Spectrum Reviews

Book Club Discussion--Christianity and Homosexuality: Some Adventist Perspectives

Steve Parker — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:33:14 -0700

Christianity and Homosexuality: Some Adventist Perspectives is a collection of essays dealing with the increasingly significant issues related to people who have a homosexual orientation and the way Christian churches relate to them.

The book is edited by David Ferguson, Fritz Guy, and David Larson and is the product of a collaboration between SDA Kinship, International (an support organization for gay Adventists) and the Kinship Advisory Board (a group straight Adventist leaders formed to advise and lead SDA Kinship).

The subtitle of the book is important. The writers all come from a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) perspective. That does not mean they write from any official SDA position. In fact, much of the book may make the officials of SDAism somewhat uncomfortable. It is published by Adventist Forum--an independent SDA organization which fosters open communication and thinking amongst its members (and the parent organization of Spectrum).

Christianity and Homosexuality has an interesting structure (see the diagram).

I’d like to make a couple of comments about this structure because I think it is highly significant. Notice the location of the scriptural and theological perspectives. Most conservative Christians would want to place the Bible and theology at the beginning of the book and filter all other perspectives through its lens. However, the editors of this book perhaps recognize that placing the Bible at the beginning of the discussion would destroy any chance of an open inquiry into the subject of homosexuality.

I don’t think there is any doubt that the majority of Christians would make the assumption that the Bible condemns homosexuality outright. Beginning from this premise, a great deal of what this book discusses would be dismissed from the outset. However, by taking the approach they have, the editors lead us to the text after considering a whole range of extra-biblical material that makes us realize that the text needs, perhaps, to be read afresh and our traditional understandings rigorously critiqued. Let me lay out the journey the editors take us on—at least as I read it.

Autobiographical perspective. At the very beginning of the book, we are introduced to real people who have had direct experience living with a homosexual orientation or who are related to someone who has. This first section of the book brings home the degree of pain and suffering experienced by an individual with a homosexual orientation. Whatever one may think about homosexuality, the reality is that the issue is not some abstract theological one that doesn’t affect real people. The person living with a homosexual orientation either has to keep their experience to themselves, struggling to come to terms with what the church generally labels as sin while suffering intense guilt for being different or not being able to "overcome" their "sin.” Alternatively the person with a homosexual orientation may "come out" and share their struggle with others. Often this results in isolation, exclusion, emotional (and often physical) abuse, or unsuccessful "reprogramming" by those who claim it can be cured. The person’s friends and family are also affected in various painful ways as they struggle to come to terms with what they often see as an abnormality, perversion, or sinful behavior. By situating the entire discussion within the context of personal experience, the reader is forced to personalize the issue. Theological debate is, in this case, about real people. Whatever we may believe about homosexuality, it is impossible to ignore the fact that Jesus commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
We are then led on to the biomedical perspective. For those who are well informed, there are no surprises here. There is mounting evidence that there is a biological predisposition toward a homosexual orientation that has nothing to do with choice. Many Christians want to avoid this fact but it cannot be avoided. Many people make a lot of the fact that homosexuality was removed from the DSM (the psychiatric diagnostic manual) in response to political action. What they don’t realize is that homosexuality was originally included in the DSM without any scientific basis in the first place. There is a chapter in this section that tells this story and is a very interesting read.
Part Three of the book surveys behavioural science perspectives. The chapters that make up this section discuss the psychological and social experiences of gay and lesbian Seventh-day Adventists as well as asking whether the SDA denomination lives up to the ideals it holds as a caring, welcoming church. The assessment is not good, to say the least.
Only after dealing with the realities of experience and science does the book turn to scripture and theology. By now it is difficult not to be convinced that much of what we thought we knew about the homosexual experience has to go. But what does the Bible have to say on the subject and how should it be read? This section, in my view, is the most controversial of the book and is likely to provoke the most scrutiny. The most significant alternative understanding of the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality offered in this section is that the biblical writers knew nothing of what we know, in our time, about sexual orientation. Every reference to homosexual behavior in Scripture occurs in a context where immoral actions are performed and the relationships are distorted. (One author rather unconvincingly suggests that there are actually positive examples of homosexual relationships in the Bible. This author himself admits that his view is highly conjectural.)  The argument is that homosexual acts in mutually beneficial, monogamous, long-term committed relationships are just not addressed in the Bible. Instead, we need to follow similar trajectories of interpretation as has occurred with slavery and the treatment of women. We need to accept that for a percentage of the population, homosexual orientation is normal. Rather than trying to "cure" them of that orientation, we need to accept it and focus on developing the moral foundations and parameters on which healthy partnerships can be formed between same-sex partners. Of all the responses at the end of each section, Richard Rice’s response in this section is probably the most critical. It is as if the other sections of the book present ideas that are basically indisputable - it is hard to argue with personal experience or science. But it is obvious that, when it comes to Scripture an enormous amount of work needs to be done to develop better, deeper, and broader understandings of the text than we have so far.
The final section of the book turns to Christian social perspectives. Coming from the SDA perspective that underlies the whole book, this section asks how SDAs should relate to the development of public policy in relation to homosexuality. What does it mean to pastor a gay person in the church? How do we evaluate public policy? What does a biblical sexuality look like? How does the biblical teaching on love imply what a same-sex marriage might look like? These are just a few of the tough questions dealt with in this part of the book.

Reading through Christianity and Homosexuality is an enlightening, provocative journey. I learned a great deal by reading this book. And the responses at the end of each chapter provided sensitive counterpoints to the material in the previous chapters. This book probably raises more questions than it answers. But it is urgent that the questions be asked and discussed. So many Christian gay men and women are hurting deeply as a result of misunderstanding, prejudice, and demoralizing treatment.

Although Christianity and Homosexuality is clearly written from an Adventist perspective there is much of enormous value for any Christian considering this important issue. The best books bring greater understanding by challenging our thinking, pushing us beyond our present limited perspectives, generate discussion, and remind us that the freedom and grace of the gospel are the central tenets of our faith that should inform all that we do. If these are the criteria for a good book then Christianity and Homosexuality is a good book. But it is not just a good book—it is an urgent call to leave the pages and look out to our brothers and sisters who struggle to work out how to live out their faith while experiencing a sexual orientation they did not choose but defines much of who they are. It is up to all of us to love our gay brothers and sisters as Christ has loved us.

You can buy the book here.

Steve Parker reviews movies and books and comments on things of interest to Christians who are thoughtful about their faith on his blog, Thinking Christian, where this review was first published. He writes from Adelaide, Australia.

A Review of "For the Sake of the Gospel" by Des Ford

Greg Schneider — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:39:47 -0700

For Des and Gill Ford, what is “the Baby?” It is the package of distinctive messages to the world for which, they believe, God raised up the Seventh-day Adventist church. The package includes:

A premillennial reading of history that shakes humans out of self-satisfied self-righteousness and makes it clear humankind is not progressing but only getting worse.
A doctrine of the advent that nevertheless gives eternal hope in the face of the despair of human history, a doctrine of the sabbath that mirrors the gospel rest of conscience that gospel believers have at all times.
A doctrine of the non-immortality of the soul that points to life only in Christ rather than innate human nature and thus points us toward the hope of the Second Advent and Resurrection of the body and away from the spiritism of the New Age.
The continuation of spiritual gifts in the church apparent in the prophetic ministry of Ellen White.
A teaching about the body as the temple of God that restrains people with temperaments like his own (he likens himself to hyperthyroid squirrel) from courting premature death.
A doctrine of stewardship that stands opposed to the growing gap in the world between haves and have-nots.

All these good Adventist distinctives can be grounded in the Gospel and thus help the Seventh-day Adventist church fulfill its God-given special mission to the whole world, or we can pervert them all. Indeed, we have (p. 18). Which brings us to “the Bathwater.” Chief soiler of the water is the Investigative Judgment with all its correlates, such as the year-day principle of interpreting time prophecies, the “historicist” insistence on aligning all time prophecies with specific historical events and institutions--chiefly pagan and Christian Rome, and the twisting of the book of Hebrews to support the rationalizations Adventists produced for the significance of 1844 after the Great Disappointment. Most the chapters of this book aim to dismantle the exegesis and argument that support the Investigative Judgment doctrine. The paramount reason why the church must confess the error of this doctrine and forsake it, says Des, is that it mutes the gospel and undermines assurance of salvation.

Another component of the dirt in the bathwater, however, is the institutional defensiveness and pride of power seen in SDA hierarchy and church committees as they dealt with Des and Gill and with so many other church workers and lay members before, during, and after the “lynching” at Glacier View. Lynching is my word, but it is an idea that Des clearly implies by likening Glacier View to trials of black men in the South (p. 39). Some of the most arresting material in this book is in the essays by Gill that chronicle and analyze the Glacier View conference and the events surrounding it.

Indeed the stormiest emotional moment this reviewer had was while reading Gill’s mention of the insinuation and slander against her and her marriage to Des that were contained in the rumors charging her with being a willing go-between in a nefarious collusion between Des and Robert Brinsmead. The story made me furious. My reaction requires a bit of autobiographical unpacking in the interests of honest disclosure.

Des and I arrived at Pacific Union College the same year, 1977, and I was witness to the processes that led up to Glacier View. While my own theology differed, and differs still, from both Des and his perfectionist attackers, I have always believed Des more theologically right than his enemies, and far and away more ethical and charitable than they in the conduct of the controversies of those years. I also watched mentors and friends in the PUC faculty lose their careers, and in some instances their marriages, in the maelstrom that engulfed the PUC campus. I mourn the loss of these people not simply for reasons of personal friendship, but because of lost opportunities to pursue our callings jointly in conversations that might have built up the Seventh-day Adventist church and community.

Although I have not communicated with them for years, I count Des and Gill as friends in both the personal and professional sense and regret that we have not had opportunity to pursue our own conversations. It is as colleagues and friends that I use their first names in this review, and I would have all readers understand that this usage stems from friendly regard and affection and intends no disrespect. This point is all the more important to make because I am about to dwell on some disagreements I have with my friends.

When Des and Gill call repeatedly for the church to confess its sins against its members and to make things right with the families whose lives were disrupted by the persecutions of church administrators, I can only say “So be it.” I hold back my amens, however, when Des generalizes wildly about the consequences of church persecution: “college attendances in the West have been hard to sustain (particularly the ministerial trainees),” many of our colleges have tremendous financial difficulty with PUC in particular in such dire straits as to contemplate selling its land, the church mission program is in decline, church members in the West are declining in zeal. Des grants there may be many reasons for these things, but “it is correct from a biblical viewpoint to suggest that one of these reasons is unconfessed wrongs” (p. 122).

My response? The church should apologize for Glacier View and its aftermath because it defended false exegesis, pursued dishonest and arbitrary procedures, and unnecessarily harmed people’s careers and livelihoods. It did wrong, and therefore apology and restitution are the right things to do. To suggest that doing right will somehow ameliorate institutional problems that are at best distantly related to the wrongdoing clouds ethical vision and encourages superstitious thinking about cause and effect in human affairs.

As a side note, I feel compelled to say about PUC’s proposed land sale that this kind of stewardship of resources in order to build endowment is several generations overdue. Had PUC been building endowment in the decades prior to the 1970s, it would not have been in the politically vulnerable position that forced college administration to agree to the disastrous “study leave” for Des that led to Glacier View. We would have been much better equipped to protect academic integrity in general and Des’s rights to academic freedom in particular.

The kind of analytical overreaching to which I am reacting seems endemic to Des’s view of the world. The Lutheran reading of the Pauline gospel is the key to everything for Des. Failure to embrace and proclaim this gospel explains why the SDA church creeps along, moribund among the well-educated of the first world and winning souls primarily among the poorly educated in both first and third worlds (p. 3). Only by way of this forensic vision of justification can one be assured of God’s acceptance and thus accept both self and others. “Until I can accept myself, I am uneasy, and I am accident prone, and I’m nasty whenever it suits me” (p. 29) This theological riff on the popular psychology of self-acceptance also explains why Adventist legalism has produced a church full of people without assurance of salvation, hence without joy, and hence without real motivation to win souls for Christ (p. 34). And this failure of Adventism is just a special case of the failure of the whole of the Christian church for two millennia. Failure to preach this gospel clearly and consistently explains why humanity still waits for the establishment of the Kingdom so long after Christ’s humiliation on the cross (pp. 103-104). Failure to preach this gospel in foreign missions, furthermore, produces indoctrination rather than conversion, and failure truly to convert “the heathen” explains things like the complicity of Seventh-day Adventist Hutus in the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis (pp. 131-36).

Like the proverbial hedgehog who knows one great thing, in contrast to the fox who knows many things, Des knows one great theological thing: the forensic, penal substitutionary metaphor for the atonement. He is as nimble and creative as he is dogged and single-minded in promoting this outlook. As one whose psychology works pretty much the way Des assumes everyone’s must, I have found his preaching and teaching inspiring and indispensable. I am aware of other friends, however, whose minds and hearts worked in ways that made Des’s outlook feel extremely threatening. Des himself notes in passing that when the SDA Bible Commentary adopted positions that aligned better with the theology he favors, the then-head of the Australasian Division cried, “‘They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him’” (p. 95). This seems like a sincere cry of the heart that might prompt us to see that the Lord’s presence and grace comes to people by many avenues, including routes that are incomprehensible, even repugnant, to us. (I have recently made my own effort to make sense of Adventist perfectionist hearts and minds in a lecture invited by the Loma Linda School of Religion.)

With regard to situations like Rwanda, furthermore, I doubt that very many African Adventists confront the same kinds of problems with guilt and self-acceptance that I do as an individualistic westerner and direct heir to the culture that Luther and Calvin were so pivotal in forming. I suspect that many Rwandan SDAs heard and understood, at some level, that “one does not have to be good to be saved, but that one must be saved to be good” (p. 134). However, suspended in webs of kinship and clan whose meanings are overlaid and twisted by generations of colonial European exploitation that sought to divide and conquer, it seems apparent that they did not hear that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, Hutu nor Tutsi. In short, I do not think that western individualistic models of the atonement, forensic or perfectionist, speak to the kinds of problems apparent in the Rwandan genocide. It is humbling to note, furthermore, that Muslim mosques were, on the whole, safer places for Tutsis to be during the genocide than Christian churches. It seems that in that time and place, Mohammed’s message of the Ummah, the House of Islam that transcends all tribal loyalties and brings peace by way of submission to Allah, was more effective in practice than any Christian message.

My point, not at all an original one, is that there are many ways to make sense of Christ, His life and teachings, His death and resurrection. Any of them can be a means of transforming grace, simply empty words, or worse. The absolute hegemony that Des claims for the Lutheran Pauline gospel will not, in my judgment, withstand scrutiny of scripture or history. I write these criticisms with reticence because I am loath to have Des and Gill disappointed in me and even more reluctant to cause them any pain. I write also with a rueful smile, knowing that if Des and Gill were once again my colleagues in a free atmosphere where we could carry on the conversations I have wished for, he would badger me relentlessly, with all the energy of that hyperthyroid squirrel whose temperament he says he shares, to change my mind and adopt his hedgehog’s vision of the faith. What a menagerie I’d have to cope with! Nevertheless, far better that lively, exasperating zoo than the lifeless, anxiety-filled void that haunted us for so many years in the aftermath of Glacier View.

I celebrate, therefore, the news I have learned from the Spectrum blog in the last couple of days as I have been writing this review: Des will be delivering a lecture on Saturday, September 6, at the Loma Linda Campus Hill church at 3:00 pm. You can read details as well as some “buzz” from the blogs here.

I celebrate also the fact that a group calling itself the “Good News Tour” will be at Loma Linda University Church that same week-end presenting messages based on alternative metaphors for the gospel. You can read more about it here.

Let there be civility, energy, more light than heat, and let everyone be persuaded in the integrity of their own minds.

You can purchase For the Sake of the Gospel, Throw out the Bathwater but keep the Baby here.

Greg Schneider writes from Angwin, CA where he is a professor of religion and social science at Pacific Union College.

Reminder for Book & Film Club

Daneen Akers — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:22:16 -0700

Just a reminder of this month's book and film club selections. If you haven't had a chance to read the book or view the film, act quickly! You can find all of the upcoming selections, here. Our discussion starts after Labor Day.

Book: Christianity And Homosexuality: Some Seventh-day Adventist Perspectives Edited by David Ferguson, Fritz Guy and David Larson
Film: For The Bible Tells Me So

Note: I realize that the topic of homosexuality has been a hot topic already this month, but since these selections were made months ago, I'm going to stay with our original schedule. However, I'd like to ask that we don't simply repeat arguments that have been fully made (sometimes several times over) on other posts. If you have a strong opinion on this topic, please make an effort to read the book and watch the documentary before commenting. I look forward to starting this discussion at the end of next week. Thanks!

The Shack: A Novel Take on Job

Daniel Giang — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:45:13 -0700

If the book of Job were written by a contemporary middle aged guy from Oregon, chapter 5 verse 90 might read:

No longer concerned or caring about what to call God and energized by his ire, he walked up to the door and decided to bang loudly and see what happened, but just as he raised his fist to do so, the door flew open, and he was looking directly into the face of a large beaming African-American woman. [1]

And after the book had been rejected by secular publishers as too Christian and by Christian publishers as heretical [2], it would end up as the New York Times #1 trade paperback best seller for 12 straight weeks as of this writing and the subject of a front page Times story. [3]

Like Job, William P. Young’s self-published, first novel The Shack relates a theophany. We learn in the framing narrative that Mack Phillips’ life has been devastated by the brutal murder of his five-year old daughter, Missy. While his wife’s faith has remained strong (the 21st century, accepts a wife who is more spiritually mature than her husband), Mack finds himself depressed and questioning God. It is through the framing narrative that readers recognize Mack’s life as something we read in the headlines and experience ourselves much as Job’s original readers must have nodded their heads about those Sabean raiders. This allows both us and them to indentify with the protagonist’s questions and ultimate trust.

At first glance, Job’s friends do not live in The Shack. However, their role is played by the conventional church Mack remembers and especially in the seminary he attended. Repeatedly, Mack remarks to God or thinks to himself, “I never heard that in seminary.” Thus, the contrast between conventional religion and an unexpected God appears in both Job and The Shack.

In contrast with Job, it is Mack who questions God. He asks God all those questions that we say we would like to ask such as “How does prayer work?” and, of course, “If you are all powerful and good, why didn’t you protect my daughter?” Unlike in Job, all three members of the Trinity graciously respond to these questions as they lead Mack to trust and forgiveness. Whereas Job comes to trust through his experience of God’s transcendence, God woos Mack’s trust through intimacy. This contrast reveals the change in zeitgeist over the millennia. We prefer our God to respond in prosaic transparency rather than in poetry. [4]

After his theophany, Job hears God endorse his original theology in Job 42:7 before his life is restored to the status quo ante. For Mack, the framing narrative has him being hit by a drunk driver and spending weeks in coma. However, his life and family are healed and the murderer is brought to justice. That, I suppose, is the modern equivalent of having 10 more children to replace those who died.

Reactions of Christians to The Shack have included the expected charges of heresy. Critics see occult references to pagan deities, unbiblical statements, an egalitarian Trinity with identical personalities, and unsophisticated theology generally. Other Christians acclaim the book as a fresh vision of God. Eugene Peterson compares the book to Pilgrim’s Progress for our generation in a cover blurb. [1] The book is causing similar reactions among Adventists with some churches organizing study groups. I suspect there will be a response entitled “The Shack Collapses” published by Review and Herald to point out that the Bible teaches the non-immortality of the soul, the Devil exists in conflict with God, and the Holy Spirit always points a seeker of truth to the Bible.

I wish Young would have acknowledged that authentic relationships do flourish within church communities. This failure leaves The Shac tinged with a highly individualistic view of God’s kingdom.

From a literary perspective, The Shack shares a problem with many self-published books: the editor (or lack thereof). Dialect is caricatured (think Jar Jar Binks), the narrative becomes murky in places and far too much of the book consists of stilted exposition masquerading as conversation. This may be a case where waiting for the movie (the rights to which are currently being negotiated) might be better than reading the book.

Taken as one Christian’s attempt to pass on his understanding of God to his children, The Shack succeeds. Like all of us, Young is sure about some aspects of his faith. These include that God will confound our expectations, the Trinity values relationship among its Members and with humans, and the futility of human institutions such as organized religion. He sidesteps other subjects such as soteriology. Occasionally, his turn of phrase is profound. My favorite is this exchange:

“Does that mean,” asked Mack, “that all roads will lead to You?”

“Not at all,” smiled Jesus as he reached for the door handle to the shop. “Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.” [1]

This picture of a God who seeks us out in surprising ways may explain how self-published fantasy novels to end up flying off Walmart shelves and into the movies. I’m picturing Della Reese as God.

___________________________________
1. William P.Young. The Shack. Windblown Media, Los Angeles, CA 2008

2. This puts it among a collection of successful books initially rejected by multiple publishers including Lorna Doone, A Wrinkle in Time and a recent Christian critique of Nietzsche better known as Harry Potter.

3. Motoko Rich. Christian Novel Is Surprise Best Seller. New York Times June 24, 2008

4. See Edwin Thiele, Margaret Thiele. Job and the Devil. Pacific Press, Mountain View, CA, 1988 for a persuasive explanation of God’s answer to Job.

Daniel Giang writes from Loma Linda, CA where he lives with his wife, three children, and three dogs. He is a neurologist and administrator at Loma Linda University.

The Singing Revolution

Rich Hannon — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:49:20 -0700

Estonia is a small country, one of three Baltic States between Russia and Europe. Its strategic location has subjected it to almost continuous occupation throughout its long history. Gaining independence in 1920 the Estonians had less than two decades of freedom before World War II began. Then the Soviet Union invaded and, except for a short Nazi occupation, Estonia was firmly held behind the Iron Curtain for the next 50 years.

The documentary film The Singing Revolution tells the story of Estonia’s struggle for freedom from Soviet domination. It is a remarkable and nearly unknown history. But there is an almost unique subtext to the story. Estonians have a very strong tradition of choral singing. In 1869 a national song festival, the Lauliupidu, was begun and held at roughly 5 year intervals. In 1947, during the first Lauliupidu under Soviet occupation, an Estonian composer set to music a century-old national poem “Mu Isamaa on minu arm“ (“Land of My Fathers, Land that I Love”). It was sung at the festival and instantly became the unofficial National Anthem and a rallying cry for Estonian independence.

These festivals were not just various regional choirs participating in some competition or exhibition. They were (and are) mass singing events with an average of 30 thousand participants and even more attendees. This in a country with a current population of about 1.3 million.

In 1969 the Soviets forbade singing “Mu Isamaa” at the festival, as they had finally come to realize its significance. But the tens of thousands of singers on the massive festival stage sang it anyway – multiple times – in defiance of the authorities.

The term ‘Singing Revolution’ was the name given to the escalating protests from the 1980s until independence in 1991. Singing was always integrally woven into the mostly non-violent resistance effort. In 1988 a massive song festival was held with nearly 300,000 people attending and participating – almost one quarter of the entire population. Political leaders spoke – calling for independence. Think: Woodstock meets Nationalism. Estonia’s eventual freedom was, in part, due to external events and actors in Russia – Gorbachev, glasnost, Boris Yeltsin. But the internal pressure came from the unremitting national will, galvanized through singing.

The filmmakers began shooting at the 2004 Lauliupidu - with insufficient funds. But otherwise they would have been forced to wait until the 2009 festival. Compilation and editing took two years. On December 1, 2006, the film premiered in the Estonian capital. It has since been shown extensively in Europe but only in a limited 2008 U.S. release. Consult their web site for a list of future dates and locations.

As I watched the film this past week it took only about a minute for me to recognize I was almost completely ignorant of all these events, even though I’m sufficiently old that they all took place during my adulthood. An entire story of suffering and striving for independence. And I knew nothing. Well, to paraphrase comedian Steven Wright – you can’t know everything. Where would you put it? And I’m certainly not alone. Our ‘gaze’ is limited by time and opportunity, not to mention our selective interests. But even if we diligently sought for such stories, how many other equally poignant and tragic stories have long been lost to our collective world-memory?

We cannot, of course, plug all the holes of our ignorance. And, for me, the primary value of this story was not to fill in an Estonian-shaped history hole. I was asking myself, what is it about music that can carry this much power, emotion and hope? Enough to help motivate an entire nation to resolutely press forward toward fulfilling their dream.

There is an important parallel to consider I think – for Christians generally and Adventists specifically. Why is hymnody in all of its forms so valuable in transmitting the message and hope of our faith? Have you ever sung A Mighty Fortress in a large congregation and felt transcendent emotion? How about Amazing Grace? For me the defining Adventist hymn is We Have This Hope, written by the recently deceased former King's Heralds member, Wayne Hooper. He composed it in 1962 and it was the theme song for the 1966 General Conference in Detroit, Michigan. Now the Detroit area is where I grew up. And as a teen I attended that GC. I remember almost nothing about it. But I do remember the entire Cobo Hall arena singing We Have This Hope. And I was enthralled. Such is the value and depth of music. Blaise Pasal once wrote “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing”. And he was not criticizing reason, rather recognizing there is much more to being fully human. It seems to me that music travels straight to our souls along this ‘Pascalian’ route. Which is why it has such power and also carries its own danger.

To get a taste of this power in its Estonian context, here is their national song “Mu isamma on minu arm” as performed at the 2004 Lauliupidu.

Rich Hannon is a software engineer who lives in Salt Lake City. His reading interests focus on philosophy and medieval history.

From the Archives: A Response to Prophetess of Health

Daneen Akers — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 02:46:13 -0700

Editor’s Note: After 32 years, Prophetess of Health has been republished. To mark this event, Spectrum interviewed Ron Numbers about the book, his experience of Adventism, and the church’s response to this historic book. Additionally, I chose a classic review from a cluster of reviews originally published in 1977 to help us revisit the topic.

In this review Ernest Sandeen, a non-church historian, finds that the mere existence of Prophetess of Health bodes well for the Adventist church, arguing that this book helps Adventism avoid the trap of Christian Scientists and their quest to preserve the legacy of Mary Baker Eddy “solely as an object of belief.” This book, he argues, helps us decide “what is the truth today for us?”

I’m curious, after 32 years, for your reaction to how Sandeen’s argument has been born out in the church. What is the state of our soul with regard to this topic?

The State of a Church's Soul
Review by Ernest R. Sandeen

Ronald L. Numbers' biographical essay is at the same time a valuable work of social history, a moving personal document and a report on the state of one American denomination's soul. As a historian of American social and religious history, I have appreciated this chance to share in another historian's discoveries. Ronald Numbers' account of Ellen White conforms to the highest canons of historical craftmanship, and his narrative seems free of special pleading or bias. His is a mature work of great value outside Adventist circles.

All of the elements which constituted Ellen White's historical environment have been familiar to historians of that epoch—millenarian expectations, health reform faddism, Graham diet, sexual theories, water cures, even direct visions and revelations. It is fascinating, however, to see how each of these elements combined in Mrs. White's own history and how she reacted to them. Numbers does violence neither to Mrs. White or to the general forces at work in the mid-nineteenth century, but allows us to see Ellen White's own completely individual and idiosyncratic reaction to these forces without depicting her as a puppet or the events as a cardboard background.

If the Marxist historian has tended to fall victim to the first kind of historical error (materialistic determinism), the Christian historian, especially the historian of denominational leaders, has often allowed himself to portray his subject in such heroic proportions that historical conditions appear to possess only superficial relevance and play no real role in controlling or conditioning the person.

How can the historically conditioned also be divine truth? This is obviously the point at which the historian provokes a response from the believer. When the historian and the believer are the same person, the writing of a book can become an enterprise fraught with tension and, occasionally, agony.

One must be an obtuse reader, indeed, not to see this tension and even feel this agony in the pages of Numbers' book. As Van Harvey has argued, the historian and the believer can seldom inhabit the same skin in tranquility and harmony; the believer's traditional response is trust while the historian's is skepticism. One often regrets the passing of those days (whether medieval or infantile) when trust alone was sufficient, but we would be denying our own historical present, ironically enough, if we were to attempt to escape this dilemma. Whatever the personal pain it produces in the historian, it does produce good historical scholarship. It almost seems like a historiographical law that the best scholarship is produced by the skeptical believer.

That Numbers cares deeply about the history of Ellen G. White is apparent on almost every page. He feels strongly about the importance of his subject, as every good historian must. But he has not accepted tradition or someone else's word concerning the career and teachings of this amazing woman. He has discovered things that appear to shock and surprise him, but he has had the courage to state them clearly.

The question, then, is passed on to the present-day followers of Ellen G. White. What will the Seventh-day Adventists do with this account of their nineteenth-century leader? Time has reported the existence of an official response, a kind of rebuttal to Numbers' volume. This is an understandable reaction, of course, but not one which I find characteristic of Adventist history or of the Adventists whom I have known. Numbers, in the last pages of his work, compared Ellen White with Mary Baker Eddy. The similarities are striking, but Numbers was quite right in emphasizing the differences—in the two women and in the denominations which they led. The Christian Scientists, since Mrs. Eddy's death, have labored unswervingly to protect Mrs. Eddy from historical scrutiny and preserve her solely as an object of belief. This has had the effect of creating a series of violently partisan views of Mrs. Eddy and has ultimately done great harm not only to the cause of historical scholarship but also, in my judgment, to the influence of the denomination. Numbers' biography of Ellen G. White has helped the Adventists avoid this trap. He has given Adventists the freedom to struggle with the real problem—what is the truth today for us?

Sandeen teaches at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is considered the foremost historian of American Fundamentalism and has written, among other works, The Roots of Fundamentalism.

Note: This is just one of a cluster of reviews published by Spectrum in 1977 in response to Prophetess of Health. Visit the archives to see a wide-range of reviews, including an official response from the Ellen G. White Estate and a response from Ron Number’s. You can also buy the new edition of Prophetess of Health from Amazon and support Spectrum with your purchase.

Open Thread on the Olympics 2008: What are you watching?

Daneen Akers — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 10:51:31 -0700

I felt a mixture of emotions leading up to these Olympics. Given the human rights record in China, and particularly given the ongoing conflict in Darfur and the continued tensions over Tibet, I wasn't sure what to think. I even participated in the torch protest in San Francisco when the torch stopped here briefly on its only American visit (ended up not ever seeing the torch as the organizers diverted the course at the last minute). After considering boycotting any viewing of the Olympics this year, my husband and I eventually decided that we still wanted to support the athletes, and we wanted to learn more about China since we live in a neighborhood with many Chinese neighbors. Just the first number of that spectacular opening ceremony made me realize how much I need to learn about this country with a culture so ancient mine looks infantile in comparison.

It turns out that I'm a complete sucker for Olympic stories--you know, the classic stories the networks produce to get us primed to watch an event. They seem to all start with a difficult childhood, seemingly impossible odds, a dream that wouldn't die, and then, hopefully, glory. I know they're formulaic, but I still love 'em. My current favorite contender, now that I know his story, is Raj Bhavsar, a gymnast who served as an alternate in 2004 and just barely got on the team this year after a favorite was injured. Between the last Olympics, he has gone philosophical and now serves as a sort of spiritual core for the U.S. Men's Gymnastics team.

I just wanted to open us this thread to you all. What Olympic stories have you been following? What do you think the Olympics says about us as a nation? As a world? What keeps you listening to Bob Costas until well past midnight?

Seven Reasons Life is Better with God

Trudy Morgan-Cole — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:20:23 -0700

In reviewing this book, I’ll resist the temptation to tell you the story of how the author, Nathan Brown, made me buy it, and the story of his deep discontent with the book’s title and the sunflower on the cover, and even the completely irrelevant story of how he ran a red light, got a ticket, and had to take a breathalyzer test while driving me around Perth. I’ll cut straight to the heart of the matter: it’s an engaging, well-written, thought-provoking book, and you should read it.

Not unlike Chris Blake’s Searching for a God to Love, this book is in some ways a work of apologetics — not in the sense that it tries to build a logical argument for Christian faith, but rather in that it tries to answer the question “Why does Christian faith matter?” The book is largely directed at people who are familiar with Christianity, who are perhaps even nominal Christians, but who don’t see the relevance or importance of faith to their everyday lives. Rather than trying to create a case for why we should believe Christianity is right, Brown tries to create a case for “why it matters” (which, I believe, may have been the working title of the book).

The fact is, for every person who doesn’t believe in the tenets of the Christian faith, there are probably half a dozen more who believe them but couldn’t care less, who don’t see any relevance to their everyday lives. This is the audience to which Nathan Brown’s collection of short, insightful essays is addressed. Each section of the book (organized around the “seven reasons”) contains a number of short pieces (it’s no co-incidence that Brown has spent most of his career writing editorial-length articles) that incorporate personal reflection, social commentary and critique, and the gleanings of an almost frighteningly well-read mind. If you know an intelligent, thoughtful person who is unconvinced on the question of whether religion has any relevance to his or her life, you might just want to give them a copy of this little book, which deserves to be more widely read and better known.

Trudy Morgan-Cole is a writer, teacher and mom from Newfoundland who writes regular book reviews over at Compulsive Overreader, where this review was originally published.

You can buy Seven Reasons from our Amazon affiliate account and support Spectrum with your purchase.

Film Club Discussion: Babette’s Feast

Scott Moncrieff — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:10:35 -0700

In the climax of Babette’s Feast, the title character prepares an extravagant meal, the like of which I have never seen. My general requirements for food are “healthy,” “easy,” and “quick.” But when friends talk about the Slow Food movement and signature moments where extraordinary food has been a catalyst, I recognize that lentils on rice is not the only way to go.

And come to think of it, I have some great food memories myself. I remember staring agog at a mountain of ice-cream with rivulets of chocolate descending the slopes, at a childhood birthday party at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor. You like apples? Here in Michigan we enjoy a variety of fall apples, but eating a Honey Crisp apple is something else. You savor the aroma as you peel, take small bites and chew slooowly, share a slice to make a forever friend, and linger long before the last bite. I love eating my wife’s or my mother-in-law’s empanadas, little pastries with egg/spinach mix or a dozen other savory or sweet fillings. We have them only once or twice a year because in the time it takes to make them you could cross the English channel with an oar and an inner tube. But maybe they’re worth it anyway—that’s what I think, especially, after watching this movie.

A character in Babette’s Feast, in reference to making a love affair of a meal, talks about a point where there is no distinction between bodily and spiritual appetite. Hmmm. Let’s roll this concept around. As a golfer, my spirit soars on those rare occasions when the iron strikes the ball perfectly and the sphere ascends majestically toward its target. Is that “spiritual”? I enjoyed a beautiful confluence of a bodily and spiritual high during a recent hike to the top of Mount San Jacinto with family. In a good marriage, sexual intimacy provides such an intersection; pornography, in contrast, divorces the spiritual from the bodily appetite.

There is a tendency among some of us to be distrustful of experiences that move us emotionally, as they can undermine our rational control. Plato is with us on this one. He tossed poets out of his Republic because, he explains, their work tends to feed and water the emotions and undermine the grave sense of duty he saw as preeminent.

However, God fashioned us as creative beings with bodily appetites and artistic propensities, and when we stifle those we are being less than fully human. So how do we address our full natures and have the spiritual, emotional, rational, artistic and creative in proper balance?

I am 100% certain that your depth in discussing this question will be enhanced by watching Babette’s Feast (based on a short story by Isak Dinesen). The film treats an isolated conservative religious community in 19th century Jutland. Their housing, food, and clothing, is the plainest imaginable. Their talk is boring, petty and purely local.

Into their midst come three visitors: a soldier and an opera singer make brief appearances; a French cook stays for a number of years. Through these visitors from the outside world, the villagers, and in particular the daughters of the local minister, have the opportunity to weigh the values of the outside world against those of their religious community. In this evaluation we have important lessons to learn.

For me, one intriguing angle is that even though the film gives me no desire to try fine wines or real turtle soup, much less cailles en sarcophagi, the idea of a meal that transforms the spirit and creates a bond of community moves me deeply. I see it. I believe it. And I ask myself what, by God’s grace, can I bring to the table to transform my community?

Questions

What experiences in art, music, or other areas, represent for you a “divine” intersection of body (or material expression) and spirit?
To what degree must we wait for heaven to experience this perfect harmony between body and spirit? The last line of the film, for instance, suggests that Philippa—who in the film finds disharmony between development of her singing talent and preservation of her spiritual purity—will delight the angels in heaven with her singing.
I don’t understand the part of the general’s speech where he tells Martina (after the feast), that it doesn’t matter that they have been separated their whole lives, and that every night he will be with her in spirit. What is he thinking, or what am I missing?
To what degree can appetite be positively indulged when not associated with spirituality? For instance, Tampopo is another very interesting film with a high culinary angle, but treated more from a comic and secular perspective, or maybe “secular spiritual” is a better term, as food is treated reverently, but with no sense that there is a god behind it all. The difference is striking.

Scott Moncrieff is a professor of English at Andrews University. He writes about Babette’s Feast and other movies in his book Screen Deep (Review and Herald, 2008).

Book Club Discussion--Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

Lainey S. Cronk — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:21:54 -0700

Some people know a lot about church and some know a lot about lying face-up in a field, alone, feeling the divine presence. And once in a while you find someone who knows a lot about both, and speaks fluently the languages of both.

Barbara Brown Taylor is one of those people. “Like every believer I know,” she writes in her introduction to Leaving Church, “my search for real life has led me through at least three distinct seasons of faith, not once or twice but over and over again. Jesus called them finding life, losing life, and finding life again” (p. xi). Using both the language of the church pew and the language of the illuminated field, Taylor recounts her travels through those three seasons.

Her story goes from the first cathedral of “a field behind my parents house in Kansas, with every stalk of prairie grass lit up from within” (p. 22), to 15 years as a fabulously successful Episcopalian priest with an awe-inspiring ministry and obvious talent, to an unexpected departure. On that narrative framework, Taylor fills the air with a host of fascinating thoughts and insights about church, people, and life.

One of these thoughts is another beautiful and unusual blending of two ideas: the beauty and value of “the church,” and the failings and insufficiencies of the same. Taylor acknowledges both with frankness, expressing the zany, beautiful, and broken life of the church as easily as she tells about the spirituality of her husband’s Native American friends, her experience in the field, and the way she keeps Sabbath.

“The way many of us are doing church is broken and we know it, even if we do not know what to do about it,” she says. This is us, I think. This is what many of us are feeling about our churches, about Adventism. But why is it broken?

Taylor says it’s the discrepancy between message and life: “We proclaim the priesthood of all believers while we continue living with hierarchical clergy, liturgy, and architecture. We follow a Lord who challenged the religious and political institutions of his time while we fund and defend our own. We speak and sing of divine transformation while we do everything in our power to maintain our equilibrium. If redeeming things continue to happen to us in spite of these deep contradictions in our life together, then I think that is because God is faithful even when we are not” (p. 220).

These simple words ring true; yet they pose an intimidating question: Has the structure and system of our church become something that is itself opposed to the message we believe and announce? And then, can the message itself be slowly altered and thinned out in order to fit the structure and system, until even our message is no longer clear and powerful?

At the same time as she throws these troubling questions on the table, Taylor admits that the church is too good to her for her to ever really leave. “I am too in need of the regular reminder that falling is the way of life. Where else do human beings recognize the bread of heaven in a broken body, or know that their lives depend on eating that food?” (p. 225). Instead, she says, “I may have left the house, but I have not left the relationship. After twenty years of serving Mother Church at the altar, I have pitched my tent in the yard, using much of what she taught me to make a way in the world” (p. 222).

The tent in the yard, however, is a challenge. Most of us have bought into an in-or-out attitude. If we’re upstanding and “in,” then we are defined by the church and she uses us as a tool to accomplish her mission. But what if that were to change? What if the church were instead our tool to accomplish the mission of Christ, a resource for us to define Christianity? “What if,” says Taylor, “the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?” (p. 222).

Taylor believes in a Christianity that’s about being “fully human.” In the end, that was why she left her church role. Worn down and finding that all her work to be near to God had left her with a gaping distance, she turned to the task of being the kind of person Jesus had demonstrated we could be, with or without a religious organization.

It is interesting, and on some level, disturbing, that Taylor had to leave her role in the church to personally realize full humanity and closeness to God — that while in the church, she was too busy, too overloaded. What about our own leaders? Are there so many expectations that they can’t achieve living Christianity? And if our leaders are so bound, how can we hope to move forward as a community in fully living Christianity?

Taylor’s step outside her leadership role allowed her to find new energy for the journey of faith and community. “I will keep faith—in God, in God’s faith in me, and in all the companions whom God has given me to help see the world as God sees it—so that together we may find a way to realize the divine vision... We may be in for a long wait before the Holy Spirit shows us a new way to be the church together, but in the meantime there is nothing to prevent us from enjoying the breeze of those bright wings” (p. 230).

Another moment that catches the Adventist eye is when the Sabbath suddenly shows up in Leaving Church. After leaving her role as a clergy, Taylor began to keep Sabbath. In her high school days, the star player on the varsity basketball team never played on Friday nights. “On the seventh day, he loved being a Jew more than he loved playing basketball, and he just as gladly gave all he had to the Sabbath... Sabbath was his chance to remember what was really real” (p. 137) .

So Taylor embarked on an exploration of the fullness of Sabbath. At the end of the book, when she talks about her answer to the question “What is saving you now?” she includes the Sabbath: “Observing the Sabbath is saving my life now... One day each week I live as if all my work were done. I live as if the kingdom has come, and when I do the kingdom comes, for one day at least... Sabbath is no longer a good idea or even a spiritual discipline for me. It is a regular date with the Divine Presence that enlivens both body and soul” (p. 228).

Taylor’s experience of the Sabbath gives it a richness and grip that makes all the old Adventist arguments about Sabbath blush with embarrassment. Of all people, shouldn’t we know the most about the beauty and power of this rare gift? Yet Taylor makes my little collection of Sabbath ideas seem utterly stale. The question has been how we “keep the Sabbath.” Perhaps what we really need is to keep a “date with the Divine Presence.”

Indeed, it’s Taylor’s simultaneously realistic and artistic approach to faith and life that make this entire book so rich. From the unanswered questions that will sit like night lights in your head to the insights of church life that leave one nodding in appreciation, Leaving Church is so full of rich, beautiful language, rich, beautiful Christianity, and rich, beautiful humanity that it can only make one reach for such richness in one’s own life.

Lainey S. Cronk writes from Angwin, CA.

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