Sandra Roberts “Living Adventist History” Says Press Enterprise
The Press Enterprise, a regional news organization that covers Southern California’s Inland Empire, has written an article about the first Seventh-day Adventist woman to serve as a conference president–Dr. Sandra Roberts. The article notes that while Roberts is making history, so are denominational administrators who refuse to recognize her election.
A year ago Monday, the election of Corona’s Sandra Roberts as the first woman to head a Seventh-day Adventist regional body led to a stern warning from officers of the worldwide church, who reiterated the church’s position against the ordination of women. The world body still does not recognize Roberts’ election. Nor does it view her ordination as valid.
The report notes that one of the slights Roberts and the conference that elected her, Southeastern California Conference, had to endure is the ommission of her name from the offical Adventist recordbook, the Online Yearbook.
Her name is conspicuously absent from the Adventist Online Yearbook’s listings of top administrators in the Riverside-based Southeastern California Conference, which is similar to a diocese. A line is all that appears after “President.”
Still, Roberts is doing her job without problems, leading one of the largest and highest tithe-contributing conferences in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. The article continues:
“Roberts said in an interview that the lack of recognition does not affect her ability to run the 70,500-member conference, which includes Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, San Diego and Imperial counties and has one of the largest concentrations of Adventists in the nation.
“To me it’s really not that big of an issue, because I feel very supported and very able to do what I was asked to do in the territory where I’m asked to do it,” Roberts said.
Read the rest of the report from the Press Enterprise: ADVENTISTS: Female conference president is living history.
Photo: Kurt Miller / Press Enterprise
