identity is crippled by the ugliness of being told we are trapped here by antique beliefs, including abusive judgmentalism and terrifying narratives. It is time for this solipsistic “one true church” notion to be discarded. My church family is special to me, as is my biological family, because it is where I am at home, not because I think all other families are objectionable. Te experience of the Sabbath is eminently beautiful in itself,
and had we taught it that way, we would now be nicer people, and happier. If Adventists truly believed that the Sabbath was “made for humankind,” as the Bible says (Mark 2:27, NRSV), then we would never have presented it as a legalistic demand by a critical God, or a sign of exclusivity, or an anti-Catholic placard. We’d have let it be what it is best at: the day when the television is off, when families gather at table over food or games, and when we walk on country roads, take aſternoon naps in the quiet, visit friends, or sing in a nursing home. What of the other half of our descriptive name? I confess I
find our presentation of the second advent of Jesus damaged almost beyond repair by two centuries of standing on the brink of not salvation, but terror. All I can recommend is that we quit insisting, “Jesus is coming soon” and that we banish once and for all the rancid notion of persecution—narratives that are unhelpful in every way. Let us settle on something like this: “Jesus said he will return someday. We don’t know when. In the meantime, let us live in peace, hope, and kindness—never in fear.” Our eschatology yielded one good thing. A side effect of both
Sabbath-keeping and the fear of persecution was the desire to preserve religious liberty. Tough none of our fears have been realized, we can be proud of Adventist advocacy for church-state separation. Adventists have always had a tendency to be legalistic,
especially about food and Sabbath-keeping. We have tended to prefer rules to principles. But one place we did find the principle behind the commandment was when our pioneers helped us see that the sixth commandment was as important as the fourth. Tat principle kept us out of combat for generations and produced our one and only legitimate war hero, Desmond Doss. We should have made that into a commitment to pacifism—and it’s not too late. Ellen White gets lots of scorn from liberal Adventists. In part
she deserves it, but those who have made her into a plaster saint deserve it more. She could yet be a blessing to us, were we to see her not as an infallible prophet whose largely plagiarized writings have been allowed to overshadow the Bible, but as our female founder who pointed the way to a church that respects and values women.
Te two marvelous things toward which Ellen White directed
us are far from obvious in the Bible. One is the importance of health, and the other is a commitment to education. Ellen White’s making health a spiritual discipline has been as good for us as her eschatology has been harmful. We can thank her for why we don’t use alcohol or tobacco, and why we have heathier- than-average diets. Sociologists have spoken of the “liſt” that sectarians get from being in a set-apart group, and both health and clean living have contributed to ours. Adventist education also contributed to our social liſt. As a
boy from a blue-collar farm family, I’m a case in point. I went to college and graduate school because of Adventist education. Tanks to our worldwide network of colleges, we have a great many professionals of all kinds, including an educated clergy. Science has, of late, put us at odds with our doctrine. Earth
can’t be 6,000 years old in biblical history but 3.5 billion years old in the fossil record. Science can’t be wrong when it shows that vaccines are safe, yet right when it puts a 400-ton airplane into the air so we can fly to the General Conference Session. We have a great deal of work to do here—but denying science has proven again and again to be a losing proposition for religion.
The Broad Church Te point of this exercise is not theological revanchism. We don’t want to recapture all of the territories we’ve lost; some we should be glad to abandon. I only want to show that the house lived in by this family of Christ can be remodeled and upgraded to be a lovely place for us, so we can be part of the Christian family while remaining an Adventist family. We can become something related to who we were—something connected, but better. What we have now, at least in my estimation, isn’t a healthy Christian church. It is a big Ellen White corporation, with an excessive number of out- of-touch leaders slowly strangling it to death. Instead of demanding unity, we should strive only for comity
and mutual respect in spite of our differences. I pray that my church can survive to pass on its lessons—at least its good and generous lessons—to new generations of Jesus-seekers.
1 Troeltsch’s 1912 study is so well-known that a quick Google search will yield more information than the reader needs. Other sociologists have added to the ends of that polarity: “cult” to the right of the sect, “universal church” or ecclesia to its leſt. 2 According to Wikipedia, the ship of Teseus is a “common thought experiment about whether an object is the same object aſter having all of its original components replaced over time, typically one aſter the other.” 3 I am excited about a movement called Crosswalk—look it up at
crosswalkvillage.com.
WWW .A T OD A Y . OR G
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