Will Andrews University Address the “Berrien” Legacy?
In 1863, during the bloodiest conflict in United States history, the Seventh-day Adventist Church was founded. Much has been said about Adventists’ connection to the 19th century abolitionist movement at the heart of America’s Civil War. Benjamin Baker, Kevin M. Burton, Doug Morgan, and others have noted that many early Adventist pioneers petitioned against slavery, joined political parties devoted to its abolition, and applied the third angel’s message to the antislavery cause.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is unique in this regard. Unlike its Protestant counterparts, whose legacies do include the peculiar institution of slavery, members of the Adventist church never held enslaved people. If any self-proclaimed Adventist held such views or subscribed to racist thinking, they would be disfellowshipped from the church. However, this does not absolve the Adventist church entirely from the legacy of slavery, deeply embedded into the U.S. cultural landscape. From the legacy of failed Reconstruction to Jim Crow, domestic terrorism and mass incarceration to the racial wealth gap, and from voting rights and fair housing to education, slavery’s impact is everywhere.
The church, deeply concerned with the imminent second coming of Christ, has made it its mission to bring healthy living and Christ-centered education to the world, becoming the second-largest healthcare and education provider on the planet. With such notoriety and an increasingly recognizable brand (just a glance at a NASCAR race, the 2020 NBA Bubble, and the formidable Choir of the World), this should prompt inward reflection on what Adventist institutions may look like within their local communities, particularly in the realm of education.
Universities Studying Slavery
In 2016, after years of conversations between institutions like Brown University, Emory University, and the College of William and Mary, the University of Virginia President’s Commission on Slavery and the University led the creation of Universities Studying Slavery (USS), a consortium that now includes over one hundred institutions of higher learning in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Scotland, Ireland, and England. These schools share best practices and guiding principles and engage in truth-telling educational projects focused on slavery and the legacies of racism in their own histories. All consortium members—whether public or private, regardless of size, religious affiliation, or rural or urban setting—share at least one common characteristic: they are united in their efforts to reckon with their history of slavery, whether the institution sold enslaved people to cover its debts or its namesake or president held enslaved people. To date, no Adventist institutions have joined the USS.
Andrews University, often referred to as Adventism’s flagship institution, does not share the baggage of many institutions whose names hearken back to slavery. The legacy of John Nevins Andrews (1829-1883) and his missionary family is worthy of celebration. Andrews was not an enslaver. He was a pastor, a church representative, the third president of the General Conference, an editor of the Review and Herald, and the first official Adventist missionary to Europe. However, in 1901, when Andrews University (originally Battle Creek College) moved from Battle Creek, Michigan to its current location, Berrien Springs, Michigan, it underwent a name change, becoming Emmanuel Missionary College until 1960, when it merged with the Adventist Theological Seminary and the Graduate School to form Andrews University. According to Minutes of the General Conference Committee’s Spring Council in 1960, leaders chose the name because “it honors our first missionary, a scholarly, dedicated man, J. N. Andrews, and is a name that has a very strong Adventist appeal.”
Why Andrews University is in Berrien Springs
In 1901, the General Conference unanimously decided to move Battle Creek College to Berrien Springs. Even Ellen G. White provided support: “God wants the school to be taken out of Battle Creek,” she said. For the church workers who surveyed the land, they found that Berrien Springs best fit their needs for its central location within the Lake Union, affordable and cultivated land, railroad transportation, vacant buildings for classes, and perhaps most importantly, the friendly inhabitants of the village. Ellen White was pleased:
“I hear that there is some thought of locating the school at Berrien Springs, in the south west of Michigan, I am much pleased with the description of this place…The good hand of the Lord appears to be in this opening…”1
According to local press, Adventists relocating to their Berrien Springs village was a cause for celebration: “They [Adventists] are workers and a nicer lot of people it would be hard to find anywhere.” Indeed, while students constructed buildings on what would be the Emmanuel Missionary College (EMC) property, faculty lived in the center of town, fully integrated with the broader community. EMC faculty and students participated in village activities and vice versa, until the school fully moved to its own property on the outskirts of town in 1902, creating what was called an “Adventist colony,” “Adventist farm,” and “Adventist camp.”2
Enduring Legacy?
Despite humble beginnings, Andrews now enrolls nearly 3,000 students. Adventists should be known as “institution builders” for their dedication to creating religious communities or enclaves. In the last decade, Andrews and the Adventist Church as a whole have ranked among the most racially diverse institutions in the United States, per Pew Research Center data. Andrews University has also led the way among Adventist universities in the United States in reckoning with its past.
In 2017, students and faculty pressed administrators to apologize and make amends for decades of racist treatment, and in 2021, the university received a NetVUE grant to reframe its institutional saga, culminating in a film that showcased the stories of the first Black alumni that formed the Black Student Christian Forum in the late 1960s and 1970s.
In spite of Andrews University’s many laudable successes over its 150-year history, the university has not yet reckoned with perhaps the most obvious heritage of its communal enclave (outside of Adventism): the legacy of John M. Berrien, a Princeton-educated, U.S. attorney general, and U.S. senator. Berrien, to echo the remarks by the General Conference in 1960, is not a name with “a very strong Adventist appeal.”
Berrien Springs, Michigan is named for John Macpherson Berrien, who held 143 people against their will and their humanity.
John M. Berrien was an enslaver.
John Macpherson Berrien
Last year, when The Washington Post dropped a piece called “More than 1,800 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation,” it confirmed what many scholars have known, but perhaps had not quantified: that most U.S. politicians in the nation’s first century were inextricably connected to chattel slavery.
In response, some community stakeholders and educators galvanized support for reparations. Some local politicians finally responded to calls for re-assigning certain street names. In Allendale Township Michigan, a little over 80 miles north of Andrews University, community members petitioned for the removal of a controversial monument of a Confederate soldier and a Union soldier standing over an enslaved girl.
Adventist administrators have stayed out of these conversations, but as the Post’s database reveals, their flagship institution’s religious enclave bears the identity of a man who rose through the political ranks to serve a president who enacted policies that destroyed Native American lives and held enslaved people in bondage.
John Macpherson Berrien (1781-1856) was a United States senator and, briefly, attorney general of the United States (1829-1831) during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. In 1830, Berrien directly aided both President Jackson and George R. Gilmer, the governor of Georgia, in carrying out their desire to force the removal of Cherokee Native Americans.3 Additionally, Berrien was an “uncompromising defender” of slavery, using the United States Constitution to argue in favor of slavery and the slave trade as the established foundation that the country was built upon.4 According to U.S. Census records, Berrien held 143 enslaved people to do forced labor for him across his estate.
Andrew Jackson and The Legacy of Cabinet Counties
When the Michigan Territory was established in 1805, it chose county names primarily individuals—politicians who visited local towns and notable military generals—or topographical descriptions. Michigan counties also adopted Native American names. But by 1823, the U.S. Congress established the Michigan Legislative Council, which went on, in 1829, to supply additional county names, this time from the president, Andrew Jackson, and the members of his Cabinet, which included John M. Berrien.
Significantly, President Andrew Jackson’s reputation among presidential historians has seen a slow decline since the apex of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Jackson’s legacy has diminished in both C-SPAN and Siena College Research Institute’s presidential rankings as more attention has been given to his racial politics. However, Jackson was highly decorated, and earlier on, towns, counties, schools, military vessels, and topographical features were named in his honor. His rise from orphaned child to elite planter helped Jackson appeal to ordinary Americans.
Jackson was a military officer who gained prominence for his role in the pivotal Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. He helped the U.S. annex Florida and negotiated the Treaty of Fort Jackson (which forced Creek Native Americans to surrender their land) before assuming the presidency and enacting the infamous Indian Removal Act, which devastated Indigenous life and culture. As early as 1783, Jackson had made it his mission to steal land that had belonged to Native Americans for generations, ensuring that white settlers could take property and force their enslaved people to work it in labor camps—or plantations. Unlike fellow slaveholding presidential counterparts like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, Jackson’s enduring racial policies were rooted in abhorrent ethnic cleansing and racism—Jackson also held at least 300 African Americans to perform unfree labor for his various estates over his lifetime.
Jackson’s advocacy for the common man would not have included women of any race, African Americans, Indigenous people, or any other minority. His paternalistic treatment of African Americans included an ad he placed for a runaway slave, offering “ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of three hundred.”
No wonder Andrew Jackson’s legacy has faltered over the last half century! Public opinion has changed enough to press the executive branch to reckon with the way we literally handle Jackson’s legacy. In 2016, U.S. Treasury secretary Jack Lew announced that he would replace Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, African American spy, freedom-seeker, and Underground Railroad conductor. Later, President Joe Biden, upon his inauguration, ordered that a portrait of Jackson be taken down from the Oval Office after the previous administration displayed it prominently there.
Renaming monuments that commemorate racist figures has brought debate, with some arguing that every entity named for an enslaver must immediately be re-named. Activists and scholars especially have wrestled with this question in the last decade. Some have contended that Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and other iconic presidents were slaveholders or held racist views, but were central to America’s formative years, and so should be re-contextualized. Others would rather see these icons torn down and replaced with those who hold up a mirror to American society. Given the debate, it seems crucial to help communities acknowledge this troubling and complex history and offer tools to help communities reckon.
This case is similar to that of the state of Washington, a territory that its namesake, the first president of the United States, had never visited and was not yet fully explored by European settlers.5
Andrew Jackson, the president John M. Berrien served for two years, is now synonymous with the Trail of Tears. While the Cherokee removal did not happen during his administration, it was his policies that began a domestic genocide. Berrien, in serving Jackson, is now a part of this complex legacy.
Berrien, a New Jersey native who went on to represent Georgia in his political career, never took residence in southwest Michigan. Why does he, like many of his fellow slaveholding Cabinet members (including the president), deserve enduring commemoration?
A religious movement with abolitionist roots took over the village bearing Berrien’s name a little over 70 years after its founding. And though Andrews University’s racial history has been uneven, the institution’s presence in the village has made Berrien Springs one of the most diverse communities in southwest Michigan.
Christian Colleges Reckon with Slavery
If Andrews University were to seriously address the legacy of slavery in its community, it would not be the first religiously-affiliated institution to do so, but would join other notable, comparably-sized institutions in this moral undertaking. Andrews, a small-sized member of the Council of Independent Colleges, would join schools like Furman University (Greenville, South Carolina), Rhodes College (Memphis, Tennessee), and William Jewell College (Liberty, Missouri)—three schools seeking to help not only their campuses, but also their communities reckon with the legacy of slavery.
Furman University, a private institution founded by Baptists in 1826, enrolls nearly 2,400 students. In 2018, Furman’s Special Committee on Slavery and Justice produced a report that included a list of recommendations that embraced both reckoning and repair. Among such recommendations was to honor its first African American student with a prominent statue and to re-name an important building on campus that once bore the name of the university’s first president and son of its namesake, James C. Furman. Furman, an anti-abolitionist, was a “vocal proponent of slavery and recession” who once shut down the institution to form a regiment for South Carolina and the Confederacy. Moreover, Furman allowed his students to attend the lynching of an African American person. While he helped save the institution from financial ruin, Furman also held 56 enslaved people.
Rhodes College, a private institution historically affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), enrolls 2000 students. In 2019, Rhodes’ Palmer Hall Discernment Committee produced a report examining the life of Benjamin Palmer. Upon further review, the committee found that Palmer was a fierce segregationist who used the Bible to justify slavery and Jim Crow laws. With this in mind, the Rhodes campus community chose to retire Palmer’s name on a building on campus and rename it Southwestern Hall.
William Jewell College, a private institution founded by Baptists in 1849, enrolls nearly 900 students. In 2023, the institution’s Racial Reconciliation Commission echoed the findings of the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project, an independent group of student, faculty, and alumni researchers who found that the college founders and early benefactors did indeed have deep ties to slavery. Central to the commission’s recommendations is renaming Jewell Hall, which was named after the institution’s founder, William Jewell, who did not free all of the people he had enslaved, contrary to previous accounts of the institution’s history.
Many of the towns where these institutions reside are bolstered by the presence of an educated populace. As the largest employer in Berrien Springs today, Andrews is well situated to enter and lead local conversations on commemoration and race.
What’s in a Name?
Seventh-day Adventists have the opportunity to positively impact the regions they inhabit. Their identity as Christians anticipating the soon return of Jesus Christ, does not necessitate idly waiting until the trumpet sounds. Rather, in each space that Adventists inhabit—especially where they are a majority—they have the opportunity to be the gospel, inviting community members to join them in enacting positive change and thinking about what (and whom) our communities should reflect today. As the second-largest education system in the world, Adventist is not only the name of a church organization, but a global brand. Inherent in that branding is an emphasis on spiritual and physical wellness. When marginalized people walk into an Adventist educational institution, that space should reflect the hope and wholeness inherent in Adventist beliefs. This entails preparing learners for responsible citizenship in the town, villages, and enclaves they inhabit.
Adventist educational institutions are still a product of American education and thus must still reckon with the history of the communities they inhabit. While Adventists may have successfully transformed communities into their religious enclaves, in the case of Berrien Springs, the legacies of slavery are still embedded within the town’s names. With a significant anniversary on the horizon, Andrews has the opportunity to yet again fundamentally transform Berrien Springs as it did in 1901.
- Andrews can argue for the renaming of Berrien County and Berrien Springs, Michigan, going beyond the traditional “insular” patterns of Adventist enclaves.
- Andrews should be at the forefront of community conversations surrounding commemoration and public memory in the Berrien Springs community.
- Perhaps Adventist education professionals should start thinking about what it means to be an educator not just at an institution, but in a community. Adventist administrators should recommend a study of what it means to grapple with being an Adventist educator in larger communities. How can they, like the Adventists of old, help their communities reckon with slavery’s afterlives?
- While Adventist postsecondary institutions were created much after the Civil War, they might have an opportunity to lead the way (through hosting conferences and symposiums) in creating a consortium surrounding the legacies of abolitionist colleges like Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH), Amherst College (Amherst, MA), and Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH). There are not enough small and medium-sized colleges and universities engaging in this work. Adventists, with their deeply American and deeply abolitionist legacy, can lead.
Adventist enclaves should go beyond mere “colonies” or “camps.” They should maintain their integrity, but should be fully integrated within their communities, sharing their own legacies of abolitionism, healthy living, Christ-centered liberatory education, the delight of the Sabbath, and the soon return of Christ, among other signature beliefs.
It is time for Adventists to engage in civic conversations outside of their own institutions. The third angel’s message should compel Adventists to reckon with the impact that America’s original sin has had just outside the gates of their institutions. While some members of the Andrews University community may be discouraged after the controversial removal of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on campus, I would contend that the work done at Andrews during those few years should not stop with the dissolution of an office. There is an opportunity to join a movement beyond the traditional religious sphere. Locally, the work should not stop at US Highway 31, but should extend, once again, to the village of Berrien Springs—or whatever new name that community may think of that represents what that community has always been.
I agree with Black students, faculty, staff and their allies when they decided in 2017 that it was time to help Andrews to reckon with its own racial past.
Now, it’s time for a new generation of scholars, administrators, students, and community stakeholders to help their communities reckon, too. Armed with a true understanding of radical Adventist history, what’s stopping us from engaging with our communities in new ways? Fully Adventist, fully citizens of the spaces we inhabit. As one author puts it, “[Adventist] teachers are the living curriculum. They live and breathe their own walk with Jesus and ultimately teach from the overflow of their time with Him.”
The time has always been now.
About the author
- E. G. White to the Managers of the Review & Herald Office, July 12, 1901, Adventist Heritage Center, as cited in As We Set Forth, 90. ↩︎
- Amy Marcarian, “Verily, Berrien Springs is Booming,” in Meredith Jones Gray, As We Set Forth, 92-96. ↩︎
- President Andrew Jackson to John Berrien, June 16, 1830: https://7063.sydneyplus.com/archive/final/Portal.aspx?lang=en-US ↩︎
- Royce Coggins McCrary, Jr, “John Macpherson Berrien of Georgia (1781-1856): A Political Biography,” University of Georgia, PhD diss, 1971: https://www.proquest.com/docview/302458325?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses ↩︎
- It should be noted that some residents in the state of Washington have petitioned for their state to be renamed on the basis that George Washington was an enslaver: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/take-it-away-d-c-lets-give-our-washington-a-new-name/; Washington infamously hunted down a slave girl who ran away from he and Martha Washington: https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-remarkable-story-of-ona-judge. ↩︎
