The Spectrum Blog

Kenneth Newport Explains the Flames of Waco

By David R. Larson

Photo by Bronwen Larson

The Branch Davidians themselves intentionally lit the fires that burned Mount Carmel to the ground near Waco, Texas, taking with them the lives of David Koresh, their leader, plus more than seventy others, contended Kenneth G. C. Newport in Loma Linda, California on Wednesday evening, November 14.  What’s more, he contended, they did this because they believed that this is what Scripture wanted them to do.

“Did the biblical text inspire this act of apocalyptic self-destruction?” he asked.  “I think it did, or at least I think that there was a direct relationship between the texts, what the Branch Davidians thought those texts meant, and what happened on April 19, 1993.”

Newport described himself as an academic administrator at Hope Liverpool University College in England and a priest in the Church of England who used to be a Seventh-day Adventist teacher in the religion departments of Newbold College, not far from London, and the denomination’s college in Hong Kong.  Before assuming his present position he earned a doctorate in New Testament at Oxford University and taught at several other universities in the United Kingdom.

This event at the Loma Linda University Campus Hill Church was the first in what will be an annual series of lectures on “Adventism and the World.”  Initiated and organized by Julius Nam, a church historian at LLU, these lectures are sponsored by the University’s School of Religion.

Newport supported his claim that the Branch Davidians ignited the fires by reviewing some of the forensic evidence.  This includes video tapes, audio recordings by “bugs” that had been implanted in the compound, much physical evidence, such as 39 fuel containers that had been purposefully punctured near the spots where it is believed that each of three fires began, the reports of those who investigated Mount Carmel after the flames had burned themselves out, and the testimony of the survivors and officers who were actually there.  His conclusion, stated in the typical understatement of an English scholar:  “One might find it difficult not to conclude that the fire was started by the Davidians themselves.”

He advanced his assertion that the Branch Davidians did this for theological reasons by reviewing their developing views about the religious significance of fire.  Victor Houteff, the founder of the offshoot from Seventh-day Adventism that after several decades and many twists and turns eventuated in the Branch Davidians, held that in an end-time battle over Jerusalem God’s true people “would be protected by God as ‘a wall of fire.’”  Lois Roden, fourth in succession after Houteff’s wife Florence and her husband Ben, taught that before the establishment of God’s kingdom “the remnant would be baptized by fire.”  This baptism, she explained, “will be literal and ‘by immersion.’”

Vernon Howell, known to the world as David Koresh, was a sexual partner of Lois Roden when she was three times his age.  He succeeded her following her death and an intense struggle with her son George, who would later die in an insane asylum.   He also made his contribution to the developing “theology of fire.”  In his “sermons,” some of which were recorded, he spoke of a short term of severe testing before the arrival of “the 200 million strong avenging army to drive the wicked from the world.”  The followers should expect death but “in that second or two before death there will be a moment of absolute, pure faith and it is this that will guarantee a glorious resurrection.” 

Steven Schneider, Koresh’s lieutenant, who in the flames would shoot him in the head from the side and back before stuffing a gun into his own mouth and pulling the trigger, went even further.  Those who would be resurrected will be “as eschatological warriors riding upon horseback—in fact they would come back as the avenging army of God spoken of in Revelation 9:  15-18.”  “You always wanted to be a charcoal briquette” Schneider comments to a colleague in one of the recordings.

In my response to Newport’s presentation, I indicated that his evidence convinces me that the Branch Davidians ignited the flames and that they did so for theological reasons.  I expressed doubt as to whether their beliefs are enough to account for what went wrong, however.  I reported my view that Waco’s horrors were caused by a convergence of very serious theological, psychological and ethical pathologies on both sides of the conflict, the Branch Davidians, on the one hand, and the representatives of the government, on the other.  I indicated my doubt “that by itself their reading of these [Biblical] texts would have caused the Branch Davidians to lite the fires.” 

If only theological considerations mattered, and if Adventist and Branch Davidian beliefs differed primarily in degree, if in effect we can picture David Koresh and Ellen White holding hands, why is it that so few SDAs (less than .00001%) were attracted to the Branch Davidians? I wondered.

I think this issue deserves emphasis.  If we have 10 million brown dogs with normal temperaments and 100 brown dogs with dangerously vicious ones, I doubt that we will try to figure out why their dispositions differ by pointing out that they are all brown.  In effect this is what Newport tries to accomplish.  But it is notoriously difficult to explain why things are different by pointing out how much they are the same.  Furthermore, in the case under consideration the two groups of dogs aren’t even the same color!

In the question and answer time, the audience asked if any Branch Davidians still exist (Yes); whether pathologies actually contributed to what went wrong (Me: Yes; Newport: It’s difficult to know.); whether the beliefs of Adventists and Branch Davidians and Adventists differed in degree or kind (Newport degree; Me: Kind, as evidenced by their diametrically opposed stances on the use of guns and other military weapons in civilian life); and whether the conclusions of Newport and me differed that much (Newport:  Silence;  Me:  That depends upon whether Newport thinks that the beliefs of the Branch Davidians are sufficient to account for what went wrong.).

Questions also surfaced about why Newport left Adventism for the Church of England (“I could no longer teach what I didn’t believe.”); whether Ellen White functions for SDAs like Koresh did for the Branch Davidians (Newport:  Yes;  Me:  No); and whether Adventism as a whole suffers from the pathologies that beset both the Branch Davidians and the government’s representatives (Newport: Silence;  Me:  In every denomination, even the Church of England, there are scary and sick people but this is not true of any community of faith as a whole.).

In addition to being the world’s foremost scholar on Waco, Newport is an accomplished specialist in the life and teachings of Charles Wesley who was born 300 years ago.  Therefore, just before the end of the evening’s event, in gratitude to Kenneth Newport, memory of Charles Wesley and praise to God, the congregation stood and sang one of Wesley’s most cherished hymns:

Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling;
All thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
Pure unbounded love Thou art;
Visit us with Thy salvation;
Enter every trembling heart!

Julius Nam prayed the Benediction and wished us all the very best.         

Paulsen visits Cuba

From Adventist News Network:

A recently retired pastor, Alvarez was given a hero's welcome for his contribution to a Seventh-day Adventist congregation, which on Sunday, November 4, officially dedicated a new church. Once a political advisor to the leaders of the Cuban revolution, Alvarez returned to celebrate a victory of God in a town at the foothills of Sierra Maestra Mountains in Southeastern Cuba.

[snip]

Speaking at the opening session of the IAD meeting, Paulsen recognized the church's "strong focus on mission." He also emphasized the church's need to "build strong communities and meet the world from a position of strength."

 He continued the theme of Adventist involvement in society when addressing a representation of the state and local government on Sunday. "We don't carry a political agenda. As a church, we are aware that while we are a spiritual community, we are committed to building society," he said.
 
Referring to "positive engagement in society," Paulsen added that Adventists "want to make a contribution to communities, and to make communities more secure."

I'm an Adventist because

By Alexander Carpenter

Why are you an Adventist?

Ex vs. anti SDA?

This post, by an former member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, raises some fruitful questions about religious identity:

I don’t actually view myself as “ex” anything, even though we all are ex-something and headed onward to something else, I hope. But I don’t shun contact with members of the church in which I grew up, and thus I sometimes have to deal with the default identity of ex-Seventh-day Adventist.

Now don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of SDAs who see me as a person apart from that one point of identity. There are even some non-SDAs–who were never SDAs–who define me as an ex-SDA. The connection between the church in which I grew up and my present identity cannot be severed in their view. What they would like me to do is cut all ties as clearly as possible and make myself anti-SDA. It’s the old “if you’re not for us, you’re against us” approach. And of course that approach isn’t bad if the question is good and evil, God or satan, constructive or destructive. But for brothers and sisters in Christ, I reject that approach.

I can illustrate this through two experiences. 

Read the rest at Threads from Henry's Web.

Cult/ure

By Alexander Carpenter

I'm spending my Sunday catching up on the current New Yorker. I just enjoyed this paragraph in an article, "The Mission," on GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. 

The application to emerging acculturated Adventism will be clear, for it gets at the deep identity connection in those who love a Christian community for more than its past disappointments and hope.

Many commentators have suggested that Romney will need to make a speech akin to the one that John F. Kennedy gave in 1960 to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, in which he promised to resign if there was ever a collision between his beliefs as a Catholic and the national interest. Jan Shipps [a leading non-Mormon scholar of Mormonism] is skeptical of the idea that Romney could do something similar. “Mormonism was a cult, just as Christianity was a cult in the beginning,” she told me. “But a cult, when it grows up, becomes a culture, and the people who are a part of it take on an ethnic identity, a peoplehood. Romney is not Mormon the way, say, Ted Kennedy is Catholic. Romney is Mormon the way Ted Kennedy is Irish. That’s the difference. And, when it’s that much a part of who you are, it’s very hard to explain it to other people, because you can’t figure out why they can’t see it. [emphasis supplied]

A peculiar peoplehood?   

Adventists on national radio in Australia

by Nathan Brown

This past weekend featured a one-hour special on Seventh-day Adventists, focusing on various public health activities, on Australia's Radio National—similar to NPR.

The four-part feature included interviews with Pastor John Gate, director of the church's Bible correspondence school in Australia, Dr Gerald Winslow of Loma Linda University, Jonathan Duffy, director of Adventist health for the South Pacific Division, and Dr Peter Landless from the General Conference health department.

The program was a direct result of the second Australian Conference on Spirituality and Health that Dr Rachael Kohn, host of the ABC Radio National program Spirit of Things attended both as a delegate and a guest speaker. The conference was held in August and was organised by Adventist Health in the South Australian Conference.

The broadcast is worth checking out. Listen online or dowload from:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2007/2059943.htm

Happy Great Disappointment Day!

By Alexander Carpenter

During her sermon at the Adventist Forum conference La Sierra University professor of religion Kendra Haloviak pointed out that October 22, 1844 was actually a day of great hope. And therefore, the 23rd was the day of great disappointment.

While some churches are built on great traditions of biblical literalism (Southern Baptists) or great spirit (Assemblies of God), Seventh-day Adventism comes from great disappointment. When one gets GOD so publicly incorrect it takes a liberal hope in human understanding and divine understandability to keep on proclaiming truth. And we have, mixing the literal and the spirit and the allegorical in present ways. Due in part to our great White hope we went from wrong to 15-million strong.   

Like the hymn says, "we have this hope burning in our hearts." And I think that this hope is embedded in our Seventh-day and Advent name -- hope in humans and God meeting in time as well as when there are no more disappointing days. 

On homosexuality: Kinship reviews For the Bible Tells Me So

By Obed Vazquez and Jacqueline Hegarty

On Sunday, October 14, 2007, a group of Kinship members from the San Francisco Bay area joined many of our straight friends at the Lumiere Theater to attend the San Francisco screening of the new 99-minute film documentary, For the Bible Tells Me So, produced and directed by first-time filmmaker, Daniel Karslake.

The film follows the journeys of five American families, each of whom discover that they have a gay or lesbian child. Two of the featured families were Gephardt family, with Chrissy Gephardt, lesbian daughter; and Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop, elected Bishop of New Hampshire in 2004. The other families were ordinary, Christian, “typical” American families who faced reconciling the issue of homosexuality with what they had always believed the Bible said on the subject.

Each of the five families dealt with the issue differently; yet, they had a commonality, their literalist understanding of what the Bible says about homosexuality. The families are all confronted by a big challenge—the apparent attack on their belief in the Bible as the written word of God that gives them ultimate truth. But more than a challenge, it feels like an assault that threatens the very core of their relationship with their God. For most of the families, their love for their children and knowing that their children are good, sincere, and God-fearing, propels them to seek a way of understanding this “condition.” 

The stories of these struggles stir the emotions, reach out to the heart, and resonate with the familiar. Each story is poignant, from the story of Mary Lou Wallner, a mother who has to live each day with the suicide of her daughter because of her own rejection, to the Poteats who are portrayed as loving and accepting their lesbian daughter but still resistant towards accepting her “lifestyle.”

This is the strength of the documentary, the joining of home and the altar. Home is where the young homosexual feels the pressures of the ultimate sacrifice of coming out. Will they be rejected by their parents as they acknowledge this “truth” about themselves, and will God side with their parents?  What is their God really like? The message from both home and church seems clear: we are an abomination. But are we? 

The strength of homosexuality is its ability to bring the committed, sincere, and honest Christian to face to face with the possibility that what he or she has been taught is perhaps wrong. That the Bible they cherish and rely on may not mean quite what they have always taken for granted. That the God they have come to know may not be the “right” or only version of God. And this is the other strength of the film—it validates the sincerity of these Christian families without attacking them. This film takes the Bible seriously and wants to reconcile gays and lesbians with the scripture they love. The film interviews Biblical scholars and ministers who help explain the context of the Bible’s few verses about homosexuality. Much of this scholarship is not new to us “out” LGBTI Christians, but we appreciated how compassionately it is presented throughout the film.

One of the scholars interviewed, Dr. Lawrence Keene of the Disciples of Christ, talks about how he responds to Biblical literalists who frequently assert, “This is what the Bible says” by countering,“…No, that’s what the Bible reads...”  He challenges fundamentalists to consider the context, the language, the culture, and the customs that helps us to understand the meaning of what the Bible is saying. For example, the Bible does not offer much advice for modern marriage because marriage as we know it today (between one man and one woman with both parties considered equal) simply did not exist. Likewise it does not say anything about committed homosexual relationships today—homosexuality as we know it today did not exist when the Bible was being written.

The producer has chosen not to address the parents that decide to send their children to conversion camps or reparative therapy programs. It doesn’t show the emotional and spiritual damage this has caused many gay and lesbians, denying them a path towards developing a relationship with the God of their childhood. In fact, the relationship is impossible because the God they read about condemns them, and there is no negotiation with “abomination.”

One of the film’s highlights that we found especially moving was the story of Bishop Gene Robinson. His story is at first a story we have all heard—he follows cultural tradition, marries, and has children. Then what has been denied within him begins to clash, putting pressures on his relationship with his wife, his ministry, and his values. His decision to come out and to continue in his ministry, however, can not be taken lightly; this is not the easy path. The courage to continue in the ministry is what makes this such an incredible story.

The film tells the highlights of his nomination to become bishop through the testimony of members of the nominating committee who were looking for the best spiritual leader they could find. The fact that he happened to be gay was not taken lightly but recognized as an additional quality that he was bringing to the office. Seeing his consecration at the General Convention with the accompanying pageantry, pomp and circumstance, and thunderous applause was a powerful testimony of the dedication of a gay man, a gay minister, and the faith of a congregation who accepted the impossible: that a gay man can be a spiritual leader.

Another highlight for us came towards the end of the story of the Poteat family. Here we have a couple who are obviously dedicated to their beliefs, but also dedicated to their children. Their prayer for their children is answered, but not how they expected. God has a sense of humor. Their inability to accept the “lifestyle” of their daughter was admittedly frustrating in many ways. They functioned on the “love the sinner, but hate the sin” mentality, a conflicting duality that is painful and an impossible reality.

Which brings us to the good question of what indeed is the “gay lifestyle"?  Mel White addresses this by sharing a moment he had while on Larry King Live. A caller asked what Mel and his partner did in bed. Even though Larry King hung up on the caller for being rude, White answered, “What do we do in bed? We’ve been together for 24 years—we sleep in bed.” Indeed, many of us lead very boring lives of working long hours, taking care of children, cooking, cleaning the house, and doing the laundry. We go to church, sit on boards, lead Sabbath school, and fall exhausted into our beds at the end of the day to sleep: the “gay lifestyle”?

Showing families on their journeys to reconciliation and unconditional love is powerful; it is the heart of society, and none are excluded. In a way, the Poteats can be seen as representative of many Americans (at least, we hope)—they admit to not having settled issues of sex; they admit they might need to read the Bible again; they admit to not being able to accept the “lifestyle”; and yet they still want to love their daughter. They want to see her as a child of God. There is still pain because they can’t offer her complete acceptance yet. “We’re not there yet.” But, there is hope that they will be there soon.

Obed Vazquez is a professor of sociology at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California. He is a partnered Seventh-day Adventist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has been a member of SDA Kinship International since 1978 and serves as a regional coordinator for SDA Kinship International.

Jacqueline Hegarty is a partnered Seventh-day Adventist lesbian mom living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is active in SDA Kinship’s Region 8 (northern California), serving as editor of the region’s electronic newsletter, Region 8 News & Views. She also serves as Public Relations Coordinator for SDA Kinship International (www.sdakinship.org).

The authors would also like to recommend an Adventist-produced video entitled, “Open Heart, Open Hand,” featuring three Adventist families and their experiences with their gay/lesbian children. It shows similar journeys, similar struggles, familiar pain, and it is our families. (More information about the video is available from Carrol Grady’s website, www.someone-to-talk-to.net.)

On Growing Up Adventist in the Caribbean

By Matthew Hunte, our man in St. Lucia.

From what I hear, the Caribbean islands are pretty well known for their sun, sand and friendly locals; I’ll get around to checking out that scene one of these days. To be quite honest, I’ve lived what some would call a rather sheltered life, though as I’ve grown older, I realized that due to my quite introverted nature–-thank you Jonathan Rauch!–-I would have spent most of my time reading and writing anyway. However it occurred to me that I, with a penchant for over-analyzing, had never turned the lens inward on my own religious community/beliefs.

I should not pretend that the Adventist experience in the Caribbean is monolithic and that I’m in any position to provide an exhaustive account; I can only speak from my position as a middle class fourth-generation Adventist who grew up in a house containing too many books and who also has a possibly unhealthy fascination with Prince and those violent eighties cartoons. I also should add that while Transformers (2007) was underwhelming, I can’t honestly say I was disappointed since my expectations were low as they should be for any Michael Bay film. Sigh…

Outside of a general appreciation for androgynous, star-crossed musical geniuses, my other views aren’t absolute. However, I could honestly say that for the most part, I have thought through whatever position I hold at a given time exposing it to great scrutiny, which perhaps explains why my views are constantly in flux, that and the fact that I’m only in my early twenties. I could tell you at a given point what my political/economic/sports views were and explain why; not so with religion. I never got around to examining my own religious community–-and/or personal beliefs–-with the scrutiny I used on the other aspects of my life. Anyhow, shall we dance? (Figuratively speaking of course…) 

The dominant culture within Caribbean Adventism, as I’ve experienced it, is a proud conservatism. Indeed, the greatest compliment that could be paid is that you are steadfast and grounded in the Word. In case you’re wondering, this means strict Biblical Literalism, along with Biblical Inerrancy. In a sense, the use of these terms within the Caribbean context to describe these viewpoints is unnecessary because it presupposes that other viable positions may exist. Fundamentalism is essentially unchallenged, not only in the sense that dissenting views are quickly suppressed, but in that few people think that there is any other way.

There really isn’t much of a discernible intellectual culture within Adventist circles, outside of the pastors sprinkling some Greek into their sermons. However, this could possibly be explained as a reflection of wider Caribbean culture. This is partially due to having a poor and for the most part uneducated population, in addition to the insularity which results from coming from such small places; none of this is unique to Adventism. Thus, one could assume that attending college would be a way for me to be exposed to a whole different side of the church culture.

However, during my time at what was then Caribbean Union College, now University of the Southern Caribbean, I came to seriously question the whole notion of an Adventist higher education. Throughout much of my time at CUC, I felt that much greater emphasis was being placed on getting me to worship services than getting me to think. Of course I was hardly a model student to begin with; home schooling must have wrecked my chances for success within a formal education system. At one particularly cringe inducing evening when there were so many other things happening in the world, we were having a public debate on whether or not women should be allowed to wear pants to class. Often I felt that the school was in its own sort of ivory tower, completely divorced from contemporary world.

To be fair, my rather un-illustrious tenure at CUC coincided with a particularly unstable period; I went through five different presidents during my four years and only once did I have the same president opening the school year and making the address at graduation. Nevertheless, there was a significant intellectual vacuum which seemed deeply embedded within the culture of the institution. Perhaps this was because part of the school’s culture which explicitly saw itself as preparation for service; the few of us who studied the liberal arts, often less than fifteen majoring in English or History at any time out of a population which was then around nine hundred, were either pariahs or simply invisible. (By the way Clifford Goldstein’s autobiography provided me with great solace while early in my collegiate career, I was trying to justify my existence as a student of literature. I figured he didn’t turn out too bad so there was still hope…) Nevertheless, though in many ways the school fit the profile of any other cash strapped liberal arts college, this sure wasn’t a Christian Bennington.

But this is not necessarily to state that CUC was a failure; what I’ve grown to suspect is that my goals and that of the institution were in dissonance. This was a school which was indifferent to intellectual development, not one which merely failed to live up to its pretensions.  To be sure, the majority of the student population was apathetic. However the plebes at the bottom could hardly bear the major responsibility in creating an environment conducive to intellectual discourse. During my erstwhile tenure as editor of the school newspaper, I was explicitly informed not to contact the most successful editor in the publication's history since he was said to not have had the institutions best interest at heart. This stems from the paper having run a story dealing with the Folkenberg affair, which lead to an editorial committee being established and the paper being censored until it wilted.

I often used to quip that if anyone in the theology department made any significant discovery, they would by definition be placing their continued employment in doubt. There were relatively few public lectures, book readings or anything of that. I am still not sure whether or not this was simply due to there being no firm leadership during my attendance, whether it is something unique to the institution I attended or if this is endemic within Adventist higher education. (There has been a major spike in enrollment at USC recently with the student population now twenty-six thousand. There has also been the establishment of a scholarly journal and greater engagement with the society with the hosting of a crime symposium for example. Too late for me but still…)

From where I stand, there is little room for dissent within the Adventist community; my growing interest in Bishop Spong wouldn’t gain me any favors among the few who know who he is. (I remember hearing some guy in college complaining about that heretic Richard Rice.) I wouldn’t venture to state that mine is the authentic Caribbean Adventist experience though I suspect that any difference in experience is rooted mainly in my reaction to it. In the mean time, I’m torn between my commitment to intellectual pursuit and a deeper connection to a community which I can’t shake despite my fiercely individualistic nature. So I’m not quite sure where I stand, except that I’m stuck out here on an island.

A hope for Adventist rebels and worriers

By Alexander Carpenter

It looks like the discussion over Adventist sectiness vs. denominationalism prompted by Gary Land's review of Seeking the Sanctuary is already going down the same old track between the worriers and the rebels. The worriers rightly fret that loss of distinctiveness makes Adventism meaningless, while the rebels hang around the self-aware contingent edge smugly smiling at exclusionary ideas like remnant or unique. They hurl "sect" and the worriers only wish it were more true.

In fact, the worriers see everyone who leaves as not having enough faith or moral fortitude or devotional discipline or doctrinal insight to see the light while the rebels wander down to the cave (or pop into a forum or blog) trying to prove that this is all shadows, the real light is outside. Of course this is a classic oversimplified binary (do you smell another dialectical synthesis coming?), but frankly we've got to get beyond this tired trope of the intellectually smug vs. the doctrinally secure.

In fact, there are rebellious worriers (like Cliff Goldstein) who remember the emptiness of pure contingency and tint their arguments for uniqueness with smugness and there are clearly worrywart rebels (some in the Spectrum community) who spend a lot of their valuable time caring about a denomination that they don't  much care for.

Mad good Adventist props if you already know this, but it's been the week of prayer with the Review featuring the usual top down slew of "encouraging" articles on hope.

Well, I've got a hope that includes more than a multi-roomed mansion in heaven. I hope for a better Adventist conversation.

We need to stop arguing over the importance of doctrines and start importing them into our globalized 21st century world. This goes beyond deconstruction or apologetics and gets at movement-building and the creation of meaning. A belief is not true or untrue according to this or that list of texts or historical significance, it is true to humans when it has meaning and to have meaning it must apply to life. Why does this sort of reapplication make me hopeful? Because no institution or person controls all the contexts of human life -- although everyone tries.

Let me offer an example: the Adventist ideal of conscientious objection. Traditionally this has applied to war. And as people like Ron Osborn and Doug Morgan have pointed out, this attempt to balance the responsibilities for safety and peace has waxed and waned through Adventist history around the world. But in a globalized world perhaps we can expand on the notion of conscientious objection. What is it rooted in? The individual conscience. So, here have a denomination telling it's laity to follow their conscience. That's actually pretty radical stuff, especially given the history of tens of thousands of splits in Christendom over matters of conscience.

But Glacial View destroyed the conscience-driven hope of many worriers and rebels. I'm glad that Bull and Lockhart devote time to Glacier View and the self-supporting movement because I think that both help us to find common ground for the future. That's what lies behind the sad legacy of Glacier View. The powerful (and people we paid and trust) used their institutional clout to control conscience, especially in the one place (a college) where ideas should be sorted out. And that also parallels what lies behind the interesting rise of the self-supporting movement during the same time. Rebels worried (and joined a forum chapter and took up drinking wine) and worriers rebelled (and joined a home church playing Countdown videos and took up drinking wheat grass). What drove both was the the growing sense of a more muscular GENERAL CONFERENCE that threated individual creative theological expression. 

Of course most Adventists didn't really care. They paid their tithe, sent their children to Adventist schools, used the word "balance" toward the end of Sabbath School lesson discussions each week, and reflected with the Review.  The conscientious objectors were both on the outside.

But let's face it, if you visit the Spectrum Blog and are still a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church you probably shuttle between worry and rebellion. I sure do. I worry about us losing our sectiness and our whatever intellectual honesty. The Advent movement should not become another centrally controlled denomination nor should be devolve into a meaningless mishmash of charismatic pastors or national churches. Comparing Seeking a Sanctuary and "Words of Hope," I think that the biggest thing missing from our paid leaders is a vision for the future of Adventism. They want to assure of salvation and cheer us up rather than engage in the tough work for exciting our ethical imagination.

What's always made Adventism interesting it's part mainline, part evangelical, slightly fundamentalist, part historic peace, a little Catholic, and in part a religion of the American 19th century and now a bit emergent.  I would hope that as we pick leaders for the future, we find men and women with a vision for what it means to be an Adventist in the 21st century.

But it's not just them. It's the laypeople too. And I for one find mission in the dream of an Adventism translating its values into just action for humanity. A faith that addresses the environmental, economic, ethnic, sexual, gender, religious liberty realities gets us beyond worrying and rebelling over sectiness and moving forward as a movement.

This will take a lot of trust in humanity and even more faith in God. Perhaps too much. But I do have this hope. And I'm sticking around to do my part.

Review of Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream

By Alexander Carpenter

As many of you know the annual Adventist Forum conference is this weekend in Santa Rosa, California. This year's featured guests are Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, the authors of the best history of Adventism, Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream, which was recently expanded and republished.

Thanks to Daneen Akers we have a review of it by the Adventist historian of ideas, Gary Land, the man who introduced me to Jacques Ellul.
__________________

Review of Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream, 2nd Edition by Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007
498 pp., paper $29.95.

By Gary Land

When published in 1989, the first edition of Seeking a Sanctuary established itself as the best available study of American Seventh-day Adventism.  Now updated and enlarged, the volume remains the foremost work on this denomination.  Combining historical, sociological, and cultural studies methodologies, Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, respectively a teacher at Oxford University and a London-based journalist, offer a readable and penetrating analysis that is indispensable to both scholars and general readers wanting to understand Adventism.  For Adventists themselves, it offers a sympathetic outsider's perspective that increases self-awareness.

The authors argue two intertwined theses.  First, as indicated by their title and subtitle, they believe that Adventism provides an alternative means of achieving the American dream of spiritual fulfillment and material progress.  Second, they dispute the interpretation put forward by scholars both within and outside the denomination that Adventism is in the process of transforming from a sect into a denomination; in contrast, they believe that it remains a sect. 

In presenting these arguments, the authors divide their book into three parts.  The first, "Adventist Theology," addresses authority, identity, eschatology, and the sanctuary doctrine.  Although they do not use the term, the authors see several dialectics at work in Adventist theology:  the Bible as the source of Adventist belief over against Ellen White as the final interpreter of the Bible, the hope for versus the delay in Christ's second coming, identity tied to specific beliefs in contrast with identity expressed through loyalty to denominational structure, and the Arian tendencies embedded in the Sanctuary Doctrine in conflict with the church's twentieth century Trinitarianism. 

Viewing these issues historically, Seeking a Sanctuary incorporates them into an almost Hegelian pattern:  the thesis of Adventist radicalism produced the antithesis of fundamentalism out of which came the synthesis of evangelicalism.  Interestingly, however, and in keeping with the argument that Adventism is not progressing to denominational status, as this synthesis became the new thesis, the antithesis that it produced was a return to fundamentalism rather than a step to a higher stage of development.

Part 2 examines "The Adventist Experience and the American Dream."  Here again we see some dialectics at work, beginning with the concept that in opposition to a flawed Republic, Adventism has developed an "alternative social system" (114).  Although the church originated in America, most of its growth is now taking place in other parts of the world; in its homeland the church is disproportionately female, old, black, and immigrant.   As health and family life (i.e. sexuality) lost their eschatological meaning and became ends in themselves, they became optional behaviors.  The church's orientation toward time as embodied in the Sabbath and the eschaton placed it in opposition to American society but also produced internal schisms and shapes artistic expression.  Contrasting Adventism with Mormonism, another indigenous American religion, the authors state, "In Adventism the American dream is reinterpreted, in Mormonism, Christianity is reinterpreted.  Adventists have become un-American in an effort to become more truly Christian.  Mormons have become un-Christian in order to become more American" (254).

In Part 3, the authors examine the "Adventist Subculture," including gender, race, ministry, medicine, education, and the self-supporting movement.  This portion of the book might be understood as a subset of Part 2, exploring in more detail important elements of this "alternative social system."  Again, a number of dialectics (I hope that I am not pushing this concept too far, but it is something that struck me when reading my notes before writing this review.)  Adventism, according to Bull and Lockhart, is a women's movement that goes against traditional male values; as a result men find entering into the church bureaucracy the only acceptable way to express their masculinity. 

Although Adventism represents the ethnic variety of American culture to a degree not found in other churches, it still practices segregation, most fully illustrated by regional conferences.  Ministers, who personify the Adventist response to the American nation, are often misunderstood and underappreciated by the laity and receive inadequate support, especially during personal crises, from their conferences.  The Adventist health system constitutes an alternative administrative and economic structurȩ for doctors and hospital administrators are the only church employees with the financial resources to successfully challenge clerical control.  Adventist education did not develop a distinctive philosophy until a couple of decades after the founding of Battle Creek College; today that philosophy may inform long-term goals as expressed in mission statements but has little influence on short-term operations, which are very similar to those of other schools. 

The ultimate dialectic, however, is that the most distinctive or pure expression of Adventist values appears in the self-supporting movement that exists outside the control of the institutional church.  But even this movement, the authors write, "which represents the ideal of egalitarian cooperation, has been promoted by the power of individual capital concentration, while mainstream Adventism, which espouses a set of values a little closer to the American ethos, is founded on centrally managed schemes of funding" (346). 

The authors' arguments are grounded in prodigious research, documented in nearly a hundred pages of notes.  Sources include nearly every imaginable type of work published by the denomination and independent publishers related to Adventism as well as those published by commercial and academic presses.  The bibliographical essay that closes the book helpfully sorts out and comments on the most helpful of these sources.

Compared to the first edition, there are some significant changes in the second.  In addition to updated statistical information and accounts of recent events such as the Branch Davidian tragedy and General Conference votes on the ordination of women, the authors have added a chapter on "The Ethics of Schism."   They have also revised their original chapter titles "Women" and "Blacks" to "Gender" and "Race," the latter change opening space for discussion of Hispanics and Asians as well as Blacks.  The visual appeal of the new edition is enhanced by the inclusion of several illustrations   There does not seem to be any major revision of the book's arguments, however.

Any book of this scope is bound to raise questions. Because the authors' discussion of the "revolving door" is primarily sociological, it does not address the role that theological disagreement has played since the 1980s in departures from the church.  Is there a connection between the grace orientation of those former Adventists for whom the magazine Proclamation! is published and rising social status?  Or is the issue truly theological?  Also, what is meant by the church?  Is it the official bureaucratic structure or the membership?  Although Bull and Lockhart are sensitive to this distinction, I have often wondered how many lay members really understand or deem important the inner workings of the sanctuary doctrine or the details of eschatology that appear in Adventist publications.

Finally, while I appreciate the reasons why the authors challenge the sect-to-denomination interpretation of Adventism, I am not fully convinced.  The very Adventist theologians, for example, who represent a return to fundamentalism appear to be aligned with the Evangelical Theological Society.  There is also evidence that Adventist scholars, in biblical studies as well as other fields, are increasingly writing for non-denominational publishers.  None of this belies Seeking a Sanctuary's thesis, but it does suggest that Adventism's trajectory may be moving in several directions at once.  These questions are minor at best and in no way lessen Bull and Lockhart's monumental achievement.  Hopefully, the appearance of this new edition will draw the attention of a new generation of readers and push scholars to more fully incorporate its interpretations into their studies of Seventh-day Adventism.   

…………………
Dr. Gary Land writes from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, MI where he is a professor of history and the chair of the Department of History and Political Science. His is the author of the Historical Dictionary of the Seventh-day Adventists and the editor of Growing up with Baseball: How We Loved and Played the Game. He is currently working on a biography of Uriah Smith.

Ready or not. . .yet perfect

By Pastor Jim Coffin

Seventh-day Adventists believe strongly in the soon return of Jesus. So strongly, in fact, that our denomination’s founders put the second-advent doctrine into the very name of our denomination. That’s why we call ourselves "Adventists."

But, as a whole, Seventh-day Adventists—especially the young—don’t look forward with eager anticipation to the second advent. And I would suggest that a major reason is that we don’t feel "ready."

Adventists talk a lot about "being ready" and "getting ready" for the coming of Jesus. But what does readiness entail?

Does it mean being perfect? Not if I understand my Bible correctly. We read in 1 John 1:8 (NIV): "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."

Those are strong words—"deceive ourselves"…"the truth is not in us." And the text says nothing about any future point when those words won’t apply. It doesn’t say, "But before Jesus comes there’s going to be a group of people who will have it together so totally that they’ll be able to say they’re without sin."

Just in case the foregoing words aren’t strong enough, however, God, through the writer John, repeats and rephrases the statement a couple of verses later (1 John 1:10 NIV): "If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives."

Some might argue that John is here talking about claiming to have never, ever, ever sinned—but that it wouldn’t be inappropriate to claim that we haven’t sinned in, let’s say, the past twenty-four hours or the past two years. That would be acceptable. The problem comes only if we claim to have been perfect from square one.

Read the whole article over at the main Spectrum site.

We-writing the Adventist novel

By Alexander Carpenter

This Boston Globe review for the new Denis Johnson novel, Tree of Smoke, caught my eye because it contained the following paragraph.

The title of "Tree of Smoke" is from Scripture, and refers in part here to the vast map of information and possibility the Colonel keeps about the war - a cache of delusional theory that Skip has been indexing for his uncle for years. The dramatic tension of the novel belongs to this folie à deux. The Colonel is trying to run a double agent named Trung, a VC who has become disillusioned with the Marxist-Leninist strictures of the North Vietnamese; having proved himself complicit by staying silent during an off-the-books assassination, Skip spends half his time languishing at a hidden villa, waiting for further instruction. Given his virginal assumptions about God and country, it's fitting that Skip falls into a wartime liaison with Kathy Jones, a Seventh-day Adventist nurse whose husband's remains have just been found - theirs is the perfect mix of lust and despair, framing the tropical circle of hell to which they've both become accustomed.

A lusting and despairing Adventist life -- when's the last time that appeared in Adventist print?  But there's no doubt that it's a part of our story.

I'm intrigued when non-Adventist novelists -- others include Paul Theroux and David James Duncan -- create an Adventist character.  And it prompts the question: Who gets to determine who we are?  Doctrine writers, the General Conference in quinquennial session, academy principals, Sabbath School teachers, parents, the compilers of Messages to Young People, Adventist Review columnists, Adventist bloggers? 

Perhaps we need to expand our idea about Adventist witnessing. For, while there's power in the blood, there's also power in the blog.  As media continues to give wider voices to the demos, those institutions that encourage diverse definitions along with a shared sense of meaning will create a satisfying sense of community character (see this chapter on "Constructing Collective Identities" in Democratizing Global Media).

All too often the church leadership treats the church as a holding tank, keeping the saints preserved until the end. But that squanders our collective talents.  By officially telling women and homosexuals, and sometimes ethnic minorities that they are genetic second class citizens, the church writes fiction, dissembling about the reality of the human character.  Instead of a member-making mentality, the church should shift money and talent to the sanctification process, and turn short conversion testimonies into long, richly charactered Adventist novels.

Sabbath Listening: The People's Messiah

by Johnny A. Ramirez

Performed at Avondale College in Australia.

ADRA on Facebook

By Alexander Carpenter

If you have a Facebook account, check out who is joining the Adventist Development and Relief Agency cause group. And, of course, consider joining too.

Props to Norwegian Adventist Britt Celine, who started it all.

A Case for Indie Adventism

By Jared Wright, M.Div. student at La Sierra University.

Driving along I-5 between Mt. Shasta and the Oregon border on my way to visit the in-laws last week, I passed a large barn with a message to passers by: “State of Jefferson.”  I had heard talk of making two states out of California, and the writing on the roof piqued my interest.

In 1941, Gilbert Gable, the mayor of Port Orford, Oregon and some like-minded Northwesterners announced the formation of the State of Jefferson [http://www.jeffersonstate.com/] (part Northern California, part Southern Oregon), declaring that they would be seceding from California and Oregon every Thursday.  Yreka, California, would serve as the new state’s capitol.  Historians who have written about the Jefferson secession agree that the independence movement was part whimsy, part real.

Gable and citizens living near the California-Oregon border were fed up with state governments that dictated policy from afar, imposed taxes, and generally called the shots, while remaining grossly inattentive to the needs of the citizens.  Of particular concern was a lack of paved roads along the border region into the wilderness where timber and rich mineral deposits provided unlimited opportunity for economic development.  Repeated calls for aid from Sacramento met empty pledges of help that never arrived.

The secession movement found sympathy from residents of Curry, Josephine, Jackson, and Klamath counties in Oregon as well as Del Norte, Siskiyou, and Modoc counties in Northern California.  California residents of Lassen and Shasta counties added to the movement’s momentum, but Jefferson State met an untimely end.  Less than a week after the establishment of the State of Jefferson, Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor putting an abrupt halt to the Jefferson “uprising.”

The spirit of Jefferson State lived on, however, and in the 1970s, talks of secession again rose among those who opposed majority rule - most being those living in Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. 

Today, the stalwarts who sell T-shirts and bumper stickers sporting the Jefferson State logo (two X’s that stand for being double crossed) will tell you that Jefferson is primarily a State of Mind, albeit one with a lingering core of supporters.

I find myself sympathizing with the Jefferson people, because I have experienced being part of a system that calls the shots from a distance, yet fails to provide help where it is vital for growth and development.  I have seen vast resources – not timber and minerals, but rather female and minority leadership, inclusiveness, and intellectual honesty – overlooked and untapped because of persistent majority rule.

I have also witnessed the formation of a new State in Adventism: it’s already here, though it remains by-and-large a State of Mind.  The need for Indie Adventism, as I’ve dubbed it, is not the need to create something new (no new sects or denominations), it is the need to affirm and solidify what already exists.

This new State of Adventism thinks independently.  To a large degree it acts independently as well.  Indie Adventism has already begun drafting a constitution of sorts, which includes the imperative of ordaining women as well as men to the ministry.  Indie Adventism affirms the progressive nature of our understanding of truth, sees our fundamental beliefs as malleable, and believes that beliefs must stand up to intellectual scrutiny and criticism.  Indie Adventism acknowledges the centrality of community and sees inclusiveness as an integral part of community.  Furthermore, Indie Adventism tends to reject assent to a specific set of tenets as a test of membership.

The list of ways that Indie Adventism thinks and acts independently of the World Church could go on and on.  But to get to my central point, there are three reasons that I believe there is justification for an officially independent fellowship of Seventh-day Adventist Christians:

1.  As mentioned above, the “Majority Rules” attitude of the Power Structure in Adventism pandering to the broader constituency, as in the case of Jefferson State, hinders regional growth and development. 

2.  There is a need for the existing group of independents to be able to act with authority and integrity, which cannot happen when it acts in opposition to the group to which it has voiced its allegiance.  In other words, such defiant acts as moving forward with the ordination of women (as the most obvious example) against the expressed will of the World Church diminish the integrity of the group.

3.  There is currently an unhealthy battle of wills in which the (not fully) independent minority impose and project their will on the World Church majority and vice-versa.  This projecting of wills upon the other side is not only unhealthy - it is also counter-productive.

Elaine Nelson unwittingly provided a pithy, anecdotal synopsis of what Indie Adventism looks like in a conversation that ensued from a recent Spectrum Blog post:

“I attend [services] and have held office in the Adventist church which I attend. Everyone who has asked me to take a position has been fully informed that I am not a member. It was dismissed with "that makes no difference," if one is willing to work within the church that is all that counts… If one wishes to worship there, that is all that is required. My tithe goes directly to the local church to use as they choose... as long as the church operates smoothly, contributes to the [local] conference and always meets its budget, and grows in membership there is no reason for the administration to raise a voice against it.”

It’s time that we acknowledge and affirm what we have; it’s time for Indie Adventism (part whimsy, part real) to come out of the closet.

p.s. Jonathan Pichot recently made an excellent case for the formation of an Indie Adventist University.

Call for gender justice response

By Alexander Carpenter

Adventist Gender Justice blogger, Trisha Famisaran has been working with a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is doing a study on how members of our church community create empowering space for women. (Tangential to this, I recommend Ben MacArthur's letter regarding Seeking a Sanctuary in the current issue of the journal.)   

Trisha writes:

Courtney Crenshaw posted a survey on Adventist Gender Justice several months ago and received great feedback. Courtney has several more questions for our community to answer. The questions and her contact information are available on Adventist Gender Justice.

 

Courtney is interested in getting responses from active bloggers, but she is also interested in the broader perception of gender equality and spaces of empowerment in the wider church. It would be especially helpful if you might consider linking over to Courtney's post from your own sites so that she gets as much response as possible. So please spread the word!

 

I think it's exciting that a non-Adventist from the University of California, Santa Cruz, has chosen to focus on women's empowerment in our church community. Courtney's work will be useful to us and I will try to get a hold of her research when it's complete.

Click here to answer her five questions.

Our man in Spain

By Ruben Sánchez in Barcelona

It was Thursday, the 26th of July, around 9pm when a few twenty-something-year-old church members gathered at a friend's house in Barcelona for some spiritual time. Before grabbing our Bibles, I opened my notebook and took out my pen as I explained that I had been asked to blog about Adventism in Spain. There I was, ready to write down their thoughts.

"We are kind of afraid of showing who we are as Adventists", said Marta Muñoz, a 26-year-old award-winning film maker.

"I think there is a lot of escaqueo (skive off work)" interrupted a 25-year-old Ph.D student, Sara Llorca. "Everyone, starting with the pastors down to the laymen, shows a lack of involvement, we tend to think that someone else will do it".

Ms. Llorca's opinion is shared by many in Spain. However, official data may show the opposite. According to figures appearing recently in the Spanish Adventist Review, in the last five years church has grown by 906 members each year, (now there are 13.200 total in Spain). The numbers report that tithe collection has recently doubled, from € 4.855.839 in 2001 to € 8.239.338 in 2006.

Considering these upbeat numbers, is Ms. Llorca's impression wrong?

In an email I got some days later, Isaac Llopis, a 26-year-old, who is close to finish his Ph.D in physics, pointed out that, "our church administrators try to make us happy by giving us general statistics which show the church's growth in the past five years, but this change is due to immigration. We would cry if we had the statistics for the native Spanish members".

Our conversation at friend's house went on. "Truly, the cultural diversity that immigration has brought is the greatest challenge our church faces", explained Pablo López, a 28-year-old IT assistant. Immigration is a church issue because it is a country's issue. Spain has experienced little immigration for the last 500 years, and now suddenly we have to learn how to deal with it.

Offering a suggestion, Mr. López added the church's bureaucracy should be reduced.

Something that seems harder to do is what Ms. Muñoz, expressed: "women can not be ordained as pastors, and that makes me angry." Judith de la Fuente, a 19-year-old nursing assistant did not go that far, but still sees the need for change. "Let us update our liturgy", she exclaimed with a big smile. Adding that in Spain, we still worship with hymns composed centuries ago.

Ms. de la Fuente also said she likes Spanish church activities, something that arose controversy among the group because the big majority of youth activities organized by the Spanish Union are just sporty. Only one is mainly spiritual. Youth evangelism rallies have been non-existent until three years ago when ASI started to support a long evangelism campaign per year. Ms. de la Fuente was in the last one and she loved it.

Another thing made possible by the laity's initiative and hard work is AEGUAE, an Adventist university students and graduates association which has been around for 30 years. Rarely supported with funds from the Spanish Union, AEGUAE has been the only way in Spain to get the most advanced Adventist thought and intellectual reflection.

Finishing the conversation, we all agreed in one thing the film maker Muñoz said: "We need a more transparent church". After this experience, it may be good for us to create a blog, post short clips of people explaining how they imagine the church and let people comment on them. What do YOU think?

Creation: on the Cliff

By Andy Hanson, a semi-retired Professor of Education at California State University, Chico.  He is also editor of the Grace Connection, a magazine and website. He writes: "When I saw the Non Sequitur cartoon in the Sunday paper a couple of weeks ago, I thought immediately of Cliff [Goldstein]. The shoe just seemed to fit." Click on the image and it will open to readable size.

This 'Adventist Home'

By Alexander Carpenter

Recently, This American Life played a tape recorded by a family in Berrien Springs, MI for their son who was -- at the time -- a medical student at Loma Linda University. Years later, the tape was found in a Chicago thrift store.   

This is amazing documentary evidence of an Adventist family -- mother, father and daughter -- struggling for money, spiritual meaning, and emotional connection. I found the mix of religious quest, marriage issues and plodding self-discovery the wife fascinating. Among this raw confusion of human discomfort, desire, and dubious humor, this provokes questions about how we read our spiritual state through our biological relationships.

Like Sharon's visual representation in the post below, this auditory map marks a very personal -- and "presently true" for them -- landscape of Adventism. Also, there is a reference to a "Carl" Hamel, if anyone knows more on that story, please share. 

Accidental Documentaries: Act One. Berrien Springs, Michigan, Circa 1967.

A Midwestern family records a "letter on tape" to their son, who is in medical school in California. Three decades later, the recording somehow ends up in a thrift store. The tape gives a complicated portrait of what goes on among the family members. Mother wishes that Father were more religious. Daughter is miffed because Dad won't help her solve her financial problems. Dad tells corny jokes, talks enthusiastically about machines and extrusions and drills used for the family business run from the basement—a business everyone else in the family resents. And after the old tape ends, Ira interviews the son they were sending these to, Arthur Davis, who's now a doctor in California. (26 minutes)

Listen here.

Scroll down a bit and click on the third button underneath the photo, titled "Full Episode."

Now there's a great idea for our good pastors

By Alexander Carpenter

Now there's a conference president who cares about the good things in life, such as his pastors.

Adventist News Network's Elizabeth Lechleitner writes:

At least one conference in the Seventh-day Adventist Church's North American region has concluded that frazzled pastors don't make for successful ministry. That conference, spanning the U.S. states of Iowa and Missouri, is encouraging pastors to trim their sometimes 80-hour workweeks to a saner 45 to 55 hours.

[snip]

The region is inviting pastors to reprioritize their lives and recast their roles within the church. "The day of working an 80-hour week must come to an end. The church does not own us," [Dean] Coridan [president of the Iowa-Missouri conference] tells ministers during workshop sessions, which he has led in the region for 18 months.

 [snip]

Eddie Cabrera, who pastors three churches in the Iowa-Missouri region and has reined in his workweek for two years, will vouch for the value of 'No.' "I tell my church members, 'Don't call me on Sunday to ask how many Sabbath school quarterlies you should order,' Cabrera says. "If it's an emergency, yes, I'll be there, but otherwise Sunday is family day."

I appreciate the investment that Adventist pastors make in our church and the sacrifices they make for their beliefs and for the difficult task of mobilizing real live folks to care about the important things in life. Thanks pastors for all you do to better human life -- and props to those of you who take the time to blog. Sharing your convictions online is a part of the Christians witness, in my biased opinion. And all pastors get a special dispensation to say whatever the hell they want as fast as they want to type it on the Spectrum Blog. Now get some sleep.

"How Others See Us: An interesting Adventist reference in 'The New Yorker'"

By Jiggs Gallagher

In my reading life, magazines come and go.  But The New Yorker has been a weekly companion for more than 30 years.  Some weeks I'm too distracted to read anything but the illustrated drawings (never call them "cartoons").  But in the April 2, 2007, edition I read a long piece by Jane Kramer:  "The Pope and Islam--Is there anything that Benedict XVI would like to discuss?"

The piece jumps off from the Pope's (perhaps) ill-considered reference in a speech at the University of Regensberg in Germany, where he once taught theology.  In the speech, he quotes a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's remarks on Islam:  "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."  The comment led to an uproar throughout the Muslim world, and the pope apologized later, albeit obliquely.

The New Yorker piece goes on to analyze the Joseph Ratzinger's position on Islam, and on the non-Roman Catholic religious world in general.  It's an interested, textured analysis.

Right in the middle, the author quotes James Puglisi, a Franciscan friar at the Vatican who heads the Center for Christian Unity.  Puglisi is talking about inter-religious dialog, and the difficulties pertaining to it, especially when one side is (or is perceived to be) fundamentalist.  Then the zinger:

(Puglisi) told me, "You need competence on both sides.  And it's not just Islam.  I was in 'official conversation' with some Seventh-day Adventists.  I said to them, 'We need to write our common history.' But how do you do that, when they don't even accept the critical interpretation of our common texts?"

I'm wondering if any Spectrum Blog readers were in the "official conversation" with Puglisi and what they remember of it?

Sabbat Heureux: Hallelujah

By Alexander Carpenter

This is one of my favorite songs. In light of our multifaceted discussion which at times intersected with Sabbath (thanks Johnny), it's good to sit back and receive that cap of creation that reminds us of our shared creaturehood. That good ol' sanctuary in time with God. Sabbath hallelujahs to you -- good readers and commenters. First Leonard Cohen, then Jeff Buckley, then Rufus Wainwright.

I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord but you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift, the baffled king composing Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof, you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, she cut your hair, and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Maybe I have been here before, I know this room; I have walked this floor, I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch, love is not a victory march, it's a cold and its a broken Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know whats really going on below, but now you never show it to me, do you? (and)
Remember when I moved in you; the holy dark was moving too, and every breath we drew was Hallelujah