March 1, 2002 - 12:00pm - Bert B Haloviak Book Reviewed:
ADVENTISM and THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC:
BY DOUGLAS MORGAN

In a succinctly written history of Seventh-day Adventism in America, Doug Morgan weaves together two major themes that provide a basis for understanding and evaluating Seventh-day Adventism.

The Adventist predilection for forecasting the future through a detailed approach to eschatology becomes one grounding theme for studying Adventist history from 1844 to the present.

Morgan's second theme examines Adventist history through the lens of its ethical involvement in society.

In his handling of the interrelationship between those two themes--Adventism's approach to eschatology and its involvement in ethics--Morgan has made a lasting contribution to understanding the essence of Seventh-day Adventism.

The jacket design of Morgan's book underscores his themes.

While the U.S. Capitol and Washington Monument stand tall and carefully outlined, an ugly, frightening beast overpowers, almost swallows the two structures.

 

 

Adventism's interpretation of the United States as a destructive power, supposedly predicted by Scripture to oppose God's people, overwhelms all relationships between Adventists and America.

It is this interpretation of Scripture that understands the United States as an ultimately evil entity that has both spurred and hindered ethical involvement.

As Morgan's subtitle--"The Public Involvement of a Major Apocalyptic Movement"--suggests, Seventh-day Adventism has not retreated to an entrenched position but has made enormous positive contributions to the world.

Some Positive Contributions of the SDA "Predictive" Schema

Here are a few of the positive contributions noted by Morgan:

1. Adventist predictive eschatology led to concern for oppressed minorities and marginalized groups in American society. This fostered strong and consistent action in behalf of religious liberty.

2. Adventist predictive eschatology thrust Adventists into the midst of some of America's greatest ethical dilemmas.

"From slavery to imperialism to Prohibi- tion, Adventists had something to say about what faith meant," says Morgan (p 71).

3. Adventist predictive eschatology kept the church from aligning itself with America's right-wing fundamentalists. Adventists believed that the government's role was to protect freedom, not to enforce religious morality.

Some limitations within the SDA Predictive Focus

While the Adventist eschatological schema has tilted the balance somewhat favorably toward positive ethical contri- butions to the American Republic, its focus upon a detailed predictive scheme of last-day events has resulted in some failures of ethical responsibility:

1. Adventist predictive eschatology left no possibility for a nuanced relationship to Roman Catholicism.

2. Adventist predictive eschatology precluded political activism in reaction to slavery. Convinced that America's moral state was irreversible, slavery was fated to exist until the parousia. Adventist work, in contrast to rhetoric for former slaves, did not begin until the 1890s.

3. Adventist predictive eschatology in the 20th century, inhibited desegregation, bred complacency toward racism, fostered sexism, denied equal wages for women, and fostered harmful attitudes toward eschatological "revisionists."

Morgan in the Trenches

In total, Morgan offers a trenchant critique of a detailed, eschatological predictive scheme. Here are a few Morgan-in-the-trenches quotations:

1. "The Great Controversy remains a thoroughly antipapal document--not just with reference to the past but in its depiction of an end-time conspiracy against liberty--and thus offensive to many, no matter how presented" (p. 186).

2. "The billboard embarrassment did not deter the Adventist mainstream from the course it had pursued.... In regard to apocalyptic prophecy, then, the differences between the far-right fringe of Adventism and the mainstream leadership were more methodological than substantive" (p. 187).

3. "Defense of the controversial book (The Great Controversy) indicates that the church's theology of history perpetuates a sectarian distance from the dominant culture" (p. 195).

Morgan and the Progressives or Revisionists of Adventist Apocalyptic

I consider Morgan's chapter 6, "A Pluralistic Remnant," encompassing the years 1976 to 2000 as the most "fun" part of a provocative book.

Here come such "revisionists" as Richard Coffen, Jonathan Butler, Charles Teel, Roy Branson, Chuck Scriven.

They are shown by Morgan as moving to revise the traditional Adventist apocalyptic scenario to give it ethical relevance in today's needy world.

Morgan considers them "voices calling for a new and progressive involvement with social issues" (p. 125). And they made themselves heard.

These well-educated, progressive scholars "reappropriated" the Adventist apocalyptic heritage by emphasizing their view of apocalyptic eschatology that did not center upon eschatological prediction. They utilized apocalyptic as a "resource for social ethics," says Morgan (p. 182).

How that story works out in its challenge to the church leadership tendency to focus upon the so-called "distinctiveness" of the church's identity is fascinatingly told by Morgan.

Possible Discussion Issues

1. Morgan omits discussion of shut-door theology of the 1844-1851 period. Would not such analysis somewhat explain why J. N. Andrews and the rest of Adventism saw no reform possible for the two-horned beast? Had not the U.S. political system already passed its period of probation?

2. Morgan seems to place the Adventist apocalyptic schema on a level of doctrine. Should the Seventh-day Adventist system of interpretation be seen within that perspective?

3. In his last paragraph, Morgan speaks of the Adventist "commitment to liberty and a pluralistic public order" that defined their vision of a truly "Protestant" America (p. 212).

How is limiting Adventist commitment to liberty for "Protestant" America really pluralistic?

Morgan and a New Paradigm for SDA Approach to Eschatology

I believe Morgan's handling of Ellen White offers us a way out the cycle of Adventism's predictive eschatological scheme.

While Morgan has noted that "Ellen White places a lasting, authoritative stamp on Adventism's apocalyptic view" (p. 25), in his analysis and handling of various episodes, Morgan offers an extremely helpful perspective of Ellen White herself not being bound by her own writings.

Ellen White implied a recasting of apocalypticism in her responses to the extremism of A. T. Jones regarding African land grants, in the issue of the presentness of the formation of the image to the beast, and to the issue of not directly challenging Sunday legislation by urging Adventists to avoid intentionally working on Sunday.

In his concluding remarks, Morgan calls for an in-depth analysis of The Desire of Ages in tandem with that of The Great Controversy. If taken up, such analysis would certainly pave the way for a greatly needed Christological perspective within the Adventist approach to eschatology. His dream for an Adventism of the future is for an Adventism built upon a more healthy correlation between its apocalyptic origins and an optimum future for the world built upon the eschatology inaugurated by Chris