The new Spring 2009 print issue has just been delivered to subscribers. It features the cover story "What is an Adventist?" Four views provided by Charles Scriven, Larry Kirkpatrick, Sari Fordham and Larry Christoffell help define the church's role in "finishing the work." Below is a preview of Scriven's article from p. 9. Click here to subscribe.

~ Editors

By Charles Scriven

Ideally, two stories define us when we consider ourselves to be Adventist.

One is the story that began with William Miller and his compelling (though misguided) reading of Daniel and Revelation. That story continues now, Sabbath by Sabbath, when Seventh-day Adventists who have suspended ordinary busyness gather to consider the Bible and celebrate the wonder of divine grace. It continues, too, on the weekdays when these same people, rested and attuned to a different but still radical hope, attempt to live their lives in the light of Christ.

The other story is the one that must be the compass and inspiration for every Christian and every Christian people. It is the master story told in Scripture. Its defining moment is the resurrection of Jesus, the crucified man now "declared to be the Son of God" and now embraced as "Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 1:4, NRSV). The story comes to its final crescendo when this same Jesus ushers in, at his second coming, a day of unshadowed beauty and perfect joy.

When you consider these two stories together, you end up with a vision of Adventism shaped to its core by grace and faithfulness. Not one of these, but both.

Let's consider each story and draw out the radical conclusions.

Reaching for Radical Hope

When in 1844 the followers of William Miller stopped everything to look into the skies for Jesus' second coming, they might as well have peered into the belly of the sea.  The skies did not light up, and the Advent failed to materialize.

Some of these Adventists passed through the Great Disappointment without losing faith. And some, following the lead of sea captain and anti-slavery activist Joseph Bates, emerged as Sabbath keepers. In the making was a community that would embrace the hope of the second coming while celebrating, every week, the goodness of creation, the value of human work, the story of ancient Israel. These Adventists, James and Ellen White among them, would begin to distance themselves from prejudice against the heritage of Judaism. And the second coming would find, through the Sabbath, a link to earthly yearnings and earthly possibilities.

These few Adventists were at the same time beginning to interpret their lives in terms of God's call for a "remnant," a faithful minority who would commit themselves to keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. The picture of the remnant was prominent in the Old Testament and enshrined anew in the visionary writings of John the Revelator. Part of faithfulness, these pioneers came to believe, was honoring the Sabbath as God gave it. Part of it was allowing the whole life, teaching, and character of Christ to illuminate true faith.[1]

Organized Adventism began in 1861 when a group of Seventh-day Adventist congregations in Michigan banded together as a legal association. By now the still-fledgling movement had been shaping its vision for nearly 20 years. Delegates to this meeting had no interest, however, in a creed-like statement of belief. As James White said, a creed would block "new light" and stand in "direct opposition" to the "gifts" of the Holy Spirit. But the delegates did embrace a simple pledge: "We, the undersigned," they said, "hereby associate ourselves together as a church, taking the name, Seventh-day Adventists, covenanting together to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus Christ."[2]

The pledge expressed the core convictions that united these early believers. They had been through harrowing disappointment, but they were still determined to honor God and follow Jesus. They began to pay more and more attention to the earth, praying, as Jesus had, that God's will be done here as in heaven.

They stood firm against slavery. They built hospitals and colleges-life-enhancing institutions to match the life-enhancing habits their health message was helping them embrace. They sent missionaries to other lands and soon afterward to former slaves in the American South. In time, they began to resist the culture of drinking that was taking an alarming toll on families, job performance, public safety, and even the integrity of politics. They fought hard to fend off Sunday laws and even imagined themselves, as Ellen would say to Battle Creek College students in the 1880s, sitting in "deliberative and legislative councils," helping to enact the nation's laws.[3]

The focus on faithfulness would engender, of course, both anxiety and self-satisfaction. You could easily lapse into alarm about not being good enough for God; you could also make Adventism's pledge of full loyalty to Christ a matter of conceit. Or you could fall into both of these snares and have a weirdly conflicted inner life, a mishmash of self-loathing and self-adulation.

In 1888, at a meeting in Minneapolis, church leaders heard a contentious debate that grew out of these unhappy possibilities. In the end they agreed that you don't, after all, earn God's approval, as religious "legalists" try to do. You simply benefit from God's grace--God's forgiveness and empowering presence. And at every step you remain profoundly thankful for the ability this gives you to live your life with confidence. 

That message of 1888--the message of "righteousness by faith"--would all too often be resisted but never lose its relevance. It was underscored a decade later when Ellen White, herself invigorated by the 1888 meeting, shared her own grace-centered experience in The Desire of Ages, a moving and widely circulated account of Jesus' life and ministry. 

When Ellen White died in 1915, Adventism became less daring. Evangelism flourished, spurred on by the three angels' messages of Revelation 14 and the call to saintly "endurance" in a time of pervasive homage to evil power. But over the several decades leading up to the 1960s, the search for new vision and deeper authenticity gave way to preoccupation with shoring up institutional strength and beliefs. Looking backward, Adventists could hardly see what was in front of them. For the most part, the church's leaders in Germany gave their support to Hitler. When the Civil Rights Movement in America brought this nation's injustice and pent-up anger to the foreground, the Review and Herald said Adventist efforts to influence public policy concerning race were "strictly out of bounds" and would waste the church's moral authority on matters irrelevant to "the gospel commission." 

But the diversity that had come into the church with the mission to black America in the 1880s now paid dividends. The church's magazine for black evangelism gave careful support to cooperative Christian action on the matter of race relations, and the influential African-American evangelist E.E. Cleveland declared in 1969 that "passivism" concerning sociopolitical problems is an evil. Those, he said, who call for disengagement from social concerns are "purveyors of misery" and "are not the servants of God."[4]

Now the journey of becoming came into prominence again. Those uncomfortable with the journey would repeatedly contest it, but it never rolled to a halt. Through the rest of the 20^th century, Adventists searching for deeper authenticity engaged one another on numerous issues, including, once again, the question of "righteousness by faith." Discussion ranged over subjects like Ellen White's prophetic leadership, the significance of Daniel and Revelation, and the place of women in a truly biblical community. The conversations were vigorous. Often they were contentious and disheartening. Sometimes they were energizing and gave rise to new, or better, institutions, as with the growth and advancement of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency.  

In 1980, in the midst of all this, church leaders skittish about turmoil voted a lengthy statement of official Adventist belief. The statement harked back, in some ways, to the period after Ellen White, when the church's energy went into shoring up what had been achieved in the past. Still, the "preamble," though all too often honored in the breach, said that under the guidance of the Holy Spirit new understanding could be "expected."[5]

The 1980 document was not the final word. Even if only fitfully, the journey of becoming-of searching always for new vision and deeper authenticity-would go on.

The Master Story

Two stories define us, and the story behind the Adventist story is the one true compass for the journey that goes on. It is the Bible story, and it begins, as it must end, with grace and faithfulness.

Abraham was the father of the movement Jesus loved and wanted to advance.  God offered him a blessing he had not earned and said that through his offspring this blessing would touch "all the families of the earth" (Gen. 12:3, NRSV). Inside a culture bereft of hope and consumed with dark thoughts, Abraham believed, thanks to the grace of God, that human possibilities could be transformed.

Later, after many family wanderings and an unexpected descent into Egyptian slavery, Abraham's children (now called the children of Israel) again felt the imprint of divine generosity. Through Moses, God delivered them from slavery and renewed the pledge, or "covenant," that he had made with Abraham. God had borne them "on eagles' wings" out of Egypt. They would be their Maker's representatives on earth, knowing and sharing the blessings of intimacy with God. They would be, in other words, a "priestly kingdom and a holy nation," bringing God to others by being faithful themselves (Ex. 19:4, 6, NRSV).

The covenant agreement said that as God had come to Israel's aid, so, henceforth, would Israel come to the aid of others. Although the details would later need amendment, most famously by Jesus himself, the basic vision of fair play and special regard for the poor came clearly into view. [6]

Israel came to the Promised Land but again and again veered off the road God had in mind. The kings who emerged tilted mostly into arrogance and made the poor and sorrowing feel worse than before. In the end, Israel split apart, falling repeatedly into turmoil and wrenching loss.

When crisis came, prophets arose, thundering words of rebuke, moral vision, and great hope. These prophets--Amos, Isaiah, Zechariah, and the like-expanded on the dream that Abraham had lived by. Jeremiah anticipated Jesus in calling men and women to generosity even in the midst of their enemies. He told those who became exiles in Babylon to "seek the welfare (or "peace," in Hebrew, shalom) of the city" you reside in (Jer. 29:1-9, NRSV).

Ezekiel portrayed Israel's hope as a "covenant of peace." The blessing God promised Abraham would take the shape of peace and would bring, as he said, food, freedom, and safety--prosperity and well-being; the conditions for human flourishing--to everyone.[7] That theme--of peace, or of the common welfare--would later epitomize the gospel vision.

In Isaiah's Servant Songs, the prophet saw a world united against Israel, a people resolutely generous, a suffering that would somehow be redemptive. This was, again, an anticipation of the Jesus story. And it was assurance that the covenant of peace would hold through all the ups and downs and that God's people would help bring ruin to repair.[8]

Centuries later, Jesus was born--at a point, once more, of deep humiliation. The streets were bristling with cold-hearted and often ferocious Roman soldiers. Ordinary folk--especially the neediest--were desperate for change. At about age 30, Jesus embarked on a public mission that would both announce and embody the prospect of change. A radical Jew, he said a new day, or new Kingdom, was dawning, and in that light he asked people to open their hearts and renew their minds. He shared maxims and stories you could never forget. He healed sick people and forgave the guilty. Like the prophets before him, he made outsiders into insiders, argued with the high and mighty, and set forth a vision of prosperity and well-being for all. When he spelled out his take on the future, his predictions were unsettling yet profoundly hopeful.

As for the disciples, Jesus described their life and mission in the longest of his recorded sermons. He began with the "Beatitudes," a series of blessings on those who follow him. He said, for example, that when disciples know their need, have compassionate hearts, and suffer persecution for doing what is right, they receive gifts that are fitting for them. Only once in the Beatitudes did he say what his followers would actually do--actually take up as a mission--and that was in the blessing he pronounced on "peacemakers." Jesus' followers would be peacemakers. They would also be evangelists for peacemaking, going forth to "make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 5:9; also 28:19, 20). In all of this, they would focus on creating the conditions for human flourishing. Peacemaking would mark their identity as "children of God."

Jesus was the embodiment of these words. Out of the God-intoxicated hope his Sabbaths helped to keep alive, he sought the well-being of all. When he faced resistance, he would not compromise the compassion in his heart. Even his enemies he loved. The cross was compelling evidence of his character, and even more compelling was the resurrection. By this sign, so Peter said, "God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified" (Acts 2:36, NRSV).

So What Is an Adventist?

According to the Bible story, Jesus is the one true compass for the Christian life. He is therefore is our guide for becoming who we are, our guide on the always-urgent journey to deeper authenticity. As the pioneers knew well, the "faith of Jesus" is our standard and our goal.[9]

So now, in continuity if not lock step with the pioneers, and with the heightened sense of divine generosity the years have bequeathed, we may declare: Thanks to the gift of grace, and for the purpose of blessing to all, we take up the peacemaking mission, and join together in keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

All who say and live these words, or so my argument suggests, are Adventist. 

[1]For this latter, see P. Gerard Damsteegt, Foundations of the Seventh-Day Adventist Message and Mission (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1977), pp. 192-194.  Here the author quotes both James and Ellen White.

[2]The pledge is cited in Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, p. 310. One account of the meeting, including the discussion of creeds that preceded embrace of the pledge, is in Arthur L. White, Ellen G. White: The Early Years, 1827-1862 (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1985), pp. 453, 454.

[3]From White's Fundamentals of Christian Education, p. 82, this remark is quoted by Jonathan M. Butler, "Adventism and the American Experience," in Edwin S. Gaustad, ed., The Rise of Adventism (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 195.

[4]A long quote from the Review editorial may be found in Charles W. Teel, Jr., ed., Remnant & Republic: Adventist Themes for Personal and Social Ethics, p. 21; for the black Adventist perspective, see Morgan, pp. 160- 162.

[5]Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, in the second edition of their Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), pp. 105-108, argue that a second fundamentalism (following the first that, in their account, emerges after the death of Ellen White) took root in 1980s and 1990s Adventism. The preamble to the 1980 Statement of Fundamental Beliefs remains a bulwark against sheer fundamentalism.

[6]See the so-called "book of the covenant" in chapters 19-24 of Exodus.

[7]This view of the promise-this vision of peace-is in Eze. 34:25-31.

[8]From the Servant Songs, see Isa. 42:3, 50:5, 6, and all of chapter 53, especially verse 12; see also Isa. 54:10-"my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord"-and Isa. 61:4.

[9]The phrase is from Rev. 14:12, at the climax of the Three Angel's Messages.