Tolerance or Love?

On Canada Day, my family set out on a rainy morning along with other like minded Fort McMurrians to celebrate the 145th anniversary of this great nation. Standing curbside with my two-year-old in my arms, I encouraged him to enthusiastically greet the cultural and religious groups passing by in the parade.

Then I saw the rainbow banner of a gay pride group. Now, the church I represent promotes a traditional sexual ethic — sex is only to be practiced by a man and a woman who are committed to each other in a marriage relationship. In other words, the gay pride group and my church group differ at a core belief level on a politically fraught issue.

So the moment I recognized the gay marchers in the Canada Day parade I faced a dilemma. Do I encourage my son to smile, wave, and shout, "Heh-wo!" to the people holding the rainbow banner, or do I look away and ignore them?

In 1689 the Parliament of England passed the Act of Toleration, allowing religious liberty for Protestant groups who dissented from the Church of England. That Act represented a widening of English civil society to accommodate groups with opposing core beliefs on the basis of tolerance, inaugurating a tradition of tolerance that extends down into Canadian-style multiculturalism today.

The word "tolerance" comes from a Latin word that means putting up with something you don't like. Since the 1530s, tolerance has meant permitting that which you consider wrong, but which you don't think should be prohibited. In our society, tolerance means that even if I oppose all you stand for, I will not deny you your right to exist and participate in society. It means that churches espousing a traditional sexual ethic may not seek to have gay people thrown in jail, and that gay pride groups may not seek to penalize clergy whose conscience will not allow them to perform gay marriages.

This is good as far as it goes, but where does this state of tolerance leave me and the gay pride group during the parade? If we merely tolerate each other, shall I stand in silent protest at those promoting a wrong I am tolerating? In turn, shouldn't they vow never to darken the door of a church that promotes a traditional sexual ethic? After all, we would not want to appear to support each others positions, would we?

Fortunately, those of us who are followers of Jesus are called to a higher principle than tolerance. Jesus taught, "You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you …."

According the principle of tolerance, smiling and waving at ones ideological opponents is about the most one can do. But when measured against the principle of love, smiling and waving is the least one can do.

Andrew Marrin is a evangelical Christian who was prejudiced against gay people until one summer when three of his best friends came out to him. This prompted Andrew to reevaluate his attitudes in light of Jesus' love. He started a group to build bridges of understanding between the evangelicals and gays. Christians from his group attend gay pride parades holding signs saying, "I'm sorry," for the ways Christians have abused gays.

Sometimes, an apology is the only way love can start. So let me begin by saying sorry, to the gay pride marchers at the Canada Day parade, for even thinking of not greeting you. Why don't we get to know each other better?

This article was originally submitted for the Clergy Comments column of the Fort McMurray Today (July 13, 2012).

Open Letter to Mike Allen, MLA Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo

Highway 63 is the most direct and important land link between Fort McMurray and Edmonton Alberta, a five hour trip, if you stick to the speed limit. Many don't, and compound the problem by passing dangerously on the two-lane, undivided highway. On Friday, April 27, someone was in a hurry and pulled out to pass a double-long semi-trailer truck during a blizzard. He couldn't see the other vehicle headed straight for him. I've put up a picture of the resulting inferno below. Among the victims was a local pastor, his wife, baby, and their pregnant friend.

The loss of seven lives in one day galvanized public opinion on the need to twin the most isolated stretch of Hwy 63 between Fort McMurray and Atamore—a promise the provincial government made in early 2006, but has only completed 16 of the 240 kilometers by 2012.

On May 22, Primier Allison Redford named local MLA Mike Allen a special adviser to the transportation minister on the issue of Hwy 63. Mike Allen is seeking public comment on solutions to the problems on Hwy 63 through his Facebook page, which is where I wrote him this letter.

In my humble opinion, the solutions are clear: Accelerated twinning and enhanced policing. Both require funding and funding on a scale disproportionate to most other similar cities in Alberta (e.g. Red Deer, Grande Prairie, Medicine Hat) due to the remoteness of Fort McMurray. In order for funding to happen on that scale there needs to be a shift in the mindset with which our province regards to Fort McMurray.

Fort McMurray needs to be conceived of less as an internal colony and more as an integral part of the provincial community. If you're running a colony, you only invest those resources necessary to extract greater resources. In this case, a twinned Hwy 63 won't increase oil production enough relative to the cost of construction, and therefore it is not considered worthwhile.

However, if you're running a community that's an integral part of the provincial community, you invest in twinned highways, because highways provide vital transportation links for two-way commerce and for citizens to interact across the province. The investment may not even pay financial returns, but you do it because it keeps people safe as they travel back and forth. And travel is necessary for there to be a community.

Having lived in Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray, it's clear to me which city is considered part of the community and which city is considered a colony. As Fort McMurray's voice in government on the issues surrounding Hwy 63, I expect you to make that difference clear, and demand that this city, which contributes so much to our province, be fully included in the provincial community, even if it proves costly.

Sexual Freedom?

Anyone who has seen two children fighting over a single object in a room full of other equally fun toys can appreciate what philosopher René Girard was getting at when he described the human predicament as "mimetic desire"—we do not want what we want, we want what others want. While we would like to think that our deepest desires are unique to us and in some way define who we are, in reality, we are usually mimicking the desires of those around us. We all want someone else's toy.

With the advent of easy-access pornography delivered anonymously through the internet, the desires of others are increasingly controlling our sexual desires. Most of us assume that what we like or don't like sexually, our sexual preferences, come from within us, from latent desires we discovered as we gained sexual experiences. The reality is the opposite. Our sexual experiences accumulate as desires, training us to prefer what we've previously experienced. So as we vicariously experience sex-acts through pornography, we are training ourselves with powerful rewards of pleasure to mimic porn-like preferences.

The results are not pretty. Pornography is training more and more men desire sex-acts with women that are embarrassing, uncomfortable, or even painful for women to perform. Some people are discovering that they cannot orgasm while having partner sex but only through masturbation. They have trained themselves to enjoy masturbation more than anything else by having the majority of their sexual experiences that way and enhancing the experience through pornography.

When human beings open themselves to a broad range of sexual experiences, real or vicarious, the end result seems to be people who desire sexual experiences that are not mutually satisfying. This individualistic pursuit of pleasure through sex is commonly thought to be the way to enjoy sex to the fullest. But contrary to what most assume, research shows that it is married, not single, people who have the most sex on average, and married women are more likely to experience sexual satisfaction than single women.

What if, instead of becoming slaves to the influence of others desires, we reserved our all sexual experiences for one person with whom we shared a mutual, lifetime commitment; trained ourselves to prefer sex-acts that brought that person pleasure; and devoted a lifetime to getting better and better at pleasing each other sexually? Wouldn't that be (in the sense of developing unique sexual desires and fulfillment) true sexual freedom?

Of course, this is what Christianity, teaching sex only within the marriage relationship, has promoted for millennia. And not just that sex should be reserved for marriage, but that it ought to be regularly enjoyed in marriage. Perhaps it's an idea whose time has come.

This article originally appeared in the Clergy Comments column of the Fort McMurray Today (February 25, 2012).

Cross-posted to true love is....

Sabbath in the Pastor's Schedule

The following is a summary of the devotional I presented at the Fort McMurray Christian Ministerial Association on February 7, 2012.

God saw all that he had made–and it was very good! There was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.

The heavens and the earth were completed with everything that was in them. By the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been doing. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work that he had been doing in creation. (Genesis 1:31-2:3, NET)

We begin at the beginning. Here in Genesis we find the first mention of Sabbath. (The Hebrew word for "ceased," is the verbal form of Sabbath.)

Human beings without their creator are "very good," but they are not complete. They are finished, but they are not perfect. The essential meaning of Sabbath is that six without seven is incomplete. (The number seven in the Bible symbolizes perfection.) Human beings were created on the sixth day, but in order to move on to perfection, they need the seventh-day.

Pastors without God are not complete, and having God takes time. The call of God is foremost a call to himself. Jesus did not call his disciples to fish for men. He said “Follow me” and as a result "I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19). Our first priority is to be with Jesus.

Jesus was simply reinforcing a massage of Sabbath, because Sabbath is the first place in scripture where we encounter God as a person who desires a relationship with us. Everything else God has done up to this point in creation, could have been done by an impersonal deity. But the Sabbath indicates the desire of God to be in relationship with his creation, and his creation with him.

This emphasizes the importance of human being above that of human doing. Ministers face the constant temptation to base our spiritual value on how much or how well we serve. But when Adam and Eve their first full day of life was not spent tending the garden, it was spent in rest.

As ministers, our first duty is to rest in God, and let our ministry flow from that. Sabbath is where we acknowledge total dependence on God, because for 24-hours we do not try to make our own way in the world. On this day God sustains us and prepares us to depend on him in the coming week.

The way we keep Sabbath, as I see it in scripture, is a paradoxical combination of feasting and fasting—at once an ascetic and a celebratory practice. I will share how Adventists keep Sabbath in the hope that you will take something that is helpful to you.

On Sabbath we abstain

• From regular work.
• From commerce.
• From secular media/entertainment/sports.

And on Sabbath we engage

• With God.
• With family.
• With church family.
• With God's creation.
• With service to humanity.

Minister’s dilemma lies in the tension between the first point on the first list and the last point on the last list—our regular work is service to humanity. So how can we pastors rest on Sabbath and at the same time serve our people who gather on this day to receive a blessing?

To answer this question I refer you to an excellent article ("From Workday to Rest Day: One pastor’s journey to Sabbath renewal") that was published in Ministry magazine about this time last year. I will summarize the conclusion.

• Don’t put off until Sabbath what can be done before Sabbath.
• Don’t put off time with God until Sabbath
• Consider your family's Sabbath experience
• Be prepared to let some tasks go undone (or be done by others)
• Be prepared to say No.

I Support Men's Commissioning

On October 10, 2011, church leaders announced a timetable for studying the theology of ordination over the next few years, the latest action following a promise at the 2010 General Conference session to study the issue.

Artur Stele, a world church vice president and director of the Biblical Research Institute, said the process would examine the foundation of ordination as well as its implications for church practices. (Adventist Review)

This is the latest in a series of debates, studies, and panels that have polarized the Seventh-day Adventist Church on the question of women's ordination since, by some accounts, the mid 1970s. (I've written previously on this topic here.) Opponents rest firm in the General Conference vote at Utrecht (1995), which shut down a move to allow the practice. Proponents continue to agitate for equality, most recently through the ONE (Ordain Now Equally) in Christ website.

Meanwhile, a proportionately small number of women continue to serve capably as Adventist pastors, and in some cases their ministry is exceptionally blessed. Rather than being ordained, these women are "commissioned," which affords them the authority to do almost everything an ordained (i.e. male) pastor does except ordain elders and deacons or organize and disband churches.

This state of affairs seems to me untenable. On its face, there is no biblical support, and it is morally disingenuous. Either women can be pastors, or they can't. Either women are allowed to have authority in the church, or they aren't. In the scripture there is no such thing in scripture as an under-shepherd who has partial authority in the flock.

I don't intend to rehash the arguments pro and con women's ordination here. For me it boils down to one issue: Spiritual gifts come with the authority to use them. If a woman has been equipped by the Holy Spirit for pastoral ministry, the church is poorer for not recognizing this.

For this reason I fully support equality of men and women at all levels of church ministry. But, I hasten to add, I do not support women's ordination.

I have come to the conclusion that in the Seventh-day Adventist Church the term "ordination" has changed into something other than a simple recognition of God's blessing on a pastor's ministry. Ordination is now a word that is used to either attain or maintain power.

Those opposed to women's ordination are focused of defending the term in a way that excludes women from power, and those in favor of women's ordination are focused on expanding the term in a way that gains women power. Both sides of the debate are in a power struggle.

Yet according to Jesus, in His Kingdom you don't gain power by fighting for it but by giving it away.

“The legal experts and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat.  Therefore, you must take care to do everything they say. But don’t do what they do. ... They love to be greeted with honor in the markets and to be addressed as ‘Rabbi.’

“But you shouldn’t be called Rabbi, because you have one teacher, and all of you are brothers and sisters. Don’t call anybody on earth your father, because you have one Father, who is heavenly.  Don’t be called teacher, because Christ is your one teacher.  But the one who is greatest among you will be your servant.  All who lift themselves up will be brought low. But all who make themselves low will be lifted up." (Matthew 23:2-3, 7-12, CEB)

“Do you know what I’ve done for you?  You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you speak correctly, because I am.  If I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you too must wash each other’s feet.  I have given you an example: just as I have done, you also must do. (John 13:12b-15, CEB)

“Whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35b, CEB)

“You know that those who rule the Gentiles show off their authority over them and their high-ranking officials order them around.  But that’s not the way it will be with you. Whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant.  Whoever wants to be first among you will be your slave—just as the Human One didn’t come to be served but rather to serve and to give his life to liberate many people.” (Matthew 20:25b-28, CEB)

Church offices and leadership structures are clearly necessary, as the apostolic church quickly discovered. But when an office or title becomes the focus of a power struggle, it's time to step back and recover Jesus' simple message of servant leadership: Instead of trying to elevate yourself, focus on elevating others. Instead of trying to be first, go serve those who are least. Instead of joining the race to the top, start a race to the bottom.

In that spirit, I propose the following: That Adventist pastors of both genders be, not "ordained," but "commissioned." After all, neither term is applied to pastors in the Bible, so we're free to change the terminology when warranted.

In fact, the term "ordained" comes from the Roman ordering of their society into plebs and patricians, the Gentile lords Jesus condemned. In the early Roman Catholic Church, ordination developed as the means by which a layman joins the elite order of the clergy.

On the other hand, "commissioned" carries, to my ear at least, the implication of "commissioned to serve," which is what a minister is supposed to do in the first place. Changing the term would also connote, in the context of the ordination debate, that Adventist pastors are less obsessed with their own power and position than they are with empowering and elevating others. It would signify that male ministers do not advance in God's upside-down Kingdom by allowing women to join them up on their level, but instead by moving down to a level where all can serve according to their gifts.

Therefore, I do not support women's ordination; I support men's commissioning.

Cross-posted to Adventist Today.

Arminianism and Adventism

While I'm sending some link-love to the Andrews Seminary, I thought I'd mention the Arminianism and Adventism Symposium coming up in October (14-17). So why is this conference important? Basically because our soteriological (doctrine of salvation) roots go back the Jacob Arminius, the first serious Protestant/Reformed theologian to reject Calvinist predestination, combining free-will with the understanding that we cannot save ourselves. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism picked up his ideas, and many of the original Adventists were Methodists, including Ellen White.

If you're still not convinced this is worthwhile, go check out their list of reasons why you should attend the Adventism and Arminianism Symposium.

p.s. They just enlisted yours truly to blog the symposium.

New Blog: Memory, Meaning & Faith

Where has Dave been since January?

Thanks for asking! I've been working on a new blog project with some of my seminary professors. It's called Memory, Meaning & Faith, and on it we'll be discussing all things related to theology and history. So you should pretty much go over there and check it out. Oh yeah, we're also going to be giving away free stuff over the next few weeks (more on that here), so stay tuned.

I'll still be blogging over here. In the last few weeks I've had the inspiration several times but haven't had the actual time. Hopefully, my schedule will allow some posting in the near future.

Much gratitude to all who still have apokalupto in their feed reader.

Testimony

According to Wikipedia, spoken word poetry began in the early nineties in New York city. I first heard it in the early 2000s on CBC Radio 1. And now, in the early 2010s, it has made an impact on the old fashioned testimony service.

The following poem was recited yesterday by Sarah Campbell at the Cornerstone Seventh-day Adventist Church in Coquitlam, British Columbia. She, along with others involved in an urban café ministry in Vancouver, gave her testimony during the Sabbath worship service.

Visit To A Mosque

Today I visited the Islamic Society of Michiana's mosque in South Bend, Indiana for Friday prayers. I was required to go for a class in world religions and, for some time, had planned to visit on this particular Friday . Given the recent Fort Hood shooting, I suspected this would be no ordinary visit.

I entered as a man, who I assume was the imam, had just begun his "English Talk", the equivalent of a sermon. The subject was the Festival of Eid, which commemorates Abraham's sacrifice of his son, that Muslims will soon celebrate. The talk was basically a list of dos and don'ts for celebrating the festival in a way that would bring the worshiper closer to God. For example, actually sacrificing a goat, as opposed to paying to have one sacrificed somewhere else for you, was recommended.

As the Eid talk was winding down I thought that perhaps the speaker would let the Fort Hood incident pass without mention, but it turned out his homily had a part II. For the speaker, the incident was essentially a PR disaster, and he felt that the media, especially Fox News, had used it as an opportunity to present Muslims in a negative way. He recommended community involvement as a way to remedy this problem, suggesting involvement with a soup kitchen or a donation to the Islamic Society of North America's fund for the victims' families. He concluded by reminding his congregation that even though America is humiliating and killing Muslims overseas, America is the place they have chosen to build their children's future, and therefore they need to support America.

Then mentioning his fears of a backlash against Muslims, the speaker invited a worshiper, whom he described as a NRA member and knowledgeable about self-defense, to the podium explain how Muslims can defend themselves if attacked. The man began by describing the tactical capabilities of the various firearms. It eventually became clear that he was concerned about someone trying to carry out a mass shooting similar to the Fort Hood shooting in their Mosque. If this were to happen, he recommended that those farther away from the shooter and able to do so flee and that those closer and not able to flee rush the shooter, "sucker punch" him, and not stop until he is down.

During this self-defense talk several men in the back near where I was sitting began talking among themselves and heckling the man, telling him they had heard enough. When that man was done, another man immediately got behind the podium and made a statement clearly distancing their Islam from the actions of Nidal Hasan and clarifying that Hasan was not following Islam in doing what he did. The men who had been heckling during the self-defense talk, indicated that they supported these statements.

After this it was time for prayers. A man in the front chanted the call to prayer, and then everyone moved forward and stood on the prayer carpet, all facing the same direction. I stood throughout the prayer as a sign of respect.

During the prayer the worshipers bowed lower and lower, until they were totally prostrated, symbolizing total submission to God. The prayer is chanted in a minor key, and the beautiful music gave me a sense of mourning for the Muslim people. It was obvious that this community was dealing with a lot of pain through humiliation brought on them by the oppression of their people overseas and compounded by the horrific actions of one of their own at home. During the prayer I was profoundly moved and prayed that God would reveal his loving character to the Muslim people.

It seems to me that the Muslim community in North America is experiencing what Seventh-day Adventists experienced to a lesser degree during the events caused by David Koresh in 1993, when public exposure of violence and wrongdoing forced our church to face the dark side of our anti-American, apocalyptic teachings. While we quickly pointed out that David Koresh was not currently an Adventist and tried to minimize his connection to our church, the fact remains the he and almost all the adults in his compound were ex-Adventists. Every religion has this dark side, the question is how to deal with it.

It seems to me that the Muslim community in North America needs find a way of expressing a constructive critique of the West that doesn't degenerate into extremism. Community involvement and statements denouncing Hasan are PR band-aids that ignore the real issue of Islam's dark side, extremism. And publicly planing for the very unlikely event of a mass shooting only increases the sense of fear that results in extremism. On the other hand, I doubt that Muslim Americans will have the space to address these issues until the media spotlight currently trained on their community moves on to the next story.

Although I did not appreciate the self-defense talk (I feel that adolescent male fantasies of a heroic charge at a deranged gunman have nothing to do with the worship of God.), I enjoyed my visit to the mosque. Of all the non-Christian worship services I have attended, this was the one where I felt closest to God, probably because there was an extended period of time when I could simply pray. My only regret was that I had to leave soon after the service, during the time after prayers. Before I left no one approached me for conversation.

Interview: Gary Land

Gary Land is one of the organizers of the Ellen White Project, a group of Adventist, ex-Adventist, and non-Adventist scholars who are preparing to publish an academic book on Ellen White. He is chair of the Department of History and Political Science at Andrews University and author of, among others, Teaching History, a book about integrating historical knowledge and Christian faith, and the Historical Dictionary of the Seventh-day Adventists. Dr. Land was kind enough to answer some questions about his latest project shortly after he returned from the working conference where authors of the book's chapters had their work critiqued.

a: Can you give us a brief history of this Ellen White Project?

GL: Now this will be my version of it; it might be a slightly different story for some of the other people. But Terrie Aamodt has long had an interest in having a conference. She talked about that with me and others, but it didn’t really get of the ground until she talked with Julius Nam at the Adventist historians’ meeting at Oakwood two and a half years ago. He’s an organizer type, and he immediately wanted to do something. It went through an evolution as to what the goals were, but eventually he, myself, Terrie, and Ron Numbers ended up as the organizing people. And we’ve been working on it for couple years.

a: I’d like you comment on the philosophy of history that will inform the editing of this book. In other words, how is it possible for scholars who have differing beliefs about the source of Ellen White’s visions to produce a collaborative history of her?

GL: First of all, saying collaborative history isn’t correct. It’s a collection of essays, and there will be differing interpretations and viewpoints in the essays. But at the same time we do hope that they will be cohesive. The issue of her inspiration is really not an issue as far as the book is concerned, because our goal is to look at Ellen White as a historical figure. I’ve had a hard time explaining that to some Adventists, because they have difficulty looking at Ellen White in something other than religious terms. But the main thing is that we have other 19th century religious leaders of what we call “American originals” who have received quite a bit of attention from historians. But neither Adventists generally nor Ellen White in particular have received very much attention in historical literature. And there are a number of reasons for that. Maybe a simple one is that we aren’t quite strange enough; we’re more aligned with the mainstream than those other “American originals”. But the purpose of the book was to bring a number of essays looking at various aspects of Ellen White’s life with the underlying purpose being to say, This is a significant woman that historians should give attention to. So it wasn’t really a matter of whether one believes she’s inspired or not inspired.

a: Can you clarify what you mean by “historical figure”? What I’m thinking when you say that is someone who influenced others after her and was influenced by people before her. Is that correct?

GL: And was influential during her own time. Although, we’re not just discussing her in terms of influence. But when one talks about things that she did, those also have influence.

a: So also looking at the bare facts, and laying those open…

GL: Right.

a: When I read Ron Number’s book, he starts off by saying that a real historian has to look for human causes, not divine causes in history (Prophetess of Health, xxxii, para 1). And it seems to me that presupposition is at once necessary for doing history while also ruling out the possibility of divine inspiration. Is that a fair way to frame the issue?

GL: Yeah, I think so. Look at a book like George Marsden’s The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, where he’s talking about how one is a Christian and does scholarship and how if you bring in divine elements, you’re probably not going to get accepted by a historical journal or university press. So he talks about something he calls “methodological agnosticism,” and that’s essentially what Ron Numbers is putting forward. Now Ron is not a Christian believer and makes no pretense of being one, so his motivations might be different in saying that. But Marsden is a Christian and is noted for that. But he distinguishes methodological agnosticism from what he calls “methodological atheism.” And it comes down to subtle use of language when you give an explanation on the human level. In methodological atheism you use language that suggests that there is nothing else to say beyond what’s being said. If you are a methodological agnostic, then you will have language that suggests there might be other things. Just as an example: You’re talking about a revival. And if you say, This revival was caused by economic dislocation (That’s a frequent explanation that’s given for revivals.), well, that doesn’t leave anything else available. But if you say, Economic dislocation contributed to the revival, then a person could think that maybe there was a divine aspect as well, even though you’re not talking about that as a historian.

a: If Ellen White is a multidimensional figure, what hidden dimensions of Ellen White would you like this book to reveal to Adventists, the scholarly community, and the average American?

GL: First of all, Adventists are not our primary audience. Obviously we would hope that Adventists would read it, but we’re aiming to publish through an academic press. (I think it needs to be clear that we’ve contacted Oxford, they’ve expressed some interest in it, but there is absolutely no commitment on their part until they see something.) So our target audience is scholars and that proverbial educated general reader. We hope Adventists will come along with that. Now what do we want to accomplish with that? I already spoke about scholars, that they would think, Maybe she deserves more than a line in the history of American religion. The general reader—sort of along the same lines—but that they would find her an interesting person. Here’s somebody who did all these different things. And we would hope that they would find this an interesting person that they might want to know more about, because this book is not exhaustive. It’s not a biography, but sort of an opening of a window on an individual and her movement. She had an interesting life, a long life, and as a woman she did things that were not typical of women in her time. She was a public figure of somewhat restricted range, a speaker, a writer when not many women were writers, was involved in establishing institutions. So I hope that people would find her life story interesting

a: Don McMahon has produced what was for me one of the more illuminating, if not unconventional, studies of Ellen White in recent decades. How will this book address his multidisciplinary approach? And maybe that would be a better question to ask Numbers, but since I have you in front of me…

Right. I don’t think it’s going to address it very much. Numbers would have a lot to say about McMahon. I think he has something in the footnote of his paper about McMahon, but that’s about all it addresses. An interesting observation about the conference: For every paper we had an Adventist respondent and a non-Adventist respondent. Several Adventists raised the issue of plagiarism; it didn’t seem to be an issue for the non-Adventists. And I believe the reason for that is for Adventists it’s related to the issue of Ellen White’s authority and inspiration. And that’s not an issue to the non-Adventists. And Adventist apologists have argued that this was relatively common in the 19th century, and I think non-Adventists recognize that. So it’s not a big issue to them. So basically I think [McMahon] will be a footnote and not much more than that.

a: As a Seventh-day Adventist, how do you anticipate this book will benefit your church?

GL: Well, to come back to our original purpose, it’d give us more visibility. Second, I think it will help people understand Ellen White better, although we’re not really breaking new ground as far as Adventism is concerned. We’re breaking new ground as far as the general historical community is concerned. But one thing that I became aware of—I wrote the paper on Ellen White and historiography—and I became aware that Ron Numbers’ Prophetess of Health has done more than any other book to bring Ellen White to the attention of historians, even though it’s still relatively small attention. But people have looked at Ellen White almost totally in terms of a health reformer, and even Adventism in terms of health reform. And so hopefully this book will help people understand that Ellen White had a multifaceted life. Health reform obviously was a part of it, but there were other aspects of it as well. And then secondarily to help them understand that Adventism is more than a health reform church. So I would hope that it would contribute to a better understanding of the denomination. But again, we’re not really writing it for PR purposes, but to better place Ellen White and Adventism within their 19th century American context.


Other Ellen White Project Working Conference coverage:

Jon Paulien (Revelation - Armageddon): An Historic Event (parts I, II, III, IV, V)

Alden Thompson (Spectrum): Reporting from the Ellen White Conference, Reflections on the Maine Event

Religion in American History Blog: The Ellen White Project (includes video interview with Ron Numbers), 'Buked and Scorned: Ellen G. White's Success

Reflictions On The Homosexuality Conference

Before apokalupto moves on to fresh topics, there's still time for me to jot down a few final thoughts on the Marriage, Homosexuality, and the Church Conference I attended last week at Andrews University. It's also time for me to share my position on the debate over whether homosexual sex is sinful, since that will inform the comments that follow. My theology on this issue is informed by presuppositions I have found to be well articulated here.

I believe that from Genesis 12 onward, the Bible tells the story of how God is leading his people on a journey, which includes moral progress, toward Heaven. So I believe the descriptions of Heaven in Scripture (primarily found in Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22) are an ethical compass for God's people, pointing us toward the ideal to which he is taking us. According to this ideal, marriage is a union of one man and one woman (Gen 1:21-28, Gen 2:18-25, Rev 21:2)

Now the problem is, given all the aberrations from this ideal that human beings desire, how do we get there from here. In the scripture we can trace God making allowances for our less than ideal situations while moving his people closer to Heaven (cf. Ex 21:10, 1 Tim 3:12). Some might argue that based on this we can make an allowance for homosexual marriage as a step closer to Heaven.

The problem with this is that God has never indicated in Scripture that such an allowance should be made. Even if you believe that the biblical injunctions against homosexual sex apply to only exploitative or non-mutually fulfilling homosexual sex, it remains the case that God never revealed homosexual marriage as the solution to this problem. In fact, given those injunctions, it seems very unlikely that God would make such an allowance.

Therefore, I believe homosexual marriage is not the way forward for God's people on their journey to Heaven. But if that is a difficult conclusion to arrive it, it leads to the even more difficult question of how the church should then respond to homosexuals. So I offer these reflections on the Andrews homosexuality conference in light of this conclusion and in partial answer to the question that comes from it.

As was the diagnosis another time Adventism and psychology converged, I suggest that the symptoms of multiple personality disorder may have been present in the conference; it spoke with two voices. Those from the counseling and pastoral care disciplines said we need to love homosexuals, and those from the public policy and religious liberty disciplines said we need to fight homosexuals. Now that's a generalization and oversimplification, but the popular perception of this conference will be generalized and oversimplified and the message of the conference will, I believe, end up sounding schizo.

Now if you're schizo, you're mad; and when you're mad, people, in this case homosexuals, don't feel the love. My point being that if you want to do some tough love, you've got to earn the right. Now the public policy guys at the conference said Adventists already have that legitimacy because of ADRA, etc., but I don't buy it.

Adventists earned the right to advocate against slavery by helping with the underground railroad, we earned the right to advocate against alcohol and tobacco by helping people kick their habits, and we earned the right to advocate for religious liberty, by sticking up for other religions, too. What have we done for homosexuals? Since the Colin Cook debacle, officially we've done whole lot of nothing.

I believe our level of public policy advocacy on homosexual marriage, regardless of the position we take, must be correlated with our level of direct ministry to homosexuals or we will end up preaching to the choir and loose our public witness. Right now we've got GLADventist.org and a handful of Wayne Blakelys and Ron Woolseys, so that means we can probably send our lawyers to court. I don't think we should start mobilizing our church members to vote until they can identify at least one homosexual person in their congregation. And if Adventists get something like an AIDS hospice going in San Francisco, I think we'd be ready to start talking to homosexuals about homosexual marriage.

Along the lines of ministering to homosexuals, I think Mark Yarhouse's three-tier distinction is an excellent starting point. I think it has implications beyond homosexuality and could be a good tool for discussing sexuality with heterosexual youth. It opened my eyes to how I have constructed my sexual identity, and, as I've said elsewhere, I think it will be remembered as the ideological core of the conference.

One thing that disappointed me at the conference was conservatives playing the victim card. I believe we need to act out of faith that God is protecting us, not fear of being marginalized.

It also seems to me that conservative Adventist Bible scholars need to take special care to speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15), and this is not something that's impossible to do. When discussing the possibility that a whole class of people may be required by God to forfeit sexual and romantic companionship, we're going to have to do better than, "Life isn't fair." That may or may not be the truth, but it is certainly not the truth in love. Scholars would do well to heed Miroslav Kis' advice that we never discuss this issue from an impersonal, abstract perspective.

Finally, I believe this conference is the start of a new and more healthy direction in how the Adventist Church relates to homosexuals. The general assumption of the presenters was that homosexually attracted persons could, like persons attracted to other sins, be regular members of the Adventist Church. If this assumption is adopted by the church as a whole (and I believe it gradually will be), it will remove a fair bit of the prejudice that Adventists have against homosexuals.

Progressives are of course miffed that the basic question of homosexual practice was not up for debate and will likely claim the conference results are just the same dish reheated and served as leftovers. But why not? Sometimes it takes a little time in the fridge for the flavors to sort themselves out into the right combination. And maybe if we work on it a little more we could one day have a potluck.


Blogging the Homosexuality Conference (other posts)

Interview: Nicholas Miller

Nicholas Miller, Esq. was the Chairman for the Steering Committee of the Marriage, Homosexuality, and the Church Conference that met at Andrews University last week. During the conference, he agreed to an interview with apokalupto to address criticisms of the conference.

a: How did this conference germinate? What was the seed from which it sprung?

NM: At the opening of the conference I talked about the controversy over Proposition 8, which necessarily involved religious liberty leaders because gay marriage would have legal implications for [Adventist] Church institutions. During our advocacy it became clear that some thought leaders in the Church had a different view on gay marriage and underlying question of the morality of homosexual practice. And it became apparent that the Church needed to have a conversation, both about the public policy position of the church on gay marriage and about revisionist arguments that were being made against the Church’s position on homosexual practice.

a: Why, then, was it decided to exclude voices from the Conference who held a contrary view of the underlying question of the morality of homosexual practice?

NM: On your blog you talked in terms of this being a professional conference and not so much a scholarly conference. I disagree with that slightly, because it was a conference with scholarship. But if you were to define a professional conference as a conference on how to implement or use an existing or underlying philosophy, there is indeed some truth to that. And I would analogize it to a conference on the meaning and practice of the Sabbath, which our church considers a biblical institution. It’s generally considered that to have a successful conference, you wouldn’t have to bring in speakers who insist on Sunday worship. And to work out the implications of the Sabbath, you don’t have to debate the underlying question of whether the Sabbath has a biblical basis.

a: But if I could take on your analogy, we don’t have any thought leaders in our Church, who remain in the Church, who believe we should worship on Sunday. But, as you said, we do have thought leaders in our church who do have a different answer to the question of homosexual practice.

NM: I might dispute that initial statement. I think we have some thought leaders in our church who think that that maybe whether it’s Sabbath or Sunday doesn’t matter, but who are willing to stay in the church. But I will accept that there are probably a few more thought leaders who disagree on the question of homosexual practice. And because there are a handful of thought leaders who disagree on this question, perhaps there needs to be a gathering where there is a debate on that issue. But that wasn’t this conference. The leaders of this conference didn’t view that as a significantly live question to justify the resources we put into it. Our purpose was to explore and affirm the biblical basis of the Church’s existing position, but more importantly to move forward in ministry based on that position. And if we came to debate the Church’s existing position, we wouldn’t have been able to meet the goal of formulating an effective public advocacy and strengthening the church’s counseling ability. And those two flow from an underlying agreement on what the biblical position on homosexual practice is.

But that's the first answer. The second answer is that this conference didn't take place in a vacuum. The revisionist position had a complete hearing in a conference a year or two ago, which resulted in a powerful book. And all but one of the articles in that book is a revisionist argument. So those arguments are out there, and that conference was essentially univocal. So to have a dialogue, we thought this conference could respond to that book. If we had made our response a kind of an internal argument within itself, it wouldn’t have been so much of a response. But we didn't do that, and I think we now have a better basis for dialogue, where two positions have been clearly outlined. As we’ve said all along, this conference is a beginning, not the end.

a: Can you tell me about those who were invited to this conference but decided not to come?

NM: Yeah, there were several. Dr. Richard Rice was invited to give a paper about the underlying questions about homosexual practice and the Bible, but chose not to come. David Larson and Julius Nam were invited, and both initially accepted. We invited them to speak to the Church’s response to Proposition 8. But Julius Nam declined for scheduling reasons, as he’s into law school. And David Larson declined—I think that he wanted a broader topic to discuss was part of that—but he also declined the invitation for personal reasons.

a: A cynical person would ask why such a panelist would want to come and be used as a fall guy to legitimate a predetermined outcome. Why would someone want to come this conference and be on a panel where they are outnumbered?

NM: Well, they weren’t invited to be on a three to one panel. We were originally going to have an evenly divided panel. And I don’t know if there are predetermined outcomes for how the church should have responded to Proposition 8. I think there’s a lot valid points that could be made on both sides. And for the panel discussing Proposition 8 we ended up inviting two from both sides. But the formal gay marriage panel ended up being three to one, because Mitch Tyner wanted to be on the breakout session discussion panel instead of presenting a paper. [a: And I did not report on that breakout session, because I went to the pastoral/counseling session instead.}

a: It's not hard to notice that over three quarters of the presenters were white, middle-aged and almost all straight men. Why is that?

NM: You’ve got to play with the deck of cards that you’re dealt. And for whatever reasons, and probably for bad reasons including chauvinism and euro-centrism, the scholars in the Church generally have those characteristics. We were looking for those with expertise within a fairly narrow field. And we sought for some women presenters, scholars, and counselors; and for various reasons they were unable or unwilling to attend. So we had what we had.

a: Why is it that we heard so few voices in the question and answer periods challenging the traditional Christian position on homosexuality?

NM: We didn’t hand pick the questions, David. I went to the hands that I saw raised in as fair a way as I could and took the questions as they came. I think it had to do with the spirit that was prevailing at the conference. Many people had been praying about this conference, and we didn’t want to have a divisive debate over technical, arcane, or revisionist biblical issues. We wanted to have a conference that in the end would provide the church with a stronger ministry to the homosexual community. And I believe the spirit prevailed that accomplished that goal. In the final session I read a letter from a lesbian individual who said she was deeply appreciative of the love and compassion and the spirit that prevailed at the conference.

To be honest, I was going to do hand written questions for all the panels. But during that first session we had presenters who were experienced handling questions publicly and we had the time, so I thought I’d try with a live mic. And it went so well, that we decided to continue. I did in the very final panel do hand written questions, because the panel was so large and the audience was so large that we couldn’t pass the mic around.

a: I have heard an allegation that you put questions challenging the traditional position on homosexual practice to the bottom of the stack during that final panel.

NM: During that time I read a number of questions challenging the position of the Church and I also read a number of questions that were entirely supportive of the position of the Church. But we ran out of time and there were questions both from the right and from the left that went unanswered.


a: Given the above, what do you think were the strengths of the conference, and how do you think we should move forward with future events to address this issue?

NM: The strength of the conference was that it enhanced the Church’s capacity for ministry and proclamation. Theological discussion is important for the Church, but it is not an end in itself. We do not exist as a church to have a series of ongoing, continuous discussions and debates for our own purposes. And we ended up with a conference where a lot of people felt they could go out and proclaim the Church’s position more effectively and minister and counsel more effectively in light of that position. I don’t think we could have accomplished that if we’d had a debate about the underlying biblical issue of whether homosexual practice is sinful.

Moving forward, we can now explore in greater depth the three areas—religious liberty and public policy, biblical theology and ethics, and counseling and pastoral care—that the conference focused on. I could see more room for dialogue among those with differing biblical views, but that’s not something I’m particularly interested in organizing. I’m a religious liberty and church history guy, not a biblical theologian, so I’ll leave that to those in that area.

a: Thank you for your time.

NM: Thank you for your interest.


Blogging the Homosexuality Conference (other posts)