I've always been amazed at the similarities between the Adventist "left" and "right." While those to my right everywhere see Jesuits, my good friend Erv-decidedly to my left-everywhere sees the ATS. For the record (and to help prove my point), I am not a member of ATS, have never been a member of ATS, don't subscribe to ATS publications, don't generally read them, and don't go to ATS meetings-yet according to Erv I am "the most visible and vocal exponent of the ATS agenda." Sounds a bit paranoid to me. (Reminds me of Voltaire's quip that he had been arrested over a pamphlet he didn't write, penned by a man he didn't know, and which expressed views he didn't hold.)

All that aside, I thank Erv for sending me his article prior to publication and giving me a chance to respond. Erv wrote that in my "most notorious recent declaration" I pushed for the "effective excommunication" of anyone who tries to harmonize Christianity with evolution. That's quite dramatic, but a distortion of my piece. I never said a word about excommunicating anyone. All I did was try to get people to be honest, to take their premises to their logical conclusions, and to ask themselves this question: Should those who believe in evolution (i.e. billions of years, natural selection, punctuated equilibrium, whatever the fad) choose to belong to a church that keeps a literal seventh-day as a weekly reminder of the literal six days of creation? That's a fair enough question, is it not? Asking people to be honest is not the same as demanding their "effective excommunication."

If one thinks that it makes no difference what anyone who professes to be an Adventist believes, then there's no discussion. If, though, one agrees that it does make a difference (especially for our preachers and teachers), then we have grounds for debate about where the line regarding those beliefs should be drawn. For me, a six-day creation is one place where not a line, but a wall, needs to be erected.

I grew up in Miami Beach. It wasn't until I was 17-years-old and found myself hitchhiking one night on a lightless country road in France that it suddenly hit me that most of the world wasn't an endless stream of hotels, motels, restaurants and bars. In the same way, so long in his Southern California cloister, Erv is totally out of touch with the rest of the church. The vast, vast majority of the SDA church today, as it has from the beginning, holds positions much closer to my "fundamentalist" view of creation than they do to his position. To think anything else is to be blindly naïve.

The only way to be even more naïve would be to think that we who hold these views are going to sit idly by while they are under assault. Erv chided me on what he called my "war" rhetoric. Well (whether he believes it or not) we are in the midst of a great controversy, and a point that the majority of Adventists deem crucial in this great controversy is the six-day creation. Undermine that and you undermine what it means for us to be Adventists. That's what we believe is at stake here.

Finally, Erv makes a big deal out of the Review's disclaimer. Though I do not profess to speak for the editors, I believe that they were distancing themselves from the my-way-or-the-highway tone of the column, and not from its position against evolution.

To conclude, a personal thanks to Erv for his openness in sharing with me his article and for giving me an invitation to respond. He's done that before with other things written in opposition to me, and I appreciate it. It's a mark of gentleman. Though I might not learn much cosmogony from him, I can learn from his graciousness.