July 1, 1993 - 12:00pm - James Walters

The Orlando campaign raises the question of whether passages in The Great Controversy should today be taken literally. No doubt, Ellen White meant them to be taken in such fashion and hundreds of Adventist evangelists have followed suit, applying them—often mistakenly—to current and anticipated world events.

Much has changed in the 100-plus years since White penned The Great Controversy. The church then had a worldwide membership equivalent to that of a large local conference. More significantly, the number of highly educated members has mushroomed, and education prompts members to ask probing questions. The most pressing question regarding any old and sacred text is the extent to which it is historically influenced.

The Orlando billboards raise an urgent question: Did Ellen White’s nineteenth century knowledge and experience significantly influence her end-time scenario? Fundamentalists say no. Progressives say yes.

As modern life—and church life—has become more complex, denominational leadership has wanted it both ways. While rhetorically supporting a fundamentalist reading of Ellen White and the Bible, the denomination’s extensive educational system and its social involvement (its health systems and its development and relief agency) point to a non-fundamentalist reading of endtime scenarios.

Perhaps the official church will never exclusively identify with either the fundamentalists or the progressives. From early in denominational history the seeds of both views have been present. On the one hand, Adventist pioneers took a literalist view of scripture, but Ellen White also advocated the doctrine of wholism in which the mental, physical and social dimensions were seen as important as the spiritual. Non-Adventist fundamentalists have an easier row to hoe in that their narrow focus on the spiritual easily allows them to establish Bible colleges in which nothing other than scripture gets serious attention. However, wholistic Adventism has fostered accredited colleges and universities where a plethora of disciplines are understood to yield valid knowledge.

An emphasis on education plus other factors has forever shattered the idea of an ideologically monolithic Adventism. Various “Adventisms” exist within America—fundamentalist, historical, institutional, evangelical and cultural. But there is a perimeter to the denominational umbrella—and there should be, as the denominational ouster of the doomsday Branch Davidians demonstrates.

Regarding the Waco disaster, the denomination chose the tack of dissociation. That approach will not work well with the Orlando campaign. The devoted lay people behind the campaign see themselves as merely applying historic Adventist positions to contemporary event—and in large part their claim is correct. So why are the Florida Conference and the flagship Florida Hospital so theologically embarrassed?

Platitudes or pat answers will not do for modern members and their acquaintances. We need an answer rooted in the best of the Adventist heritage and made sensible for contemporary America. Perhaps through disciplined, creative thinking and God’s blessing the denomination can continue to claim the allegiance of diverse Adventisms; the Vatican, for lack of a more distant example, has the tacit loyalty of a range of Catholics. A vacuous response to Orlando would suggest a church theologically adrift.