March 1, 2002 - 12:00pm - Alton D Johnson

EDITORIAL NOTE: From the AT Archive; Jul/Aug 1998

Sometimes AT can publish news that denominational leaders would like reported but which is too controversial for denominational papers to cover.

 

Shortly after I began pastoring the Charlottesville, Virginia, Adventist Church, I learned that over a dozen of my members were staff and students from a nearby self-supporting Adventist college I’d never heard of, Hartland Institute. It adjoined my church district, so I toured the campus and met the president, Colin Standish, and other staff members. At that time Hartland, though unaccredited, had an enrollment of about 100 Adventist students from around the world. It offered classes in religion, business, education, and other basics.

I was impressed with the earnestness of both staff and students and invited Dr. Standish, a former president of Columbia Union College and West Indies College, to preach in Charlottesville. I looked forward to working together with Hartland students in community outreach.

Unfortunately, my dreams never became reality. I began to hear strange and disturbing stories and discovered the morale of my members was low. They saw the Hartlanders as "carpet baggers" from out of town who imposed their standards of morality on the church. Hartlanders controlled the church board, Sabbath School, even church potlucks and socials. Some of my members complained that Hartland students and staff were "running the church" and "driving people away" with their sincere yet judgmental confrontations of members and visitors regarding jewelry, dress, make-up, etc. Others told of a young student from Hartland who, on one or two occasions just before I arrived, had, from the pulpit, enlightened the members regarding his ongoing battle with "secret sin." The members and I found the spirit of many Hartlanders divisive and detrimental to a spirit of love and unity in our local church family.

For example, in my absence, my head elder, who was on the staff at Hartland, preached sermons about the "trend in the Adventist church toward worldliness and apostasy." He cited "a west coast Adventist pastor who practiced mass hypnotism on his congregation;" a conference in the Pacific Northwest that "held a ceremony to burn E. G. White books;" and other such wild allegations, as "evidences" of the Adventist church’s condition. During my tenure, the elder left and was later "ordained" as an Adventist minister by Steps to Life, an independent Adventist fundamentalist ministry in Kansas.

Comparing notes with other pastors, I discovered that Hartlanders were generating controversy not only in my church but in all the local Adventist churches they were attending. (The staff and students did not attend a Hartland church on Sabbaths; they dispersed into the Adventist churches in the region.) As I read Hartland literature, particularly articles by Standish in Our Firm Foundation, it soon became apparent that not only was Hartland’s spirit exclusive and intolerant, but its theology was outside the Adventist mainstream.

 

Adventist Fundamentalists: more fit for heaven, or just fitting a profile?

As I continued my study and observation of the practices and teachings of the Hartland staff and students, a fundamentalist profile began to take form. This profile characterizes not only Hartland and others in the right wing of Adventism but also the "religious right" and the "political right." This syndrome includes:

1. A strong individualism, which can lead to spiritual isolationism (or political nationalism) and do-it-yourself-ism. This fosters a "saving oneself" mentality—a dependence on one’s own good works to make one good enough to be saved. Such individualism can lead to paranoia, legalism, and literalism.

2. Paranoid tendencies—"we are the righteous few against the big corrupt Government or Denomination."

3. An unbalanced emphasis on "law and order": To the fundamentalist, the "law" is the "ultimate standard." It becomes the main inspiration for a person to become one’s own Saviour: "If I can obey this standard perfectly enough, then I will be saved." The focus of the fundamentalist is also on resisting temptation, the punishment of sinners, and God’s retribution and vengeance, rather than on deepening a relationship with Jesus, which will, of course, lead to the fruit of love, obedience, and other fruit of the spirit. Similarly political fundamentalists are fixated on law and order, a strong national defense, the death penalty, etc.

4. A literal interpretation of the Bible. Religious fundamentalists also believe in "verbal inspiration"—God inspired the words of Scripture rather than the prophets. Thus Standish thinks he has a biblical basis for saying that "leadership in the church has been given by God to men but not to women," and "the appointment of women elders [local church elders] has brought great grief to God’s church and terrible division" (Keepers of the Faith, pp. 191, 192).

Likewise, the political fundamentalist believes in a literal or strict ("constructionist") interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

 

Fundamentalism breeds legalism

Fundamentalism, as its name implies, is concerned with fundamentals, or basics. Its thought tends to be concrete, black and white, literal-minded. To the fundamentalist, "relative" is a bad word. (It is "anathema" [Keepers, p. 75].) Fundamentalism gives undue weight to the Old Testament concept of "obey and live, disobey and die." Since Adventist fundamentalists believe that E. G. White is a true prophet, they would do well to heed her statement that:

"In order to be rightly understood and appreciated, every truth in the word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, must be studied in the light which streams from the cross of Calvary" 5BC 1137. It is through this revelation that we must understand and interpret all that the Old (and New) Testament say about God, law, and obedience.

Adventist fundamentalists will select from E. G. White’s writings a statement such as, "We have a heaven to win and a hell to shun." At the same time, they will minimize her statements that express unselfish love for God and others, a love inspired by His love for us.

Fundamentalists will virtually say we must love perfectly in order for God to save us. But apart from Jesus, we cannot love.

 

Reviving the Charlottesville Church

Much of the controversy Hartlanders were arousing in the churches they attended centered upon their insistence that "faith plus works equals salvation." I decided to preach a series on this subject, delineating the theological similarities between the apostle Paul, the reformers, and Ellen G. White on the one hand (salvation is by grace through faith alone) and, on the other, Hartland, Our Firm Foundation, and the Roman Catholic church (salvation is by faith plus works). By the end of the series, very few Hartlanders were still attending. They said I was preaching the "New Theology," shook the dust off their feet, and left to reform other churches. A new, peaceful, happy family spirit—a sense of relief—was now pervading the congregation. Members who had been displaced and sidelined were once again assuming responsibilities. The preoccupation of the church with lists of do’s and don’ts (works and standards) as virtually the means or root of attaining heaven was changing to a grace orientation—a grateful spirit, thankful that Jesus is the Root of our eternal life. They saw that when He is in the heart and in the Church, then works of loving obedience are the natural fruit of salvation—but not the root of justification. All was well, until a scandal broke at the General Conference.

 

Crisis at Colin Standish’s Home Church: Orange, Virginia

When the church at nearby Orange, Virginia, lost its pastor, a General Conference auditor had been receiving mileage to preach and cover the Orange church on Sabbaths. When the auditor was fired by the General Conference for alleged misconduct, the Orange church was without a pastor.

The Potomac Conference annexed it to the Charlottesville church, a 30-minute drive away. Although Charlottesville members were willing to share their pastor with Orange, the feeling was not mutual. This action by the Conference created a major uproar among Hartlanders who attended the Orange church, including some who had attended Charlottesville until they heard my "heretical" series on justification by faith alone. As further fuel in the fire, a Hartland sympathizer had made a videotape (without permission) of a seminar I’d presented in another church on this subject. My emphasis was on Jesus and His grace—the Root of our salvation. The video was circulated among Hartland members and staff. Colin Standish and his followers were in a furor that this "new theology / saved-by-faith-alone" pastor might become their spiritual leader.

The Conference ministerial secretary informed me he would meet with the Orange church the next Wednesday evening and invited us to attend. When my wife and I arrived at the church, we were told to wait outside until we were called for, but we weren’t called in.

Hartlanders spoke out at the Orange meeting. After the meeting, I was "traded" (against my wishes and the wishes of the Charlottesville members) with the pastor of another church—we swapped districts. This move pacified Colin Standish and the Hartland members, because their new pastor was young, unordained, with no theological training in either an Adventist college or seminary. Hartland must have therefore assumed he would not be infected with the New Theology they believed is rampant in Adventist theology departments. One of the reasons Hartland was founded was to restore and teach the "pure" Adventist doctrines.

At first I could not understand why the Potomac Conference would allow the Orange congregation (the majority of whom were Dr. Standish and his followers) to have a controlling voice in determining who was to be or not to be their pastor, when it was contrary to the recommendation of the North American Division that Hartland not be allowed a controlling voice in local church decisions. Ultimately I assumed it was easier for them to transfer me out than to "transfer" Dr. Standish and his followers.

Disheartened and uprooted from Charlottesville, we moved to our new church assignment and began house hunting. However, a few months later, when my wife’s old job as an editor at a university became available, she and I left the Potomac Conference. I am no longer pastoring.

Fundamentalism, religious or political, is a permanent segment of the spectrum of human thought and behavior. Of course, not all Adventist fundamentalists are sympathetic to Hope International or Hartland Institute. In many churches, the more moderate fundamentalists quietly endure what they consider to be the too-liberal ways of their church, patiently waiting for the final sifting of the tares from the wheat.

Wherever we may be on the spectrum—liberal, moderate, conservative, fundamentalist, or points in between—we should take to heart the E. G. White counsel from Mind, Character, and Personality: "We should love and respect one another, notwithstanding the faults and imperfections [too liberal, too strict] that we cannot help seeing" (vol. 2, p. 635).