you been reading lately?

There is a quote that has stuck with me: “A desire to preach without the burden to study is a desire to perform.” I have a burden to study. I have been at my church for 15 years, and I have to study. Most of my reading is from the Word of God. I don’t have a lot of time for other kinds of reading. The most enjoyable reading I do is on character and on the character of God. And no other Christian writer in the history of Christianity has had more to say on the character of God than Ellen White.

What has been inspiring your prayers in the first weeks of 2017? 

The pre-eminent theme I study about, pray about, and try to live is to resemble, reflect, and reveal the character of Christ. That is my prayer for my life, my church, our country’s leaders, and the readers of Spectrum. 

Where do you see yourself next?

I look at the arc of my ministry as a pastor in the Adventist church. It has been an unusual path, just as God told me it would be. But I have no regrets. 

I have been in ministry in the Adventist church for nearly 41 years. I know that we all have a life cycle, and I see my life cycle in traditional church ministry coming to an end. This feels like an exit interview. I will, however, continue to dedicate whatever life and years God gives me to helping others prepare for the second coming of Jesus.

Alita Byrd is Interviews Editor for SpectrumMagazine.org.

If you respond to this article, please:

Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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When the Oscar nominations were announced today, Hacksaw Ridge  — about Adventist World War II hero and Medal of Honor recipient Desmond Doss  — landed six. The film has been nominated for best picture and Mel Gibson for best director. Andrew Garfield, who plays Doss, got a best actor nomination. The film also has nominations for film editing, sound mixing and sound editing. Last month, retired U.S. Army colonel Charles Knapp, chair of the Desmond Doss Council, talked to Spectrumabout how the movie got made. He explained the stringent agreement Mel Gibson and the producers signed up to, promising to stick to the facts of Desmond Doss's life and describe his faith accurately.

You are chair of the Desmond Doss Council. What is that?

The Desmond Doss Council has been in existence since 2000. It was formed specifically at the request of Desmond Doss when he was arranging to have his estate taken care of upon his death. [Desmond Doss died in 2006.] Because he was a public figure and Medal of Honour recipient, one of the elements of that estate was the intellectual property rights to his story. 

The idea of creating a documentary about Desmond Doss was discussed for a long time. But Doss had very specific requirements that he wanted any documentary to adhere to. He actually had signed agreements on at least two, and maybe three, occasions in the 1970s and early 1980s with production companies and directors to make a story, but he backed out of those agreements because of fictionalization and dramatic license writers wanted to take that he did not agree to. One of his requirements was that the story be told factually and truthfully as much as possible. 

To do this, the Georgia-Cumberland Conference formed the Desmond Doss Council as a nonprofit charter, started with about 15 members. Now we have 11 members and 15 to 20 consultants who advise us in highly specialized areas. I joined the Council soon after. The Council was formed specifically to explore the possibility of making a documentary. 

After interviewing a number of directors and producers, Terry Benedict was hired. All the money for the production was raised by the Council, and the rights to the film belong to the Council. 

Terry did a really good job and produced a very well-received documentary, called The Conscientious Objector, that earned him several awards when it was premiered in 2004 at the Cinequest Film Festival in California. The film has been in distribution since, and the Council has been involved primarily for many years in just making certain that his other intellectual properties — memorabilia and collections — were assembled, properly archived, and preserved.

The mission of the Desmond Doss Council is very precise: to preserve, protect, and manage the Doss life story, his intellectual property, collections, and memorabilia. We own/hold copyrights on most of the materials that are published with one exception: the Frances Doss (his second wife) book that is currently available from Pacific Press.

The Doss collections are extensive, with the major portion of his collection housed in the heritage room of the Loma Linda University library. Though Doss died in 2006, the collection is still not fully digitized. There are filing cabinets full of things, available for researchers. There are significant pieces of correspondence, including some that he wrote, invitations to him, and hundreds of photographs. Anyone can access the best of these at desmonddoss.com. 

In 1967, a Desmond Doss biography, The Unlikeliest Hero, was written by Booton Herndon. It is now now out of print. The Herndon book and Terry Benedict’s documentary form the basis for Robert Schenkkan’s script for Hacksaw Ridge.

We have republished the book, and it came off the presses a few weeks ago. We hired an accomplished book editor, expanded the original book, tripled the number of pictures, fact checked everything, and added a new forward and new epilogue. We retitled it Redemption at Hacksaw Ridge. It has already sold some 30,000 or 40,000 copies and five or six foreign language licenses.

Did you think it was important to have another film about Doss?

The documentary is a completely different film than Hacksaw Ridge. It is the back story. Terry Benedict was able to find half a dozen men who had served with Doss or whose lives Doss had saved. They tell the story, and it is very poignant. It even made it to the final ten out of 300 for the Oscar that year. (March of the Penguins won.)

We have just completed a remastering of the documentary. It was filmed in high definition, but we did not have the money to release it in high definition at the time. Now we have gone back and cleaned up the color. It really sparkles. 

Do you expect Oscar nominations?

I will just say that the critics continue to laud Hacksaw Ridge. It is being called one of the best war movies ever produced. It got a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes after the first weekend. When it was shown to the Academy, [director] Mel Gibson and Andrew Garfield [who played Desmond Doss] both received standing ovations. The movie got a ten-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival where it had its international premiere. I was with the cast and producers and Mel Gibson when it was shown at the World War II museum in New Orleans, where again it got a standing ovation. We are hopeful. 

Doss's Adventist faith is positively portrayed in Hacksaw Ridge. Did Mel Gibson and the other makers of the film agree to that kind of portrayal beforehand? How much influence did the Desmond Doss Council over the final cut?

The making of Hacksaw Ridge was a long process. We started with Terry Benedict’s assistance. We approached Bill Mechanic at Pandemonium Films (he used to be president of 20th Century Fox) and spent almost a year-and-a-half negotiating the rights for Desmond Doss’s life story. The reason it took so long was because of the specificity of the language about what the filmmaker could and could not do in portraying his life. 

Among the requirements were these: writers could not fictionalize the facts; Doss's beliefs had to be correctly represented; the church had to be properly represented. Basically, Bill Mechanic could not find a studio that wanted to sign such an agreement because they thought it was too religious or that  the director would not have enough leeway.

Desmond Doss knew about the rights agreement although it was not signed until after he died. Bill Mechanic began the process of developing a script, but Mel Gibson declined to direct. Then the economy went into a recession, and one of the media partners backed out of the agreement.

We had a lot of discussions with Bill Mechanic. We decided to put together another rights agreement although the requirements would be the same. Finally, in February 2015, I was sitting in Mechanic’s office, and he told me that Fox Australia was onboard and would put up the money as long as the movie was filmed in Australia. The Australians love Mel Gibson, and he eventually agreed to direct. They started shooting in September 2015 with a huge cast and crew — only a week after getting the final green light. 

I had the privilege of being on site for filming lots of the battle scenes.

I am one of two people who reviewed all the scripts. We made little tweaks or suggestions, and Mechanic passed them on to the screenwriter. Some changes were made even after the final production. Lionsgate, the U.S. distributor, began to hold  focus groups around the country, the first one at Liberty University in Virginia. I went to screenings at Southern Adventist University and Loma Linda University. Lots of people commented on the profanity — including a lot that was not even in the script. I passed those comments on to Mechanic, and it disappeared — was edited out. This helped to make the movie more acceptable to faith communities. 

I had no creative input on the movie. But I was not denied access to anyone or anything and could talk to anyone I wanted to. That is the kind of relationship we had with Bill Mechanic.There would not have been a movie without him. I could not imagine anyone better to work with.

What has Mel Gibson said about the movie?

Mel was quite changed by this story. He says he set out to make a war movie and ended up making a love story. Mel says: "We didn’t film everything that happened. People who know the story know very well what happened. I set out to chronicle the bloodiest days of World War II, but I couldn’t put it all in because people wouldn’t believe it had actually happened." 

I know that Bill Mechanic and Mel Gibson spent hours and hours together. They were both very involved in the editing. I know some scenes filmed never made it into the final movie. 

I know that everyone on the production team had either read Doss’s biography or seen the documentary — they knew the story.

What have people said about Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Desmond Doss?

He does such a good job. I have talked to Desmond Doss’s family — they say that Garfield’s portrayal is so good that they could be twin brothers.

What about the complaints of excessive violence in the film?

Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ got criticism. We do not want to see the horror of torture or the horror of war. But there is no gratuitous violence here. We talked to survivors. People in their 90s now who saw the movie say: “Yes, that is exactly the way it was.”

I personally had to make the decision, sitting in Bill Mechanic’s office. The rights agreement did not say the film had to have a PG-13 rating although that was preferred. Mel Gibson said it was going to have to be an R rating for violence. They asked me, and I said yes, and the Desmond Doss Council endorsed it.

I arranged for Adventist leaders and influencers to see it, and we hosted General Conference administrators, North American Division leaders, union and conference presidents, before the film was officially released on November 4. We showed Hacksaw Ridge to 640 invited attendees in my local theatre. Well over 10,000 attended screenings in Adventist buyouts across the country. It was an incredible witnessing opportunity, exactly as we had hoped. 

The message of the film is powerful. During the production of the film, writing of the script, adapting, and shooting, I probably mentioned a half dozen times to Mr Mechanic: “Please don’t let the film preach, teach, judge, or moralize.” And it does not. It lets the story be told, and people will come away from the theater either liking or not liking the film. But that is not important. It is not a film they will soon forget. It will start lots of conversations about faith, personal conscience, bullying, and redemption. The guy who bullied Doss dies in his arms on the battlefield. And there is a redemption scene between Doss and his father. It is that theme of redemption that goes all through the film. 

I have watched Hacksaw Ridge with top military brass, leaders of Veterans Associations, the American Legion, and military chaplains. They say the movie is a poster child for PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder]. The film does not use the word, but you can see acute PTSD on the screen. This makes Desmond’s character stand out.

It is graphic; there is no question. But it would not have the same impact if it did not show what the fighting was like. The American public needs to understand that war is hell.

I am a 30-year veteran. I am a doctor. I was in Operation Desert Storm and in Vietnam. 

This movie shows what these guys went through, just like it was. 

Did Desmond Doss really enlist as a conscientious objector or was he drafted?

Many people have said that Desmond was drafted — that seems to have become a myth in church lore. But the facts are that Desmond qualified with his draft board to be a conscientious objector. Then Desmond went down to the recruiter and said he had conscientious objector status. Recruiters are like salesmen — they promise whatever you want to hear. So Desmond enlisted, but he was naive. His draft certification as a conscientious objector did not follow him, and he was assigned to a rifle company. He told them that he had enlisted as a medic. But the army just does what it does. This is correctly portrayed in the movie. Desmond went through stuff he would not have had to go through if he had just waited to be drafted. 

Was this a film that could really only be made after Doss's death? Or would he have liked to see it?

Yes, he would have liked to see it. Desmond’s son says that his father would be very happy with the accuracy of the film. That means we have done our job. We tried to be faithful.

I am not certain that Desmond ever went to a movie, but yes, he would have gone to this one. 

Is Hacksaw Ridge nothing but positive for the Adventist Church today? Any negatives?

The church does not endorse seeing the film, but that actually puts the church in a bit of quandary. This film is probably the most effective, evocative witnessing opportunity and experience that the church has ever had in its history. Over a million documents the Desmond Doss Council have made available have been shared already. 

I did some interviews with John Bradshaw of It is Written, filmed at some of the sites that feature the Doss exploits, including the escarpment where the major battle was fought. Every church in America has received those interviews on a DVD, underwritten by the Desmond Doss Council. Bradshaw also wrote a little booklet called The Faith of Desmond Doss. 

This is not preaching or traditional evangelism, but it is getting people to talk about the themes in the film. 

I do not see any negatives personally, and I am very sensitive to them! Adventists all over Europe and Asia are getting very positive feedback.

Despite the rise of the religious right in America, the idea of a conscientious objector is not big in the public imagination these days as gun ownership is at its highest ever and many citizens sport "God and Guns" bumper stickers. How does the message of this movie speak to U.S. politics in 2016?

We have to remember that non-combatancy is not a test of faith. One is not subject to judgement from church. It is like vegetarianism: a personal choice. But young people have to understand the circumstances. If you go into service in any country, and then later decide you do not want to complete your duties, that can be a problem.

Doss was a patriot. He bristled when people called him a conscientious objector because that is someone who refuses to participate in military duties or anything that supports military duties. And that was not him. He called himself a “conscientious cooperator.” Unfortunately, there is no such official classification. 

I was a military commander for 11 years.  I had Adventists, Muslims, Mormons, Catholics — all types of beliefs  — under my command.

People have to remember that when you enlist, you volunteer — that means the military owns you. If you have an objection of conscience, it needs to be developed. Unfortunately ,a typical 18-year-old has not given it that much thought.

Today a person who enlists can enlist for an an occupational speciality: cook, electrician, whatever. But you cannot wait until after boot camp to decide.

All the laws and rules are in place so that if the president sees a national emergency, the draft can be reinstated. And the status of conscientious objector still exists. When a young person registers, he/she can register as a conscientious objector under a variety of classifications which kick in if he/she is drafted. But if he/she enlists, those classifications are not available. How one will serve is the prerogative of the commanding officer, who will look at how it affects accomplishment of mission and cohesiveness of group.

There are thousands of Adventist men and women in uniform now. 

What is next? How can you and the Council continue to keep Doss's legend alive? What other projects might be in the works? What doors has Hacksaw Ridge opened for you?

I have already gotten an invitation to the Oscars!

Now the Desmond Doss Council is looking for the best way of maximizing the distribution of the documentary. We have done the book. The focus in the next year will be establishing the strategy for the promotion of Doss’s legacy.

Two Pathfinder badges are under development at our request. 

We are working with the Medal of Honor Society for a major push on the legacy. I am visiting military colleges — many of them use the Doss story to teach character to senior officers: integrity, loyalty, fidelity, and selflessness.  The movie Hacksaw Ridge demonstrates these characteristics.

Dr. Charles Knapp is chair of the Desmond Doss Council. He is a retired U.S. Army colonel who served in the military for 29 years, including in the Middle East and Vietnam. He is a medical doctor who holds many additional degrees and certifications. 

Title photo: Desmond Doss on Okinawa. Courtesy of the Desmond Doss Council.

Hacksaw Ridge will be released on DVD/Blu-Ray on February 21. The Digital HD release is February 7.

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Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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In every organization’s history there are inflection points where its future trajectory is in question. I suggest we are at one of those points in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  

The constituencies—church members—of certain union conferences have voted to ordain women. The General Conference says, “That is against policy. You must stop and conform.” (The GC probably values policy adherence more than anything because that is its ersatz control mechanism, having no real power or control otherwise.) The unions say, “Ordination is in our purview, and our constituents think ordaining women is the right thing to do in pursuing mission where we live.”  

Positions taken and decisions made in the near future will determine the nature of our church for a long time to come. Along the way, there will be a struggle to arrive at a good place.  


The Camel

The nose of the camel is now under the tent. The camel’s nose is represented by “The Sentence” in the by-now-infamous “unity” document adopted by the GC Executive Committee at the recent Annual Council.

The Sentence says, “For the biblical principles as expressed in the Fundamental Beliefs or voted actions and policies of a worldwide nature, the General Conference will become involved” (underlining supplied) (This article does not delve into the tempting discussion of the document’s equation of voted actions and working policies with biblical principles, a concept mentioned four times in the document.).

The Sentence follows a description of the process to be followed when a church entity has “overlooked or ignored the biblical principles as expressed in the Fundamental Beliefs, voted actions, or working policies of the Church.” The process spells out how the next higher church organization will work with an errant entity to bring about “reconciliation.”

I believe The Sentence is the crux of the “unity” document. It is the insertion of the camel’s nose under the tent. Actually, any tent.  There is no reason whatsoever to think that the “unity” action taken by the GC would be limited to the current issue of unions ordaining women. It provides for the GC to intervene directly with any entity of the church, potentially bypassing the role of a division, a union, a conference, or other entity.  Doesn’t this sentence open the door for the GC to intervene directly with a congregation, a college, an academy, or a hospital? Does this not give the GC carte blanche to intervene in any situation of alleged noncompliance with “Fundamental Beliefs, voted actions, or working policies” in which the GC asserts the next higher organization has not taken appropriate action? Let’s be blunt. This was an ill-advised action. It needs to be rolled back.

So let’s pose a hypothetical about the most obvious current situation. Let’s say the North American Division, as the next higher organization, goes to the Columbia and Pacific Unions and asks them to reverse their positions and actions on the ordination of women. Let’s say those unions decline to reverse course. Let’s further say that the NAD leaders then go to the NAD Executive Committee and ask it to discipline those unions in some way. Let’s say the NAD Executive Committee declines.

The next step under the “unity” document would be for the GC to interact directly with the unions. The body of the camel would follow its nose into the tent. Let’s further say that no matter what the GC might do with the structure and/or leadership of the unions, it cannot change the minds of the constituents, the representatives of the 376,000 church members who are the constituencies of those two unions.  

This hypothetical series of events would lead to a troubling scenario. We don’t know how it would work legally or practically at a point of impasse between the GC and hundreds of thousands of church members. It is quite unpredictable. But I would be shocked if attorneys are not now involved behind the scenes. The GC and the unions are very likely exploring what is actually legally possible under the governing documents of our unique legal structure. In the context of a spiritual fellowship, the development of competing, internal legal strategies would be a very, very bad sign.  

Beware. The camel’s nose is now inside the tent.


The Trojan Horse

Alongside the camel rolls the Trojan Horse.  Inside the horse lurk two things.  

First, lurks a risk that the Seventh-day Adventist Church will become a more hierarchal, authoritarian organization. The siren call of hierarchical authority seems to have lured the GC in the 19th century and, in modern times, ever since the Merikay Silver court case of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In pursuit of a line of legal defense in that litigation, GC and NAD officials testified in depositions that the church is indeed a hierarchical organization with authority flowing down. 

So apparently Church leaders decided, perhaps as counseled by attorneys, to say that the Seventh-day Adventist Church governance had suddenly transmogrified into hierarchical form! They just failed to tell the rest of us!

In my opinion, some GC leaders started to believe their own story, and have tried ever since to paper over the gaps in hierarchical control created by the independent constituencies and separate corporations of the unions and conferences.  

So in the last few decades, we’ve seen model bylaws promoted. We’ve seen votes saying that all entities are required to abide by the policies of the GC. These initiatives have attempted to create a paper substitute for actual corporate control.  

It is time to quite openly name this trend for what it is and call a halt to it. We exist as a fellowship of believers who find sufficient common ground in our belief system to stick together in worship and mission. If policy showdowns become the medium of achieving “unity,” we are in trouble indeed.

So I believe that inside the “unity” Trojan Horse are behaviors intended to advance the authoritarian agenda.

I have experience with a small manifestation of this authoritarian tendency. As a partner in FaithSearch Partners, I manage executive searches for faith-based organizations. In one of our recent SDA higher education presidential searches, we encountered an unexplained delay in getting started with the project. It finally emerged that the General Conference president had inserted himself into the decision-making process of the university and its board chair, the president of one of our large unions. The GC president instructed that they should not use search consultants, but to follow a process he specified. This interference had created a delay.

I was astounded that the president of the GC would insert himself into the decision of a university board—a university operated by a union conference—as to how they would select their next president. My reaction was that this was a vast overreach, a blatant attempt at micromanagement and a display of authoritarianism.  I suggested to the union president that I hoped he was quite perturbed. He was. And to his credit, he rebuffed this gambit.  

In my view, the president of the General Conference is not the chief executive officer of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The president is just the chief executive officer of the General Conference, a corporation, a service organization that manages certain activities for the benefit of the wider church body because that is the most efficient way to do it. The management of money. Retirement plans. Benefit programs.  Departmental support. The flow of missionaries. The oversight of accreditation of schools. Providing governance to a few GC institutions. Arranging and facilitating the gathering of the church every five years to do its collective business. Providing inspiration and creating a tone. These are the matters for the GC. But in my view, the GC is not a controlling corporate entity, nor should it be.  

Power in our church is distributed. Intentionally. Our Church in 1901 made a very conscious decision to distribute the power precisely to prevent overreach by the GC. And now, lurking inside the Trojan Horse, seemingly lurks a compulsion to change that arrangement.  

Make no mistake. The tendency to assert authority is the issue we now face. The women’s ordination issue has morphed into a control/power issue. The boundaries that have defined our fellowship for 100 years are under assault.

The second thing lurking inside the Trojan Horse is Male Headship theology. That aberrant doctrine is not part of our belief system. You can search authoritative sources of our beliefs and you will not find it.  

The risk is that male headship may intrude into the church through “squatter’s rights.” It could be nurtured in our midst, not through inclusion in our Fundamental Beliefs or by any kind of vote, but by efforts to promote practical applications of male headship. Thus this alien belief could come informally under the back of the tent while the camel is coming in under the front of the tent, and could become our practice, even if not our stated belief.

Beware the Trojan Horse.

The Other Shoe

The “unity” document suspends a shoe in the air, ready to drop.

The “unity” document’s first recommendation prescribes a process of  (1) listening and praying, (2) consultation with a “wider group” over six months, (3) writing “pastoral” letters (no doubt vetted by lawyers) to the offending entity, and (4) listening and praying again.  

If the conflict has not been resolved at the end of the four steps above, then the second recommendation in the “unity” document would come into play. This recommendation empowers the General Conference Administrative Committee to recommend to the 2017 Annual Council a course of action if “unity” has not been achieved.

In other words, between now and October, the GC will be developing strategy and tactics to recommend to the world church in the event “unity” has not been achieved by the NAD.  What would those strategies and tactics look like? I don’t know. I hear things like hostile take-overs of unions. Or forming shadow unions. Or converting unions into missions under GC control. Or using the threat of loss of tax-exempt status under the church’s umbrella exemption. Or loss of use of the Seventh-day Adventist name. Maybe something more creative.  

Any of those tactics would, in my opinion, have a potentially serious impact on hundreds of thousands of members. Does the GC leadership really believe it could make retaliatory moves against unions without adverse effects among the 226,000 members of the Pacific Union and the 150,000 members of the Columbia Union (not even taking into account the members other unions in Europe and China)? Does GC leadership think it can institute punitive measures against union leaders and corporations while those 376,000 members of the North American Church stand meekly by? I believe that instead of bringing reconciliation and unity, such measures will create much greater and more damaging conflict.  

When the constituency of a union conference votes, it is expressing the desires of church members regarding the mission and ministry of the Church where they live and worship. Short of apostasy, you would think GC would hesitate to think their views are more important than those of the members in a territory of the Church. And how can you apostatize over policy unless someone is of the opinion that policy is of equal value with belief?  

Is the General Conference leadership willing to alienate thousands upon thousands of members in its quest for uniformity? Does the General Conference leadership really think policy is of equal value with belief? Is the General Conference leadership surreptitiously trying to promote a particular doctrinal view of the ordination of women when our theologians generally take the position that it is not a doctrinal issue? Does the General Conference leadership think it knows better than the member constituents what is best for their territory? Does the General Conference leadership think that perceived policy variances are just cause for a potentially explosive conflict in our church?  

Perhaps GC leadership thinks some serious losses are acceptable in order to make a point. Maybe they think significant damage among our membership is worth it to achieve their objectives. Maybe the other divisions around the world are supportive of such a course of action. I pray not.  

For me, the most poignant moment of the NAD Year-end Meeting occurred when Don Livesay, president of the Lake Union Conference, asked for those in the auditorium to stand if they had a son, daughter or other young acquaintance who was rethinking their relationship with our church because of the current dynamics. It was very sobering that probably 90 percent of the audience stood.

Beware the Other Shoe.

Conclusion

The Camel, the Trojan Horse, and the Other Shoe are all realities in play now.  The next couple of years, at least, will be tense and bumpy. They will be full of ambiguity. It may not feel like church. Isn’t it interesting how threatening language and conflict can be wrapped in the most spiritual of terminology? But none of this feels spiritual at all. This feels like corporate warfare. And over what? Disagreements about policy? Power? Distribution of authority? Uniformity? Doctrine? Rule of the majority? The GC president feeling personally rebuffed by two union constituencies? All the above? What precisely lies at the root of this?  

We are facing a pivotal moment in the history of this denomination. What is at stake is the very nature of our fellowship. I want to be a member of a fellowship of believers. I don’t want to belong to an authoritarian hierarchy. So some things are worth fighting for. 

Edward Reifsnyder is a healthcare consultant, president of The Reifsnyder Group, and senior vice-president of FaithSearch Partners. He and his wife Janelle live in Fort Collins, Colorado, and have two daughters.

If you respond to this article, please:

Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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The original plan was to get up early Saturday morning and get to the Prince George’s Plaza Metro station (on the Green Line) around 9.00am. The rally for the Women’s March on Washington was supposed to start at 10:00 between 3rd and 4th streets on Independence Avenue, and the march was to begin at 1.15 and wind itself down the length of the Mall and then north to the White House. In the end, I didn’t get to the station until about 11.30, but I hoped that I’d get to the rally area in time to hear a few of the speeches or songs, and then join in for the march.

When the train came it was about half full of men and women in pink hats – knitted pink pussy hats, fuzzy pink headbands with glittery bobbles, pink foam Statue of Liberty crowns – and one somewhat bemused man in a white hardhat. The mood was cheerful and there was a lot of laughter. By the time we got into the city the train was full. I’d planned to get off the Metro at L’Enfant Plaza, as it was the closest I could get to the rally area near the Capitol building without changing trains, but as we approached the Galley Place stop in Chinatown there was an announcement that the train would not be stopping at either the Archives stop or L’Enfant Plaza as they were so full of people it was unsafe. So, everyone trooped off the train at Gallery, out of the station on the corner of 7^th and F Streets, and into a street party. We were four blocks north of the mall and the streets in every direction were packed with women, men, young, old, children, pink hats, banners, and placards both strident and funny.

Traffic was blocked off and people filled the streets and sidewalks. The flow of pedestrians was moving slowly south on 7^th Street so we followed it as far as Constitution Avenue, which forms the northern edge of the Mall. At that point the crowds going South just weren’t moving so the procession turned and started following Constitution west. My phone was having trouble picking up a signal but people in the crowd kept shouting out updates on the situation. There were a lot more people than the organizers had anticipated and the streets surrounding the rally area were gridlocked. Latecomers were being routed around the area, directly toward the White House. None of us were in a hurry and with so many people we couldn’t have moved fast if we’d wanted, so we ambled westerly, slowing down at each intersection as more people joined the procession from all directions.

As we moved, small groups of people would start singing or chanting, those near would take up the refrain, and the sound would move through the crowd. At various times we were singing along to “America the Beautiful” or the “Star Spangled Banner” or “This Land is Your Land,” at others shouting out very catchy (and occasionally raunchy) chants. My favorite was “We need a leader, not a creepy tweeter.” Every few minutes a howl would move up the street, like an audible Mexican wave, and I found myself whooping along with the crowd.

The atmosphere was odd – jubilant, friendly, angry, polite. A friend described the L.A. March as feeling “like a gigantic support group for throngs of folks who have felt despair since election night” and that’s exactly how the D.C. March felt to me. We were a gathering of elderly white couples, middle aged black women, blond teenage girls, families with small children, every age, color, gender, ethnicity was represented. Although we were marching for many different reasons—many for reproductive rights or for black lives, others against a Muslim registry, still others for the rights of indigenous peoples or for the environment—we all had one common cause: to stand up for the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the despised.

And by the time we reached the White House, streamed across the lawns, and shuffled along the path across the front of the building, it didn’t matter that the resident wasn’t there to watch us. The world was.

Wendy Trim is Sabbath School Editor for SpectrumMagazine.org.

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