Pandemic Worship and Religious Liberty

The question of pandemic worship and religious liberty has arrived in my city—its exurbs, to be precise. GraceLife Church of Edmonton in Parkland County has been practising civil disobedience of Alberta's 15%-of-fire-code-occupancy cap on indoor public gatherings ever since the government announced stronger pandemic-related restrictions in December.

Public health officials quietly monitored the situation and attempted to bring the church into compliance over the intervening month. But the situation was brought into the open when police charged the pastor-teacher of the church with failure to abide by a closure order. James Coates turned himself into the police and, starting this week, is being held in remand custody for refusing to abide by conditions of bail, which apparently forbade him from doing certain activities that he deemed necessary for his calling.

Purpose

My goal in this essay is not to comment on the manner in which the authorities have enforced Alberta's regulations. That situation is developing, and, as of this writing, the church is holding another gathering from which they were apparently turning people away because they would have exceeded their fire code occupancy limit.

Rather, I will briefly evaluate the theological and philosophical arguments that the church and its pastor-teacher have given for their position and argue that they are unsound from a Seventh-day Adventist and liberal-democratic perspective. I will show how certain of their errors may originate in the distinctives of Calvinist Reformed theology. Pastor Coates is a graduate of John McArthur's Master's Seminary, which is a culturally and theologically conservative expression of the Reformed tradition. (For context, note that Pastor McArthur's megachurch has also been involved in longstanding legal disputes around its refusals to follow California's pandemic rules, some of which the US Supreme Court found to have unfairly singled-out churches.) However, I will also show why not everyone who holds to some kind of reformed political theology would subscribe to any or all of Pastor Coates's or GraceLife Church's views.

Also note that while it has become a trope among certain Adventists, who are interested in recovering our Arminian theological heritage on the doctrine of salvation, to rhetorically position themselves against anything Calvinist, that is not my intent here. Adventists also have theological roots in John Calvin and the Reformed traditions, including the roots of our seventh-day Sabbatarianism! But Adventist political theology, which remains to be systematically articulated, stands among the Dissenting traditions, some of which split from the Reformed traditions. That difference is what I am primarily addressing in what follows.

Sermon Evaluation

In a sermon preached last Sunday, Pastor Coates made a theological case for why churches should continue to operate at full capacity. It rested on the following propositions, which I summarize as theses and evaluate below.

1. The government has no jurisdiction over how the church conducts its worship.

Pastor Coates asserted, without biblical reference, that God has not given the government authority to set "terms of worship" for the church. I suspect that the roots of this claim lie in Augustinian two-cities theology, which informed the Medieval system of separate church and civil legal systems that was overturned by the Reformation and Enlightenment. Contrast this with another Reformed view of church-state relations, Kuyperian "sphere sovereignty," in with the state directs churches away from actions that are destructive to public interests (see p. 12).

Seventh-day Adventists, following the Calvinist Dissenter, Roger Williams, build their church-state view, in part, on the biblical distinction between the two great commandments: the law of love for God and the law of love for neighbour. We hold that governments may legislate in the areas covered by the second table of the law (last six commandments) when such actions harm others in this life. But governments should not legislate in the areas covered by the first table of the law (first four commandments), which are strictly matters of individual conscience to be guided by the church. A.T. Jones's made this argument in his testimony before a US Senate committee against the Blair Sunday observance bill (National Sunday Law, p. 18). According to the two-tables principle, governments cannot tell us what songs to sing in worship, but they can, as long as they aren't singling out faith communities, tell us to wear masks while singing them so as not to endanger public safety. They can tell us not to sing songs the incite violence, but they cannot tell us which god(s) to sing about.

2. The church should show the government how to conduct "its God-ordained duty."

This is true as far as the temporal, second-table goals of human governance go, with the provision that a single church or civil society organization does not have a privileged role in this regard. Otherwise, we get a soft-theocracy, which is characteristic of certain Calvinist approaches to political theology that try in some way to direct governments toward eternal, first-table ends. As I argue in this essay, the problem with privileging one church's voice to the state is that it can just as easily be turned against that church when it falls out of favour and is replaced by some other church or secularized version thereof. Regardless, I suspect that Pastor Coates and I are not in disagreement on this point.

3. The dominion God gave humanity in the Garden of Eden confers "unalienable" rights, such as a right to work and to be with your family when they are dying.

The "unalienable" rights enumerated in the US Declaration of Independence are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." That succinct and general expression of a philosophical orientation toward the basis of American common life required specific expression in the US Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments to the US Constitution to be realized. The same is true of the dominion God gave humanity at creation. The general mandate given to humanity in a nutshell in the creation account is elaborated in the books of the law and the other canonical scriptures. Identifying unalienable rights to work or be with family at death in Genesis 1 is an exercise in reading a specific interpretation of contemporary liberal-democratic norms into the biblical text.

Furthermore, specific human rights, like the right to work or be with family at death, are not unalienable but are limited by the rights of others—in this case, their right to not be exposed to diseases. In light of Leviticus 13–14, the Edenic dominion decree plausibly implies a mandate to figure out what causes the spread of infectious diseases and stop it. The biblical quarantine laws accomplish this, as do economic shutdowns, by limiting the right to be with family in some cases.

As the aphorism goes: Your rights end where my nose begins. That metaphor, originally used to make the case for prohibition, became literal during the COVID-19 pandemic. A more sophisticated way of putting it is that when the second-order effects of the free actions of individuals have the cumulative effect of threatening the bodies or property of others, the government has a reason to restrict their liberty via the least restrictive means. (For an entertaining, if somewhat lengthy, illustration of why that is the case, read this.)

Understanding the second-order, rights-end-at-nose principle applied to the second table of the law, along with the freedom of conscience principle with regard to the first, is how American Adventists in the late nineteenth century could be intellectually consistent while publicly advocating against Sunday-closing laws and for prohibition.

4. "God is sovereign over the virus." The government didn't cause it, so they aren't responsible if someone dies from it. But if someone dies from pandemic restrictions, the government is responsible for that. So the government should not restrict liberties to deal with the virus.

God intended for the principles of Israel's law to be an example to the nations (see, for example, Deuteronomy 4:5–6) and held the nations surrounding Israel to account when they violated certain principles found in Israel's law (see the Old Testament prophets' oracles against the nations). This example extends down to our time through the influence of Judaism and Christianity on the liberal-democratic political tradition, which has recognized a principle of quarantine that justifies limited governmental restrictions on individual liberty to prevent the spread of infectious disease. By interpreting Old Testament quarantine laws as a source of "Progressive Moral Wisdom" (Matthew 5:17–19), Christians should be predisposed to support quarantines and adopt new customs when they judge they will preserve life.

Statement Evaluation

The thesis expressed in Pastor Coates's sermon, that the government should not restrict liberties to restrain viruses, is expanded in the following paragraph of the statement on the church's website. I will evaluate it in this section.

That said, living life comes with risks. Every time we get behind the wheel of a car, we are assuming a degree of risk. We accept that risk due to the benefits of driving. Yes, though vastly overblown, there are associated risks with COVID-19, as there are with other infections. Human life, though precious, is fragile. As such, death looms over all of us. That is why we need a message of hope. One that addresses our greatest need. That message is found in Jesus Christ. It is found in Him because all of us have sinned and have fallen short of God’s perfect standard of righteousness (Rom 3:23). To sin is to violate the holiness and righteousness of God. As our Creator, He is the one who will judge us according to our deeds and no one will stand on their own merit in that judgment. Therefore, we need a substitute. One who has both lived the life we could not and died the death we deserve.

This let's-take-our-chances philosophy is likely the political upshot of the view of providence behind Pastor Coates's reference to God's sovereignty. Calvinist views of free will (specifically, either our lack thereof or its compatibility with divine determinism) and predestination (those whom God chose choose him) can form the intuition that when a deadly disease surprises us with a novel form of risk, God in some sense sent it upon us to drive us to him for our eternal security. And if some people die from it, that should also be accepted as God's will. This can result in a quasi-fatalist quietism in the face of major social problems, like that which Cotton Mather confronted in eighteenth-century Boston when his Calvinist Puritan brothers declared that he was interfering with a divine judgment by experimenting with smallpox inoculation: We shouldn't try anything too novel in response to novel risks, because that would put us in rebellion against God's sovereignty.

 

Adventists differ from this political view because we believe that humans have been given free will. We believe that God acts in history in ways that we cannot stop, sometimes even executing, as I argue, judgment on contemporary nations. But Adventists also believe that Satan is ultimately the cause of sickness and death and that humans can and should choose to cooperate with God's laws of health to reduce our risk of sickness and death. And we believe that fighting sickness and death via health reform is the "right-arm" of our gospel proclamation because it is a token of eternal life.

 

To spread the benefits of health, Adventists have a tradition of fighting sickness and death through social reform—not just individual, family, or church reform, but legislation and social organization that restricts our liberties to the least extent necessary to prevent deadly second-order effects of individual actions. We find this tradition in the chapter on "Liquor Traffic and Prohibition" in The Ministry of Healing and in our denominational leadership organizing preventative quarantines during the 1918 Flu. (For the record, American prohibition was not the disaster that the popular historical narrative makes it out to be.) In liberal-democratic countries like Canada, where citizens have been given a say in how their society governs itself, Christians should continue to use that influence to support quarantines, including economic shutdowns, as means to fight sickness and death.

Cost-Benefit of the Shutdowns

Finally, the GraceLife Church's statement makes an extended case that the pandemic is not that bad and that the shutdowns intended to stop COVID-19 transmission have potentially done more harm than good. I don't believe that case holds up in view of the big numbers: year-over-year death certificates and confirmed COVID-19 deaths.

For example, the US, Canada, and Australia have similar cultures and share a common political tradition derived from English representative democracy and Common Law. They also have had stable death rates in the years leading up to 2020. In the US, where shutdowns were inconsistently applied, confirmed COVID-19 deaths account for about two-thirds of the high rate of excess mortality in the 2020 reporting period (source). In Canada, where shutdowns were more strictly applied than in the US, including some lockdown-type measures, confirmed COVID-19 deaths account for nearly all of the moderate rate of excess mortality in the 2020 reporting period (source 1, source 2). And in Australia, which applied strict, lockdown-style shutdowns, there was no excess mortality in the 2020 reporting period (source). Anyone who wants to persuade me that shutdowns don't save lives overall, or that they cause more people to die from other causes than would have died from COVID-19, etc. is going to have to get around those big, hard-to-distort numbers without appealing to some kind of conspiracy theory.

This is not to say that shutdowns don't have negative effects that lead to higher deaths for certain populations. So do other public health restrictions on individual liberty (such as narcotics laws). Nor is it to say that we should not attempt to ameliorate those negative second-order effects. Nor do I imply that governments should enact the strictest possible lockdowns as if extending life were the only earthly human good that matters. My point is simply that the big numbers bear out the view that a broadly pro-life response to the novel coronavirus requires of us some form of shutdown in the absence of widespread vaccination.

Conclusion

But the bigger point is that this argument about the cost-benefit of Alberta's shutdown is a matter of political judgment that is only tangential to a principled religious liberty argument. It seems to me that, in their statement, GraceLife Church is leveraging religious liberty to make a political point: Contrary to the majority of their neighbours and their elected officials, they believe that the shutdowns are doing more harm than good. But because they are a church, they want their beliefs about God to shield their political dissent.

In Pastor Coates's sermon, he argues for a view of religious liberty that I can't support either as an Adventist, because he doesn't understand the structure of God's law as it applies to government enforcement, or as a liberal-democrat, because he doesn't understand that our liberties can be limited when they are used in ways that have harmful second-order effects on other's bodies and/or property.

I believe Pastor Coates should have the opportunity to promote these views, practice civil-disobedience, attain good legal representation, and argue his case in court. But I also believe the government may to enforce its rules in the case of him and his church, including, if necessary, using incarceration. I further hope and anticipate that the courts will reject the view of religious liberty for which he has become a symbol.

From Fear to Love

1.
Fear is a powerful but short-term motivator that responds to urgent stimuli. Love (in distinction to infatuation) is a long-term motivator that is developed by choices to acquire habits.

2.
Seventh-day Adventists see in Scripture a cosmic conflict over the character of God: Satan claims that God ultimately wants compliance based on fear, but God really wants sacrifices motivated by love. Our view of God's character is bound up in our response to his call to love and serve him: Christians demonstrate our loyalty to God by imitating his self-giving love, thereby proclaiming our view of who God is.

3.
When the shutdowns happened in spring, I wrote that it started a clock in people's minds that runs on fear. Eventually the fear would run out, and so would most people's desire to make sacrifices that keep our most vulnerable safe.

That prediction came to pass. The death toll is rising. We find ourselves caught in the “second wave.”

4.
The coronavirus doesn't kill enough of us to make us afraid of it anymore. But it can put enough of us in hospital to threaten everyone's access to medical care. And if that happens, even more people are going to die from COVID-19. The premier of my province has said that if we don't stop doing two things that we are in the habit of doing—hanging out in each other's homes and going to work sick—we are headed for another shutdown in two weeks. The public health experts say by then it may be too late.

5.
We now see how unreliable our natural fear-based response is during a protracted pandemic. Now that we have grown accustomed to the threat, we will find out whether we are a people driven by love or fear, that is, whether we can develop new habits that will allow us to carry on with work, school, church, and play and at the same time prevent us from doing the things that contribute most to the economic and physical destructiveness of the plague.

6.

Because you have made the LORD your dwelling place—
     the Most High, who is my refuge—
no evil shall be allowed to befall you,
     no plague come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
     to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
     lest you strike your foot against a stone
(Psalm 91:10–11, ESV, emphasis mine).

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
     “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

 and
      “‘On their hands they will bear you up,
          lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matthew 4:5–7, ESV).

Drummed out of Church? Evaluating Music for Adventist Worship

• Drums are acceptable in worship as long as they don’t play certain rhythms.
• Drums may not be seen in worship but may be played as part of a pre-recorded accompaniment track.
• Drums arranged as a drum kit may not be played in church, but traditional African drums like bongos and djembes may be played in church
• Drums arranged as a drum kit may not be played in church, but a wooden box rigged to sound like a drum kit (a cajón) may be played at church.
• Drums are not to be played at all in church, but at youth events, they may be played however the youth like it.
• Drums at church should either be contained behind a sound barrier or electronically mixed so that they don’t disturb sensitive ears.

That’s a sample of various stated and unstated customs restricting the use of drums in worship I have encountered in various Adventist churches. Given the diversity of approaches, it seems that there is no agreement on what principle or set of principles guide the use of drums in Adventist churches. In this essay, I will propose that (1) we have been looking for such principles in the wrong place and that (2) our practice is better than our theory.

Philosophical Framework: Time and Reason

To explain what I mean by that I will need to introduce two different ways of reasoning about things relative to time.

The following philosophical and theological overview is based on my careful reading of Fernando Canale’s PhD dissertation: “Toward a Criticism of Theological Reason: Time and Timelessness as Primordial Presuppositions.” It is also informed by Canale’s later work on the sanctuary, most succinctly captured in his article, “Philosophical Foundations and the Biblical Sanctuary.” For an accessible summary of Canale’s dissertation see Sven Fockner’s “An Introduction to Canale’s Criticism of Theological Reason,” part of a collection of scholarly essays in honor of Canale’s work.

The first mode of reasoning in time comes from an assumption baked into the grand tradition Western philosophy since Parmenides that what is really real is what doesn’t change. Consequently, to make reliable inferences we need to find ways to think about what is in time and changes by relating it to what is outside of time and cannot change. Much of science, for example, operates on this assumption by explaining changes we observe in the world as the operation of unchanging laws of nature. I will call this the analytical mode of reasoning because analysis often means defining unchanging structures of reality in terms of their constituent parts. (Caveat lector: My definitions of analytical and phenomenological are limited to the purposes of this essay. They are not intended to describe those philosophical traditions or the other ways those terms are used in scholarly discourse.)

But what if what’s really real really does undergo change?

As a Christian, I understand God as the creator and sustainer of all that is: God is the being in whom everything else that exists holds together (Acts 17:28). While God has revealed properties of his being that are consistent through all time—for example, his character (Malachi 3:6)—he has also shown us in his sanctuary that his experience, and thus ultimate reality, is subject to change. Though the bisection of the space where God dwells—a division that demarcates a two-phase heavenly ministry of the Son before the Father—the architecture of Heaven shows us that ultimate reality involves change and time.

The biblical sanctuary further demonstrates that what’s real about where God dwells is not completely disconnected from human reality, so that we do not need to escape from our changing world into a changeless, divine reality to connect with God. Rather, we connect with God by joining our stories to God’s story, especially as told in the sanctuary and its services. This has profound and far-reaching implications for how we are to reason about the human relationship to God, but in this article, I will focus on those that relate to the evaluation of music for worship.

Joining our story to God’s story requires a mode of reasoning that makes inferences by relating past, present, and future. Such inferences seem arbitrary to those who intuitively reason analytically because no one narrates their experiences in exactly the same way. But if what’s really real is changeable, we need to have a way of reasoning about our experience, which is, after all, organized by time.

I will call this the phenomenological mode of reasoning because phenomena are aspects of reality as we experience them (as opposed to reality as we analyze it). How we experience reality is determined by (1) our habits, customs, and overall background that has been shaped by our past; (2) by our states of consciousness, bodily states, and all else that directs our attention to the present moment; and (3) by our goals, commitments, and other exercises of the will that open up new possibilities for the future. These are always changing and particular, yet not so unique that we do not share commonalities of experience connected by shared physiology, culture, and/or conviction. (In this description of the constitution of persons, I am drawing on Thomas Pfau’s Minding the Modern, which critiques modernity as an attempt to escape the historical nature of reasoning about human experience.)

Thus, phenomenological reasoning doesn’t have to describe what is true for everyone in order to arrive at truth. Rather, it aims at conclusions that are true as far as they go or to explain why different kinds of people experience things differently. For example, biblical typology reasons from past to present and future in order to show, among other things, what changed in the experience of God’s people so that where people connected to God’s story in the past had to offer animal sacrifices, in the present they do not.

The Failure of Analytical Evaluations of Worship Music

Because music and worship are embodied in human cultural practices that change over time and have different effects on different kinds of people, I propose that phenomenological reason is the correct mode of reason for evaluating the role of drums in Adventist worship. We cannot resolve a phenomenological problem by asking an analytical question.

The failure of this analytical approach is laid bare not only by the plurality of practice in Adventism, but also by the General Conference’s disregard for what it has plainly stated in its Church Manual: “Any melody partaking of the nature of jazz, rock, or related hybrid forms … will be shunned” (p. 150). This statement is adapted from page 10 of the outdated 1972 “Seventh-day Adventist Philosophy of Music” guidelines voted by the General Conference Executive Committee, which also counseled against the extensive use of jazz chords (specifically, “the seventh, ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords,” p. 10). Yet when I heard the Breath of Life Quartet sing at the 2015 General Conference Session in San Antonio, they “saturated” their music with beautiful jazz chords that made it past a rigorous vetting process.

Examples could be multiplied to illustrate my point: Attempts to define the right and wrong forms of music using the analytical tools of music theory have proven unworkable in the Adventist experience. They also tend to elevate forms of music associated with white culture and denigrate forms of music associated with black culture. Yet there is a cottage industry in Adventism claiming to have discovered the timeless properties of music that are suited or unsuited to worship.

Drums are often a focus of these attempts at analysis. Such teachers may claim that because percussion instruments are not in the lists of instruments played in the sanctuary, they are not suited to Adventist worship. Or they may claim that certain rhythms always produce certain effects on human consciousness. Whatever their reasons, what these self-appointed guardians of Adventist worship have in common is a mode of reasoning that, while intuitive for many, cannot adequately account for change through time and thus also experience.

Evaluating Worship Music as Phenomena

The structure of music can be explained analytically, but its suitability for worship can only be evaluated by its effect on human consciousness (which is not to say that the technical proficiency of worship music cannot be evaluated analytically). This is similar to the biblical criteria of fruits (Matthew 7:20) or to the test of God's blessing proposed by wise Gamaliel (Acts 5:38–39). It is the reasoning “from cause to effect” that Ellen G. White counseled in a variety of situations, but is perhaps best illustrated by this counsel regarding diet in a sermon she preached in 1908:

There is no door in our stomach by which we can look in and see what is going on, so we must use our mind, and reason from cause to effect. If you feel all wrought up and everything seems to go wrong, perhaps it is because you are suffering the consequences of eating a great variety of food (Letters and Manuscripts, vol. 23, Ms. 41).

Like food, the effects of different kinds of music can vary from setting to setting and individual to individual across time and place for reasons that are hidden from us (“there is no door”). But we can aim at evaluations of worship music that are generally true for particular Adventist communities. We make those evaluations by observing the results of steps taken to improve the quality of our worship music relative to our common background and the goals of Adventist worship (“perhaps it is because …”). By repeating this process, we can tell a story about the community’s relationship with God in music and worship, a story that we can evaluate by synchronizing it with God’s story.

It turns out that this is what many Adventist communities have already done with the question of drums in worship, even if they haven’t been aware of why it works or how best to accomplish it. What appears to analytical intuitions as confusion about timeless principles turns out to have prompted the first steps toward phenomenological clarity. In 2004 the General Conference replaced its proscriptions of genres and chords with guidelines that take a phenomenological approach: laying out the goals of Adventist worship and leaving it up to individual Adventist communities how to best meet them.

For guidance on how to do that, I recommend the 2010 book, In Tune with God by Lilianne Doukhan, professor of music, emarita, at Andrews University. She is a musicologist trained to observe music as a phenomenon. Her book helpfully walks readers through the ways music affects our experience and how our experiences affect the way we individually and collectively interpret music. Based on these understandings, she gives practical guidelines for how music in worship, including the use of drums, can be evaluated.

A version of this essay was published in the September, 2020 issue of the Alberta Adventist News.

Beliefs and Reality

This coronavirus is a destroyer of American ideological worlds.

• Single-payer promoter? Europe is doing as bad, if not worse than, China.
• Civil libertarian? Here's a existential threat that is (1) not a war but (2) can't be confronted without restraining individual freedom.
• Globalist? Saying Trump was dumb for closing the borders sure seems dumb now.
• Trumpist? The cost of his power of positive thinking shtick will surely be counted in the lives of his political base.
• Technocrat? The best and brightest at the CDC and FDA utterly failed due to over-regulation and bureaucratic backside blanketing.
• Capitalist? It turns out there some things people won't trade for GDP/stock market growth.
• Conspiracy theorist? Nobody cares about your speculations if you can't help them get through this alive. And colloidal silver isn't going to cut it.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. We are finding out that our beliefs aren't tethered to reality as tightly as we thought.

One day a college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." That's all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven't been able to define reality any more lucidly (Phillip K. Dick, "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart in Two Days, 1978, 1985).

When you encounter a reality that doesn't conform to your beliefs and doesn't go away, that's usually a sign that something bad is about to happen to you and yours. And the longer it takes you to adjust your beliefs about it, the worse that bad thing is probably going to be. The rub is that when you are reforming your beliefs about reality, you need an anchor for your identities so that you don't lose your integrity as a person.

A weak integrating anchor—one that does not give you the consistency necessary to sustain your self conception as you change your deeply-held beliefs—is why so many people cling to false beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. What I am describing is not a political crisis among competing ideologies or an epistemic crisis, like the one Philip K. Dick grappled with his whole life, but a spiritual crisis.

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." ... "Therefore, if the Son makes you free, you really will be free."

-Jesus of Nazareth, John 8:32, 36

Quick and Dirty Guide to Independent Adventist Journalism

It can be wild online-world in independent, Adventist journalism. If a fellow Adventist forwards you an article, you may not be sure whether you can trust the source.

Introduction

While this guide will not tell you who to trust, it will tell you where those behind the most commonly forwarded articles are coming from.

In my decade-plus experience of following and writing in this space, I can assure you not everything you read in independent, Adventist journalism that you want to be true is, in fact, true. And not everything you read in it that you suspect is fake-news is, in fact, false.

Not all of the outlets in this guide follow best journalistic practices. Some do not attempt to. Not all of them will help you build a balanced faith. Some do not attempt to.

The purpose of this guide is to make you conversant about the sources, so that you can research, seek advice, and make informed judgments about their claims. You will have to decide which (if any) of these outlets you will patronize and which (if any) conversations on them are worth following.

Remember, "Knowledge' puffs up, but love builds up" (1 Corinthians 8:1).

Caveat lector: Much of this is based on my personal impressions, informed by feed-back from select individuals. Acknowledgement is not endorsement. This is not a fact-checking service.

Criteria for Inclusion in the Guide

1. Operated by Seventh-day Adventists (no offshoots)
2. Offer news and opinion about Seventh-day Adventist issues
3. Publish text-based journalism in English
4. Offer open, online content (no paywall)
5. Ranked on Alexa at the time of this writing

The Guide to the Guide
(Warning: Failure to read this section may result in misunderstandings.)

• Reporting voice: modes and styles of expression that distinguish its news pieces
• Editorial voice: modes and styles of expression that distinguish its opinion pieces
• News topics covered: subjects that are likely to be reported
• Opinion topics covered: theological/political opinions that set it apart
• Publishes views contrary to the 28 Fundamental Beliefs: yes or no
• Hill to die on: an issue-stance that epitomizes its moral core
• Publishes contrary opinions: yes or no
• Publishes corrections: yes or no
• Alexa traffic/engagement rank: website ranking as of time of this writing (For comparison, adventistreview.org ranks at #382,661; #1 being the most visited and engaged website on the internet.)
• Other media: print, video, podcast, livestream, etc.

The following independent Adventist journalism outlets appear in order of their Alexa ranking:

Spectrum (spectrummagazine.org)

• Reporting voice: neutral, investigative
• Editorial voice: scholarly essay, personal essay, jeremiad
• News topics covered: church politics, progressive Adventist conferences and academic symposia, church medical and development work, Adventists in the media, Adventists who hold views or make accomplishments outside of the mainstream of the church, in-depth investigation
• Opinion topics covered: the Sabbath School lesson, inequality and injustice, peace issues, critical takes on traditional Adventist theology and practice, contemporary spiritual practice
• Publishes views contrary to the 28 Fundamental Beliefs: yes
• Hill to die on: same-sex marriage
• Publishes contrary opinions: yes
• Publishes corrections: yes
• Alexa traffic/engagement rank: #258,636
• Other media: print journal, podcast

Adventist Today (atoday.org)

• Reporting voice: neutral, exposé
• Editorial voice: scholarly essay, personal essay, satirical
• News topics covered: church politics, church corruption, Adventists in the media, progressive Adventist conferences
• Opinion topics covered: critical takes on traditional Adventist theology and practice, Adventist angles on the news-cycle, lifestyle advice with a progressive slant
• Publishes views contrary to the 28 Fundamental Beliefs: yes
• Hill to die on: theistic evolution
• Publishes contrary opinions: yes
• Publishes corrections: no
• Alexa traffic/engagement rank: #614,137
• Other media: print magazine, books

Advent Messenger (adventmessenger.org)

• Reporting voice: muckraking, sensationalistic
• Editorial voice: sectarian diatribe
• News topics covered: heresy and apostasy
• Opinion topics covered: conspiracies about ecumenism, abortion, pluralism, etc.
• Publishes views contrary to the 28 Fundamental Beliefs: no
• Hill to die on: denominational leadership compromised by Roman Catholic influence
• Publishes contrary opinions: no
• Publishes corrections: no
• Alexa traffic/engagement rank: #977,274
• Other media: sermon audio

ADvindicate (advindicate.com)

• Reporting voice: promotional
• Editorial voice: personal essay, haranguing
• News topics covered: mostly promoting books and conferences
• Opinion topics covered: salvation and end-time events, lifestyle standards, social justice, religious liberty
• Publishes views contrary to the 28 Fundamental Beliefs: no
• Hill to die on: last-generation theology
• Publishes contrary opinions: no
• Publishes corrections: yes
• Alexa traffic/engagement rank: #1,209,410
• Other media: podcast

Fulcrum7 (fulcrum7.com)

• Reporting voice: muckraking
• Editorial voice: personal essay, snarky
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The Compass Magazine (thecompassmagazine.com)

• Reporting voice: neutral, unfiltered
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• Opinion topics covered: graduate research, devotionals, defenses of traditional Adventist theology, Ellen White pieces
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Being White

After these things I looked, and here was an enormous crowd that no one could count, made up of persons from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb dressed in long white robes, and with palm branches in their hands. They were shouting out in a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God, to the one seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!" (Revelation 7:9–10, NET)

I'm going to try to do something here that white people try to avoid: think, and think out loud, about what it means to be white. I'll get at why that can uncomfortable for us later on, but first, Why am I doing this?

"Emoji Modifier Fitzpatrick Type-1-2," Apple

I'm writing this because I've come to the conclusion, based on how John identifies the Great Multitude of the redeemed, that I'm going to be white in Heaven. Not that I'll have the phenotypical features of a Northern European in the sweet by and by; I don't know what kind(s) of skin, eyes, hair, etc. I, or anyone else, am going to have in Heaven. No, I mean that in Heaven the redeemed are able to be identified as being "from" the groups formed by their world-historical circumstances. And one of those categories—at least, for many of us living in the modern world, as I'll explain—is race.

In other words, what I've heard God saying to me here is that if, in Heaven, he were to take away the white, he'd be taking away part of what it means for me to be David Hamstra. Just as much as if he took away the German, Luther wouldn't be Luther; or if he took away the Aramean, Jacob wouldn't be Jacob (Deuteronomy 26:5); or if he took away the Jewish, the man from Galilee wouldn't be Jesus.

So if being white here means I'm going to be white in Heaven, the question isn't whether or not I should be thinking of myself as a white person. The real question is What does it mean for me to be white? And, especially, How I am to be white together with those who are not?

Conversation Partners

To get at the answers to those questions, I'm going to bring in two authors and their two books as conversation partners. Let me introduce Linda and Tim.

Linda Martín Alcoff is a philosopher. She's of Panamanian and white American descent. Raised partly in rural Panama and with poor whites in Florida, she joined campus radicals during the American Civil Rights struggle, which involved exposing herself to life-threatening danger. Her book is The Future of Whiteness. I'll be drawing on Linda to talk about how identity works in general and how it has played out in the history of white people in particular.

Timothy J. Lensmire, for our purposes, is an ethnographer. He conducted a series of interviews with his white friends and associates in his home town in the rural northern Midwest about how they view racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States. His book is White Folks: Race and Identity in Rural America. By critically reflecting on his own past, and that of his interviewees, Tim weaves a story about how coming into contact with other peoples changed his own and his subjects' whiteness in both conventional and unexpected ways.

(Note: This isn't a book review. I'm using these books as sources, not critiquing the authors' views where I disagree with them. I'm also not attempting to summarize the books by touching on their major themes or arguments. They are worth reading in their own right for other valuable insights the authors have on this topic.)

Identity

But before going into what it means to be white, let's figure out what it means to "be" anything in this way. Linda offers some philosophical guidance on what it is to have this kind of un-chosen group identity.

First, identities are not the material stuff of human existence. This can be illustrated by the difference between being a male and being a man. One could say that any male with functional genitalia can procreate, but it takes a man to raise his children to be responsible adults.

Second, identities are socially constructed. They vary across cultures. They have a story; they change over time. The habits and attitudes that make a man in America are similar to but different than those of Angola. And what we consider manly in America of 2018 is similar to, but different than, what was considered manly in 1958, or 1758. (Powdered wigs, anyone?)

Third, the fact that identities are not material and are socially constructed does not mean they are arbitrary or infinitely malleable. They are governed by cultural rules about attitudes and habits that developed as ways to help people make sense of their material circumstances by being or becoming a certain kind of person. To the degree that those rules continue to provide an explanation for what it means to be that kind of person in those circumstances, the identity expressed by those rules will be stable. So returning to our example, whatever else masculine identity might come to involve, as long as humans sexually reproduce, attitudes and habits on the part of those males that have reproduced that support family life are likely to continue to be a part of what it means to be a man, because they offer a powerful explanation for how we are to bring in the next generation.

That's all to say that being white is not fundamentally about possessing a certain set of physical characteristics. It means having inherited or been adopted into a partial but satisfactory explanation for how you arrived at your place in the world and a set of cultural rules about the habits and attitudes that make sense of how to live in light of that explanation. 

Finally, Tim's interviews suggest that identity requires some kind of Other(s) or counterpart(s), a variation (or variations) on the same kind of being as we are without whom there would be not reason to be identified as part of a group in the first place. There could be no such thing as a landlubber until the first sailor put out to sea. Whatever men are, they are not boys, or women. And whatever white people are, we are not—and we lack an elegant vocabulary for this—black, colored, something else?

The Story of White Identity

Time was when nobody thought of themselves as white. As recently as just over 100 years ago, when my great-great grandparents arrived in North Dakota, they thought of themselves primarily as Germans and Ukrainians. And, the story goes, my German great-grandparents were not to impressed that a Ukrainian boy (my grandfather) had taken a special interest in their daughter (my grandmother). But by the time I was old enough to learn about such things, those ethnic prejudices were long in the past. My grandfather was then an American, the kind who loved Western wear and proudly flew the US flag over his farm (typically, but not exclusively, white habits).

So in my family's history, white identity is something that was learned within living memory. Whiteness explained what you were in the New World, a place where the ethno-national rivalries of the Old didn't have to matter any more. And, as Linda points out, many European immigrants to these shores were forced out of their societies or otherwise had to leave under less than ideal circumstances. For these immigrants-of-necessity, whiteness afforded way of quickly shedding identities tied to shameful events of the past while simultaneously identifying with the American promise of a new start in life.

As the category of "white" in America expanded to include more and more ethnic groups (from Irish, to Italians, to Jews, to "white-Hispanics," etc.), it's power to explain trans-ethnic, and even trans-national affiliation not only increased, but was exported around the modern world. That's because the set of physical features racial categories map onto can be more or less fuzzy at the margins, changing as populations intersect or diverge across history. But the ability of whiteness to assimilate has, from the beginning, bumped up against its limit, its Other: the so-called "person of color", whose phenotypical features cannot be plausibly associated with European ancestry so as to be physically indexed to white identity.

That is because the idea of a white person was invented by European elites who, following the Age of Discovery, realized that the divided, warring ethnicities crammed onto the lands north and west of the Caucasus mountains had more in common than they themselves understood. But, as Linda reminds us, the idea that these groups were all white people was part of more than just an Enlightenment quest for a rational, pan-national, European brotherhood. It also positioned these newly christened "white" people at the vanguard of history, on a disciplining mission to civilize the world according to the dictates of reason.

It doesn't take a cynical view of the intentions of those who formulated this vision of white supremacy to see how supremely susceptible it was to the depravity of the selfish human heart. Helping the locals put their resources to their best use (as if white people had the best understanding what "best" means) easily became colonial wealth extraction. Enslaving non-Christian blacks until such time as they should convert (as if that were a biblical way to evangelize) became keeping both them and their children as chattel slaves in perpetuity, because of the "curse of Ham," once too many had converted.

White Vulnerability

And that's where being white is complicated. On the one hand, the vanguard vision retains its ability to elicit pride among white people for their affiliation with a group that ushered in an era of unprecedented prosperity, integration, and liberty for the peoples of the world—a project over which white people continue to preside to some extent. On the other, whiteness can equally be a source of deep shame for the abuse, exploitation, and degradation to which white people have subjected and continue to subject peoples of color—much of which was and continues to be justified as necessary to live in a modern world.

So we don't like to think or talk about ourselves as being white, because a deep part of what it explains about us is morally conflicted. When it comes to the role of whiteness in the modern world, we don't know whether to respond to our white identity with pride or shame. Not that being white is like being a Nazi, because, as Linda reminds us, being white explains a lot about me that isn't inextricably linked to attitudes and habits of oppression. If it were otherwise, white people could end the inner conflict by simply renouncing our whiteness or sublimating it into a newly constructed identity.

But neither is it exactly like being a Rotarian, because being white explains how we came to enjoy certain advantages in the modern world as direct or indirect results of white consensus decisions to exploit of people of color because they were non-white. So we cannot speak to issues of race as white people without exposing ourselves to moral vulnerability according to our own standards of right and wrong (derived from Christian religiosity and Enlightenment rationality). And so, returning now to Tim's ethnography, we white Americans have responded to that sense of vulnerability in what I think of as a typically white way: by creating a new set of civilizing rules that manage the moral conflict of our identity so that we can get on with the rest of our lives.

The biggest rule is, Don't mention race except to denounce racism. Because, if you don't bring up race, you cannot be accused of being a racist. And being a racist means you are uncivilized and should therefore be denied the benefits of the modern world. These rules have locked white people into a competition in which status is earned by appearing to be anti-racist. Failure to do so gives society reason to deprive you of employment and business opportunities, political office, friendships, and other venues of power and influence.

Of course, this does not mean race goes unmentioned. Where white people are willing to be vulnerable with each other (such as during the weekly men's poker game hosted by the interviewee who lays out this dynamic for Tim) white people feel free to speak about people of color as such, and in the most bigoted of terms. But in this space there can be no challenging of such perceptions, because to do so would introduce the anti-racist status competition of civilized life and destroy the trust that allows white people to voice the vulnerable side of their identity. In Tim's telling, many white people are stuck between "high spaces," where white racial attitudes and habits are strictly controlled but white people can't talk about race, and a "low spaces," where white racial attitudes and habits are uncontrolled, but where they can talk about race.

How to Be White

So the problem of being white, as I've developed it with the help of Linda and Tim, is one of being morally conflicted with no venue in which to resolve that conflict. The story of whiteness lays bare the sources of that conflict in the white desire to transcend the racial categories we created and usher in a new, post-racial era via civilizing disciplines that enforce "colorblind" attitudes and habits. We are gambling with our consciences on a repeat of the same move that only partially succeeded at uniting the Europeans; only this time it's for all humanity.

But that homogenizing Babel project cannot succeed. Partly because it's imposed from the top down via rules that suppress the conversation necessary for the explanatory power that comes from bottom-up identity formation to emerge. And partly because because we need an Other to define ourselves.

So, if resolving the conflict of white identity in the twenty-first century does not, or rather cannot, mean sublimating it to an all consuming anti-racist project, how are we supposed to be white? What I took away from reading Linda on that question can be summarized thus: Being white isn't so special. Part of our moral problem is the we need to get over ourselves.

White people are not, and have never been, the vanguard of history. Jesus is the vanguard of history. That means we can afford to let go of power and control in government and civil society, including in the church. That also means that we're not at the vanguard of an anti-racist civilizing project. God isn't waiting for his white people to be purified of all racism, as if only then could he finally save the world.

What is required of us white people is the same thing that was required of the Jews who followed The Way of Jesus when it was time for the fullness of the Gentiles to come into the Assembly. It started by giving up control of the food distribution to six Greek-speaking Jews and a Greek proselyte (Acts 6:5). We've become accustomed to a world and a church run "for us, by us," to borrow a phrase. But white people who can't take their place beside, not before, all the other groups of people who have inhabited this world will find they are not suited to the worship of humanity's Creator around the throne of Heaven.

That does not imply that there are not better or worse ways of being in the world before God. However, the fact that whiteness is just one of them means that it is not the standard by which the rest are to be judged. It also means that it does not have a privileged relationship to that standard. Whiteness is just one way, among many, by which God has lead people to make sense of their circumstances in ways that open them to knowledge of himself (Acts 17:26). To make it more or less than that is an idolatrous denial of God's uniqueness as the supreme agency in human history.

How to Be White With Others

If that is the case then how are we to go about being white with the Others. Linda points to examples white uplift movements—movements seeking justice for poor whites—that also coordinated with movements to promote justice for black Americans during US Civil Rights era. In other words, white identity and white concerns are not inherently bound up with the oppression of people of color. In fact, they can be very much the opposite.

But what makes the difference? Here's where I think Tim's ethnography clarifies two ways people form their identity in distinction to the Other. Tim asked his white interview subjects to recall the first time they met a black person. For those who met black people as children, the reaction of the white adults around them was crucial. All the adults recalled a childish desire to form relationships with the black people they encountered. For those who were encouraged in this impulse by their adult authority figures, their initial encounter with black people was associated with feelings of joy, wonder, and contentment. They came to view racial difference as a potential source of personal acceptance, and, as adults, had a less morally compromised relationship with race and racism as a result.

The other group had experienced the same impulse toward connection, but picked up subtle or overt signals from adults they respected that this was a transgression of boundaries, a transgression for which they felt shame. Out of a strong childish desire to please the adults in their life, they began to be racially discriminating in their associations. As adults, although often not wanting to be racist, they more often viewed people of color as sources of fear and as scapegoats.

From these identity forming experiences, in which Tim's interviewees came to understand themselves as white, they inherited one of two very different ways of being white with Others. In one, to be white is the way to be human, a way which is threatened by corrupting associations with those who are human in distinctly deficient ways. In the other, to be white is a way to be human, a way that is affirmed by validating encounters with those who are human in distinctly different ways. We white people cannot choose which way of being white was passed down to us, but we can choose which way we will pass on to our children.

A Cross-shaped Way of Being White

I suspect that the choice to embrace or to exclude will hinge on a willingness to make amends where amends are due. In my own life, I expect to maintain a measure of prudent self protection between myself and those who have proven willing and capable of harming me, intentionally or inadvertently, until such time as amends are made. I can't expect it to be otherwise for people of color, individually or as a group, when it comes to their relationships with me as a white person. For, the benefits of group identity go along with the burdens of group accountability.

Again, that doesn't mean putting white people back into the driver's seat of history. It simply means we don't get special treatment when it comes to any contemporary or historical wrongs to the extent that we are implicated in them. It means we don't assume we have the best take on what's best for race relations personally, politically, socially, or in the church. And it means we will need to listen to the concerns of those with other racial and ethnic identities—concerns that come from ways of making sense of circumstances rather different than ours—to the same degree that we expect other groups to listen to concerns that come out of having a white identity.

I take this personally to be the racial side of what it means to hide myself behind the cross. Hiding self behind the cross doesn't mean that my identities are annihilated by Christian conversion. It means that they are held relative to the self-sacrificing love of Christ, so that I now devote them to the purpose of laying my life down for others. I want to commit to God, for his service, those white habits and attitudes that enable me to love others in a cross-shaped way. As for those that get in the way of that love, I want them to stay hidden behind Jesus's sacrifice.

"I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another" (John 13:34–35).

I've written previously about race, social justice, and Jubilee: "The Sabbath More Fully."

Four Adventisms

The two central tensions, as I have come see them in Anglo-American Adventism, are between immanent and transcendent goods and between justifying and sanctifying grace (or, as I will call them when referring to grace in the immanent mode, affirming and disciplining relationships).

Their historical roots are in the 1888 crisis (justifying vs. sanctifying) and the Kellogg crisis (immanent vs. transcendent).

That makes for four possible trajectories movements can take out of the center of Adventism, and I think we've got them all.

1. Immanent/affirming = Recovery Adventism—reconciling the self to itself
2. Transcendent/justifying = Evangelical Adventism—reconciling the self to God
3. Immanent/disciplining = Social Justice Adventism—healing the body and society
4. Transcendent/sanctifying = Apocalyptic Adventism—conforming the body and church to God's end-time purposes

Before I briefly develop each category, a couple of caveats: (1) I'm not going to name names because this isn't statistically validated. (2) What follows an intuitive interpretation of my faith community based on my experience of Anglo-American Adventism in relatively diverse church membership and ministry settings. I leave it to you to decide to what or whom these categories might apply and how valid they are in light of your own experience of the same.

1. The immanent/affirming option is the last trajectory to be explored and is the most marginal. It provides an answer to the question, How can I live with myself? Its deep roots are in the Wesleyan class method, which was practiced as the "social meeting" for a short time in early Adventism. It started again in the 1970s when Adventism first started to incorporate the techniques of therapy culture to treat drug addictions. Where it is associated with Twelve Step culture (Methodism for the spiritual but not religious), it can be properly called Recovery Adventism. But it can also have sources in therapy/coaching culture, chaplaincy ministry, and the spiritual formation movement. Recovery Adventism aims at reconciling the self to itself with divine help via introspective practices combined with group affirmation. It is centered on areas with large numbers of Adventists where it is highly attractive to those who have failed to reconcile an affirmative sense of self to the self-denial required to practice one or more of the varieties of transcendent or sanctifying/disciplining Adventism.

2. Transcendent/justifying Adventism views the relationship of God's grace to the self as affirming and aims at reconciling the self to God. It provides an answer to the question, How can God live with me? Its historical source in Adventism is Jones and Wagoner's recovery of the Reformation teaching that the moral law of God is powerless to bring us into a saving relationship with him. It is acceptance God's unmerited favor that enables the self to transcend its sinful condition in relationship to God. The role of the moral law is primarily to show us our defects, which God forgives when we repent. Where this movement retains the apocalyptic transcendent focused on the second coming and Adventist sectarian distinctiveness in light of that, it can be associated with the theological consensus of institutional Adventism that emerged between the Evangelical conferences (1950s) and the aftermath of the Ford crisis (1980s). Where a movement on this trajectory has a Cross-oriented transcendent vision and emphasizes Adventism as a part of the broader Christian community, it can be properly labeled evangelical Adventism. Either way, these movements often also define themselves in opposition to transcendent/sanctifying Adventism.

3. Immanent/disciplining Adventism that excludes the other Adventisms is what Kellogg advocated in The Living Temple: the discipline of self for the purpose of cooperating with God's restoration of creation. It continues to be centered around Adventist health and higher education institutions. But these are no longer organized to effect a radical reform of medical practice in accordance with natural laws of health. So the focus on God's saving work has shifted somewhat from the perfecting of the human body to perfecting of the social organism. Not that Kellogg was without his urban missions nor that social justice Adventism is devoid of alternative health practices. It's a matter of emphasis. The disciplines that were once applied to make the body whole according to laws of health have been transformed by a new set of disciplines aimed at healing the divisions of society by implementing the imperatives of justice. Either way, they provide an answer to the question, How can we live in the world? Although less radical than its predecessor in some ways, there is enough divergence from those who don't practice these disciplines, both within and without the church, to sustain a distinct Adventist identity around social justice. These movements may or may not have an affinity with other Adventist movements, depending on the consonance of their goals. But social justice Adventism encounters pushback when those committed to transcendent expressions of Adventism believe it is reducing their faith to the concerns of this world, as with Kellogg's panentheistic immanentizing of God.

4. Transcendent/sanctifying Adventism provides an answer to the question, How can we live with God? It has its historical roots in Joseph Bates's Sabbatarian conversation based on the Seventh Day Baptist interpretation of God's moral law in Reformed theology. His subsequent theological moves held other doctrines relative to the Sabbath—including salvation, which became keeping the God's moral law. For Bates, this was not exclusive to health and social justice activism, but his followers left that work to Kellogg. Their view of salvation was rejected by Ellen White in 1888, and consequently most transcendent/sanctifying Adventists are at least nominally tethered to transcendent/justifying soteriology. The sanctifying part comes in after justification, when the mode of God's relationship to the self demands discipline via empowering grace. The emphasis then switches to ordering ourselves and the body of Christ through wholistic spiritual practices to become the kind of people who can withstand the final crisis. These apocalyptic movements are the most likely to view other movements as having gone beyond the limits of Adventism and often see themselves as the church's disciplinarian.

I think individuals or movements can be more or less inclined toward the exclusive, ideal type of each trajectory. And while some could be moving away, others could be moving closer to the center.

But, because of human finitude, movements and individuals cannot deeply pursue each combination of the good and how to achieve it simultaneously. Thus, the third axis of this analysis, not represented graphically, would be time.

On this analysis, an identity crisis hits Adventism when a major moment along one or another of the trajectories can no longer be explained as Adventist on the other groups' terms. The immanent goods of Adventism can be pursued with more or less openness to transcendent goods (and vice versa). Likewise, discipline can take place in a context of affirmation, and affirmation can ground the disciplining relationships. Or they can be seen as diametrically opposed.

I believe the center of Adventism to be wherever movements and individuals maintain openness to the other goods/graces and to the other movements pursuing them. And I think you can read Ellen White herself as simultaneously correcting imbalances among these pursuits of the good and growing herself in her understanding and practice of how to relate them.

So while I do not take these four Adventisms to be inherently mutually exclusive, they do define four dimensions across which movements in Adventism have excluded each other in the following ways.

1. Immanent/affirming Adventism's self-affirming mode is perceived as directly undermining the sanctification required by transcendent/sanctifying Adventists, especially when it doesn't care to explain itself in transcendent terms. Movements within recovery Adventism can also move outside what evangelical Adventists think of as Christianity when they start to deny transcendent dimensions to our relationship with God, like divine wrath or the need to accept Jesus as savior in order to go to Heaven. They exclude social justice Adventists when they affirm those whose politics and practices are contrary to the imperatives of justice.

2. Where transcendent/justifying Adventism embraces its natural affinity with the God-and-country mode of its Evangelical cousins, prioritizing a politics of piety and personal virtue, it can no longer be seen as authentically Adventist for immanent/disciplining Adventism. Where it sees no further need for the reconciliation with oneself after one has been reconciled to God, it excludes recovery Adventism. And where it makes the center of God's saving activity on the cross exclusive, it's soteriology is no longer intelligible in terms of apocalyptic Adventism's sanctuary theology.

3. Evangelical Adventism cannot exchange the free pardon of God for a view of sin as the absence of peace and salvation as social reconciliation, and it fears this is often the upshot of immanent/disciplining Adventism, especially where it has lost the conversionist impulse. And while apocalyptic Adventists and social justice Adventists can both advocate vegetarianism, for the former it is primarily to prepare the body to receive the Holy Spirit, and the later, where it is only to heal creation, excludes the former. Recovery Adventism parts ways with social justice Adventism when the imperatives of justice are seen to require overly adversarial modes of relating to others and to the self.

4. The self-denial required by transcendent/sanctifying Adventism is even less intelligible on immanent/affirming terms than the self-denial required by immanent/disciplining Adventism because transcendent/sanctifying Adventism isn't always able to offer a this-life explanation for why the discipline is necessary. And when apocalyptic Adventism isn't willing to talk about how its disciplines are consonant with being reconciled to ourselves and the world, it comes across to recovery and social justice Adventism as more sanctimonious than sanctifying. Apocalyptic Adventism also excludes evangelical Adventism when it becomes suspicious that any emphasis on the cross is an attempt to undermine a transcendent vision focused on the second coming.

I don't at all mean to suggest that these tensions explain everything important about Adventism or everyone's Adventist experience. I do think this analysis is grounded on profound philosophical tensions inherent in Adventist teaching and practice as it relates to the self, God, the body, and the world. Therefore, it likely explains a lot of what's been going on, but that would have to be demonstrated with further research.

As to the question of whether the center of Adventism holds, it depends on whether we can maintain those tensions as generative of creative responses to challenges and opportunities. That would involve a number of other factors including our relationship to Scripture, Ellen White, spirituality, institutional intentionality, leadership capacity, etc.

In the meantime, I'm putting this half-baked thesis out here in the hopes it can at the least suggest some fundamental questions to bear in mind when you think about and live out what it means to be an Adventist in the twenty-first century.

This essay was published in The Compass Magazine.

What Religious Liberty Is

In recent weeks there has been much discussion in the American media about what religious liberty entails. What I have not seen is anyone taking a stab at the question of what religious liberty is. In this essay, I will attempt to define what religious liberty is, and then look how that might apply to a current dilemma.

I take religious liberty to be the right to withdraw from meaningful participation in an otherwise mandatory custom—whether a practice or an abstention—based on the transcendent claims of a community of believers with which one has a good faith association. This definition does not reduce religious liberty to a mere mode in which freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, property rights, etc are expressed, though it may entail those other rights. It also only kicks in when religious minorities have a different way of relating to the transcendent than the larger political community in which they live.

"Meaningful participation" is an expression intended to exclude second order involvement with other responsible parties from religious liberty exemptions. So once money changes hands, I'm no longer responsible for what happens to the good or service provided. Or, going the other way, what the business does with the money I provide them in exchange for their good or service, I'm not longer responsible for.

In concrete terms, a Jehovah's Witness can't try to stop a hospital they patronize from providing blood transfusions to other patients. A conscientious objector can't sue to stop the whole nation from going to war. A Catholic gynecologist can't object to their medical society licensing doctors who perform abortions. And so on.

Crucially, "meaningful participation" doesn't prejudge what ways of relating to the claims of the transcendent are legitimate. I only assumes the the final responsibility for the way one relates to the transcendent, as far as a free society is concerned, is personal (though typically sustained through associations of like-minded individuals). Hence, it is to be expected, for example, that some traditionalists are okay with going to same-sex weddings and others not.

But what "meaningful participation" does do is limit the extent to which exemptions for those who recognize such claims must be extended across social relationships. It does so based on the assumption that other parties are responsible for their relation (or not) to the transcendent as they best understand it. Therefore, the participation for which an exemption is granted has to be meaningful with reference to a network of relationships in which each individual is responsible for their own relationship to transcendence.

So on this definition of religious liberty, an third century Christian may withdraw from the incense offering to the Roman emperor—a mandatory practice reinforcing state solidarity that the empire takes the gods to be indifferent to—because Christians have a good faith association with a community of believers in a resurrected God who requires they not have meaningful participation idolatry.

And on this definition, an nineteenth century Seventh-day Adventist has the right to withdraw from Sunday rest—a mandatory abstention that America takes the Christian God to be in favor of—because Adventists have a good faith association with a community of believers in a God who created in six days and rested on the seventh and requires they not have meaningful participation in observing Sunday as a day of rest.

But, as with all rights, your right to religious liberty ends at my nose. To take two extreme examples, if your god demands human sacrifice, you don't get to kill me. Likewise, if your God demands race-based discrimination, you don't get to organize to broadly exclude historically discriminated against racial/ethnic minority groups from goods and services offered to the public.

Now, to briefly apply this framework to the specific case of the Colorado baker:

The assumption of American capitalism is that God (if a Supreme Being exists) doesn't hold us responsible for the transcendent moral implications of what we know people will do with the goods and services we provide to the public. The baker belongs to a community of believers who dissent from that view of the relationship between transcendence and free markets. They can't have meaningful participation in gay marriages due to the meaning they see in the institution of marriage as it relates to their God.
The Colorado baker isn't suing to stop everyone from using any of his cakes in a same-sex wedding. He isn't screening every customer based on their beliefs about same-sex weddings or asking about the intended use for every product sold. But he does object to making specific cakes that he has good reason to believe would be used to celebrate a same-sex wedding. Thus, this is a request for exemption based on meaningful participation. And the Colorado baker has also turned down business making cakes for Halloween and divorce celebrations, evidence that his appeal to a transcendent claim is in good faith.

But the custom from which he is requesting exemption provides a social good that must be weighted against his religious liberty. Sexual minorities are a historically discriminated against group that is even today targeted for violence and needs protection from being broadly excluded from goods and services offered to the public. So whether the Colorado baker can be granted an exemption does not simply turn on whether his claim of meaningful participation is in good faith and simply not cover for an anti-minority animus. The extent of the exemption he is requesting would determine whether this baker is trying to push his rights past the minority group's nose.

In this case, the Colorado baker requested a narrow exemption to the non-discrimination mandate from providing a select good and service. So it is not part of a broad attempt to exclude sexual minorities from his business dealings all together. The baker is willing to provide sexual minorities cakes in general with the exception of those that entail meaningful participation in practices his God prohibits, including, but not limited to, cakes that entail his meaningful participation in a same-sex marriage.

We have no reason to doubt the harm to dignity wrought by the experience of being discriminated against on the part of the gay couple. We should be especially sensitive to it given the high rates of suicide found among sexual minorities, and require those who claim to religiously object to meaningful participation in same-sex marriages do so without expressing of animus toward sexual minorities as a sign of good faith.

On the other hand, the Colorado baker's conscientious objection was not part of a broad social exclusion of sexual minorities from the wedding cake market. The gay couple was able to get their wedding cake from another local goods and services provider.

In a free society, while there is a right for minority groups not to be excluded from public life, including the marketplace, there is no right to be shielded from every indignity. We recognize that the rights of others, such as freedom of speech, will expose everyone, including historically discriminated against minorities, to certain indignities. We minimize our exposure to indignities through free associations, which also reinforce the sense of self by which we are able to bear those indignities we must in order to maintain our freedom.

Because the extent of the meaningful participation to which the Colorado baker objects is narrow, because his objection is good faith and not primarily motivated by animus, and because Coloradans in general disagree with the Colorado baker's understanding of what God expects of him, having enacted civil rights legislation to that effect; religious liberty requires that we allow for this narrow exposure to indignity on the part of sexual minorities in order to maintain the religious liberty on which a free society is predicated.


I have previously treated this issue in greater length: "A Framework for Balancing Competing Concerns: RFRAs and Adventists in the Public Square."

56 Theses on Trump and Truth

1. Understanding the power of how President Trump relates to the truth requires understanding how professional wrestling and reality television, the televisual forms in which he built his popularity with the everyman, appeal to their audiences.

2. If we don't understand what the rise of Mr. Trump to the presidency reveals about the way these these televisual forms shape their audiences' relationship to the truth, we won't understand how to effectively communicate with them.

3. These audiences know that what is being presented in these televisual forms as unscripted is in fact heavily scripted, yet not entirely scripted.

4. Pointing out to these audiences that a gap between presentation and reality makes a TV show "fake" does not lessen the appeal of these televisual forms for them.

5. By asking their audiences with a "wink" to suspend disbelief on the question of whether what is presented is fiction or non-fiction the producers of these televisual forms invite the audience into an interpretive game played with an unreliable narrator.

6. The audiences that enjoy professional wrestling and reality television enjoy it, not despite the fact that they are being "lied to," but because the gap between presentation and reality invites them to account for the mechanics of scripting a spectacle that resonates emotionally.

7. This gives the audiences a powerful sense of being "in the know" about stories over which they have little to no control.

8. These audiences can then play this interprative game with the rest of the media, media that is not "winking" as they present a story as fiction or non-fiction.

9. If fiction and non-fiction are on a spectrum, how much of non-fiction media is presented by unreliable narrators as real when in fact it is scripted? Answer: All of it, to some degree.

10. In reality television and professional wrestling, good and evil are not moral absolutes but plot devices used by unreliable narrators to ask their audiences' to suspend disbelief.

11. Sensationally good characters suspend disbelief just as well as sensationally evil characters. Only boring characters are wrong.

12. If something boring happens, the interprative game is no longer fun because the gap between presentation and reality collapses as the reality of the scripting process becomes evident in its failure to deliver a spectacle that resonates emotionally.

13. For the audiences of these televisual forms, the value proposition of most media on the non-fiction end of the spectrum comes across as, Give us your time and attention (making us money) in exchange for boring stories told by unreliable narrators who never "wink". At least the unreliable narrators of fiction media tell spectacular stories, even if their interprative game is less fun.

14. These audiences cannot evaluate the truth of professional wrestling or reality television based on whether the narrator is sincere in what they present as true or false, good or evil, but on whether the (always unreliable) narrator tells a story that is emotionally compelling while inviting them to consider how they scripted reality.

15. By inviting their audience to consider how they scripted reality, the unreliable narrator allows their audience to evaluate them based on whether the narrator's self-interest in telling the story aligns with the audience's interests in investing in it.

16. For the audiences of these televisual forms, earnestly presenting truth as Truth, not-truth as Not-truth, good as Good and evil as Evil is the sign of an unreliable narrator who either doesn't realize they are scripting reality according to their own interests or knows it and is keeping their audience from playing the interprative game by being inauthentic.

17. For the audiences of these televisual forms, what counts for truth is authenticity—telling a spectacular story they can resonate with and inviting them to evaluate your motives for having done so by "winking" at your unreliable narration.

18. Of course, there are those in the audiences of professional wrestling and reality television who believe everything they see is real and none of it scripted. They intensify the sense of interprative play for the rest of the audience who is in on the game.

19. In the metanarrative constructed by the audiences of these televisual forms in their interprative play, the true believers among them are just another part of reality being scripted by the unreliable narrator, in this case, using the spectacle to script the true believers.

20. This reinforces the audiences' sense of being behind the scenes of a story over which they actually have little to no control.

21. For the true believers, truth resides at the level of spectacle, where presentation and reality appear to merge.

22. For the rest of the audience, truth resides in the gap between presentation and reality where spectacle and motive combine: Lie to me, so I can see if our self-interests are aligned.

23. Those who present truth earnestly, in the view of these audiences, are obscuring how they've scripted reality so that they can obscure their motives to themselves or their audiences.

24. Those who present truth earnestly and appear to be scripting reality the least may limit the spectacular in their presentation by breaking up their story with alternative viewpoints, caveats about their own biases, and other nuances. They are boring.

25. Boring presentations of reality are not emotionally compelling, so the audiences of these televisual forms are apt to ignore them.

26. Boring presentations of reality do not help these audiences tell themselves a story about themselves that makes their lives feel spectacular, so there is no payoff for these audiences that alignes with their self-intersets in investing time and attention in media.

27. If a presentation of reality doesn't offer a story that can be evaluated in terms of these audiences' self-interests, it cannot be evaluated by them through interprative play for its truth content.

28. For the audiences of professional wrestling and reality television, boring, non-fiction media has even less truth value than earnest, non-fiction media (Donald Trump > Hannity > Fox News > CSPAN).

29. Boring presentations of reality also imply that acting based on ones interests is less important than understanding reality in all its complexities.

30. If reality is always being scripted by all media, it is meaningless to seek an understanding of it that goes beyond the interests of powerful actors.

31. The spectacular celebrates the act taken without regard to complexities, whether for good or evil, as that which compels an audience to invest time and attention in the story of the actor and find truth in its resonances with the story they tell themselves about themselves.

32. Because the story we tell ourselves about ourselves shapes and is informed by our self-interests, it is possible to influence the interests of audiences invested in a story by shaping their story about themselves.

33. The one who produces spectacular acts can influence the interests of these audiences by shaping they story they tell themselves about themselves through the metanarrative they tell themselves about the scripting of the spectacular. (The effect also works in reverse from audience to producer.)

34. Having given up on any truthful presentation of reality, the audiences of professional wrestling and reality television are not equipped to evaluate this shaping of the stories they tell themselves by any standard other than their interests as they are being shaped.

35. Pointing that that Mr. Trump is "fake," a more pervasive scripter of reality than ordinary politicians, and that his blatant disregard for the pretense of truthful presentation disqualifies him from being taken seriously does not lessen his appeal to these audiences because they do not believe that any presentation of reality can correspond well-enough to reality to discredit the story Mr. Trump is telling.

36. For the audiences of these televisual forms, Mr. Trump is telling the truth because he tells a story through spectacular speech acts that leave gaps between reality and presentation inviting them into a interprative game in which they tell themselves a story about how his interests align with their own.

37. Politicians are simultaneously narrators of the national story and actors in it.

38. Politicians who want their audiences to participate in their decisions about how to deal with the reality of Truth and un-Truth, Good and Evil, make earnest presentations—the more boring the presentation, the more reality their audience is able to participate in deciding about.

39. Mr. Trump does not want his audience to participate in decisions about reality, but instead asks his audience to trust that his own interests in scripting reality are aligned with theirs to the degree that his unreliable narration reveals that they are.

40. The more spectacularly Mr. Trump's speech acts as an unreliable narrator signal that he is aligned with the interests of his audience, the more truly his interests can be judged by his audience through interprative play to be aligned with their own.

41. The more spectacularly Mr. Trump's speech acts as an unreliable narrator signal that he is not aligned with those opposed to the interests of his audience, the more truly his own interests can be judged by his audience through interprative play to be aligned with their own.

42. For the purposes of creating spectacle, it does not matter whether Mr. Trump presents himself as good or evil.

43. Evocative presentations of Mr. Trump as evil heighten the spectacle for his audience.

44. Earnest presentations of Mr. Trump as evil that can be plausibly denied heighten the sense of unreliable narration from both Mr. Trump and the news media for his audience.

45. Nuanced presentations of Mr. Trump as one not aligned with the interests of his audience are boring to his audience, which causes them to question the motives of the presenter.

46. Science-fiction author Phillip K. Dick was correct when he said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." (And he should know, because he had a mystical vision and then did a lot of perception altering drugs.)

47. Unfortunately, that kind of reality is so complex that by the time we realize it's not going away, it's too late to avoid trouble.

48. Those who wish to understand the reality of Mr. Trump and make decisions about it before it reaches the point where it doesn't go away are limited to the study of his actions in speech and deed.

49. As an unreliable narrator, Mr. Trump will continually create ambiguity as to how much of what he presents is Truth. You will rarely know enough about how big the gap between presentation and reality is before it's too late to respond.

50. Ask not what Mr. Trump's says but what his speech does and how it aligns with everything else he is doing.

51. When making decisions, account for how Mr. Trump's actions in speech and deed script reality for himself and his audience, shaping and responding to their mutual self-interests.

51. The study of Mr. Trump's speech as act requires detaching from the emotional resonance of his spectacular performance as national antihero.

52. To detach from Mr. Trump's spectacle, you must tell yourself a story about yourself that has more emotional resonance than the one Mr. Trump is narrating by replacing self-(interest)gratifying entertainment with spiritual practices.

53. To detach from Mr. Trump's spectacle, you must invest time and attention in boring presentations of reality by replacing 24-hour news cycles and social media with critical analysis of longform journalism and peer-reviewed research findings.

54. Reliable narrators who understand the reality of Mr. Trump's audience will not try to influence them with earnest appeals that require the audience to assume that the presenter is good, the presenter's opposition evil, and the presenter's self-interest, irrelevant.

55. Reliable narrators who understand the reality of Mr. Trump's audience know that talk is cheap and reality is expensive. They prove their good intentions with real investments in their audience that cannot be denied because they don't go away.

56. Reliable narrators who understand the reality of Mr. Trump's audience attempt to engage them with irony, Socratic dialogue, and illustrative stories that make nuanced presentations of reality an invitation to mutual discovery instead of a boring monologue.

Further (Boring) Reading

• Wrestling and the End of History
• Putin’s Rasputin
• Donald Trump Is the First President to Turn Postmodernism Against Itself
• Dear Journalists: Stop Taking Trump Literally
• I Wish More Poets Loved Pro Wrestling, or the Apocalyptic Postmodern Fanscape (with Examples)
• The New Rhetoric of Television Politics