The]ournal of the Association of Adventist Forums
The Environment, Stupid
, GOD AND THE COMPELLING '' CASE FOR NATURE RESURRECTION OF THE WORLD
LETTERS FROM AFRICA WHAT ARE ADVENTISTS DOING?
THE CURIOUS IMAGINATION
APOCALYPTIC ANTI-IMPERIALISTS
ACROBATIC ADVENTISTS
January 1993 Volume 22, Number 5 Spectrum Editorial Board Consulting Editors I
Beverly Beem Karen Bottomley Edna Maye Loveless Editor English History English I . Roy Branson Walla Walla College Canadian Union College La Sierra University Bonnie L Casey Edward Lugenbeal RoyBenlon if;:._, Anthropology Matbematical Sciences Writer/Editor i~\ Washington, D.C. Atlantic Union College Senior Editor Columbia Union College ~tl Donald R. McAdams TomDybdahl Roy Branson Raymond Cottrell President Etbics,l(ennedy Institute 1beology :1 Lorna Linda, California McAdanls, Faillace, aud Assoc. Georget
Vice Presi
Executive Secretary Of Marketing Canadian (West) Soutbem Mary Halovlak Patricia Salcedo Bruce Buttler Robert Hale Adminislrative Secretary Marketing Dean, Sdence Division Certified Public Accountant Silver Spring, Maryland Lorna Linda University Canadian Union College Atlanta, Georgia
· Treasurer Of Promotion Central Soutbem Pacific Jay M. DuNesme Richord B. Lewis, Jr. Kay Clayton Jim Kaatz Investment Banker Adverlisi~g Cleburne, Texas Education Lake Arrowhead, California Boston, Massachusetts Lakeside, California Central Pacific Editor Of Special Projects Michael Saucedo Roy Branson Glenn E. Coe Legal Analyst Staff Ethics, Kennedy Institute Attorney Sacramento, California Legal Consultant Georgetown University Hartford, Connecticut Columbia Bradley Litchfield Susan Sickler Attorney Washington, D.C. Kettering, Ohio ·~.·.:I
SPEC/RUM is a journal established to encou~ge· Seventh. © 1992 All rights reserved Litho USA Vol. 22, No.5, January 1993 FROM THE ED!JOR The Environment, Stupid 2 ARTIClES LeHers From 4frica 3 Gilbert Burnham returns to Africa, where he served for 15 years as a missionary. The Questioning Imagination 6 Ottilie Stafford shares her zest for life as a joyous quest. The Cynic and the Church 13 Gary Chartier tells why it isn't necessarily sacrilegious to feel like laughing. Apocalyptic Anti-Imperialists 20 Doug Morgan shows how an apocalyptic hope can encourage public witness against war and oppression. SPECIAL SECTION: THE ENVIRONMENT Adventists and the Good Earth 28 Alvin Kwiram challenges Adventists to change the ecology of their faith. The Compelling Case For Nature 36 Glenn Coe argues nature's right to exist unmolested. Earth in the Balance 38 Roy Benton explores echoes of Old Testament prophets and Revelation in U.S. Vice-president Albert Gore's book. Resurrection of the World 41 Brian W. Harper relates the environment to the resurrection. What Are Adventists Doing? .45 A look at Adventist involvement, from Capitol Hill to Borneo. DEPARTMENTS News Updates 50 Sharise Esh and Roy Branson report on Adventists on the move. Book Reviews 55 Readers' Responses 59 FROM THE EDITOR The Environment, Stupid ill Clinton's version was scrawled across the the environment. front wall of his presidential campaign head This is the first special section of Spectrum devoted B quarters: "It's the Economy, Stupid." If AI Gore to the environment. Of course, the voices heard in this had been at the top of the ticket, the title of our special issue only begin the discussion. For example, they section might have dominated the campaign. (See Roy concern themselves with the environment primarily Benton's review of Gore's book.) Gore and many because pollution transforms the environment into a others believe devastation of the environment has hazard, indeed a threat, to human existence. The replaced nuclear winter as the impending apocalypse principal concern of these authors is the traditional that should dominate our thinking. preoccupation of morality-the well being of humans. "The environment, stupid," was not the slogan They are what might be called soft environmentalist.~. mounted on the denomination's Rose Parade float, but What remains a secondary theme through most of the one billion potential viewers on television could our special section are concerns about the environment see that the Seventh-day Adventist Church had dedi for its own sake; expressions of outrage at the extinc cated its gorgeous, multicolored float of animals to tion of species unnecessary to human existence, such "Enjoying and Caring for Nature." (See Lara Beaven's as the snail darter, spotted owl, and humpback whale. report.) Media commentators reported that Seventh-day Glenn Coe does defend an environmentalism that might Adventists were environmentalists. (See the General threaten human interests. Such a sense of loss at the Conference's official statement on the environment.) disappearance of any part of creation, a demand to In our special section, some of Spectrum's best preserve life, even at the expense of human well being, known authors (Alvin Kwiram, Roy Benton, Glenn is the truly new moral concern suggested by hard Coe) demonstrate how making the environment one of environmentalists. In a sense, soft environmentalist.~ the church's major concerns involves re-examining worry about protecting humans from a polluted envi such distinctive Adventist affirmations as Creation, the ronment; hard environmentalists worry about protecting Sabbath, healthful living, and an apocalyptic world the environment from humans. view. Brian Harper, a graduate student in ethics Whether an apocalyptic community endorses not appearing for the first time in Spectrum, suggests that only soft but hard environmentalism is worth further redemption understood as resurrection must also be discussion. It is already clear that soft or hard, Advent revisited if the environment is to become the focus of ists are-or should be-environmentalists. Adventist Christians. Several other younger voices report some things Adventists are actually doing about Roy Branson 2 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 ARTICLES Letters From Africa A Johns Hopkins professor returns to Africa, where he served 15 years, until recently, as a medical missionary. by Gilbert Burnham Fort Portal, Western Uganda interests in Hans Kung and double reeds. He is doubtless the finest (and only) cor anglais player in ganda is but a shadow of its former self. True, Fort Portal, if not all Uganda. From his house the U Field Marshal Amin and Milton Obote are gone, road goes poco a poco among the potholes and past but they left behind an unsettled and suffering land the colonial-era municipal buildings, now balancing with perhaps 1.3 million of its people killed. As the between decay and dereliction. On the green in front country struggled to its feet it was savaged again, of the Labor Office the colonials once played cricket this time by the AIDS virus. Two decades of devasta every Saturday in their starched whites. The bark of tion seem to have etched into the Ugandans with a nearby Jacaranda tree enfolds a corroded metal whom I work a certain indefinable sadness. Outside plate, which reminds the passercby that this peace my bedroom window the guard with his Kalash tree was planted in 1918 to celebrate the armistice. nikov is a reminder that in some places, order has As years have passed, the carnage has come home not been completely restored. from Ypres and Compiegne. Beyond the cricket In the evening the sun sets behind the 17,000- pitch the road goes allegro vivace downhill, sun foot Ruwenzori mountains, their glaciers and snow dappled through the trees, to the river where bare fields virtually astride the equator. The peaks are foot pedestrians cross on a: foot bridge made of named for the Victorian greats who came this way tropical hardwoods laid in a herringbone pattern. on their explorations: Sir Samuel Baker, traveling Above the river stands the old Hindu school, and not with his slave-wife; Henry Morton Stanley, prince of far away is the Asian cemetery where still rest the hype; and the unfortunate John Speke. Captain Sir only Indians whom Idi Amin did not expel in 1973. Richard Burton is not remembered here. At the top of the hill, where the shops begin, the I am staying with Walter, a German doctor with roundabout has only shards of asphalt-left from the days when Uganda's GNP was greater than that of Korea. Before its glissando into anguish. To the left, Gilbert Burnham, who teaches international health and in a refurbished garage-cum-servant's quarters, is the tropical medicine at the johns Hopkins University, travels office of the Northwestern Uganda Field of Seventh extensively, especially in Africa. With an M.D. from Lorna Linda University and a Ph.D. from London University, day Adventists. Entering the door, I walk in on the Burnham served 15 years in East Africa, 14 of them, until monthly meeting of the field's pastoral staff. These 1991, as head of the denomination's Malamulo Hospital in district pastors have lean, hungry looks avouching Malawi. salaries that fall short of the Minimum Daily Require- jANUARY 1993 3 SPECTRUM ______ment of a wife and children. The 14 pastors look motion and rhythm, they sway gently and unself after 49 churches and 98 companies. During the last consciously in time to "The Old Rugged Cross." quarter, Cranmer Nkiriyehe, the field president, says The sermon comes from Revelation 2:17; "... there were 408 baptisms and U.S.$2,587 in tithe was and in the stone a new name written .... " It is collected. Remarkable for a country where many preached in English for my benefit. To many Afri households earn less than $25 a year. I try to exit cans one's name has significance, perhaps remem tactfully and allow the meeting to go on, but a bond bering a past great deed done by the family, some of brotherhood has been established, and I cannot injustice done to a parent, or great expectations for leave until we pray together. My request to the Lord the child. John promises that we, as did the Apostle that he remember the wives and children of these Paul, will receive a new name, signifying our new gaunt men evokes a resounding amen. relationship with Christ. The world church's shrinking resources threaten We close with another song from the past, sung to leave unions like Uganda, established as they were in the rich harmony so characteristic of African during the spring tides of missionary zeal, heaped on congregational singing. Between the third and forth the beach. Orphans like those up in the Taro Babies verses I wonder what the music of heaven is like. Home. But orphans from apathy, not AIDS. My friend Walter already knows: oboe con basso On Sabbath, church is held in an uncompleted continuo. building on a hill overlooking town. If you come early you can squeeze together with other worship Lagos, Nigeria ers on the few benches. Late comers bring mats to sit on the unfinished floor. Until prosperity returns, the he early morning flight from Maiduguri has set church is likely to remain unfinished. To begin the T down at Lagos in light showers, and without the divine service we sing one of the grand old Advent benefit of air controllers, who are on strike. I am ist hymns from the Taro hymnbook, translated in relieved to be off the worn and weary Boeing. After some distant year from Christ in Song, and still two weeks in the arid Lake Chad Basin in the printed, no doubt, from time to time by aging type at northeast corner of the country, the humid air of the the Africa Herald. F. E. Belden and P. P. Bliss sing coast is welcome. In Lagos I look forward to seeing on in these remote reaches of the church. old friends at the embassy and new friends at the Six secondary school students in their school ministry of health. uniforms sing the special music. Born into a world of Getting to Victoria Island from Ikeja airport is a slow trip through the high-viscosity road traffic of this 4-million strong pullulating metropolis. Small muddy roads lead off at irregular angles between countless one- and two-story buildings stuck up against one another. Some buildings affect an air of self-importance, peering over their lessers with an uppity smugness. But most look as if they had set themselves down for a moment of rest en route somewhere else, then decided to stay on. Intermit tent electricity and a more intermittent water supply suggests an aggressive neoplasm, rapidly outgrowing its vascular supply. Floating in serenity above this amalgam of vitality and squalor is the new Sheraton Hotel. Visiting businessmen in their pressed tropical worsteds will still be breakfasting in the Garden Room on croissant and fresh melon as we pass. This morning the traffic resembles the frenzied instinctual migration of some feral rodent species. Seemingly without beginning; certainly without end. The horde of Peugeots that have been flowing along in a noisy turbulence suddenly congeal into an agitated, snarling mass, stopped up by a stalled bus and a truck undergoing repairs. On the right side of Ikorodu Road, protected by high walls topped with 4 VOLUME 22, NUMBER 5 THE joURNAL oF mE AssoCIATION oF ADVEN77ST FoRuMs broken glass, rises the office of the Nigerian Union Julius is a Falasha, one of several thousand Mission of Seventh-day Adventists. The belief of its Nigerian Jews whose families have lived here for builders in the Imminent Return is proclaimed by centuries. They are an inseparable part of the stark steel window frames set in a commonplace intellectual and commercial life of this most popu concrete structure, unadorned by plaiting of hair or lace of African nations. Amidst the long-running wearing of gold. More recently, a church building strife among Nigeria's many tribes and between its has been constructed adjacent. Its exuberant archi Christians and Muslims, they have preserved their tecture with attractive angles to its roof and walls Judaism. When did the Jews come to Nigeria? Julius and imaginatively designed hardwood doors sug is not sure. Perhaps it was in the 15th century. gests that the eschatological certitude has, perhaps, Perhaps before. When smoldering conflicts with the softened. Christians in Ethiopia flared up into another pogrom, On Sabbath, an urbane congregation will pack his forebears were chosen by their co-religionists to the benches to sing historic Christian hymns from the search out a new land where their race and religion new Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal and to hear could be preserved. Even now there is a tradition traditional Adventist sermons that could have pleased among Nigerian Falashas that one child in each the early missionaries. Women will wear kilometers of family must be brought up to sacrifice himself, if colorful Nigerian print. The headdresses of matching circumstances require, so others might escape. fabric will be especially spectacular. The choir from When he was a child, Julius remembers Golda the Adventist Seminary of West Africa may be there to Meir, future prime minister of Israel, coming to his sing, with graduation gowns, mortar boards, and parents' house, asking help of his father to encour tassels doubling as choir robes. The choir director is age the return of the Nigerian Falashas to Israel. In particularly resplendent, gowned in yellow and green the end, the Falashas decided they preferred trade of a tropical iridescence. with Israel to immigration. At the outbreak of the Several hours and a few miles later we reach the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Julius left his academic decaying grandeur of the Federal Palace Hotel with position to join the Israeli army in the defense of a its spectacular prospects across Lagos harbor to the land his ancestors had left during the reign of open sea. Peddlers of magazines, hawkers of curios, Solomon. This was the high point in his life. and the inevitable bevy of bar girls ebb and flow On our last day in Lagos, with my colleagues I through the lobby while negotiations for a room pay a final visit to Julius in his office, high up in the continue. 15-story ministry headquarters with its sweeping views across the hazy afternoon sea. In the hallway ulius is director of research for the federal ministry sit a gaggle of gossiping messengers, deep into the of health. A few nights later we are at his house analysis of the day's rumors. The impending change Ior a chat. He is dressed in an embroidered kaftan, of government, riots in the north, a possible move of which flows generously over his substantial frame headquarters to Abuja and the latest announcement and serious stomach. On the walls, Nigerian art is by General Babangida gives them much to consider. interspersed with Pissarro, Corot, and Turner prints. When we arrive at his office there are already Tonight he is in fine form. We are quickly infected two meetings going on, and Julius is conducting by his spontaneous laughter and clever wit. From his spirited negotiations on the telephone, punctuated inexhaustible supply, the Great Stories roll, covering by dramatic gestures. We just dropped in to say the circuit from improbable to absurd. They tumble good-by, but no, he is thinking of a new research out, words stepping on one another as enthusiasm project, funded by Japanese money, and we have to compromises articulation. At the approaching talk about it now. But for us there is the airport punchline Julius collapses on the sofa in mirth, feet ordeal ahead. We must go. We edge toward the kicking wildly in the air, long robes flapping and door. Julius blocks our way. Have we heard the abdomen convulsing. story about the rabbi at the funeral? jANUARY 1993 5 SPEcmuM------ The Questioning hnagination A commencement address at Canadian Union College by one of Adventism's most respected educators. by Ottilie Stafford T IS A PLEASURE TO BE HERE, TO FIND FORMER of meanings. colleagues and friends here, and to be part This resilience of the mind and its ability to I of this celebration. Academic events tie venture into new and (for the individual at any the entire academic community together, and rate), unexplored territories is a central con commencements have a common uniting cern of education. memory and hope for the future that makes "The mind is an enchanting thing," said them similar, no matter what country the Marianne Moore, "like Gieseking playing institution. They give us time to pause and Scarlatti." Most of you are too young to re reflect on what events mean--moments out of member Gieseking, the great pianist, but if time to think about what time's envious and you have heard his recordings, you know calumniating effects truly are. And in this kind what Marianne Moore was getting at. The of reflective pause, to think about how we intricacy, the great delicacy and complexity of have been changed by knowledge and expe the music, performed with such skill and ease rience. that its difficulty is completely hidden, and the The educated person learns how to live performance creates the impression of perfect with such change. Learns how to welcome the freedom. unsettling of ideas and the shattering of vi The mind, she is saying, is just such a sions that knowledge and experience often performer. Trained to discipline, and yet, by produce, and still to trust in the mind's "blessed discipline, freed. rage for order" and to wait for the reshaping Every musician and athlete must know that we must labor to be beautiful, whether it is Ottilie Stafford, who received her Ph.D. in English literature Gieseking the virtuoso, or Kristi Yamaguchi, from Boston University, is director ofthe adult degree program the balletic skater. Alfred North Whitehead, in and professor ofEnglish at Atlantic Union College. She contin ues to teach in the English department, which she chairedfor the more abstruse language of the philoso 25years. pher, echoes the poet's admiration for this 6 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE jOURNAL OF lliE AssOCIA7ION OF ADVENTIST FORUMS enchanted process of the mind. You quote about education and in his book, published him in your motto: "Wherever ideas are effec shortly after he came to Harvard, 17Je Aims of tive, there is freedom." Education. "Inert ideas" he defined as "those It is particularly pleasant to be speaking to ideas that are merely received into the mind a graduating class that has the good sense to without being utilized, or tested, or thrown quote Alfred North Whitehead. We have never into fresh combinations." managed to quite catch up to Whitehead, even Basing his further statements about educa though it is now almost 75 years since he came tion on these early ones, he began exploring to this continent, changing his profession and the uses of imagination and the responsibility venturing into a world of new ideas when his education places on those who are fortunate contemporaries were planning their retire enough to obtain it. "The fortunate people are ments. those whose minds are filled with thoughts in which they forget themselves and remember e was 63 when he came to Cambridge, others." "The whole point of a university ... H Massachusetts, and Harvard University, is to bring the young under the intellectual having already had a distinguished career as a influence of a band of imaginative scholars." mathematician. But there were new ideas he The emphasis, of course, is on imaginative. wanted to explore, and dynamic changes Whitehead always credited his own teachers were the central reality of life, he believed. He and his associates for the kind of imaginative came to a department of philosophy that was scholarship they exemplified. All of us owe in its golden years, but with a group of vast debts of gratitude to those who lit our distinguished philosophers whose primary fires, to those whose minds freed our minds to concern was epistemology. Whitehead wanted be adventurous. to talk about metaphysics. His first lecture at "The human soul," he declared, "cannot Harvard left students and faculty alike shaking endure monotony; it needs to be 'fertilized' by their heads. They could not understand him. transient but vivid experiences; art meets this But his Friday night seminars in his home need." gradually drew a group of students and col "Imagination is more important than knowl leagues into a conversation that led to a series edge," Einstein said. "The tragedy of the of books by Whitehead, and to a changed world," said Whitehead, "is that those who are view of philosophy in the department he had experienced have feeble imaginations. Fools joined. act on imagination without knowledge; peel He began to talk and write about education ants act on knowledge without imagination. before he left England, basing his lectures on The task of education is to weld together a "main idea": "The students are alive, and the imagination and experience." purpose of education is to stimulate and guide Imagination frees us from imprisonments their self-development." He called this the of various kinds: it frees us from our own "one fundamental principle of education." subjective visions-locked up in the cell of Transmission of knowledge was not the role our own experiences and emotions, we are of education, but the transformation of the alienated from others, and cannot grow be mind and the lives of students and of their yond our own limitations. We react strongly to societies. our own experiences, but, lacking the imagi "Bits of knowledge can easily be learned; native ability to see them as common to the what matters is their use." His chief attack was experiences of humankind, we fall into self on "inert ideas," both in his early lectures aggrandizement or self-pity. jANUARY 1993 7 SPEcmUM------ Imagination frees us from the rigidity of a injustice as a way of understanding the roots viewthatseeswhat has been and what isas the of injustice as they grow vines that choke only possibilities. Such a view imposes con others. Nor can he understand that his own formity on the society or institutional struc sense in one kind of relationship may be ture, aiming at crushing any suggestion of similar to that of others in the same relation something different. Every imaginative act ship, even when he is in an opposite position. that is based upon knowledge overpasses the His imaginative powers have failed to free him established order in some way and in some from the imprisonment of subjectivity. degree. It is likely at first to appear at least We just had our alumni weekend at Atlantic eccentric, at worst rebellious and chaotic, but Union College. I have very mixed feelings it is truly a freeing from the established. about these events. It is wonderful to see And imagination frees us from the certainty classmates, former students, from the near and that chains of cause and result determine distant past. It is disturbing to listen to those whatever happens, that nothing we can do who have grown old viewing eve1ything dif- will make a difference. ferent in today's soci Such a failure of the ety as "signs of evil imagination leaves us I would hope the hunger and times," thinking, appar passive, lazy, and self thirstfor knowledge, the keen ently, that the past was ish parasites on a power good, but the present structure or subject to delight in the quest, will drive world is descending haphazard events. you from question to ques into chaos. My mother's The ironic utopias generation grew up in of the 20th century pic tion; that you will be neither the jazz Age, the world ture this condition. In fool nor pedant, but will so of bootlegging, speak 1984 a society has be easies, free love, and come passive and lost combine imagination and agnosticism. Today its freedom. In Brave knowledge that you will have those few who are left New World a society from her generation are has become lazy and the power to changeyour per shocked by drugs, the lost its concern about sonal worlds and the worlds ignoring of the law, and what happens. In both around you. cynicism. What hap- cases the faculty that pens to memory and has been destroyed has been the imagination. imagination as we grow old? Do we forget as we grow, and therefore cannot free ourselves e have 8 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE jouRNAL oF mE AssociATION oF ADVENT1ST FoRUMs lifetimes. And there are occasionally, of Pittsburgh, who were so fascinated with the Whiteheads, who have the courage and the life in ponds and streams, she wondered? The imagination to change their lives and start book changed Annie Dillard's life, leading her something new, even at a stage in life when to a lifelong curiosity about the natural world others are hardening into banality. Such per around her, and the sense of the mysterious sons are truly free, and at a time in life when that lies behind that world. freedom often diminishes, they are the most The adult Dillard, at the end of her Pulitzer free. It is such freedom that Whitehead urges prize-winning book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, us toward. talks about the energy that results from a The imagination feeds upon curiosity, a combination of experience and imagination. feeling that Whitehead says education should She writes: begin with: "A ferment already stirring in the mind." That ferment grows out of the instinc Thomas Merton wrote, "There is always a tempta tive, deep, human desire to know. The imagi tion to diddle around in the contemplative life, native scholar becomes comfortable with the making itsy-bitsy statues." There is always an enormous temptation to diddle around making knowledge that there are few fixed truths, and itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy that the questions themselves are that mind's bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so purpose. It is Whitehead who sees the impor apparently moral, simply to step aside from the tance of uniting the young and the old to gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, gether in the search for answers to questions. saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to walk along the rest of our days on the Such a union preserves the connection be edge of rage. I won't have it. The world is wilder tween knowledge and the zest for life. A in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more college is not concerned with merely impart extravagant and bright. We are making hay when ing knowledge, but with a sense of adventure we should be making whoopee; we are raising that the search for knowledge brings. tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus .... The gaps are the things. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so he writer Annie Dillard found such a zest dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can T for life early in her childhood. She de discover itself for the first time like a once-blind scribes sitting on the cold marble floor of a man unbound .... Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a library in Pittsburgh, as a child, while her gap in the soil, turn, and unlock a universe. This is how you spend the afternoon. Spend the mother talked to the librarians. The child afternoon. You can't take it with you. Annie had gone to a section of the library far away from the children's books, and was Annie Dillard has a more recent book out. looking with curiosity at the books in the Her first novel, and a blockbuster. In an article nature section. She lifted down from the in the Sunday New York Times, she talks about shelves the Field Guide to Ponds and Streams. the preparation for the imaginative life of the Not knowing anything at all about ponds and writer as reading. Read! Read! Read!, she says. streams, which were scarce in central Pitts It fills the mind, so that the knowledge and the burgh, she leafed through the book. What a imagination can'work together. In An Ameri shocker it was! Here was a whole area of life can Childhood, Annie Dillard talks about the she hadn't even known existed. Then she sentimental poster that hung in the Pittsburgh looked at the card in the back of the book. It library-"When you open a book, anything was filled with names, some of persons who can happen." But, she adds, "This was so. A had taken the same book out over and over. book is a bomb, a land mine you want to go Who were these people, living in the middle off ... Books swept me away." jANUARY 1993 9 SPEcmuM ______ The chief malady of the mind of man, said F.W. Maitland describes the qualities that Pascal, is a restless curiosity about things that shape the life of the imaginative scholar: he does not know and cannot understand. It is this curiosity that preserves the connection The hunger and thirst for knowledge, the keen between the knowledge and the zest for life. delight in the chase, the good humored willing If that curiosity operates, suggests Whitehead, ness to admit that the scent was false, the eager desire to get on with the work, the cheerful "a fact is no longer a burden on the memory: resolution to go back and begin again, the broad it is energizing as the poet of our dreams, and good sense, the unaffected modesty, the imper as the architect of our purposes." turbable temper, the gratitude for any little help that was given. ow do we manage to keep the inquisitive H eye and mind alive and well, throughout What a vital and dynamic list of qualities life, however long? How do we bring together none of them connected with the gathering of the imaginative ability to see visions of worlds inert facts, with the sense of being an author that do not exist, even as we study about the ity, of having found answers, or of learning one in which we live? How can students be led how to do things efficiently! Good humor, a to refine their questions so they will lead to recognition that false starts are inevitable and further and fuller questions? How can the often precede finding the right path; modesty, sense of learning as an adventure in whieh we and especially a thirst for knowledge and a move into the mysterious and the astonishing delight in the adventure of pursuing it. How be kept fresh? How can we keep alive the idea can an educational system develop these of lifelong learning carrying us to the edge of qualities in graduates? Higher education is knowledge? Can we learn to use our questions puzzled when it tries to answer this question. and our curiosity to change ourselves and our We understand how to say, here is a body societies? Can we, by escaping from the con of knowledge you must master if you are to ventional wisdom, by sensing the infinite work in this area. There will be an exam over possibilities for change, actually transform our it in April. I am not so sure that we understand worlds? how to develop a sense of adventure, the ability to ask productive and expansive ques tions, the imaginative power that true scholar ship needs. How do we develop the eager desire, the cheerful resolution, the good sense and modesty that Maitland thinks characterize the educated person? Without these qualities, we are trapped by dilemmas because we cannot imagine ways to think differently about what we know. We grow and learn and solve problems when we not only tolerate, but delight in, the knowl edge that many false starts can precede finding the right path, and that the fact that we have made false starts does not doom us to follow ing them to their disastrous ends. How can we educate our children, our young adults, our older adults, and those who 10 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE jOURNAL OF THE AssOCIATION OF ADVENTIST FORUMS are in charge of doing the educating, to The gift that the college has to offer to its understand that the curiosity and openness to students is the ability to adventure for an possibilities is a way ofliving and not an article swers, the old gift of the educated imagination of commerce? That education should produce that can see visions and dream dreams. As a kind of mind and character and not a job Whitehead says, "It is a dangerous gift, which applicant. That such an education should be has started many a conflagration. If we are too actively shaping our lives and our discourses timid as to that danger, the proper course is to during the entire course of a lifetime. Lifelong shut down our universities." But, he also says, learning then is not a plea for continuing "You must be free to think rightly and wrongly, education. It is a commitment to a life dedi and free to appreciate the variousness of the cated to the hunger and thirst for knowledge, universe." It is the gift that lends zest to life, the excitement of the chase, to the inquisitive that gives life meaning, whether we are living eye and the open mind. in the middle of happiness and good fortune, I have had for several years on the bulletin or in the middle of tragedy. board over my desk these words of Rilke: hristopher Fry, the English playwright, Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart C tells about his last encounter with his and try to love the questions themselves, like friend Charles Williams, who shouted to him locked rooms and like books that are written in a from the tailboard of a London bus, '"When very foreign tongue ... Live the questions. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live we're dead we shall have the sensation of along some distant day into the answers. having enjoyed life altogether, whatever has happened to us.' If the purpose of the education is to lead us "The distance between us hac! wiclenecl," to further and more profound questions, not says Fry, "and he leaned out into the space so to give us absolute answers, one must ask how that his voice should reach me. 'Even if we've questioning and curiosity change between the been murdered, what a pleasure to have been experience of the child, sitting on the cold capable of it!"' marble floor of the library, surprised by the Fry goes on to add, "He was not at all saying book that seems to have no relation to the that everything is for the best in this best of all world around her, and the educated mind of worlds. He was saying that there is an angle of the adult. The answer to that question should, the experience where the clark is distilled into I suppose, shape the structures of education, light; either here or hereafter, in or out of time: the methodology of teachers, the curricula of where our tragic fate finds itself with perfect the college. Surely one aim would be to keep pitch, and goes straight to the key which the inquisitive eye and mind alive and well, creation was composed in." Only a combina resilient and with a joy in the performing, like tion of experience and imagination could see Gieseking playing Scarlatti, and not to forget life whole in a way that reaches beyond the them as academic disciplines engage them. immediate and chaotic and sees its deeper But they must not just survive, they must meaning in all events, joyous and tragic. Such develop. Here Whitehead's protest against an imaginative vision brings a sense of zest to inert facts becomes important. What happens life, whatever its contents may be. while the facts are being mastered, and after "A university," Whitehead thought, "is imagi they are encountered is much more important native or it is nothing-at least nothing useful to the freeing of the mind than is the learning ... The gift the university has to offer is the old of them. one of imagination, the lighted torch which jANUARY 1993 11 SPEC1RUM------passes from hand to hand ... It is a gift which fool nor pedant, but will so combine imagina all must pray for their country who desire for tion and knowledge that you will have the it an abiding greatness." power to change your personal worlds and I would hope for those graduating today, as the worlds around you. I would hope for all of us rejoicing in the Because, as the great questioner Hamlet event, that your lives will be filled with the asks: excitement of curiosity, the hunger and thirst What is a man [or a woman) for knowledge, the keen delight in the quest, If his chief good and market of his time that you will be driven from question to Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. question as you learn and find answers, that Sure, He that made us with such a large dis the mysterious and the inexplicable will al course, Looking before and after, gave us not ways be there, that you will be freed from the [Imagination) and godlike reason familiar and the trite, that you will be neither To fust in us unused. 12 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE joURNAL oF mE AssociATION oF ADVENT7ST FoRuMs The Cynic and The Church A young theologian explains why it isn't necessarily sacrilegious to feel like laughing. by Gary Chartier ANY PEOPLE COULD ECHO THE WORDS OF cliche patterns of thought, and legalism, and PR pastor and theologian William faces, and materialism, and cliquish sociability. Willimon: "For me, the real scandal And we have sensed this flesh pervade our very M selves, and well up within us-from we know of the ordained ministry-, the ultimate stum not where-as a great current of darkness .... bling block, the thing I avoid and fear most, is We wallow in the flesh of Adventism-bored, the Church.... My problem ... is that I am frustrated, left-wingers or stragglers.2 yoked to the Church." Willimon observes that like "many today, I love Jesus. I want to serve The "scandal" of the church evokes a cer him. But he married beneath his station. "1 And tain kind of cynicism. Indeed, cynicism about numerous Adventists could resonate with the church follows naturally from Christian Jonathan Butler when he says that, faith. Cynicism, in and of itself, can never be judged to be necessarily inappropriate, even as the good Christian Paul had a "wretched from within the community of faith. In short, body" to contend with every day, so the Advent I want to justify the cynic to the church and the ist church has its wretched body. As a people church to the cynic. I believe cynicism about Adventists mean as much as the Christian Paul the church is a part of fidelity to the church. meant in his great love-letters and general epistles. By "cynicism," I mean an attitude of dry-ly But as a people we also are weighed down with a body of death which we must fight daily. It humorous suspicion about human activities pervades us with its languor, and discontent, and especially motivations. While more extreme provincial grasp of mankind and systems, and accounts of the cynic's perspective may be offered, this one seems to me to capture the Gary Chartier, a graduate ofLa Sierra University, received his understanding of cynicism presupposed in doctorate from Cambridge University. He is the news editor of ordinary- discourse. The cynic doubts that Spectrum. Another version of this essay was presented at the October 1990AmershamRetreatin England and appeared in things are as they should be. He or she also Opinion, published by the Amersham Retreats. doubts that this is caused solely by poor jANUARY 1993 13 SPEcmUM------information or inadequate coordination; pure while in no way condoning their behavior, human cussedness is at least partly respon Paul judges the Corinthian believers to be sible. The cynic believes in "original sin." "infants in Christ," not ready for "solid food," and living in accordance with dictates of the easured suspicion of the church is ap "lower nature" (1 Corinthians 3:1-4). M propriate, first of all, because of the "in The church cannot glory in this shame; the between" character of Christian existence. inherent sinfulness of its members can be no The identity of the church and its members is cause for gratitude. But this shame must clear. That identity is shaped by God's self-gift render incredible any corporate or individual in Jesus of Nazareth; by the hope inspired by claims to perfection. Consequently, Christians Jesus' resurrection, by the promise of the always appropriately remain suspicious of world's ultimate salvation and restoration in churchly pretensions to ultimacy. Jesus' parousia; and by the presence of the The fact that the church is a corporate entity Holy Spirit in the church. also renders it worthy of suspicion. For corpo- But the Christian is rate structures give called to "become what ever-fresh opportuni he or she is." While I believe that cynics have ties to sinful people to identity of the Chris cloak themselves and tian as a child of God cause to remain hopeful. I their actions in a mantle may be clear, his or her remain convinced that indi of respectability. Some experience and behav involved directly in the ior often fails. Thus, vidual Adventists possess the church structure are Paul distances himself capacity to continue their drawn to the argument from enthusiasts who that the Spirit, who suppose that the a lover's quarrels" with the makes Christ's lordship Christian's new life church) and that collective in the church, ensures eliminates the ambigu its infallibility. If one ities inherent in sinful Adventism possesses the re then judges oneself to existence: "I do not sources to profitfrom its cyni be "legislating for claim that I have al God,"4 the temptation ready succeeded or cal members. to make absolute what have already become ever one decides be- perfect. I keep going on to try to win the prize comes well-nigh irresistible. for which Christ Jesus has already won me to Of course, ecclesiastical history demon himself. Of course, brothers, I really do not strates that the universal Christian church has think that I have already won it; the one thing strayed, wandered, and been inconsistent. I do, however, is to forget what is behind me God is always at work in the church to bring and do my best to reach what is ahead" good out of its evil or ineptitude, but God does (Philippians 3:12, 13, TEV).3 not always overrule the church's mistakes. Paul makes the same point in a more It would seem that if one has exactly the general way in his Epistle to the Galatians: the same informational input as someone else, but sinful nature "sets its desires against the Spirit, relies on divine power, one's judgment re while the Spirit fights against it. They are in garding an issue of moral or spiritual signifi conflict with one another so that what you will cance ought to be better. to do you cannot do" (5:16-18, NEB). And, In fact, reliance on God does not make 14 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE jouRNAL OF THE AssociATioN oF ADVEN71ST FoRuMs much of a difference in coming to a right Suspicion of the church is justified precisely decision. There are at least five reasons why. because of the gospel the church preaches. 1. An issue may be so circumscribed that it The church does not preach belief in unwa is of a purely organizational or logistical vering human goodness. The gospel the church character. In such a case, moral and spiritual presents highlights not only human possibility sensitivity cannot make one's judgment better but human ambiguity, not only the goodness or worse. wrought by the Spirit's work but the evil 2. Other persons with explicit faith in Christ against which the Spirit contends. may-indeed, probably will-have differing opinions about an object of dispute, and hile suspicion and cynicism are justi invoking one's faith as the source of the W fied, they are also dangerous. First, we legitimacy of one's opinion can carry little or cannot afford to be suspicious of the Lord of no weight in such situations. the church. Of course, the prophetic word 3. God's grace is, of course, operative out informs us that it is God who says "come now, side the visible church, and thus to assert the and let us reason together." Central to Advent superiority of one's opinion over that of some ist talk about the "Great Controversy" is the one else solely or exclusively because one is a assumption that God is willing to be evaluated Christian is to ignore the possibility that the by the created universe. Even if we judge that person with whom one is disputing is also the God whose grace is proclaimed by the being transformed in judgment and will by church is trustworthy, we may still find our God's Spirit. selves questioning within the community of 4. Whatever one's disposition, one's analy faith, like job and the psalmists. sis of the relevant data is a function of one's Williams argues that our "obedience to God human history and social locus. requires us to fight Him. And when we fail in 5. Finally, one is never in a position to that most radical and paradoxical kind of know with any degree of accuracy either the obedience people smell death in our churches state of one's own spiritual maturity or the and stay away .... ""Whatever God wants in state of anyone else's. our relationship with Him," Williams main Humans are not only evil, they are also tains, "it certainly isn't respectability. I imagine limited. No humans can act on completely that the chur~h in Laodicea treated God in the adequate knowledge. No human activity can most respectable way. The divine reply to this be carried on with perfect effectiveness. Hu treatment is invective fitting for youth at its mans do not possess unlimited power or most rebellious: Til spit you out."'6 knowledge and so, even under the best of The temptation to be avoided here is one circumstances, their actions and decisions can common to all real and would-be intellectuals: be faulty. to cultivate tension as a sign of sophistication Because, then, the church has its redeemed rather than accepting it as a sign of fallen and identity on the one hand and the imperious finite humanity. To be sure, Christian life is demands of the Old Adam on the other, we unlikely ever to be free of doubt. George have every right to be suspicious of any MacDonald wrote, "The man that feareth, ecclesiastical claim to finality.5 We can be Lord, to doubt, I In that fear doubteth thee."7 suspicious of the church's belief, the church's But we must not compel ourselves to cherish practice, the motives of the church's members cynicism about God, not because God is so (especially ourselves) because the church is a insecure that human suspicion na rurally evokes human community. divine wrath, but because to be cynical about jANUARY 1993 15 SPEcmuM------ God is to alienate oneself from the loving It is worth noting the distinction between source of one's being.s experiencing appropriate suspicion and voic Second, cynicism is dangerous because we ing it. Private wrongs deserve private airing, cannot exempt ourselves. The others regard while public wrongs demand public attention. ing whom we are cynical face challenges not One's suspicion is most appropriately ex dissimilar from our own. Our loyalties are pressed and directed at those in whom one often divided, our commitment to God and trusts. After all, they are the most likely to others wavers, our experience is pervaded by return the favor. It is in the company of one's ambiguity. friends that self-criticism comes most readily. Cynicism cannot be allowed to break down A community of trust and honesty may serve relationships among people. Because we must as a paradigm for the church, understood as a be suspicious of ourselves, we must be aware community of both loyalty and "suspicion"- that our own suspicion of others is itself of others and, even more, of ourselves. questionable. Thus it seems to me that Butler is absolutely Perhaps it is easier to maintain appropriate correct when, in the context of Adventist distance when one voices suspicions of the collegiate life, he writes that we corporate (congregational, denominational, or universal) church. Church structures inten get off the subject when we place all our gripes sify the inherently problematic character of on the head of a scapegoat ... , [assuming that) if we can just rid ourselves of these goats human decisions, and have wide-ranging con everything will be alright. We are off the subject sequences for people. One can articulate when it is always "their fault," because even if we suspicion, cynicism, and concern about struc could drive out all these scapegoats from the tures in a way that does not bring shame and camp, we would still be here (I would still be disrepute to particular individuals. here), and now we're getting back on the subject. Because after I have exposed all the evils, and smashed all the idols, and burned all the tyrants in effigy, the real enemy still lurks. For the enemy is never the scapegoat we can send out of camp, the problem is never simply "their fault" (if we understand fully the problem), for it is part of me. The enemy must be met within me. I can gripe all I want through the day about the faculty, or the Commons, or the Dean's Council, but it's really only chit-chat until I turn out the lights and wait in the silence for sleep to take me.9 Third, cynicism is very dangerous when it is directed at the point of the church: the trust and love and worship and service of God. What goes on "in church" (i.e., in congrega tional life) and "in the church" (i.e., in the context of church and supra-church organiza tion) may often fall short of the divine ideal, and deserves to be treated with a healthy skepticism. But responsible suspicion regard ing the church is always the suspicion of a 16 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE jOURNAL oF THE AssociATION oF ADVENTIST FoRuMs participant, not a bystander. The church is to call down divine judgment on the church, worth getting mad about, but only if the humor will seem entirely inappropriate. Is church makes a difference in our life, if one sues of consequence are at stake, and the fate has some reason to care about it. of the church is, they will tell us, no laughing We must have community if we are to matter. grow, if we are to be the persons God intends us to be. Spirituality is not nurtured in a t least two responses come to mind. First, vacuum; nor are the various worthwhile A in Scripture, the narratives that shape our endeavors the church sponsors likely to be moral identities as Christians, 12 combine, with successfully managed by isolated individu little difficulty, humor and seriousness about als. To experience and respond to the world matters of ultimate concern. Elijah mocks the most adequately, we require the support of a prophets of Baal with the suggestion that their community which helps to shape our inter deity has not bothered to answer their peti pretations of and responses to reality by a tion; instead, he is relieving himself. jesus variety of the practices it inculcates, the employs striking metaphors and stories in language and images it employs, the stories tended to elicit not only reflection but laughter it remembers and the self-discipline it fosters. from his hearers. Paul employs sarcasm to In other words, we need religious communi good effect in his attempts to shame and woo ties.lO the Corinthian believers back into fellowship We do not start in a vacuum. One begins with himself (e.g., 1 Corinthians 4:8). If the one's religious reflection with a heritage one moral witness of Scripture is to be taken cannot simply ignore. Karl Rahner, the great seriously, then human foibles cannot be taken German theologian, is surely correct when he too seriously. writes: The second defense of humor is more philosophical. One key ingredient in humor is A man cannot do away with his parents once he the sense of incongruity. And a sense of is born. The very fact that we are and that we incongruity should be very, very evident when continue to exist assures us of the fact that they continue ceaselessly to be our parents. Hence ever religious issues are discussed by finite we cannot be Christians . . . by quitting the creatures. church which has been, and remains, once and The reality about which we speak when for all the mother of this Christian existence of we speak religiously so far exceeds our ours. Otherwise all that we have, ultimately language and our imagery that we speak only speaking, is an abstract God and an abstract Christ who continues to exist merely as the because we have no alternative. The issues projection of our own subjectivity. Community is are important ones, and they must be ad thus crucial for personal religious experience.!! dressed with whatever clarity of thought and courage of will we can bring to bear. But our Though church communities are flawed, they representations of ultimate reality are sepa have the capacity to dramatically affect our rated from ultimate reality itself by infinite lives in positive ways. decision. Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking I have observed that the cynic's suspicion is about ultimate reality at all. The tension qualified by his or her humor. And this refer obtains not only when we speak, but when ence to humor will be enough, as far as some we do Christianly. That is why H. A. Williams people are concerned, to legitimate the dis can write, "Thank God when you can take a franchisement of the cynic. To the grimly delighted pleasure in the comic spectacle serious pundits who take it upon themselves which is yourself, especially if it is yourself jANUARY 1993 17 SPEC1RUM------devoutly at prayer."13 Why then does the church remain alive as a The recognition of this gap can inspire community of faith? Not because there is no appropriate irony and cynicism about the threat to life, no fatal illness, within it. But church. There is something more than faintly because God keeps it alive, despite all infirmities and weaknesses, and constantly endows it with absurd about our too-somber religious perfor a new continuity .... mance and discourse. Laughter is the only appropriate response.14 Why does the church remain in grace? Not Is there a place, then, for cynics in the because it is itself steadfast and faithful. But church? Perhaps not for cynics whose own self because, despite all sin and guilt, God does not dismiss it from his favor and grace and constantly righteousness prevents them from being cyni grants it a new indestructibility .... cal about themselves. Perhaps not for cynics who believe that ultimate reality itself deserves Why does the church remain in truth? Not to be scorned. Perhaps not for cynics who because there is in it no wavering or doubting, no refuse to opt for the trust, love, worship, and deviation or going astray. But because God maintains it in truth, despite its doubts, misunder service of God-in-Christ on the basis that their standings, and errors. IS categories of understanding are provisional. Certainly, however, there is room for wor shipful, self-critical, and communally respon I believe that cynics have cause to remain sible cynics. Christians are impelled to such hopeful. Not everyone, perhaps, can be a cynicism by the Christian gospel itself. And cynic in the church. Not every church, per since their faith is always in the church's Lord, haps, can tolerate cynics. But I remain con and not in the church itself, their faith can vinced that individual Adventists possess the continue despite battles with their community capacity to continue their "lover's quarrels" of faith. Hans Kung articulates this ambivalent with the church, and that collective Adventism understanding of the church with particular possess the resources to profit from its cynical clarity and grace: members. ------~~~-~-----~~NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. William H. Willimon, What'sRightWiththeChurch be their admiration of His character" (Ellen G. White, (San Francisco: Harper, 1985) p. 131. Tbe Great Controversy [Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific 2. Jonathan Butler, "Letters to Phillip," La Sierra Press, 1911], pp. 677, 678). College Criterion, 38:4 (October 21, 1966), p. 2. 6. H. A Williams, Tensions: Necessary Conflicts in 3. Cp. Ellen G. White, Tbe Acts ofthe Apostles (Moun Life and Love (London: Beazley, 1976), pp. 30, 31. tain View, Calif.: Pacific Press, 1911), pp. 559-565. 7. Qtd. in Williams, p. 48. 4. To use a de-contextualized Ellen White expression 8. But cp. Williams, who argues that temporary employed in the introduction to the new General conflict with God can ultimately be productive of Conference Rules ofProcedure. greater intimacy with God: "When we find ourselves 5. Thus, Ellen White's image of the life to come sneering at God-associated things we may be pretty includes a vision of progressive understanding: "There, certain that the God-associated things are only a cover immortal minds will contemplate with never-failing for God Himself. We often find that too shocking an delight the wonders of creative power, the mysteries of admission to make to ourselves-are we sneering at redeeming love .... Every faculty will be developed, Absolute Goodness? Or if not too shocking, then too every capacity increased.... And the years of eternity, absurd. We might as well sneer at the Alps. Yet in fact as they roll, will bring richer and still more glorious that is precisely what we are doing, not because we are revelations of God and of Christ. As knowledge is doomed and damned and totally depraved, but be progressive, so will love, reverence, and happiness cause here on earth our sneering and ridicule is a increase. The more men learn of God, the greater will necessary stage or element in our love for the Creator, 18 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE jOURNAL oF THE AssoCIATlON OF ADVEN77ST FoRuMs who is leading us towards that independence of Him by God." What LeGuin means I am not sure, but it seems means of which alone we can finally give ourselves to me that her statement could be interpreted as totally to Him. The acceptance of our inevitable ambi implying that God does not take the divine majesty too guity towards God-with all the tensions, conflicts and seriously, that God is not easily offended. Were it guilt-feelings it involves-is part of that cross through validated, this affirmation could serve both as a legiti which alone we can enter into fullness of life" (p. 34). mation of comic discourse about the church and as a While I find this plausible, I think we must avoid the model for our own self-analysis. temptation to idealize such conflict and to use the truth Suppose God really does not take Godself seri that it will sometimes come as an excuse for self ously; would this legitimate simply any response to indulgence and irresponsibility. It is important to distin the divine reality? I think not. There is a difference guish here between our genuine (and not merely clever between God, the ultimate reality, who knows Godself and trendy) doubts about the reality and goodness of to be self-giving love, denying with amusement the God and our response to a God whose love we perceive thought that ultimate reality should be taken as but whom we wish, perhaps, to ridicule because we ultimate for its own sake and our refusal to recognize find that love too demanding. our own rootedness in the being of God. While our 9. Jonathan Butler, "Letters to Phillip," La Sierra concepts of God are always provisional, God remains College Criterion, 38:10 (January 20, 1967), p. 2. our sure foundation-morally, epistemically, and 10. The dependence of the account of religion ontologically. God is ultimate in a way that no finite offered here upon that of George Lindbeck, The reality is, and it is precisely God's ultimacy that renders Nature ofDoctrine: Religion and Theology in a Post finite claims to ultimacy comic. Further, to make light LiberalEra(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984) will be of God is not to make light simply of one other obvious. I am, in fact, more appreciative of the work member of reality; it is to make light of the character of Lindbeck's student, William C. Placher, whose of reality itself. Our talk about that reality must be Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Plural treated with humor, but our judgments relative to the istic Conversation (Atlanta: Westminster/John Knox, nature of reality itself-is it marked by mutuality or 1989) offers an account of "post-liberal" theology less competition, is it self-sufficient or dependent-are open to relativist or dogmatic misuse than Lindbeck's. vital. There is always a tension here between our own And, in company with Terence Tilley, I advocate a limitations and the significance of the decisions we "dirty intertextuality" in contrast to the "pure must make despite those limitations. intratextualism" Lindbeck, Kenneth Surin, and others It is perhaps in this context that discussions of seem to prefer. Nicholas Lash addresses these issues flippant use of the word "God" belong. God does not incisively in his recent book Easter in Ordinary: take God seriously enough to be offended by such Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge usage. But perhaps we will fail to treat God worship of God (Charlottesville, Va.: Univ. Press of Virginia, fully if the only label we have for God is bandied about 1988). without much thought. Again, we must prevent our 11. Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations 12: Con cynicism about our own limitations from encouraging frontations 2, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, a thoroughgoing cynicism about reality as such. And 1974), p. 154. since our only access to reality as such is by means of 12. See Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: our words and concept'>, we must make use of them A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. even as we affirm their provisionality. of Notre Dame Press, 1983). 15. Hans Kung, The Church-Maintained in Trnth: 13. Williams, p. 113. A Theological Meditation, trans. Edward Quinn (New 14. Science fiction and fantasy novelist Ursula York: Random House, 1982), p. 16, and cp. Rahner, pp. LeGuin remarks somewhere that "God is only playing 159, 160. jANUARY 1993 19 SPEcmuM------ r;,,.' PE·RIL ,, rJ,. REP.UBU<."' ' The Adventist denunciation of the Spanish-American War (1898) demonstrates that a lively apocalyptic hope can encourage public witness against war and oppression. by Doug Morgan ''IT HAS BEEN A SPLENDID LITTLE WAR," WROTE possible movement of the Spanish squadron. John Hay, United States ambassador The action positioned U.S. forces for the most to England in a letter to the war's best decisive victory of the Spanish-American War, known hero, Theodore Roosevelt. 1 In Hay's when Dewey crushed the Spanish fleet in assessment, America's little war with Spain in Manila Bay in a battle described by one 1898 was "splendid" for three reasons. First, it historian as "a military execution rather than a was "begun with highest motives." Because of real contest."2 Spain's intransigence against Cuban indepen Finally, said Hay, the war was "favored by dence and the repeated atrocities of its colo that fortune which loves the brave." Begun in nial rule, the United States could enter the war April of 1898, it was all over by August, with with the high moral purpose of liberating a only 281 American combat deaths (though grievously oppressed people. tropical diseases took the lives of around Further, the war was "carried on with 2,500).3 magnificent intelligence and spirit." Theodore The Spanish-American War and its after Roosevelt, of course, epitomized that spirit, math marked the emergence of the U.S. as a not only in leading his Rough Riders in the world power, an empire with worldwide com assault on San Juan Hill, but also in the pre mitments and even outright possessions. This emptive action he'd taken as assistant secre emergence sparked a debate about the nation's tary of the Navy, prior to the outbreak of the character and policies in which Seventh-clay war, in ordering the U.S. Pacific fleet under Adventists were deeply involved. The Advent George Dewey in the Philippines to block ist response to the government's action during this epoch adds clarity to the complex picture Doug Morgan, a graduate ofUnion College, has taught in the of the church's interaction with the American history department of Southern College, and is currently completing a doctorate in American religious history at the Republic in the 19th century. The Adventist University of Chicago. response to the Spanish-American War and 20 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE jouRNAL oF THE AssociA770N oF ADVENTIST FoRuMs related developments suggests, I contend, that life," seemed more vital and progressive to the the apocalyptic view ofhistory which Adventists majority of Americans. For Roosevelt, "right held drove them to bear a witness that in eous war" was a necessary expression of those volved them in the public affairs of the Repub "virile qualities" which Americans must have if lic. the nation was "to play a great part in the At the outset of the war, Congress had world." He had no patience with "those who signalled America's apparently honorable in make a pretense of humanitarianism to hide tentions by passing a resolution guaranteeing and cover their timidity, and who cant about Cuba's self-determination. But during the 'liberty' and the 'consent of the governed,' in course of the war, the U.S. acquired numerous order to excuse themselves for their unwilling island territories, including Guam, Puerto Rico, ness to play the part of men. "6 and most controversial of all, the Philippines. According to Roosevelt, President McKinley, The Philippine independence forces under because of his initial restraint regarding the Emilio Aguinaldo had initially welcomed the dispute with Spain, had "no more backbone Americans as liberators. But the Americans than a chocolate eclair."7 However, public stayed after driving the Spanish out, and sentiment, inflamed by sensationalized press ignored the independent government reports of Spanish atrocities in Cuba and the Aguinaldo tried to establish. In February of tragic explosion on the U.S. battleship Maine 1899, the Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris, that killed 262 men, finally overcame the formally annexing the Philippines. This action President's reluctance and swept the nation led to a two-year war against Aguinaldo's into war. nationalists, in which American troops re How, then, did Adventists respond to this sorted to various forms of torture, such as the overwhelmingly popular "splendid little war" "water cure."4 and its aftermath? Two levels of moral dis A diverse coalition of voices responded to course may be seen in that response. The first the U.S. action with alarm, charging the nation had to do with what was right for Christians. with imperialism. Though a minority, the anti The second had to do with the church's imperialists included many prominent Ameri witness to the nation.s cans, including ex-Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland, progressive reformer jane Addams, labor leader Samuel Confronting the Church Militant Gompers, industrialist Andrew Carnegie, writer Mark Twain, philosopher William James, and he war fervor that had galvanized the a host of lesser-known educators and reform T nation prompted striking expressions of ers. Though motivated by a variety of con pacifist sentiment from Adventist leaders. In a cerns--diplomatic, constitutional, political, and sermon preached in the Battle Creek Taber economic-the anti-imperialists' major theme nacle about the same time the United States was that in becoming an empire and denying entered the war, General Conference Presi those conquered the rights and liberties of dent George A. Irwin declared, "We have no Americans, the nation was betraying the ideals business whatever to become aroused and on which it was founded and which made it stirred by the spirit [of war] that is abroad in the unique, a beacon of democracy to the world.5 land." He cited several passages from the The anti-imperialists, however, did not pre Sermon on the Mount, declaring that these vail. The bold, expansionist spirit of Teddy scriptures "show what I believe is the position Roosevelt and what he called "the strenuous of the Christian in this conflict, and what are jANUARY 1993 21 SPEcmvM ______the teachings of our Lord and Master in regard obligation." 12 A Review and Herald editorialist to war and the spirit of what comes with war. "9 lamented the "spirit of militarism" being fos A. T. jones, co-editor of the Review and tered "right within the bosom of the church," Herald, maintained that "Christian love de noting the companies of "Christian cadets" mands that its possessor shall not make war at training for action under the auspices of all. 'Put up again thy sword into his place,' is America's churches, the prayer services for the the word of the Author of Christianity, the "success of the American arms" at a leading embodiment of Christian love."10 Ever in Protestant church in New York City, and the clined to state issues in the most stark of terms, irony of "American Catholics ... praying for the former army sergeant declared that "Chris the extermination of Spanish Catholics."13 tianity is one thing; war is another, and far President McKinley gave classic expres different thing. Christians are one sort of sion to the justification of force as a means for people; warriors are another and different sort advancing the gospel when he explained to of people."ll a group of Methodist clergymen visiting the Such anti-war statements were not ex White House in 1899 how he had arrived at pressly for the purpose of advancing a particu this decision to annex the Philippines. The lar national foreign policy, but rather to make president told the ministers that he had been clear the moral stance of Christians as a people deeply troubled about what to do with the distinct from the world. In proclaiming these Philippines after Spain had been defeated, views, Adventists were challenging influential and that he had prayed about the problem. American Christians who pronounced bless Finally, the answer came to him that it would ings upon the war and American territorial be "cowardly and dishonorable" to give them expansion because of its benefits to the cause back to Spain and "bad business" to turn of Christianizing and civilizing the globe. them over to rival nations; moreover, the According to Sydney Ahlstrom, "the churches Filipinos were "unfit for self-government." reflected the American consensus" in favor of Thus, the war, "and then proceeded in the limited time available to convert the war into a cru there was nothing left to do but to take them all sade to rationalize imperialism as a missionary [the islands), and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department (our map-maker), and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States [pointing to a large map on the wall of his office), and there they are, and there they will stay while I am President!14 Challenging the widespread acceptance of this linkage between Christian mission and national aggression, Adventist writers pointed to the glaring inconsistencies of associating the cross of Christ with military conquest. Percy T. Magan, then professor of Bible and history at Battle Creek College, pointed to 22 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE jouRNAL oF THE AssoCIATION OF ADVEN7IST FoRuMs Jesus' repeated refusal of the temptation to use ing it from the war policy. They had a mission force to aid his mission, and argued that it to the world that included bearing a witness to would far better serve the cause of Christianity the nation. Week after week, the editorial "for a few missionaries to lose their lives at the sections of the Review and the American hands of heathen savages than for heathen Sentinel decried American imperialism as "na savages to lose their lives at the hands ofthose tional apostasy." The Sentinel described the calling themselves Christians." If the "doctrine shot fired in Manila beginning the war with the of the Bible in one hand and the shotgun in the Filipinos as a reversal of the shot fired at other is a good one for the Philippine Islands, Lexington in 1775, for it united Americans how long," he wondered, "will it be ere it is once again with "imperial government"-this considered a good one for every State in the time their own.18 Union?"15 Perhaps the most significant piece of Ad After the first year of America's war against ventist anti-imperialist literature was a book the Philippine independence forces, Andrew by Percy Magan entitled Tbe Peril of the Carnegie sarcastically congratulated Whitelaw Republic, rushed into print in 1899. Published Reid, a prominent expansionist, for his suc by the non-Adventist evangelical publisher cess in advancing the cause of "civilizing" the Fleming H. Revell, the book was a prophetic Filipinos: "About 8,000 of them have been call to the nation to realize the seriousness of completely civilized and sent to Heaven. I its peril and reform before it was too late. hope you like it."16 In a similar vein, the In contrast to Jones, who was suspicious of American Sentinel (predecessor to Liberty), American intentions from the outset of the then edited by Uriah Smith's son Leon, ob intervention in Cuba, Magan agreed with most served that in fulfilling the "high moral obliga Americans that the war to liberate Cuba was tion" it had assumed in the Philippines, the indeed a "'war for humanity's sake,"' not a war United States was "slaughtering the wretched of conquest, as the United States had allowed Filipinos by hundreds and by thousands." The the Cubans independence.19 jones, however, Sentinel declared that "every Christian in kept a critical eye on the way in which America ought to raise his voice in protest" American promises concerning Cuba were against this action, which the "sentiment of the being fulfilled. He picked up on an unguarded Christian church ought never to support (as it statement by a U.S. admiral regarding the U.S. now does) ... "17 intention to "rule" Cuba, and caustically ob Thus, the Spanish-American conflict and served: America's rise to imperial power prompted Adventists, despite prevailing public opinion That illustrates how "the people of Cuba are, and to the contrary, to declare their conviction that of right ought to be, free and independent," as declared by the American Congress, April, 1898. for the Christian church, faithfulness to Christ and his kingdom entailed rejection of war and Hurrah for free Cuba! Cuba fibre forever!20 the militaristic spirit. Despite this apparent disagreement, Jones and Magan were essentially agreed in the Denouncing the American analysis, and certainly that the annexation of Empire the Philippines constituted "national apos tasy." With the takeover of the islands, said ut Adventists were not content simply to Magan, the war begun for "humanity's sake" B strive for the church's purity by distanc- had "been turned from its high and holy jANUARY 1993 23 SPEcmuM------purpose." By imposing rule on the Philippines In their warnings about the government's without the consent of the governed, America course, Adventists were not asking the repub had utterly repudiated the great principles of lic to be specifically Christian. Civil govern the Declaration of Independence and the ment, ordained by God to use force in the Constitution. restraint of evil, could not be expected to act in full accordance with Christian principles. Her character as a nation, first formulated in the But the republic could be expected to adhere war of the Revolution, regenerated and to its own expressed ideals, and those of the reconsecrated in the war of the Rebellion, has U.S. were the best reflection of divine ideals to been ruthlessly sacrificed to colonial greed and rapacious lust. Awake! 0 Fathers of the Republic, be found in any earthly government. 27 In the ere it is too late, and call back your posterity, ere controversy at the turn of the century, they stray into paths from which there is no Adventists, motivated by their particular faith retuming!21 based concerns, raised their voices in public debate, calling on the republic to square its Adventists argued that the American rule practice with its principles. over the Philippines was based on the same principle invoked to justify slavery. 22 Since slavery, in the words of Lincoln, was an "open Challenging the Protestant war with the very fundamental principles of World View civil liberty," why, asked A. T. jones, "should not this which does the same things in our day hy were these Adventists, these avow be hated by every lover of liberty now?"23 W edly apolitical apocalypticists, spend It was not simply the conquest of territory ing so much time and energy on such political to which Adventists objected, it was an entire issues? Did they expect or even want the pattern of militarism which they believed nation to reform, or were they merely on the would return America to "old world" despo lookout for signs of the end? tism, and thus deprive the world of its "last, Discussion of such questions must begin best hope." Rather than bringing the vitality with jonathan Butler's ground-breaking analy that Theodore Roosevelt promised, Magan, sis of Adventism's relationship with the Ameri relying on the work of Carl Schurz, a leading can public order in the 19th century. 28 Butler anti-imperialist voice, 24 argued that military argued that at the time of the denomination's build-up and democracy were antithetical. founding in the Civil War era, Seventh-day Adventists engaged in "political apocalyp Military modes of thinking and methods of action tic"--that is, a rhetorical radicalism that iden unfit men for the duties incumbent on the tified America as one of Revelation's beasts citizens of a free republic. The rise of a large, permanent armed force in a republic always because of slavery, but did not issue in action portends the downfall and ruin of free govem for change, as expectation of an imminent ment.25 Second Advent was still powerful. Adventism's public stance then developed With its move toward imperialism and into what Butler called "political prophetic" in militarism, the United States was returning to the latter quarter of the 19th century. This style the monarchial doctrines of Europe, abandon was characterized by social action on certain ing the "new order of things" that it had issues: human rights, prohibition, and hu inaugurated. And this "national ruin" por manitarian ministry in large cities. By such tended "the ruin of the world. "26 action Adventists began to work for a tempo- 24 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THEjouRNAL oF mE AssociA770N oF ADVEN77ST FoRuMs rary delay of the final collapse of society in argued, represented the principles of Protes order that the church's mission might be tantism, or religious liberty, and republicanism, carried forth. They were working, as Butler or civil liberty. The beast's dragon voice repre phrased it, "to delay the end in order to preach sented the betrayal of those principles. In the that the end was soon." 1850s and 1860s, slavery constituted the be ·Butler did not discuss the Adventist critique trayal of republicanism, while creedalism and of American imperialism, but it appears to fit an inclination toward Sunday laws constituted well into his schema. Though Adventists be the betrayal of Protestantism.30 lieved that republican principles ultimately would fail in America, they can be seen here ith the abolition of slavery and the as calling the nation to correct its course for the W increased prominence of movements time being. Yet questions remain about the for Sunday laws to bulwark a "Christian ongoing function of apocalyptic hope in rela America," Adventists after the Civil War fo tion to the Adventist political outlook. It would cused their interpretations of the prophecy be misleading to conceive of Adventism as about the two-horned beast almost exclu gradually shedding its apocalypticism. Indeed, sively on Protestant movements to legislate the very era we are examining saw an increase Sunday observance. "For several years," Jones in intensity of apocalyptic expectation in the observed in 1899, "we said much, never half Adventist community. Did this reheated enough, about the apostasy of the nation from apocalypticism simply co-exist in tension with the fundamental principle of Protestantism. concern for the fate of the republic or, as But very little has been said about the apostasy Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart have re of the nation from its fundamental principle of cently argued in connection with Adventist republicanism." denunciations of slavery, were Adventists pri However, America's imperialist adventure marily motivated by a desire to convince was making the latter "apostasy" dramatically people that the end was soon, their political obvious: "now, JUST NOW, the fact pointed criticism functioning mainly "as a stick with out in that truth is being worked out before the which to beat the American beast,"29 rather eyes of all people."31 The action in the PhiliiF than constituting evidence of genuine public pines, said Magan, constituted an abandon engagement? ment of the essence of republicanism and a The commentary of Seventh-day Adventists turn to "monarchical ideas" just as religious on national affairs was not merely fodder for legislation marked Protestantism's turn to the evangelistic sermonizing. Rather, the apoca principles of Roman Catholicism.32 lyptic impulse shaped and energized a par For these Adventist interpreters, America's ticular form of public witness, which reflected embrace of imperialism at the turn of the a passionate commitment to justice, peace, century was the culmination of a series of and human rights. events beginning in the late 1880s that ap A matrix of specific apocalyptic interpreta peared to confirm both the prophecy of Rev tions clearly shaped the Adventist perspective elation 13 and Ellen White's commentary on on America's rise to empire. The most impor that prophecy. Jones repeatedly referred to tant biblical passage was, of course, Revelation Mrs. White's 1885 statement that the United 13. Since 1851, Adventists had seen in the "two States would "repudiate every principle of its horned" beast of Revelation 13:11-17 a divine Constitution as a Protestant and republican forecast of the career of the American republic. government."33 The repudiation of Protestant The two lamblike horns of this beast, Adventists ism had taken place in 1892 with the Supreme jANUARY 1993 25 SPECT.RUM ______ Court's decision in the case of Church ofHoly remaining before the Second Advent with Trinityvs. United States, in which America was such significance that Adventists felt im described as a "Christian nation," followed by pelled to circulate petitions, appear at con congressional legislation making federal fund gressional hearings, publish magazines, and ing for the Chicago World's Fair contingent on work the lecture circuit in behalf of their the fair's being closed on Sundays. For Jones, conception of human rights and the public these actions were the formation of the "image good. Such action, Jones argued, was not to the papal beast" foretold in Revelation 13. "meddling in politics" any more than was the Moreover, the 1888 message of righteousness public witness of Daniel in Babylon or the by faith had launched the "loud cry" of Revela early Christians in the Roman Empire.38 tion 18 and was making possible the renewal necessary to prepare the church for the final Sacred regard for human rights is a Christian events.34 virtue. And for people who stand before the Now, in annexing the Philippines, the United world as Christians, to disregard human rights is doubly wrong, in that (a) it is wrong in itself, and States had forsaken republicanism as utterly as (b) it turns the light into darkness, causing others it had Protestantism only a few years earlier. to stumble on in darkness.39 The government had, said Jones, "in principle ... deliberately and expressly repudiated Thus, for Jones, Adventists could no more be every principle of its Constitution as a repub silent about imperialism than they could about lican government."35 The import he saw in all Sunday laws. of this for the people of God obviously was the In writing The Peril of the Republic, Magan necessity of readiness for the "end of all saw himself in a role similar to that of biblical things." Jones frequently ended his articles prophets sent to warn kings and nations of the with the thrice-repeated exhortation: "Get consequences of departure from the divine ready, get ready, get ready. "36 intention. "Ambassadors of Jesus Christ," he believed, should make their voices heard "in the courts and congresses of human powers, Energizing Public Action of earthly governments." And he called upon all citizens of the coming kingdom of God to uch thoroughgoing apocalypticism would be true to principle "in things national as well Sseem to confirm the view that Adventist as in things personal" and to "work for right interest in public life was limited to end-time principles while it is day."40 prognostications. Indeed, Jones and Magan The Adventist response to a "splendid little both insisted that their criticism of government war" and America's rise to imperial power policy was a matter of prophecy, not politics. 37 around the turn of the century was remarkable But, paradoxically, the apocalyptic vision for its expression of a pacifist ethic for the in some ways functioned to energize public church, its forthright critique of the nation's action. The "readiness" to which Jones called departure from the principles of liberty, and his audiences did not mean withdrawal from for what it reveals about the function of the world, nor was it only a matter of indi apocalyptic. A lively hope went together with, vidual repentance. Rather, it included a indeed encouraged, public witness against summons to action in defense of liberty. war and oppression and for the dignity and Apocalyptic hope charged the brief interim rights of human beings. 26 VOLUME 221 NUMBER 5 THE joURNAL oF THE AssociA710N oF ADVEN71ST FoRUMS NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Frank Freidel, The Splendid Little War (Boston: Sentinel (February 23, 1899), pp. 114, 115. Little, Brown, and Company, 1958), p. 3. 19. Magan, pp. 38, 39. 2. Harold A. Larrabee, "The Enemies of Empire," 20. A. T. Jones, "Solely for Humanity," RH Qanuary American Heritage, 11:4 Qune 1960), p. 28. 24, 1899), p. 57. Though Cuba did become independent 3. Graham A. Cosmas, AnArmyForEmpire(Colum in 1902, the United States imposed on it an agreement bia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1971), pp. guaranteeing the United States many economic rights, 243, 275. the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, and the right of 4. Freidel, p. 304. intervention if Cuban sovereignty were threatened. 5. Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire (New 21. Magan, pp. 103, 117. York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), pp. x-xiii, 216-225. 22. "Justifying 'Expansion' by the Constitution," 6. Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life: Essays American Sentinel Qanuary 5, 1899), pp. 2, 3. and Addresses (New York: Century, 1902), pp. 1-21. 23. A. T. Jones, "The Necessity of 'Imperialism,"' RH 7. Larrabee, p. 31. (December 27, 1898), p. 834. 8. For contemporary statements of Christian social 24. See Beisner, pp. 18-34. ethics that distinguish between norms for the church, 25. Magan, pp. 126, 127; 168, 169. Magan and jones and the norms to which the church seeks to hold the believed, as did some non-Adventist anti-imperialists, public order accountable, see John Howard Yoder, The that the United States was recapitulating ancient Rome's Priestly Kingdom (Notre Dame: University of Notre development from republic to empire; see Magan, p. Dame Press, 1984), pp. 151-171; and Walter 155, Jones, "National Apostasy," RH (May 23, 1899), p. Brueggemann, "History on the Margins," Sojourners, 328, and Larrabee, p. 33. (August-September 1991), pp. 18, 19. 26. Magan, pp. 114, 115, 165. 9. G. A. Irwin, "The Present Crisis," supplement to 27. See for example A. T. Jones, Civil Government Advent Review and Sabbath Herald (May 3, 1898), p. 1. and Religion (Chicago: American Sentinel, 1889). 10. A. T. Jones, "'A Novel Christian Duty,"' Advent 28. jonathan M. Butler, "Adventism and the American Review and Sabbath Herald (hereafter cited as RH) Quly Experience," in Edwin S. Gaustad, ed., 17Je Rise ofAdvent 12, 1898), pp. 444, 445. ism (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), pp. 173-206. 11. __, "Christians and War," RH (March 29, 29. Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, Seeking a 1898), pp. 210, 211. Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American 12. Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the Dream (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 197. American People (New Haven and London: Yale Uni 30.]. N. Andrews, "Thoughts on Revelation XIII and versity Press, 1972), p. 879. Adventist writers leveled XIV," RH (May 19, 1851), pp. 81-86. criticisms at articles in leading Protestant journals such 31. A. T. jones, "Present Truth," RH (May 16, 1899), p. as the Independent (see Jones, '"A Novel Christian 312. Duty"'), and the Outlook, edited by Lyman Abbott, the 32. Magan, pp. 162, 163. influential pastor of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church (see 33. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church "'The Principles of the Fathers,"' RH (June 27, 1899], p. (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub!. Assn., 1948), 412). vol. 5, p. 451. 13. "The Gospel of War," RH (May 3, 1898), p. 351. 34. George R. Knight, From 1888 to Apostasy: The 14. Cited in Larrabee, pp. 76, 77. Case of A. T jones (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and 15. Percy T. Magan, The Peril of the Republic (Chi Herald, 1987), pp. 75-103. cago: Fleming H. Revell, 1899), p. 121. 35. "Another Brief Review of 'Passing Events,'" RH 16. Walter Millis, The Martial Spirit (Cambridge, (March 19, 1901), pp. 184, 185. Mass: The Riverside Press, 1931), p. 406. 36. E.g., "The Example of this Nation," RH (July 4, 17. "Not by Politics, But by the Gospel," American 1899), pp. 428, 429. Sentinel (March 30, 1899), p. 194. Magan noted other 37. Magan, p. 159; "The Third Angel's Message: It ironic outcomes of America's "Christianizing" presence: Must Be Given," RH (July 3, 1900), p. 424. since the Americans had arrived in Manila 300 new 38. "The Third Angel's Message: It Must Be Given," saloons had opened and 21 percent of U.S. soldiers had p. 424. become afflicted with "loathsome diseases" (Peril ofthe 39. A. T. ]ones, "Human Rights," RH (March 21, Republic, p. 125). 1899), pp. 184, 185. 18. "Lexington, 1775; and Manila, 1899," American 40 Magan, pp. 158, 193. jANUARY 1993 27 SPECIAL SECTION: THE ENVIRONMENT Adventists and The Gcxxl Earth A scientist challenges Adventists to transform the ecology of their faith. by Alvin Kwiram LOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IS CONSID ourselves as fully embedded in a complex ered by some to be the most impor web of life, as an integral part of God's G tant science policy issue of the 1990s. creation, and as responsible stewards of that Environmental issues will influence the creation, then our response to challenges such scientific and political agenda for years to as the environmental issue will take on a come. Failure to address the most critical distinctly different character. Which of these aspects can expose us to potentially devastat two attitudes we hold is deeply influenced by ing consequences. But do these issues, how our religious tradition, by the paradigms of our ever important they may be to the world at culture, and by the metaphors on which we large, have any relevance to us as Christians? structure our daily lives. The answer to this question depends in part I would assert that at the very center of our on our theology and in part on our world view tradition stands the concept of time and in general. If we take the view that we are endtime. Yet our ambivalence about the ques transients in an alien community, then our tion of time prevents us from thinking clearly interest in the long-term welfare of the com and acting decisively with regard to major munity will tend to be limited. If we see global issues. It is precisely this ambivalence that paralyzes us and prevents us from engag ing creatively and productively in some of the Alvin Kwiram is the senior vice provost of the University of larger questions facing humanity today. Such Washington. Kwiram graduated from Walla Walla College, received his Ph.D .from the California Institute of Technology paralysis undermines our own spiritual expe in physical chemistry, taught at Harvard, and became chair rience and weakens our Christian witness. ofthe chemistry department at the University of Washington. If this assertion is correct, then it should Tbe first president of the Association of Adventist Forums, raise an alarm that we have serious work to do Kwiram condensed this article from a series oftalks delivered at two Seventh-day Adventist churches: All Nations in Berrien in refining our metaphors and resolving our Springs, Michigan; and Green Lake in Seattle, Washington. ambivalence. The environmental issue illus- 28 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE ENviRONMENT trates how our confusion as Adventists about water. 2 Cattle (ruminants) and rice paddies are the question of time essentially relegates us to significant sources of methane because of the sidelines in some of the pressing issues of · their specific metabolic processes. These pro our time. These issues have relevance not only cesses add to the atmospheric burden. As to our role as citizens of the social order, but these gases build up in the atmosphere, they especially to our role as citizens of a spiritual block more and more of the Earth's outgoing community. 1 I will begin by outlining a few of infrared radiation without affecting the incom the most critical environmental challenges, ing radiation as significantly. The more of argue that our present metaphors limit our these gases we pump into the atmosphere, the effectiveness, and finally suggest that if we less heat can escape by way of the infrared could rethink those metaphors we might revi radiation. Consequently, the Earth will gradu talize our theology and give greater clarity to ally grow warmer.3 our mission. Two things are clear: carbon dioxide and methane concentrations are increasing, and increases in greenhouse gases can cause glo Environmental Impacts bal warming. What is not clear is how much and how soon such warming might occur. lobal environmental change is a vast (Nor do we know whether there is another ice G subject. Some of the major themes that age just around the corner that could com define the current discussion include green pletely overwhelm the impact of the green house gases and global warming, depletion of house gases.) To answer these questions, the ozone layer, destruction of the ecosystem, scientists have developed models to simulate and population growth. Reasonable people the impact of various factors on the thermal can differ on the scale or the timing (or in some budget of the planet. Unfortunately, this is a cases even the mathematical sign) of these massive computational problem. Even the impacts, but most would agree that these most powerful computers available today can impacts are real and deserve our thoughtful not adequately address the task. The problem evaluation. is complicated further by the fact that we do Greenhouse Gases. There is little dispute in not even know all the factors that should be the scientific community that greenhouse gases included in the models. In other cases, we may have been increasing steadily since the begin recognize the importance of a factor, but do ning of the Industrial Revolution. Figure 1 not really know how best to include it in the shows the increase in the concentration of model. carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This in For example, only recently have investiga crease results largely from burning fossil fuel tors begun to include the effect of clouds in the and other organic rna terial (principally wood). global circulation models (GCMs). Clouds are Every time we burn a gallon of gasoline, we known to play a significant role in reflecting are putting about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide sunlight and in trapping radiation. However, (COz) into the air. Not only does the burning how to include them properly in the model is of fossil fuels increase C02, but it also con not well understood. Furthermore, including a sumes a precious, non-renewable natural re factor to represent clouds adds greatly to the source. (In my view, the latter is even more demands placed on the computers which, as worrisome than the former.) we have said, are inadequate even for simpler In addition to carbon dioxide, methane also models.4 contributes to the greenhouse effect, as does Similarly, the role of sulfate aerosols, pro- jANUARY 1993 29 SPECJmUM ______ duced by burning coal and by phytoplankton however, evidence has accumulated to con in the world's temperate oceans, is only now firm the original idea. The discovery of the being recognized as an important and poten seasonal reduction of the ozone concentra tially offsetting factor in global warming. These tion over Antarctica finally made believers are very active areas of research today, and out of most of the earlier skeptics, and led to good progress is being made. But clearly, the enactment of the 1985 Montreal Proto given the problems with the GCMs outlined cols, which called for the gradual phase-out above, we cannot' be entirely comfortable of CFCs by 2010. That initial timetable was accepting the predictions of the models sug revised just two years later, in 1987, because gesting that the global temperature will in of the growing recognition that the problem crease by two to three degrees in the next was far more serious than had been realized century.5 earlier. The potential impact on the health of Ozone Depletion. The ozone depletion plants and animals alike could be significant over the Antarctic is another good example of if the "thin blue shield," represented by the a serious environmental challenge. This prob Earth's atmosphere with its even thinner lem was first recognized in the early 1970s by ozone layer, were seriously compromised. the chemist Sherry Rowland, who was trying Human activities are beginning to damage, to understand the eventual fate of the chlo perhaps irretrievably, the ecosystem. rofluorocarbons (CFCs) that we use as the A thousand years ago, human activities had working fluid in our refrigerators and air a relatively small impact on the Earth's sys conditioners. Until recently, CFCs were also tems. Today, abetted by the power of giant used in foam insulation and as the propellant machines, we are transforming the face of the gas in spray cans. Rowland predicted that the Earth. reactions of these "stable" compounds at Human Population. The impact of humans high altitudes under the influence of ultravio on the Earth through the various mechanisms let radiation from the sun could lead to a listed above might be manageable with a catalytic and serious destruction of ozone. stable and reasonably modest population. There was much skepticism about this idea However, the growth in population makes all when it was initially outlined. Gradually, the other problems pale by comparison. Fig ure 2 shows the growth of the world's popu lation since the Middle Ages. This explosive growth should be of paramount concern to us. It is worth considering two extreme scenarios: continued and uncontrolled growth with the curve exploding off the top of the page, or a sharp bend in the curve toward the right (or even downward). If the present trend contin ues unchecked, then all the environmental impacts that we face today will only increase exponentially in scope and intensity. If the curve begins a sharp turn away from the vertical, it could be caused by massive starva tion, disease, and death. Either of these sce narios must concern any responsible person, and should be of special concern to us as 30 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE ENVIRONMENT Christians. not able to take issues such as the environ Although it cannot be stated with certainty ment (and many other contemporary issues) just how much the impact of these global seriously if we are ambivalent about the time changes will affect us, it would be irrespon frame in which we operate. For example, sible for us to ignore the problems. It is some will argue that our apocalyptic view imperative that we, together with other re exempts us from responsibility for the cre sponsible inhabitants of this fragile planet, ation. If we don't expect to be here very long, study the matter and refine our models while then it doesn't matter if we use up the Earth's at the same time making reasonable efforts to resources or devastate our environment or modify our actions so as to mitigate the most destroy essential ecosystems. If we don't ex obvious effects. We must not abdicate our pect to be here very long, then there are higher responsibility by assuming that the problem priorities that require our attention, and we will be addressed by others. should not be wasting our time worrying about some remote ice fields or rain forests. Let's turn back the clock briefly to 1843. The Theological Impacts Millerites were expecting the Lord's return in a very short time. Since they believed that the owever important these issues are for Advent was going to occur within a year, there H society at large, what do they have to do really wasn't a compelling reason to worry with us as Adventists and as Christians? After about their long-term health or to put new all, if the Advent is imminent, and the pace of roofs on their houses. In that context, it was global change sufficiently slow, then we can entirely reasonable for the Millerites to leave probably escape the consequences just in the their jobs, and to turn all their energies to the nick of time. anticipated event in 1844. But once that date Such a posture is inappropriate for at least had passed, they began to realize that a new three reasons. First, we have a responsibility to understanding was necessary. Different ac be faithful caretakers of God's creation. This tions were appropriate. stewardship is directly linked to the celebra For the past 100 years Adventists have tion of the Sabbath, the central pillar of our operated with a somewhat stretched version faith. Second, these issues present us with an of the one-year time frame of the Millerites. I opportunity to put our holistic views of life believe we have operated, pragmatically, within into practice on a larger stage to encompass a 10-year time frame. And we have not really the relationship between mind and body, acknowledged our ambivalence, much less male and female, black and white, human and examined it. As a result we have continued to animal. Third, these issues provide us with an live a somewhat schizophrenic existence that important reality check on the theoretical has arguably crippled our effectiveness. structure of our faith, and help us to see Part of our confusion stems from what I will whether it matches with the practical realities refer to as the actuarial fallacy. We have failed of the world about us. However, a serious to emphasize a basic mathematical reality: examination of our position on environmental what is true of a statistical average is not true issues brings a key metaphor of our religious for each member of the average.6 For human culture-the metaphor of endtime-into sharp kind, the Lord's coming may be 10 or 100 years relief. away, and so humans must structure society It is time for us to re-examine our under and government on that basis. But for the standing of time. It can be argued that we are individual, the operative time of the Lord's jANUARY 1993 31 SPEcmuM------coming can occur at any moment. The chal we have espoused a profound truth about the lenge is to balance the task of being ready need to stop and recognize the holiness of each moment with the task of occupying until time. Maybe it is appropriate to expand our he comes. celebration of the Sabbath by giving greater Even if a one-year time frame for the faithful attention to the holiness of creation as well. was appropriate for the mid-19th century, is it What a wonderful opportunity to give the appropriate today? Almost 150 years have Sabbath new meaning and to bring a new passed. Is it time to explore this question? Is it richness, depth, and purpose to this special time to consider a new paradigm? Even a 10- day. year horizon imposes an entirely different A re-examination of our metaphors and our dialectic. The challenge of clarifying this fun tradition in the context of environmental aware damental issue could b~ one of the primary ness would enlarge our understanding and tasks of our theologians. 7 If we could make broaden our vision in other areas as well. The such an adjustment, it could have a profound concepts of the Enlightenment, however pow effect on our vision of the future, on our erful and productive, have left us with a legacy contributions to society, and on our vitality as that establishes a hierarchical world view a movement. wherein nature is to be mastered and ex Some will object that even talking about ploited. Maybe it is time to take our Western such a change in time frame will undermine metaphors, with their emphasis on individual faith. But cognitive dissonance, insisting on ism and domination, and leaven them with something that is demonstrably not so, also some Eastern perspectives on holism, on the undermines faith. The challenge for the church importance of community, and the connect today is how to keep faith alive if we do not edness of all living things. make the transition to a more comprehensive We have successfully espoused a holistic world view. view of personal growth in our teachings. We have emphasized that the body is the temple hristians should be concerned about the of God, and this understanding has served us C physical and social environment because well in maintaining a healthful life-style in of our concept of the Creator and his creation. which the physical, the mental, and the spiri Adventists are in a unique position to provide tual are components of a harmoniously bal leadership in this arena, especially given the anced life. We often see these components strong link between the doctrine of the Sab represented pictorially as the three sides of an bath and the doctrine of creation. As a church equilateral triangle. But that is a highly re stricted emphasis, with its focus on self-devel opment, and an individualistic strategy for personal salvation. Maybe it is time to move beyond our Flatland conceptions to add higher dimensions to our metaphors. At the very least, we could add the other components of God's creation at the apices of three-dimen sional constructs so that our holistic vision can be elaborated to encompass a more harmoni ous balance for all of God's creation. Such a conceptual departure might provide us with a more constructive framework in which to 32 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE ENviRONMENT .------Testament of Chief Sealtn------. Seattle, I 85 3 The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, now can you buy them from us? What Chief Seattn says, the Great Chief in Washington can count on as truly as our white brothers can count on the return of the seasons. My words are like the stars. They do not set. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy snore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man. We are a part of the earth and it is a part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the norse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the Juices in the meadows, the body neat of the pony, and man-all belong to the same family. There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to near the unfurling of leaves in spring nor the rustle of insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot near the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand. The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with a pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things snare the same breath-the beasts, the tree, the man, they all snare the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beast soon happens to man. All things are connected. This we know. The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. We will consider why the white man wishes to buy the land. What is it that the white man wishes to buy, my people ask me. The idea is strange to us. How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land-the swiftness of the antelope? You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. This earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to neap contempt on its Creator. The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one day suffocate i.n your own waste. But in your perishing you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man. That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival. One thing we know. Our God is the same God. This earth is precious to Him. Even the white men cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see. jANUARY 1993 33 SPEdRUM------understand the relationships between the sexes, contemporary context. between classes, between the races, between Scripture reminds us that the Creator looked humans and animals, and between ourselves at all that had been made and declared it good. and our non-sentient environment. 8 just as all God has called on us to be caretakers, not only members of the body are of value, so all of the Earth and of its creatures, but more members of the natural order are of value. importantly, of those who live on the Earth: all A shift in paradigm that gives greater recog are precious in God's sight. If we value the nition to our interconnectedness could also message of this church, if we are committed to lead us to a more realistic posture with respect the Christian imperative, then let us be faithful to the role of women in society and in the caretakers of God's creation and protectors of church, and make us less prone to accord the environment. This will enhance and nur unique status to one group of individuals or ture the ecology of our faith in all its wonderful one class. diversity and complexity. Physicists in the 20th century came to The challenge_ is simply stated: let us begin understand that neither the particle picture of a serious re-examination of our paradigms. We matter nor the wave picture alone could can begin with an examination of the time provide a full understanding of the fundamen frame in which we will operate. If we engage tal character of matter. Consequently, a new in this effort with honesty, with openness, and metaphor referred to as the wave-particle with seriousness of purpose, we will discover duality has become an integral part of all of new dimensions of our faith and broaden the modern physics. horizons of the Advent movement. Our attitude toward environmental issues can be a telling s in physics, so also in theology, maybe it reflection of our spiritual understanding. A is time to modify our image of Father/ But, if we retain a narrow focus, we will God by adding the Mother/God dimension. By become mere hecklers on the sideline of invoking such a duality in our image of God, major human events. If we take these chal our concepts of God will tend to be shifted from lenges seriously and act responsibly, we will trivializing, anthrocentric overspecification to a not only become more fully engaged with deeper insight into the profound creative and some of the great issues of our time, we will compassionate character of the Godhead. We also find our experience enriched, our un must come to recognize that our image is just derstanding expanded, and our metaphors that: mere images of much deeper realities for transformed for a contemporary faith. We which our inadequate mental constructs pro will feel energized, and this sense of excite vide merely the most rudimentary and partial ment and meaning will be contagious not representations. These limit our appreciation of only for our own young people, but for God's role in his/her creation. countless others who are seeking answers in Apart from our ambivalence about time, all a world of confusion and despair. Most of these deeply rooted metaphors that shape important of all, we will bring new meaning, our thinking and actions must be re-examined understanding, and respect to both the chal in order that our understanding may be en lenge and promise of stewardship, service, riched and our concepts reformulated for the and justice. 34 VOLUME 221 NUMBER 5 THE ENVIRONMENT NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. The relationship between environmental issues name. In the greenhouse, the glass lets in the sun's rays and human aspirations has significant overtones for our butprevents the infrared radiation from escaping (since spiritual quest, and shapes our attitudes toward others ordinary glass is opaque to infrared radiation). Obvi as well as the rest of God's creation. This dimension has ously, in the gardener's greenhouse, the glass also received increasing attention in recent years. A few reduces losses due to convection. examples will provide a flavor of the breadth of these 4. For example, the size of the grid used in present concerns. Selected references are provided that illus models is 250 miles on a side, hardly what one would trate the range of discourse. call a fine-grained model. For example, environmental issues were a major 5. Two or three degrees (whether in centigrade or factor in the political and intellectual ferment that Fahrenheit) may not seem like very much. However, if eventually led to the collapse of the iron curtain. The one realizes that the ice age, which resulted in ice nearly Prayer ofThanksgiving and Confession crafted recently a mile thick as far south as the northern tier states of the by the North American Conference on Christianity and United States, was characterized by a global temperature Ecology provides a compelling statement of inter drop of only four to five degrees centigrade, then a two connectedness, and echoes a similar theme expressed to three-degree change becomes more interesting. eloquently by Chief Sealth (after whom the City of 6. When an insurance company sets the premium on Seattle is named) nearly 150 years before. The recent your life insurance policy, it considers the probability Rio conference was probably the single largest gather that, statistically, people live to about 75 years of age. ing in history to address the environmental issues. So even if you are 30 when you take out your first Other voices have also called attention to the spiritual policy, your premium is based on the assumption that dimensions of our relationship to the environment and you will live to be 75. But presumably no one is so naive the natural world. as to believe that everyone insured by that company This issue has not been a highly visible topic in the will live to be 75. life of the Adventist Church. See, however, the editorial 7. Clearly, it would be important in that reformation by Kit Watts in the Adventist Review (April 18, 1991), to help people understand the fundamental difference p. 5. between the actuarial time frame and the personal time 2. Water is an important greenhouse gas, and water frame. vapor is obviously very abundant in the atmosphere. 8. Maybe we should consider a new mission for the But it tends to remain in dynamic equilibrium since we Geoscience Research Institute. What if the focus of that are not introducing many new sources of water to the program were to shift somewhat to address the nature atmosphere. The fact that we are mining aquifers at an of environmental impacts, to consider the relationship accelerating rate could alter this equation somewhat. of these issues to the mission of the church, and to However, the enormous quantities of water in the devise programs that could enlist the energies and world's oceans tend to ensure the stability of the imagination of our young people? This could lead to a equilibrium. Of course, if the global temperature were constructive dialogue between our scientists and theo to change, the equilibrium point would shift as well. logians. It could lead to a positive and creative engage 3. The principle is essentially the same as that which ment with problems of immediate and pressing signifi describes the operation of a greenhouse, hence the cance. jANUARY 1993 35 SPEcmuM ______ The Compelling Case For Nature A lawyer argues that nature has a right "to exist unmolested by humanity." byGlennCoe ART OF OUR ADVENTIST HERITAGE IS TO SEE In law, the constitutional freedom of the things in sharp, contrasting terms: right press, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, P and wrong, good and evil, pure and even freedom of religion may, under certain impure. There is little tolerance for ambigu circumstances, be limited if there is a compet ities, for balancing. It is much easier to adopt ing and compelling state interest. The process positions and standards that do not allow for calls for the balancing of the individual's gradations: "no make-up" rather than "make constitutional rights and the needs of society. up that is tasteful"; "no jewelry" rather than Satisfying society's needs must intrude as little "jewelry that is modest and becoming"; "no as possible upon the rights of the individual. movies," rather than "movies that make a Perhaps it is time to accord to Earth a compelling statement." comparable respect to that accorded to consti Some would advocate a similar absolutist, tutional rights. Perhaps we should impose on purist position with respect to nature. I would ourselves the burden of articulating a compel submit that that position is unconvincing and, ling need before we encroach on nature. Even in the long run, does not advance the cause of if "compelling" is too heavy a burden to nature. Instead, I suggest assessing the needs impose, showing "some" legitimate need would of humanity and weighing them against the provide a curb to our exploitation of nature. legitimate and independent right of nature to Here is how this approach might apply to exist unmolested by humanity. current environmental debates. It could be argued that the need to wear furs Glenn Coe, Esq. partner at Hoberman and Pollack, P.C. in is outweighed by the interests of nature. On Hartford, Connecticut, was for 10 years president of the the one hand, wearing furs is an insignificant Association of Adventist Forums, on whose board be still human need, since there are many sufficient serves. As 1991 bonoreda/umnusatAndrews University, Coe delivered, at Pioneer Memorial Church, the Sabbath morning alternatives. Furthermore, the process by which sermon from which this essay is taken. animal skins are harvested does not respect 36 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE ENviRONMENT the legitimacy of nature's existence. and life in humankind. It is clear that this has One could also reason that alligator and been a labor of love by our Creator-God who leather handbags, wallets, or belts can be took personal delight in all that he brought into forgone for the same reason, but could justify existence. But when God entrusted his creation continued use of leather shoes until a syn to his children-the men and women who thetic material is developed that allows feet to were told to populate the earth, exercise do breathe adequately to stay healthy. minion over all the earth and over his created creatures-God did not abdicate his ownership ontrolled harvesting of certain trees for of his creation. As the Psalmist says: "The earth C construction of buildings or production is the Lord's" (Psalm 24:1, NIV). This includes of papers would seem to be defensible, pro all living things that inhabit the earth. "Every vided it is accompanied by replanting and animal of the forest is mine," says the Lord, "and reforestation that sub- the cattle on a thousand stantially repairs the hills. I know every bird damage done by the in the mountains, and original harvesting. the creatures of the field Properly handled, this It is time to accord to Earth a are mine" (Psalm 50:10, would seem to make comparable respect to that 11, NIV). unnecessary the cutting accorded to constitutional It can be argued that down of forests where Genesis, indeed the endangered species rights. Perhaps we should im- - Bible in general, estab make their homes, or pose on ourselves the burden lishes that humanity has the destruction of an a higher priority in cient trees or rain for of articulating a compelling God's creation than ests. need before we encroach on animal or plant life; that Harvesting the fish both may be taken to from the sea to provide nature. sustain human life. But food would seem to be as we respond to hu defensible, provided it is not excessive and not man needs by relying on the resources of done in a manner that results in significant, creation, we must remember that we are unnecessary destruction of other sea life. My accountable for how we fulfill the fiduciary wife threatened, along with other friends, to responsibility God has given us for his cre boycott Burger King, the fast food chflin, be ation. cause Burger King used Icelandic fish. In filling It means that Adventist Christians should its quota for Burger King, Iceland killed whales. not begrudge the added cost of responsible, Subsequently, Burger King stopped using Ice ecological stewardship; the cost of production landic fish and Iceland stopped killing whales, without pollution. Practically, that means we for all of which my wife claims credit. should strenuously avoid all wastefulness, not The ode to creation found in Genesis 1 only out of solidarity with the poor, but also illustrates the competing and often conflicting out of respect for the living environment. values and principles present in the environ Adventist Christians need to join together in mental debate. God created life in the trees and a fresh commitment to caring for God's cre grass, life in creatures of the air and of the ation, a renewed vision of this planet as God's waters, life in the animals that roam the earth, earth. jANUARY 1993 37 SPEcmuM------ Earth in the Balance An exploration of why Seventh-day Adventists hear in U.S. Vice-president Albert Gore's book Earth in the Balance echoes of Old Testament prophets and the book of Revelation. by Roy Benton EORGE BusH CALLED HIM "ozoNE." DuR written, prophetic, even holy book, clearly ing their vice presidential debate, pointing the way we need to change to assure G Dan Quayle misquoted1 his Earth in the survival of our grandchildren," gushes M. the Balance. Conservative columnist George Scott Peck. 3) Will said Albert Gore's 1992 book was "waste The Harvard-educated Gore was a formida basket-worthy," "a jumble of dubious 1990s bly informed and effective U.S. legislator on science and worse 1960s philosophy . . . a environmental issues for 15 years. Gore ad powerful reason not to elect its author to high mits that he wanted to reach the voters not office. "2 These and other critics scorned Gore's persuaded by his ecological warnings during key theme--that the environment should be a failed 1988 bid for the U.S. presidency. But come "the central organizing principle" of the it was the soul-searching following the near post-cold war world, complete with an ambi death of his young son from a car accident that tious "Marshall Plan" to restore ecological gave him the vision to write a book obviously balance. driven by spiritual passion. By the success-is-the-best-revenge standard, Gore persuasively argues that ours is a Gore has won big. Bush and Quayle are gone, "dysfunctional civilization." Our abuse of na and Gore is vice-president. Most reviews of ture has resulted in denial, addiction, and co Earth in the Balance range from high praise dependency--the same symptoms common ("a work of intelligence and passionate au to dmg abusers. We "civilized" societies take thenticity," says Time) to ecstatic ("a brilliantly for granted life-styles that arrogantly consume a dangerous share of natural resources. We Roy Benton, a graduate of Andrews University, received his even self-righteously criticize developing coun Ph.D. in mathematical logic from the University ofMichigan. tries for the same abuses we have already He teaches philosophy and mathematics at Columbia Union College. Earth in the Balance: Healing (New York: Houghton committed in our own territory. We do not Mifflin, 1992) is available for $22.95 ($13.00 paperback). figure industrial waste into the Gross National 38 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE ENviRONMENT Product of "goods and services." modern translation: "thou shalt preserve In voices ranging from political strategist to biodiversity." Gore's favorite story, repeated scientific enthusiast, from philosophical histo in interviews with Christian Century5 and rian to biblical interpreter, Gore speaks with Christianity Today,6 is jesus' parable of the breathtaking range for a politician. In impres unfaithful servant. The servant was charged by sive detail, he rounds up the usual ecological the master to be vigilant against vandals. suspects: C02 buildup, ozone depletion, de Likewise, we have a divine command to struction of tropical rain forests, loss of protect our planet. biodiversity, excessive pesticides, incinera Gore wishes that politically involved Chris tion of municipal wastes, soil erosion, green tians would pay more attention to the environ house effect, etc., etc. mental crisis. Liberals stress the social gospel, Because these problems are entwined and but do not see, for example, that most toxic global, Gore urges nothing short of a vast waste dumps are located in poor neighbor spiritual awakening, and a "Marshall Plan" in hoods. Conservatives are wary of siding with which rich nations help fund the environmen liberals who they think are soft on "godless tal costs of developing nations. communism" and big government. Gore says conservatives should learn that "many deeply ven the shortcomings of the book point to committed environmentalists have become, if Eits authenticity. If Gore dilutes his pro anything, even more hostile to overreaching phetic passion by bogging down occasionally statism than they are," having witnessed com in 10-point plans, over-detailed explanations munist regimes committing the worst ecologi of committee testimony, odd metaphors and cal sins. digressions, or minor slips of fact or arith Adventists do not fit neatly into Gore's metic,4 at least we know that the book is no liberal-conservative typology. Still, I think that cynical broadside ghostwritten for a politician several Gore themes can help us to connect with a sound-bite attention span. environmental concerns with distinct SDA To this voter, at least, Gore is impressively tenets. For example: convincing. Even if one disagrees with Gore's Tbe Sabbath. Given our apocalyptic pessi clean-up remedies-Republicans, for example, mism, we are tempted to give up on nature as may prefer business incentives to Gore's EPA part of a lost world. But in both theory and monitored "Superfund"-he makes a strong practice, when we rest on the Sabbath, we scientific case that only drastic action can avert remember that God created nature and de doomsday. In any case, I wish to explore here clared it very good. Gore's call for religious renewal, which opens Love of Nature. Adventists have always re and closes the book and also dominates a 28- vered nature as a spiritual oasis in a sick world. page chapter entitled "Environmentalism of In the 19th century, perhaps Adventists could the Spirit." simply escape the cities and find renewal Gore, a devout Baptist, admits that a "car amidst "God's other book." But Gore proves toon version" of Genesis has been misused to that we cannot now count on finding nature license careless abuses. He cites other biblical unspoiled anywhere unless we work for it. texts to show that "dominion" should not Simplicity. Currently, each person in an entail "domination" nor "an arrogant and reck industrial country uses many times more re less attitude toward nature." sources than those in poor countries. Though God commanded Noah to take into his ark Gore doesn't stress it enough, we who live in at least two of every living species. Gore's rich nations need to develop a "small is jANUARY 1993 39 SPEcmuM ______ beautiful" life-style that uses fewer resources. the Earth Without Worshiping Nature) .9 Ad We need to use fewer manufactured goods ventists should draw again from its heritage of and travel less, and be willing to pay more for holism and its corollaries, insisting that a "clean" forms of each. Adventists should advo healthy environment and a healthy body are cate simplicity as an ecological virtue, enlarg crucial not only to spirituality but to a proper ing the vision that makes us known for sim ecological order. plicity in dress, entertainment, and eating. Apocalyptic. Of course, Adventist apoca Holism. In his concluding remarks, Gore lyptic has been historically more attuned to says: "I have come to believe in the value of a spiritual conversion than preserving nature. kind of inner ecology that relies on the same But Gore thinks the former is needed to bring principles of balance and holism that charac about the latter, so maybe we are already terize a healthy environment ... "7 Earlier, he halfway there. spends many pages blaming religion for per In many respects, the closest modern coun petuating Greek preferences for mind over terparts of the apocalyptic prophets are radical body, spirit over nature, science over moral environmentalists: consider their shrill rhetoric responsibility. warning of impending doom on a global scale, Gore himself goes far to the other extreme: their faith in the power of a committed and "It is my own belief that the image of God can knowledgeable few to blast an impatient trum be seen in every corner of creation, even in us, pet for radical repentance. Indeed, Gore's lan but only faintly. By gathering in the mind's eye guage, like the final passages in Jonathan Schell's all of creation, one can perceive the image of Tbe Fate of the Earth, lO often eerily echo the the Creator vividly."8 minor prophets and the book of Revelation. Perhaps Gore wobbles as he walks the thin Whether environmentalists like Gore get all line between holism and pantheism, but Ad their facts straight may be beside the point. In ventists should empathize. (Can you hear us, fact, if a prophet's role is part proclamation John Harvey Kellogg?) Even so, Gore's analy and part prediction, the most "successful" sis serves as a corrective to those--including prophet is one whose proclamation is so too many Adventists--who do not see the potent that the prediction fails. If environmen global environment as the home of God's talists like Gore prove to be Jonahs--so effec activity. We should be ahead of fellow tive that their predictions are not realized- evangelicals who are struggling with the same our grandchildren can rejoice that they did not issues (see Anthony Campolo's How to Rescue proclaim in vain. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Quayle repeatedly charged that "on page 304," Gore Review (September 14, 1992), pp. 40-46. advocated spending $100 billion for his environmental 5. "Earth in the Balance: An Interview With AI Gore," "Marshall Plan." Gore did note that the original Marshall Plan The Christian Century (April 8, 1992), pp. 368-374. to save Europe involved 2 percent of the GNP. In today's 6. "Preserving God's 'Very Good' Earth" (interview), dollars that is about $100 billion, but Gore nowhere says that Christianity Today (September 14, 1992). we should necessarily spend the same amount now. 7. Page 367. 2. "AI Gore's Green Guilt," by George F. Will, 8. Page 265. Washington Post (September 3, 1992). 9. Anthony Campolo, How to Rescue the Earth 3. "A Crisis as Real as Rain" (book review), by Lance Without Worshiping Nature (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Morris, Time (May 4, 1992). Nelson, Pubs., 1992). 4. For a catalog of errors, real and imagined, see 10. Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New "Captain Planet for Veep," by Ronald Bailey, National York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982). 40 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE ENviRONMENT Resurrection of The World Resurrection describes not only an historical event but also God's ongoing activity to save the world. by Brian W Harper URVIVAL ON EARTH SEEMS BLEAK AS THE of eschatology (the study of last-day events) is environmental crisis worsens. Amidst "other-worldly." God struggles with the evil Sthe destruction, how should Adventists forces of the world to establish his kingdom on respond to the environmental crisis? Creation earth; however, evil prevails over good until and incarnation dominate Christian under God decides to save the righteous and destroy standings of ecology. However, I think that a the wicked. This includes the destruction of third theological theme, the Resurrection, best the natural world and the re-creation of a new illuminates the relationship of Christianity to earth. In this view, sin runs so deep that even the environment. the natural environment must be destroyed in The Resurrection, otherwise known as Eas order to restore perfection in creation. ter, reveals God's plan for the human and Adventist theology is saturated with this natural environment. The Resurrection is not "other-worldly" eschatological view. As a re simply an historical event, but an ongoing sult, we have fostered ambivalent, non-caring activity. Easter captures the essence of God's attitudes about environmental issues. Like mysterious presence in the world. It compels many evangelical Christians, we have become us to take the natural environment seriously, caught up in telling people about an other and shapes our vision of the future. Easter worldly heaven, and forgotten that God first should force Adventists to re-evaluate how we called Christians to live in the "here and now" treat one another and the natural environment. of the world. Two general views concerning the future A second view emphasizes that God works and the coming of God's kingdom have domi with people to make the world a better, more nated Christian thinking. One Christian view just place, until it reaches a point where God can come a second time and establish his Brian W Harper, a graduate ofSouthern College, is completing kingdom on earth. In this scenario, God's his Ph.D. in Christian Ethics at Southern Methodist University. kingdom is "this-worldly." The undergirding jANUARY 1993 41 SPEcmuM ______assumption is that once a just social order is stewards. Sin makes a creation based on an established it will cure the ills of the natural environmental ethic problematic. Human be environment. ings were created to love God and care for the Adventists can be found who hold some earth; we have failed to do both. Our sinful thing like this second view. All Christians, they nature compels us to take control of the earth say, are people living "in between" God's act from God. 1 Science and technology allow us in Christ and the final establishment of the to be more like God, as we entertain becoming kingdom of God. Adventists, they say, have creators ourselves. Arrogantly, we presume been committed to bringing in the kingdom of that technology frees us from the Creator, God on earth. Our commitment to education giving us power that was previously his alone. and preventive medicine, for example, reveals As pride clouds our vision, the civilizations we our dedication to God and a holistic world build devastate the natural environment. 2 view. In other words, some Adventists main Christian theological traditions in the West, tain room for Christian practices and institu beginning with the Middle Ages and stretching tions that affirm our place in a world not soon to the present, provide the roots for the to disappear. Unfortunately, this second view environmental crisis of today.3 These Chris of the end time has not reached the average tian theologians brushed aside the tradition of layperson. Adventist eschatology is not neces stewardship for an anthropocentric view of sarily wrong, but it needs to better articulate the world. As humans assumed control of the God's relationship to the natural world. Earth and its natural resources, God was What theological vision could help Advent pushed outside of the world. The outgrowth ists articulate an eschatological tradition that of this intellectual tradition can be seen in the affirms and builds care for the natural and environmental crisisfacing the economic sys human environment? tems of both capitalist and socialist countries. Sin destroyed the perfect harmony of cre bviously, the creation of the natural world ation, and has made the entire future of the O and universe by God was, and continues world questionable. As long as theological to be, a positive statement. The Earth in its and philosophical thought revolve around a original state was beautiful and perfect. Adam pessimistic view of humanity--a nihilistic an and Eve lived in harmony with the animals and thropomorphism--ecological disaster and natural environment. God made humans as social oppression will follow. 4 the caretakers of the Earth (Genesis 2:15). As The importance of stewardship has not stewards in the service of the Creator, Adam been lost by Adventists. We can have a major and Eve were given power over every living impact on the formation of an environmental thing. But the power to dominate was not to ethic that emphasizes stewardship as an inte be abused, for the world did not belong to gral part of God's kingdom. However, an ethic them but to God the loving Creator. As Lover, based solely on creation or stewardship can God was intimately involved in the affairs of not adequately answer questions about the the world. Apparently God walked and talked future world, because the story of God's in the Garden of Eden on a regular basis salvation is not complete. (Genesis 3:8ff). The incarnation was a testament of God's After the Fall, confusion replaced harmony love for the natural environment. A human as the primary characteristic of the world. person bound himself to the flesh and our From that time forward, humans have tended natural existence. However, the many tradi to abuse nature rather than care for it as good tions of incarnation theology all end with the 42 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE ENVIRONMENT incarnate God, Jesus of Nazareth, dead on the Our experience of the risen God's spirit in cross. There can be no vision of the future if the ordinary places of life addresses ecological God is in the grave. It is true that the church concerns in several ways. There is no conclu Jesus established while alive enables God to sion to the gospel in light of Easter. Easter live on in the memory of living disciples, but envisions a world that is saved. We have what kind of hope is that for a dying world? As always looked forward to the "end of time"; the world's creator, lover, and savior, God is however, we recognize this is not the end of the only one who can save us from the all human existence. Those who are saved will devastation of the environmental crisis. As our enjoy the new earth and time with the risen only hope, God must be alive. Lord. Everything we know about God, including hristmas theology--emphasizing the in the symbols we use to help us understand the C carnation of Christ-is good news for the depths of his mystery, are related to the world, but it means nothing without Easter. surroundings of our natural environment. We The word made flesh, in the person Jesus, was experience God's spirit on earth. When Chris slain to save us in our sins. However, the good tians consume the elements of bread and news of the Christian gospel does not end in wine, part of the natural environment, we are death but resurrection. The Resurrection con reminded that we not only killed the Creator firms God's triumph over sin and reveals his on the cross, but we also go on killing his saving character and orientation toward the creation by our devastation of the environment. entire world. Our Christmas hope in the Christ Contrary to tradition, the celebration of the child was sealed forever in the resurrection of Eucharist does not only commemorate a death, Christ the Lord. The incarnation was not a but celebrates the resurrected life of Jesus separate event from the Resurrection, for Christ.9 The bread and wine, which we eat and "resurrection" is a part of what "incarnation" drink, comes from the earth and acknowl means.5 Both events are a part of one continu edges God's presence here and now in the ous narrative about God's activity in the world. world and in the church. These symbols The point of the Resurrection is that the spirit actually tie us to the natural and social envi- of the risen Lord is still at work in the world and church-in the ordinary places of life.6 Easter could hardly have been an isolated past event, as it has been the center of Christian worship and hope throughout the history of the church.7 Therefore, Easter de scribes the ongoing activity of God to save the world. The presence of God's spirit is real. It is a redemptive gift that transforms our ordinary lives and ordinary experiences in a world of darkness. s God easters in the ordinary lives of believers and in the life of the world. Easter as a verb provides us with the hope that even through such environmental hazards as nuclear waste, chlorofluorocarbons, and pollution, God has not abandoned us to figure out on our own how to solve the environmental crisis. jANUARY 1993 43 SPEcmuM ______ronments where the spirit of the risen Lord need not despair in the midst of the environ works for our salvation. mental crisis and the bleak future that seems The dominant meta phor in Adventism pic to be ahead. The presence of God in the world tures the resurrected jesus at the right hand of through the spirit of the risen Christ is encour God serving as our High Priest. The primary aging. The risen Christ, through the church job of the High Priest is to save, and according and its symbols, can change the way many to some strands of Adventist thought, the High people think about and live with the natural Priest's work of salvation extends to the entire environment. universe. God's cosmic plan of salvation could Ultimately, however, our hope does not rest include some understanding of how God on the church becoming a powerful political intends to deal justly with the animals and force. Our hope finally springs from the power natural environment, which--through no of the risen Christ to transform our lives and fault of their own--are condemned to death shape our future. The power of Easter can because of human sin. restore a better understanding of how we If God can save humanity, why is it hard to ought to live not only with one another but think he can save the natural environment? We also with the natural environment. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, ed., A Worldly Granberg-Michaelson, ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wil Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, liam B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987), p. 64. 1984), p. 53. 5. Nicholas Lash, Theology on the Way to Emmaus 2. Ibid., pp. 31, 32. (London: SCM Press, 1986), pp. 170, 171. 3. Granberg-Michaelson, p. 32, citing Lynn White, Jr., 6. Nicholas Lash, Easter in Ordinary: Reflection on "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Western Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (Notre Man and Environmental Ethics, pp. 18-30. White's Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), p. 294. article charges Christianity with the exploitative attitude Also, Acts 5:30-32. propelling the environmental crisis. 7. Ibid., pp. 293-296. 4. William Dryness, "Stewardship of the Earth in the 8. Ibid., p. 295. Old Testament," in Tending the Garden, Wesley 9. Lash, 17JeologyontbeWaytoEmmaus, pp. 170, 171. 44 VOLUME 22, NUMBER 5 THE ENVIRONMENT What Are Adventists Doin£!/ Some do more than talk. Here's a breakdown of what's happening. it is only recently that the church has Float Shows Church's Concern become excited. about stewardship being understood as taking respon For Environment sibility for the environment. In addition to identifying Ad by Lara Beaven ventists with the environment through a Rose Parade float, the he General Conference and fying the church with concern for church in 1992 adopted an official T North American Division re the environment. position on the environment. A few cently took disparate but signifi Although an outside company, years before, the South Pacific Divi cant steps to place Adventists within Fiesta Parade Floats, designed the sion had drafted its own statement. the environmental movement. float, Pathfinders and other Adven In 1991, the denomination submit North America dedicated a highly tists, representing the nine regional ted a different statement to the Rio visible float to the cause of the areas of the United States and world conference on the environ environment and the General Con Canada, made and rode on the ment, which some felt was embar ference Committee adopted its first float that depicted outdoor activi rassingly inadequate. Preparations official statement on the subject. ties such as hiking and camping. began on a fuller document. For the third consecutive year, The 25-foot high, 18-foot wide, and ·The final draft emerged from a the Seventh-day Adventist Church 55-foot long float was decorated working group at the 1992 Annual participated in the Tournament of with thousands of flowers-40,000 Council that included teachers of Roses Parade. The theme of this roses, as well as dendrobiums, cat science, theologically trained editors year's float was "Enjoying and Car tleya orchids, tulips, camellias, and at the General Conference and laity, ing for Nature," which was shown gerbera daisies. including one person from the South by two sets of animated floral wa Norm Middag, North American Pacific Division. As readers of Spec terfalls surrounded by animals and Division Camp/Pathfinder special trum can see for themselves, the insects. For several years the Rose ist, was the principal force behind statement, "Caring for God's Cre Parade has been televised interna the planning and financing of all ation," officially adopted by the An tionally, but last year citizens of the three floats. He says the theme of nual Council, provides theological former Soviet Union could see it, the 1993 float developed out of the reasons for endorsing the basic goals and this year the parade was tele Adventist traditions of outdoor ex of the environmental movement. vised to the People's Republic of ercise and nature observation as China. As a result, in 1992, if they well as the tradition of stewardship. Lara Beaven, a junior journalism ma tuned in, some one-half billion Middag explains that the concept of jor at Columbia Union College, is the people, worldwide, could see the stewardship has been a part of the editor of the Columbia Journal, the Seventh-day Adventist float identi- church for a long time, even though campus newspaper. jANUARY 1993 45 SPEC7RUM------ tal hazard known to Americans. Fifty-two thousand Americans suc cumb each year to diseases related to secondhand smoking, including 3,000 who will die from lung can cer. In fact, environmental tobacco smoke causes 30 times as many lung cancer deaths as all other cancer-causing air pollutants regu lated by the Environmental Protec tion Agency. Sharing supper with a friend in a no-smoking area of an otherwise smoke-filled restaurant means being exposed to air pollu tion that is six times greater than breathing the outside air of a met ropolitan area during rush hour. Until recently, religious orga nizations were noticeably absent from attempts to employ public policy to combat the tobacco com panies. The Washington Institute, an Adventist institution, is leading America's churches to take to bacco seriously as a public policy issue. Environmental tobacco smoke is part of the general problem of smoking in America. Active smok ing kills more Americans (more than 434,000 yearly) than alcohol, cocaine, heroin, homicide, suicide, car accidents, fires, and AIDS com bined. Add deaths from environ mental tobacco smoke and you have the total for the first and third preventible causes of yearly deaths in the U.S.: 485,000 people (see chart, facing page). Just as it had attacked studies of active smoking, the tobacco indus try responded to the Environmen tal Protection Agency's report with the usual accusations that health Fighting Secondhand Smoke's advocates had skewed statistics. They would have us believe that Pollution of the Environment their advertising-an area where the industry spent nearly $4 billion by Bryan Zervos dollars in 1992 to push their lethal products-has no effect on con he Environmental Protection tal tobacco smoke: It kills, and in a sumers' buying habits. Given that T Agency gave us, in January big way. Environmental tobacco 90 percent of all smokers begin 1993, a chilling level of awareness smoke now has the dubious honor before their 20th birthday (50 per regarding secondhand environmen- of being the greatest environmen- cent start smoking by the age of 46 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE ENVIRONMENT 14), the industry targets its adver sistant general secretary of the gen the Interreligious Coalition recently tising at children. And it works. eral board of the church and society participated in a summit meeting The December 1991 issue of of the United Methodist Church; "Tobacco Use: An American Cri the journal ofthe American Medi and Roy Branson, a senior research sis"-sponsored by the American cal Association QAMA) reported fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Medical Association. The summit on a study involving six-year-olds Ethics, Georgetown University. The meeting, with the strong backing of and RJR Nabisco's Old Joe Cool ad quarterly newsletter of the Interre the Washington Institute and the campaign. The findings: the chil ligious Coalition, Religion & Tobacco Interreligious Coalition, agreed to dren more readily recognized Old Control, is edited by the Washing advocate the adoption of a higher Joe Cool (and the link with ciga ton Institute. The newsletter briefs tax on tobacco-an additional $2 rettes) than Mickey Mouse. As members on action plans, news per pack at the federal level and an Charles Scriven, president of Co items, pending relevant legislation, additional $1 per pack at the state lumbia Union College and chair of and is distributed to all members of level. Higher taxes have proven to the Washington Institute's program the U.S. House and Senate through be the single most effective mea council, wrote in an article for the office of Jane Hull-Harvey. The sure reducing the number of first SojournersQuly l992), this is noth Interreligious Coalition has also vis time smokers. ing short of child abuse. ited members of Congress. Those wishing to help in this cam The Washington Institute is ral It recently submitted testimony paign, or to learn more about the lying the churches to support stiff raising questions at confirmation Washington Institute or the Interreli excise taxes on tobacco. The insti hearings this January regarding gious Coalition, write to: Washington tute is following its charter to "iden Mickey Kantor's nomination to the Institute, 771 OCarroll Avenue; Takoma tify issues ... that have historically post of United States trade repre Park, Maryland 20912. Fax: (301) 270- been of concern to Adventists" and sentative. Philip Morris, the largest 2814; telephone: (301) 853-2303. to "choose the organization involved tobacco conglomerate in America, with the issue that is recognized as had hired Kantor's law firm to Bryan Zervos, a graduate of Columbia being the best." Washington Insti represent it in Washington, D.C. Union College, is program coordinator tute program council members Roy The Washington Institute and of the Washington Institute. Branson and Charles Scriven are leading the way in alerting Protes YEARLY CAUSES OF DEATH tants to the dangers of active smok IN THE UNITED STATES ing and environmental tobacco smoke by writing essays in such leading journals as Christian Cen tury, Christianity Today, and So journers. Roy Benton, professor of mathematics at Columbia Union Col lege, is reporting in several journals Alcohol (includes drunk driving) on a nationwide conference on tobacco and youth he attended in the People's Republic of China. The Ministry of Health in Beijing wel comed public health ministers from each of China's provinces to plan health-education measures. Working closely with religious 1 advocates on Capitol Hill, the Wash Tobacco ...... 434,000 SOURCES Secondhand smoke ...... 53,0002 1. U.S. Centers For Disease Control, 1988 ington Institute, in the fall of 1992, 3 Alcohol (includes drunk driving) ...... 105,000 data formed the Interreligious Coalition Cocaine & Crack...... 3,3004 2. U.S. EnvironmentaiProtectionAgency, on Smoking OR Health. Since its Heroin & Morphine ...... 2,4004 ETS Compendium, 19&5 data 4 3. U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 1987 inception, the Interreligious Coali Homicide ...... 22,000 data tion has encouraged mainline de Suicide ...... 31,0004 4. National Centers for Health Statistics, nominations to adopt official church Car Accidents ...... 25,000s 1988data Fires ...... 4,ooos 5. National Safety Council, 1989 data statements regarding tobacco. Its 6. U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 1990 AIDS ...... 31,0006 co-chairs are Jane Hull-Harvey, as- data jANUARY 1993 47 SPEC1RUM------ has been submitted that provides Recycling College Campuses for purchase of necessary supplies, and payment of an hourly wage to by Chip Cassano and Theresa Yu students who will collect, sort, and transport recyclables. s the environmental movement The studio could also be used to The group also circulated a pe A gains momentum, the re produce educational videos focus tition asking for student and faculty greening of Adventist college and ing on environmental issues. support. Potter says that the group's university campuses has focused Like Andrews University's pro goal is to establish a recycling pro on recycling as a logical first step. gram, the recycling program at Co gram as part of the way that the Near the end of 1991, Andrews lumbia Union College was started college does business, and to thus University's Student Movement re several years ago by a student, ensure that the program will sur ported that student Stephen Ertel, Andrew Marter. Students have con vive,_ even if the current level of with the assistance of Dr. Robert tinued to oversee the program, but interest wanes. Wilkins of the chemistry depart it has struggled for lack of funding ment, led in forming ReCreation, a and volunteer help. Chip Cassano, a graduate student in volunteer program that encourages This year a group of students, the writing program at johns Hopkins recycling and conservation and organized by senior Jill Potter, have University, is assistant editor of educates the community about re taken steps to secure administra Spectrum .Theresa Yu is a junior jour cycling. The program has grown tive support and funding for a nalism major at Columbia Union Col steadily, and plans are in effect to campus-wide program. A budget lege. incorporate 40 or more volunteers- students, faculty, staff, and admin istrators--to oversee and imple ment the recycling program. Support from faculty and ad Adventists Among the Elephants ministrators has been encouraging. The program was granted a small by Leonard Taylor budget, and one faculty member, Dr. Dennis Woodland of the biol y wife and I have participated we visited. ogy department, offers extra credit M in five short-term, ecologi Typically, the projects accom to students of his Environment and cally related projects with modate five to 20 or so visiting Man class who participate in the Earthwatch. Carlene and I have assistants. Some will be involved program as volunteers. spent two to three weeks at a time with day-long hikes, others with A survey of students at Atlantic working with scientists research less physical record-keeping. All Union College showed that virtu ing orangutans in Borneo, small the programs have several hours a ally all respond positively to sug carnivorous animals in Nepal, day oflectures both in the field and gested recycling programs, and cranes in Vietnam, bottlenose dol in the camp. plans are afoot that, if imple phins in Costa Rica, and one of the Life at one project we joined, mented, will have more than local world's last primeval forests in evaluating the small carnivorous impact. Poland. animals of Nepal, can give a more Professor Gene Johnson of We helped researchers with detailed picture ofEarthwatch. The AUC's biology department is direc academic positions either in the government established large ar tor of the Adventist Environmental United States or other major coun eas equivalent to our national parks Institute, an organization with the tries. No matter how remote the to protect animals from a rapidly objective of developing environ location of the project, the re expanding human population. mental awareness. The organiza searchers were at ease with the Earthwatch investigators tabulate tion hopes to raise enough money unusual languages spoken and had the variety of species, information to develop a studio where a Mr. wide contacts within the countries necessary for rational programs to Rogers-type television show can in which we worked. In many maintain ecological balance within be re-enacted, with the objective of instances the researchers we joined the preserves. educating children on the impor had devoted decades--sometimes We reached our base of opera tance of maintaining a healthy en their entire professional lives-to tion in the Himalayan foothills by vironment by way of recycling. the particular ecological project using elephants as our sole means 48 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE ENviRONMENT of transportation, carrying us computer operated on batteries without trying to understand what across rivers and through heavy charged by solar panels during the the consequences will be. For ex foliage. The elephants also pro day. ample, the advent of antibiotics tected us from attacks by large Financial support for basic eco seemed a certain victory over some animals, such as rhinoceroses, ti logic research is scarce. Partici diseases. It seems no one knew or gers and slothbears. At our base pants like us, by providing their cared that the short generation time camp we slept on the ground in own transportation and paying for of bacteria would allow "super the open forest. the opportunity to work with these bugs" to evolve that would be Our day usually began at sun researchers, are able to help keep highly resistant to antibiotics. rise, baiting new traps, with their these vital projects alive. By thus The result is that mathematical accompanying cameras, and check supporting basic research our fi ecologists are constantly looking ing the old trap lines. Captured nancial contributions to Earthwatch for new technology to help us animals were tranquilized and given projects were tax deductible. We correct the problems created by a complete physical examination. also obtained a deep respect for old technology. The philosophical Several pages of data were written other countries, their people, and implications are potent, disquiet up on each animal. Selected ani their religions. A catalogue of ing, and unpopular. Even if we mals were equipped with radio Earthwatch projects can be ob take a pragmatic stance and as collars, and a team was given the tained from Earthwatch, 680 Mount sume that we "can't stop progress," responsibility of keeping the loca Auburn Street, Watertown, MA we should at least try to reason out tion of the animal known at all 02272. Telephone: (617) 926-8200. what are likely risks of implement times by the use of directional ing a new technology. radio antennae. Leonard Taylor, chief ofpathology and No ecological system can be com In . the evening we gathered director of the clinical laboratory at pletely described mathematically, around a large campfire, with el Redlands Community Hospital, is an asso but our research group here at the ephants standing guard in the deep ciate clinical professor if pathology at University of Tennessee uses large shadows. The information collected Lomalinda Uniwrsity. This piece was writ systems of partial differential equa that day was then entered into a ten in coUaboration wiJh Carlene Taylor .. tions to model ecological systems. By using both theoretical and nu meral means, and taking into ac count mathematical theory and The Wilderness and Mathematics empirical, biological data, we create powerful computer simulations of by Shandelle Henson entire environments. In particular, our group at the University of Ten have been an environmentalist professor had been the only faculty nessee is modeling the effects of I ever since I can remember. I member at Duke in my specialty, I certain pollutants on natural aquatic find God in the wilderness. It is my was also looking for a new school. populations and communities. sacred cathedral and my play Then the director of graduate stud I enjoyed theoretical mathemat ground. It is a mysterious acquain ies at the University of Tennessee at ics, but I always felt that my time tance, a comfortable companion, Knoxville department happened to and energy should have been used and a stem disciplinarian. I wish to mention a special research group: to more directly confront the world's help protect wilderness for prag mathematical ecology! I was problems. I wanted to feel like my matic, poetic, and moral reasons. hooked. Nowl'mfinishingmydoc research was useful. Through a Lately, I have found a niche that torate in mathematics, only this time seeming setback in my doctoral has combined my career as a math my research is in this new field of program, God directed me to an ematician with my interests in ecol mathematical ecology. option I had not known existed. ogy! The Environmental Protection I'm so glad my mathematics can Last year for the first time I heard Agency uses mathematical models make a difference to the wilder the exciting phrase "Mathematical as tools to make assessments of the ness and the world. Ecology." At the time, I was a Ph.D. risks new technologies bring to candidate in theoretical mathemat humans and to the environment. Shandel/e Henson, a graduate cfSouth ics at Duke University. I suddenly Such risk assessments are of ut ern College, is a Ph.D. candidate in found myself in need of a new most importance, for too often we mathematics at the University of Ten thesis advisor, and since my major put a new technology to work nessee. jANUARY 1993 49 NEWS UPDATES Adventists on The Move Adventist athletes compete in world championships, and Adventist linguists bring news from Albania and Turkey. institutions that offer competitive acrosports. Acrobatic Adventists While the sport is .not well known in the United States, it has been very popular in by Sharise Esh Europe, China, and the former Soviet Union for more than 50 years. It is expected to be a n November 26-28, 1992, four Adven demonstration sport in the 1996 Olympic games. O tists-a doctor, a teacher, a law student, Acrosports, also known as sports acrobat and a hospital cashier-competed in the 1992 ics, is quite similar to gymnastics. However, Acrosports World Championships held in instead of working on traditional gymnastic Rennes, France. They placed sixth-higher equipment, such as the balance beam or than any other group representing the United uneven bars, the athletes use other gymnasts States. In doing so, they have made the United as their equipment-building pyramids, toss States eligible to send a group from their ing and catching people in the air. category to the 1993 World Games, held next Acrobats choose partners and then train and summer in Amsterdam. compete with only these partners. They can Robb White, Rick Schwartz, Mark Velasco, choose from five catagories-men's pair, men's and Jon Velasco, the only Adventists in the four, mixed pair, women's pair, or women's competition, train at Spring Valley Academy, trio. There are also four levels of competition where Rick Schwartz is head coach. More than in which these groups compete-novice, in 200 other Adventists are currently competing termediate, advanced, and elite. When com at the national level, with some 700 more petitors reach the elite level, they are eligible striving for eligibility at the six Adventist to attempt qualification for international com petition. Sharise Esh, a senior journalism major at Columbia Union Adventists became involved in sports acro College, is Spectrum's editorial assistant. batics back when the sport was still at the 50 VOHhWE 22, NUMBER 5 THE jouRNAL oF mE AssociA1lON oF ADVENTIST FoRuMs developmental level in the United States. tion, spotted Vanny Dye, a former student of Pioneers like Robert Kalua, currently coach of Kalua's. He approached him about joining a the Andrews University Gymnics, helped shape men's four. This brought Adventist acrobatics and influence the direction of sports acrobat into the competitive arena. Joining Dye in the ics in this country. distinction of being the first Adventists to In the early 1950s, Kalua witnessed a compete were Craig Patterson and Tonya simple acrobatics demonstration by a couple Case, competing in a mixed-pair routine. from Hawaii. Enthusiastic about what he had After training only six months, Dye's men's seen, he began collecting information on four won their division and the elite men's four acrobatics and training at Pacific Union Col national title at the 1986 U.S. National Cham lege with a friend, Gene Wilson. In 1957, pionships held in Mobile, Alabama. Dye was Kalua and Wilson went to Lorna Linda Univer the first Adventist to win a national title. Later sity. There, with a pick and shovel, they dug that year, this men's four earned a silver medal out the side of a hill. After leveling it off, at a friendship meet in Poland, becoming the paving it over, and setting up a few simple first U.S. men's four to medal in international pieces of equipment, they had their first "gym." competition-Adventist or otherwise. Dye's group went on to win the national title again fter two years, Kalua and Wilson decided in 1987 and, at this competition, scored high A they were ready to take their team on the enough to qualify for the world champion road. After much discussion and letter writing, ships, held in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They this team-the "Gymnics"-secured an invita placed fifth. tion to perform at the 1959 Adventist Youth Congress in Atlantic City. Acrobatic demonstrations at this time in volved pyramid building; simple beam, bars and vault routines; trampolining, and some comedy. As the Gymnics performed their three-ring circus-style show, Kalua watched to see the reaction of denominational officials. These General Conference leaders, all lined up in the front row, were poking one another in the ribs, motioning wildly at the different stunts, unable to take everything in. It was this team and this performance that launched acrobatics into the Adventist system. Soon exhibition teams similar to the Gymnics were springing up all over the Adventist system. Now, nearly every Adventist academy and college in the United States has a gymnas tic/acrobatics team. With so many teams, Adventist colleges began holding clinics each year for training purposes. At one of these clinics, held at Walla Walla College, Dan Hoff, a national coach for the United States Sports Acrobatics Federa- jANUARY 1993 51 SPEcmuM------ About this time, Roger McFarland, coach of Other Adventist schools are now becoming the team at La Sierra, became interested in involved. Union College and Columbia Union competitive acrobatics. Contacts McFarland College have sent teams to the last three had made, combined with an article he had national championships. These two colleges read about two other Adventists competing, combined have managed to take home two prompted him to take six of his students to the team awards and 15 medals. 1987 U.S. National Championships held in It is now estimated that one fourth of all Hawaii. By 1988, La Sierra was hosting the acrobats competing in the United States are national championships, with 26 Adventists Adventist. Nine hundred Adventists are com competing. In 1989, Adventists took another peting members of the federation, with more turn, with Kalua hosting the National Champi than 200 of these competing at the national onships at Andrews University. Adventist par level. Not surprisingly, Adventists are moving ticipation had now reached 86. into leadership positions. La Sierra coach At this point Robb White, Mark Velasco, jon Roger McFarland is a member of the United Velasco, and john Greenidge began training at States Sports Acrobatics Federation Board and Andrews University. They competed and won Executive Committee. Spring Valley coach the elite national men's four title for two years. Rick Schwartz serves as regional director for In the third year the group picked up Rick the Mideast. Schwartz--head coach at Spring Valley where they were now training--after losing partner john Greenidge. This group held their title at nationals and even scored enough points to Diplomat & Missionary: move on to international competition. It was this group that placed sixth at the 1992 world Pilgrims on the Road championships. During Friday's finals at the 1992 world by Roy Branson championships, the group ran into difficulty with sundown, and unanimously chose not to wo recent visitors to Washington, D.C. perform one of their routines. The group came T came from countries with very few Ad out sixth all around, scoring higher than any ventists, Albania and Turkey. They updated other U.S. group at the competition, and two stories previously printed in Spectrum. higher than any other U.S. men's four at an Megan Shehu and David Dunn also embody international competition. This score secured the h'ealth and creativity of the Seventh-day the United States a spot in this division at the Adventist community. 1993 World Games, at which acrobatics will be included for the first time. They, along with Vanny Dye, are the only Adventists to reach Diplomat in Albania this level of competition. Rick Schwartz, the fourth and newest part egan Shehu is a member of the foreign ner, also coaches Spring Valley Academy, M ministry of Albania. Three years ago, which is the largest Adventist competitive she was marching with fellow university stu team, sending more than 20 competitors to the dents in the streets of Tirana. They could have national competition each year. Spring Valley has become a very strong team, winning Roy Branson, a senior research fellow at the Kennedy Institute medals for almost every entry they make. of Ethics at Georgetown University, is the editor ofSpectrum. 52 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE jouRNAL oF mE AssociATION oF ADVENTIST FoRuMs all been shot. Instead, their demonstrations America was spent with the Adventist congre helped overthrow the remnants of the most gation in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Her repressive dictatorship in Europe. second Sabbath she greeted worshipers at the Enver Hoxha, first secretary of the commu 11 a.m. service of the second-largest Adventist nist party, ruled Albania for 40 years, from congregation in North America, the 3,200- 1946 until his death in 1985. Loyal to Stalin and member Sligo church in Takoma Park, Mary enemy of all Soviet liberalization, Hoxha closed land. more than 2,000 places of worship, tortured Megan told amazed churchgoers, and a and executed thousands of believers, and Sligo discussion Sabbath school class, that she wrote into the nation's constitution that "the comes from a Muslim family (although not State recognizes no religion whatever and formally religious). Indeed, Megan's paternal supports atheist propaganda." Hoxha's suc grandfather was a muezzin, the cleric calling cessor clung to power until 1990. pre-war Albanians to prayers at a mosque. Her In the spring of 1992, Megan, at 21, gradu maternal grandfather was a professor, impris ated with honors from the University of Tirana oned by the Hoxha regime for his democratic and its program in linguistics and literature ideals. (her thesis was on the nature of double Megan began studying the Bible when three negatives). After scoring among the top 2 American boys, speaking English, arrived at percent in a government examination, she the University of Tirana. Later, when she was invited to join the foreign ministry. Her decided to become a Christian, her family university-long practice of teaching herself initially had problems, but are now recon English-three hours a night-then proved ciled. "They see that my Christianity has made critical. The United States Department of State me much more joyful. Besides, they love me." arrived in Tirana and, after conducting a round Before the Sabbath school class was over, of competitive interviews, invited Megan to be Megan was saying how proud she was of her the youngest of only 10 Albanian officials to Albanian culture-"as ancient as Greece's" attend a month-long seminar at the Foreign and smilingly asking about differences in life Service Institute in Washington, D.C. Other style between Albanian and American Adven invitees included the president's chief-of-staff tists-the latter seemingly more rigid. and his principal foreign policy advisor. Both Albania and Adventism can rest as That was not all that happened to Megan in sured that in Megan Shehu they have an 1992. In September, after studying many accomplished and winsome diplomat. months, she was baptized as a Seventh-day Adventist, one of only about 100 in the entire country. She confirm's Spectrnm's 1991 report Modern-day Livingstone in (Vol. 22, No. 1) that her home congregation in Turkey the capital, Tirana, includes the pioneer Ad ventist Meropi Gjika (now 88), and her two avid Dunn loves being a missionary. He sons, Thanas, a professor of literature at the D also loves adventure, so he makes cer University of Tirana; and Viktor, one of tain they always go together. The key, as for Albania's most prominent filmakers. Megan Shehu, is linguistic ability. At the fa As soon as she arrived, in February 1993, for mous Berlitz language school in Washington, the State Department seminar in Washington, D.C., David became something of a legend for D.C., Megan's instructors fulfilled their prom his rapid mastery of Arabic. He now teaches in ise to find fellow believers. Her first Sabbath in a Turkish high school. jANUARY 1993 53 SPEcmuM ______~ During Megan's first week in America, David ventists. The denomination wanted him to was completing arrangements to bring up to start work in new areas. So, David retrieved his 100 non-Adventist Turkish students to Colum family from the United States, and took them bia Union College for a summer of English to Iskanderun, a port in Southern Turkey, near language instruction. He also told some of his Syria. st01y to a Sligo church Sabbath school. The Dunn family knew no one when they Partly because of his language skills, the arrived. They sat down in an outdoor restau General Conference sent David and his family rant and David and his wife began doing what to Kuwait. While he pastored a congregation they do best-getting acquainted. In that first made up largely of non-Kuwaitis, David culti- · conversation, they learned that the high school vated Kuwaiti friendships. He chatted easily in to which the well-to-do business and govern cafes, and was beginning to become ac ment leaders sent their children needed an quainted with members of the ruling families. English teacher. After the first candidate left The son of missionaries, David planned to stay the country, David was employed (he turns his in Kuwait with is family for years. salary over to the Middle East Union). He and Then the Iraqis invaded. David was the his family are now part of the life oflskanderun. American Adventist caught behind Iraqi lines The Muslim parents who have come to know in Kuwait City (reported in Spectrum, Vol. 21, and trust him for his work at the high school No. 2). He survived through the efforts of are the ones who will be paying for their Muslim Kuwaitis who had stayed in the coun children to be taught at an American Adventist try to work in the underground resistance. He college. had spent time getting to know them; they Now the church wants David and his family now helped their friend. to move again-this time to Istanbul, where After a brief respite in the United States, David has been invited to become a faculty David returned to the Middle East on a special member at the well-known Roberts College, mission with the Adventist Development and founded early in this century by American Relief Agency (ADRA). This time he traveled Presbyterians. to Istanbul, then trekked through eastern No one ever questioned the commitment to Turkey, not stopping until he had penetrated Christian missions of David Livingstone, the into Iraq, indeed to its northern capital, Mosul. famous Scottish missionary to Africa. But There, under protection of the United Nations, Livingstone the preacher was also driven to be he helped the Kurds survive the months after Livingstone the adventuring explorer. Those the Gulf War. who have heard the 20th-century David, and Then in 1991 the church had a new assign who find themselves, for some reason, in ment. Despite decades of effort, and the Turkey, should be prepared, if they are in purchase of a large building near the famous some sidewalk cafe, to look up, recognize a Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey-according to round, quizzical American face, and say, "Pas David-still has only eight Seventh-day Ad- tor Dunn, I presume." 54 VOLUME 22, NUMBER 5 REVIEWS Servants or Friends? Graham Maxwell's Latest Book Reviewed by Gordon Bietz Graham Maxwell, Servants or the same with the motifs servant Friends? Redlands, Calif.: Pine Knoll and friend. He gets these words Publications, 1992. $15.95 hard from a phrase in John 15:15 where cover; $9.95 paper. 224 pages. Jesus says, "I no longer call you servants, ... Instead, I have called rom the first chapter on, Graham you friends ... " (NIV). One might FMaxwell has a pastoral objec question building such an extensive tive for his book. He seeks to reach picture of God based on one text, a generation of people turned off to but then Nygren used only two Christianity. The book opens with a words and one of them isn't even in variety of his personal experiences the Bible. I illustrate Maxwell's con with people whose distorted con trasting motifs in the table below. cept of God drove them away from The bias of any theologically the Christian church. Maxwell seeks conversant Adventist will have them to bring them back by picturing looking for some praiseworthy or God as seeking our friendship rather damning clues in the book that than our servitude. reinforce their ideas about Anders Nygren, in his classic Maxwell's ideas. There are those work Agape and Eros, builds a who would suggest that the para paradigm of contrasting motifs digm doesn't stand up theologi through a word study of agape and cally because of the way it deals eros. He sees the world and every with the cross (God's supreme dem thing in it fitting into one of these onstration of his love, according to words. Graham Maxwell is doing Maxwell, as compared to a forensic Gordon Bietzgraduated from Andrews University with M.Div. and D.Min. de grees. He has been pastor of the Collegedale SDA church for 11 years. He was awarded the Merrill Fellowship and spent three months studying at Harvard University during the fall of 1991. jANUARY 1993 55 SPECTRUM------view of his death as a sacrifice). contact with Maxwell's ideas. I don't than addressing only the symp Maxwell's theory of the atonement necessarily believe that Maxwell's toms and casualties of those struc is not the focus of the book, though paradigm answers all the questions tures. This results, the authors con his ideas come through. about the atonement, but then that tend, when Adventists individually I am not a theologian. I am a wasn't the goal. Certainly other and corporately throw off such pastor who lives a long way from theories also fall short of making inhibitors to social action as the the semiarid land of theological clear this event that we will study deep-seated fallacy of ancient bodyI hair splitting, so I won't get into all for eternity. soul dualism; internalize the Old the implications for the doctrine of When it comes to thinking about and New Testament roots of social atonement. I simply know that the God, we all need to take off our concern; and set their own house picture of God presented by Max sandals like Moses and walk very aright by dismantling the black well ministers to people whose carefully. No one picture is the sin qua conferences of the North American lives have been abused by reli non picture of God I fmd that many Division. gious demagogues and who don't perspectives deepen one's apprecia Readers will notice that the case experience God's peace. Some will tion of Scripture, and of God. for social concern is not made by suggest that there are many inap The book is "an easy read." It is caricaturing the church. Positive propriate theological thoughts that filled with illustrations, both picto recent developments are acknowl minister to people but in the end rial and written. The points are edged: our forays against the lead them down the garden path to made clearly. Just pick up the book tobacco industry, the release of destruction. I agree. I don't believe Servants or Friends and you have General Conference statements on that this paradigm is one of those. the feel that this is not published selected public policies, revisionist One test of the God-as-friend for the Adventist Book Center. There interpretations of the Adventist paradigm, aside from whether it is is a clear attempt to reach a wider church in Peru, integration of the theologically valid, is "Does it audience than might find their way South African church, and the like. work?" I answer that question with into an Adventist store. It is good to Noteworthy also, the prescribed a decided "Yes." I might not be as see an attempt to publish to the social activism does not spring from exclusive in using the servant/friend larger community rather than just the hearty individualism that we paradigm as Maxwell is, but it having continuing conversations rightly or wrongly equate with lib nonetheless makes a very distinc with ourselves. eralism. Indeed, the authors' valu tive contribution to Adventist I recommend the book to you. ation of the individual, which is not thought. Several of my parishio Give it as a gift to friends who are altogether clear, seems low--at least ners has come to me with a reflec struggling with their perception of too low for triggering the remedial tive question about eschatology or God. It may just open up a whole passions that are wanted. As in the the atonement. Their reflections new vista and enable them to re Hebraic and conservative traditions, have been stimulated by coming in ceive God's friendship. the individual becomes truly hu man only as the member of a group. SDAs: Conservative and Liberal Social activism, as generally understood in Adventist circles, Reviewed by Gary M. Ross misses the mark. Too smart to voice the dualism they deplore, Dudley, Roger L., and Edwin I. i"'f"1his book appears to be a manual Dudley and Hernandez do not sepa Hernandez, CITIZENS OF TWO 1 for social activism and an em rate spiritual concerns from social WORWS: Religion and Politics pirical demonstration that Advent concerns and then uphold the lat Among American Seventh-day Ad ists need it. On closer analysis, it is ter. It only seems that they do this. ventists. Berrien Springs, Mich.: not quite either of these things. Social concerns are emphasized Andrews University Press, 1992. The later chapters of the book, because they are the more ne $14.95 paperback. 318+ pages. the part where recommendations glected component of the Advent emerge, describe what ought to ist mindset. constitute the relationship between For the authors, the desideratum GaryM.Ross, who received his Ph.D. in religion and politics: a commit is always an integrative holistic history from Washington State Univer ment to the radical, prophetic kind model that brings into creative ten sity, is the congressional liaison for the of social involvement that trans sion all dimensions of human life. General Conference ofSDAs. forms oppressive structures rather Soul and body become one. Evan- 56 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE joURNAL OF mE AssociATION OF ADVENT1ST FoRuMs gelist and acttvtst coincide with produced a mixed and quite dis sist, with Niebuhr, that correlation singleness of purpose and mission. turbing picture. Given the North does not prove causation, given No aspect of human life escapes American Division's recent book that social variables intervene be the power of the gospel. And all of length repudiation of such unoffi tween religion and politics. Their this because, for Ellen White, "the cial journals and ministries as Our assumptions set the stage for scanty union of Christlike work for the Firm Foundation, it is curious that empirical results. Nevertheless, the body and Christlike work for the these journals were rarely even book holds that "while the effect of soul is the true interpretation of the known to the respondents. religion on political views is by no gospel." The question posed next is means strong, it does exist, to some The authors ask, Is it empiri whether social variables determine extent, independent of that of de cally the case that Adventists shun the religious differences among mographic considerations." politics and neglect the social side Adventists. Comparisons between The measure of religion found of things? In this book advocacy, the measures of religion and such to serve best as a predictor of politi such as that which is outlined demographic groups as gender, cal attitudes and behaviors is ortho above, follows inquiry. Turning, religious background, marital sta doxy or ideological commitment. then, to the section written by the tus, age, ethnicity, family income, Where this is strong, Adventists ei authors in their role as social scien and level of formal education re ther withdraw from politics com tists, we find inquiry aplenty-and vealed considerable predictability pletely or take conservative political surprisingly meager results. in the areas of age and socioeco positions. But three things can com nomic status. That is, religious com plicate this correspondence: reli ble researchers that they are, mitment increased among the gious liberty issues, military A Dudley and Hernandez dis elderly, perhaps because of the offensives, and ethnic experience. close their methodology, acknowl increasing imminence of death; and Indeed in such contexts the ortho edge the shortcomings of ques it fell markedly among the affluent dox become markedly liberal, fear tionnaire-generated data, and and professionally trained. Appar ing that school prayer could break qualify the results. A survey of 419 ently, when the former leave the the wall of separation between adult lay members in North America scene one cannot expect the latter church and state, that war and kill on religion and politics forms the to take up the mantle and support ing could curtail the spreading of basis of their study and produces the church with equal commit the gospel, that obsession with law the eventual thesis that Adventists ment. and order could undermine the free "vary on their politics according to A chapter follows on how Ad dom and justice that minorities (but certain measures of religion and ventists responded to the political, not only minorities) crave. background variables such as economic, and social issues cur We knew already, of course, ethnicity." rent in 1988. Most favored a "lib that the attendees of Sabbath "ral Ambitiously, the book first iden eral" stance on socioeconomic and lies" on religious liberty look like, tifies differences among Adventists peace issues, such as the elimina and sound like, conservatives while in religious beliefs, behaviors, and tion of racial discrimination and zealously voicing the liberal agenda experiences. Pastors and church the establishment of peaceful rela on church and state. It is the con administrators should draw heavily tions with Russia. But Adventists spicuous absence of moderate, upon this material as they nurture took a "conservative" position on middle-aged professionals that I their parishioners and determine strictly political concerns, like law wanted explained. policy. For example, questions on and order-perhaps reflecting their A further letdown: a Seventh orthodoxy discovered beliefs in own law-oriented soteriology. day Adventist Church in North the imminence of Christ's second America known to be undergoing coming to be unexpectedly low, aving determined what Ameri an influx of blacks and Hispanics is and belief in a works-oriented doc H can Adventists are like reli assessed by an instrument that trine of salvation to be unexpect giously and politically, the authors slights minorities; and a people's edly high. While at the experiential proceed to their "major research stance on public issues is assessed level Adventists were found incor task": the demonstration of how without mention of abortion. For porating much subjectivity and the first quality influences the sec some, these acknowledged weak emotion into their religion, church ond. They lament that "the nature nesses will loom too large to be related practices such as atten of the relationship between reli excused. dance, tithing, witnessing, and the gion and politics is--in the final Preoccupied as I am with this conducting of worship in the home analysis--elusive." They also in- church's role in the public sector, it jANUARY 1993 57 SPEC7RUM------is also hard to share the authors' sense that the denomination's social Milton Murray's Dream concern is inadequate. The Advent ist Development and Relief Agency, Reviewed by Loren Dickinson a very far-reaching dynamic of the church, seems not to count at all. And what about the community Ronald A. Knott. The Makings of a enced en route to raising millions setvices of local churches? Super Philanthropic Fundraiser: The In for the church and other entities. seding Dorcas, these efficient, pro structive ExampleofMiltonMurray. The book's most compelling fessional outreaches desetve atten San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Pub point is not so much what Murray tion and approval. lishers, 1992. $23.95, hardcover. 237 has done but what he is. One Few books reach their central pages. senses a man of intrepid style with task so slowly. About 100 pages of the singular goal of raising and material precede the above report ilton Murray, the subject of sharing money for good causes. of the empirical findings. Yet this is M this book, never himself Persistence and ethics may rank a virtue, too. They pack valuable aimed to write a book about what highest as Murray's greatest assets. information on the reversal of con he does best-raise and give away Murray offered Knott a rare and setvative Protestantism from in money. Even less did he ever intend candid insight into the state of volvement in society to withdrawal to have one written about him. affairs at Lorna Linda in the 1950s. from society to engagement in se But his admirers thought differ Early in his career Murray worked lective aspects of state and national ently. They've produced The Mak to establish public relations at the life; and valuable information also ings ofaPhilanthropic Fundraiser: former College of Medical Evange on the relationship of the Seventh The ln..'itrnctive Example of Milton lists. He admits in the book to day Adventist Church to the U.S. Murray. being both challenged and annoyed government since the mid-19th Murraycouldhavewrittenit. The at LLU's reticence to see value in century. Exciting research by book's single dominant feature ends public relations and philanthropy. George Marsden, Jonathan Butler, up being an array ofverbatim quotes That has dramatically changed, Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart and Murray philosophy garnered probably in part due to Murray's laces this historical introduction. and arranged by author Ronald Alan early work there. Indeed, theoretical constructs Knott. (Knott and Murray spent some The book, published by Jossey undergird the book throughout, and six months together in early morn Bass, is not holy writ. Clear and fair constitute a major strength. The ing intetviews to develop the sub minded, but not holy writ. People timing of this book's publication is stance of the book.) who don't know Murray are not another merit. We who have just Knott, with some considerable likely to buy it. Those who do may endured a race for the White House, skill, blends Murray's views with wish for something more than de watched Global Mission become more factual description of Murray's scription. Interpretation, perhaps. our church's top priority, listened to life, detailing a variety of family and Still, it offers a picture of a sig debates over national health insur personal influences Murray experi- nificant church figure, setting out ance, and applauded the integra to be useful, and finding out that he tion of the Adventist Church outside Loren Dickinson is chair ofthe commu succeeded to a measure greater North America cannot butwelcome, nication department at Walla Walla than he would ever admit. That read, and use this book. College. may be worth writing about. 58 VOLUME22, NUMBER 5 RESPONSES From Heavenly Sanctuary To Earthly Synagogue ecently you printed an article to be passionate about your Ford. A Rabout Good News Unlimited car you believe in you will take care with an interview with my father, of and pass on to your children. But DesFord(Spectrum, Vol. 22, No.1). with just another Ford, you'll trade it I think I was the only outsider to sit in easily when you see something in on the Glacier View Conference, better come along. which saw the Adventist Church strip my father of his ministerial n the past dozen years I've seen credentials. I Adventists who retain their belief Many people have asked me my in the doctrine of the heavenly sanc opinion of what happened. I can tuary retain their religion. And those sum it up in a sentence. Adventism's Adventists who've become too so best and brightest wailed and phisticated to believe in a last judg gnashed their teeth for a week over ment have frequently traded in their the question of whetherJesus moved faith for other, more attractive, less from the holy to the most holy place demanding vehicles to heaven. in the heavenly sanctuary in 1844. Adventism's gospel revolution But on that silly question rests ev (the belief that the sacrifice of the erything for the Adventist. divine Saviour did it all 2,000 years Only a minority of Adventists ago and that there's consequently understand the heavenly sanctuary nothing to fear from a judging God doctrine, but you must believe it or so long as one is in Christ) can be you're not really an Adventist. You're seen in a specifically Christian sense just another Christian who happens as another explosion of the religion's to eat an abundance of natural food antinomian (good deeds don't count Spectrum readers prepared in as natural a way as for salvation) core and in a general possible. sense as just another human rebel respond by writing Let me give you an analogy. lion against a higher moral law short notes, longer (I've adapted it from one offered by (which traditional Adventism some the Jewish thinker Dennis Prager in what embodies). epistks-euen a lecture entitled "Faith vs. Rea And where do I stand on the son.") If you believe your car is the movements of]esus in the heavenly poems-about best car and the very best way to sanctuary? I think it's all nonsense. travel from Pacific Union College I'm converting to Judaism. sanctuaries, gays, to Weimar, you are likely to be odysseys, families, passionate about your Mercedes Benz. But if you view your car as Luke Ford and standards. just another vehicle, you're not likely Newcastle, California jANUARY 1993 59 SPECT.RUM------ erry Gladson's essay, "Convert to Scholar: An Odyssey in Humility" Fellow Pilgrims (Spectrnm, Vol. 21, No.5), brought to mind a poemiwrotewhensearching !or a new concept of God after disillusionment with traditional Adventism. Join Gladson's Resources "Odyssey of I, who question the existence of a "personal" God, Find myself in awe, wonder, thanksgiving, And praise to some higher force Humility" Available to those who open themselves To new experiences, and fresh insights. Who make an effort to live to the utmost r. Gladson, in his article en A useful, effective life in and for themselves D titled "Convert to Scholar: An And those within their circle of influence. Odyssey in Humility" (Spectrnm, Vol. 21, No. 5), shares with us his Some power which recognizes in a human being A longing for the ultimate in true happiness; not-so-quiet despair. He is part of a Which makes unimaginable resources available lengthening list of those who share To those who are seeking truth his opinions and write similar ar By a realistic approach, without guile or subterfuge. ticles. These past two decades have These resources become available, Not in answer to prayer, seen a multiplying of detractors. I For we are benefited in ways that we could not have not always been quiet but I Know to pray for or desire, . have listened to them and read Perhaps not even recognize at the time their offerings. No one really points In fact, praying for specifics to a viable alternative other than Would limit the infinite miracles available. the one many of us have chosen. It might be a book, or a letter, a poem or a song, We have lashed ourselves to the The thoughts of a friend or an unknown scholar, mast of the good ship Remnant Or even a fresh insight into familiar material; People and prepared to ride out the A coincidence of time, storm. We feel the strength of the Of all things coming together In an inexplicable harmony. timbers beneath our feet. The ship is battered bow and hull and bids to Persons may unknowingly become the channel take on water by and by. Professor Through which such miracles occur- Gladson cries out for us to prepare Being in the right place at exactly the right time, to man the boats, or perhaps to With the specific solution to another's problem Without any knowledge that a problem exists. become nondenominational and survive in that manner; however, I hesitate to say there is a God we are surely and rightly afraid of Carrying on this function moment by moment, tempestuous and unknown seas. Because it is so contrary to what I believed No one has yet shown us a truer About a personal God who waits for us to ask And manipulates lives without permission. chart or more reliable compass. If we are in grievous fundamental It is more understandable to me doctrinal error, then only the Holy To believe that this capability is inherent in humans, Spirit can help us and he must do so Making available the resources of the universe quickly. Through an awareness of the intricate complexities Of the human mind- Its emotions, feelings and intuitions; H. N. Sheffield To believe that we were created in the image Madera, California of a power beyond comprehension. Clela Waddell San Diego, California 60 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 THE jouRNAL oF mE AssociATION oF ADVENTIST FoRUMs and waiting for Williams to exit the Daniel and Revolution? park. Game after game I waited, and game after game I failed to find the exit he used. And, of course, I also hile keeping in mind that Ad seminars five nights a week (not to failed to get his autograph ... back W ventism, from its founders, criticize him, please). then. has a heritage that places high value However, do we Adventists find My father never would have ap on searching the Scriptures, we were it easier to search the Scriptures, proved of paying for a player's au awestruck by the article in Spec sometimes, than to become involved tograph, but he did approve of the trnm, Vol. 21, No. 1, on the massa in searching out how to meet our way I eventually got Williams' sig cre of Yugoslavia-shredding fami neighbors' needs? nature on a baseball. Back in 1960, lies and neighbors. During the agony, when the Sox and the Minneapolis crying and dying, a pastor in Zagreb Robert Lee Marsh Millers met in an exhibition game at is conducting Daniel and Revelation Glendale, California Met Stadium, I used my college press card to gain entry to the play ing field. After circling Williams a number of times, I moved closer and listened to him respond to real The Family Revisited reporters. I even mustered enough courage to ask him to pose with me ot long ago you published a When my father talked about for a picture, and he agreed. But that N special section on the family, baseball, such names as Cobb, wasn't my biggest coup. On im including some reminiscences of a Gehrig, Ruth, Speaker, and Walter pulse, as the game was about to father (Spectrnm, Vol. 22, No. 2). It johnson would invariably sneak into begin, I marched into the Sox dug reminded me of my early years in the conversation. For some reason, out and sat down ... next to Boston. my father gave special billing to Williams. And there, for six glorious My memories of my father are johnson, perhaps because my fa innings, all under the watchful eyes wrapped in Sunday doubleheaders ther loved an underdog, and johnson of the usher (who, I suspect, thought at Fenway Park, with pimic baskets pitched for the hapless Washington I was a Boston writer), I revelled of food-<::arefully prepared by my Senators, perennial doormats of the and listened to each and every word mother-sunny skies and grass. Real American League. My father's atti Williams said. grass. And, of course, Ted Williams. tude, I'm sure, explains why I have My wife and I took a whirlwind My father was a frugal man, thus a special affection for the Chicago tour of New England a few year ago. we always sat in the bleachers (back Cubs. As we drove into Boston the night in 1946, $1.50 would seat four: 75 Growing up in Boston with too before our flight back to Minneapo cents for my father, and 25 cents much time on my hands, I took on lis, we "suddenly" found ourselves each for my two brothers and me). some questionable character traits. at Fenway Park. The Sox were off to I never minded sitting in the bleach My brand of fraud took two major Oakland for the American League ers. Hunched over the first row forms. The first of these had to do play-offs. Somehow we found an railing, I could peer down at Dom with bumming quarters on Boston entrance, and an attendant guided DiMaggio, and, over in left field, not Commons. The second bit of chica us to the grandstand area behind far away, was my idol, Williams, the nery took place at Greater Boston first base. It was just after dusk and greatest hitter ever. Academy. On select days, when the a heavy fog had enveloped the My father died back in 1967, his Sox were playing an afternoon game, park. Only a few lights were on, life cut short by an auto accident. At I would lay my head on my desk presenting an eerie picture. Soon first, his in juries were not seen as life and feign a headache. It generally another couple joined us. For about threatening. Later he was taken into took about two hours before my five to 10 minutes, the attendant surgery and died before I could say teacher, Mr. Hammond as I recall, shared some of Fenway's history good-by. In the ensuing years, I directed me to go home. Once safely before hinting that it was time to go. have lost out on a lot of precious out of sight of the school, I would As we were leaving, I heard the things: hundreds of games of run the mile and a half to Fenway. other woman remark, "Why would Scrabble, countless rounds of golf, There, outside the ballpark on the anyone want to visit an empty park?" and, most importantly, endless dis street, I would spend the next three I glanced at her companion and he cussions about baseball. hours trying to shag a foul ball ... looked my way. I believe he was jANUARY 1993 61 SPEC1RUM------thinking what I was thinking: there action, but that can tum out to be a ost of these homosexuals hide are some things in life you can't plus-you'll have more time to talk M their sexual orientation. Out explain to others. to each other. And, if it's cold out wardly, they pretend they are I'm not a preacher (my two chil and you have need of an overcoat, straight. Inwardly, they feel rejec dren might beg to differ), thus I perhaps you can smuggle in some tion, hurt, and shame. In addition to claim no right to moralize. But please home-prepared food. the pain of the children, there is the allow me just one "ought" or And, just for teachers of elemen pain of their parents, many of whom "should," founded on 25 years of tary school students: see that kid, either know or suspect the homo working with children and parents: third row back, last seat on the right? sexuality of their children. Since children grow up in a hurry, and The one with his head on the desk? many homosexuals marry to avoid parents need to relish each precious Before you send him home, be sure suspicion, we can also add to this moment. you check the morning paper. If list the pain of their spouses. Add to If you are a father who has lost a your local baseball team is playing that the number of brothers, sisters, step or two in your relationship with an afternoon game, forget it! The children, uncles, aunts, and friends your children, I'd suggest the kid's faking it. who may suspect the secret but say ballpark. If you don't have much nothing. Even if homosexuals are a money, sit in center field. True, it's Len Colson hidden, and often forgotten, minor far from home plate and much of the Plymouth, Minnesota ity in our churches, the issue still directly concerns us all. Our church is built on the teach ing of Christ and his unconditional love of peG>ple. He taught us to "love Friends of Gay Adventists' your neighbor as yourself' (NIV). The homosexual is our neighbor. Families We need to start to care for this group of people who are hurting: ou recently published a special the gay community and their par the homosexuals, their families, and Y section on the Adventist family ents' concern. their friends. (Spectrum, Vol. 22, No.2). Approxi Since a homosexual orientation Jon and I have just recently started mately eight years ago, my hus can be hidden indefinitely, there are a confidential support group within band, Jon, and I found ourselves far more people affected by homo the Adventist Church for parents, involved with the parents of gay sexuality than many Christians think. relatives, and friends of homosexu children. Our first experience was Most experts feel that approximately als. The new group is called SIMON/ when we got to know a couple from 10 percent of the population is ho CARRYING THE CROSS WITH AD New Westminster whose son had mosexual. Yes, it is likely 10 percent VENTIST PARENTS AND FRIENDS AIDS. Their son did not tell his of the Seventh-day Adventist popu OFLESBIANSANDGAYS. We would parents that he was gay until he lation is gay. like to talk and write to other par contracted the disease. ents and friends who are struggling Another experience came just with this issue. We are not planning after Christmas when we were in support groups but will share expe volved with helping two Christian Letters to the editor are riences on a person-to-person basis. families deal with the guilt, anger, always welcome, and will In addition to providing this peer and hurt when their gay sons com support we will be trying to give mitted suicide. They were all alone be considered for publica support to the new outreach net and felt they could not tell their tion unless otherwise work ARTA (Adventists Responding pastor or friends that they had a gay specified. Direct editorial to AIDS). Anyone interested in in son who just committed suicide. correspondence to Spec formation please contact us: Jon We soon realized that we had and Mabel Norcross, 313-5550 much to learn about homosexuality. trum, P. 0 Box 5330, Cambie Street; Vancouver, BC Our immediate response was to Takoma Park, MD20913 Canada V5Z 3A2; ortelephone (604) love and respect the families in (U.S.A.). Tbe editors re 325-1400. volved. However, we found our selves in the midst of confusion. We serve the right to condense Mabel Norcross are still learning about the hurt in letters prior to publication. Vancouver, Canada 62 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 ------THE jouRNAL OF mE AssociATION OF ADVENTIST FoRUMS educated young adults in the church Life-style Standards Must Be balk at arbitrary boundary setting. There is a report that native In Reasonable, Not Traditional dian hunters have been known to stretch simple cloth fences around the natural habitat of the Bengal s I read Ernest Bursey's and to some extent at least, known real tiger. The report describes the hunt A Greg Schneider's articles (Spec ity. The banning of jewelry as a ers then proceeding to set fire to the trum, Vol. 22, No. 2), I was struck church standard is a little harder to grasses enclosed by the cloth bound with both authors' labored assump defend on the basis of the research ary. The tiger, believing that he tion that all church standards must model, since it appears to be a cannot penetrate the boundary, per be rationalized on the basis of strict medically benign form of self-ex mits himself to be captured when he theological consistency. In reality, pression in most instances. Unfortu might easily have escaped. there are many legitimate models by nately, the church has also placed We have drawn many arbitrary which to measure and rationalize itself in the difficult position of de boundaries around the life of the church standards. fending an arbitrary standard differ church. Our young people, unlike the The standards of healthful diet; ently on the basis of geographic tiger, push against these boundaries exercise; abstaining from the use of regions. The wearing of a wedding and find them to be made of cloth drugs, alcohol, and tobacco; sexual band cannot be acceptable in Eu filled with holes and inconsistency monogamy; as well as those of rope and unacceptable in America and patched over by arguments that marital fidelity and moderation in all in these days of global motility. An do not stand the test of time or things are, today, medically recog apparent inconsistency with chang technol06'Y· They break through these nized as health restoring and dis ing times in the application of church boundaries into a world for which ease-preventing practices. It would standards leads to the labored ef they are. ill prepared because they seem that the research model pro forts we have seen to defend a have been lovingly sheltered and vides a more logical defense of such policy that may not be defensible. bonded to a particular group identity church standards than does strict rather than given principles on which consistency with theological ideals. oung adult Adventists see to evaluate their actions. The sophis It stretches the imagination to Y through the thin veil of bound tication of today's Adventist youth rationalize abstaining from the use of ary setting as a frail attempt by the demands more relevant defenses for meat and pork on the basis of their church to arbitrarily control their our church standards. social symbolism. It also seems a behavior in areas that may best be A final point addressed in both little out of touch to describe such a left to the judgment of the indi articles is the sacred autonomy of choice on the basis of boundary vidual. It is not easy for Adventist the individual in choosing how to setting and "entry level" behaviors in parents of another generation to relate to the Lord and how to work establishing early group identity. To admit that the youth may have a out his or her own salvation. Arbi substitute sociological theory for the legitimate point. trary church standards may well accumulated medical evidence of A similar example of the bound defeat the very purposes of the the health-promoting and disease ary-setting rationale involved the church in drawing others to Christ. preventing aspects of the traditional advent of the video cassette re Adventist diet seems to ignore the corder. When the movie theater-a runo Bettelheim, the child thera role of research in preserving health. building traditionally outside Ad B pist at the University of Chi When counseling young sub ventist boundaries-moved into our cago, noted a profound truth with stance abusers, for example, one is living rooms, the boundary-setting regard to boundary setting for young constrained to keep the conversa rationale collapsed. Young people people. It was his belief that it took tions in the here and now. It is purchased video recorders in record no brains at all to put bars on all of typically more helpful to direct the numbers, but had no basis for evalu the windows. Nor, he believed, did young person's attention to the cur ating and choosing what to watch. it take any brains to take the bars off rent state of his liver than to the Parents had not explained suffi of all the windows. What took the future state of his soul. ciently the effects of visual and brains, he explained, was deciding To beg the question of the elimi auditory images on value develop which windows to put the bars on nation of pork on the basis of social ment, or the emotional impact of and which windows to take the bars symbolism, group identity, and theo violence on the limbic centers of the off of in providing safety for chil logical consistency seems to ignore, brain. It is little wonder that the dren. It seems as if the church has jANUARY 1993 63 SPEC7RUM------occasionally engaged in the prac little choices in order to learn how to valuable statement about its wearer. tice of putting bars on all of the make the great choices of life? Within a community that frowns on windows, with little regard for their jewelry the wearing of jewelry may need. Have we not also neglected to Lillian Moore make a statement about the wearer's consider the opportunity to make Glendale, California relationship to the community, but the "I like to be decorated" statement is highlighted and rna y indicate prob lems of self-image in the wearer Our Standards Say Reform (especially among teens). The jew elry standard does have a significant asaninyenzi's letter and Bursey's Jesus gave ourunmonitored thoughts semiotic element, but the semiotics B and Schneider's articles (Spec and motives equal weight with of belonging to a community is a trum, Vol. 22, No. 2), revolved monitorable crimes (see Matthew 5- relatively minor component. around Adventist standards and 7), he later contrasted the legalistic The jewelry issue may not be our semiotics. While reading them I felt tithing of mint, anise, and cumin most important standard, but it does there was something missing. As with great abstractions like justice, draw the line somewhere, and it is Schneider demonstrated at the end mercy, and faith (see Matthew 23:23, foolish not to. Our denominational of his article, semiotics is not a 24). Still, he said that the tithing of standards are part of our denom sufficient rationale for the standards. mint, anise, and cumin should not ination's reform program, standards Not even the semiotics of commu be neglected. Tithing cumin and we share with many other reform nity belonging is sufficient. straining out gnats still have their minded denominations. Something Standards are one issue, and place, even in New Testament eth about our standards says "reform." community and its semiotics are ics---even when consistency cannot We liken ourselves to Elijah and another. Adventist standards are not be regulated in a practical manner. John the Baptist (the second Elijah), based on the semiotics of commu reform-minded prophets who pro nity but on something more basic f we see the jewelry issue prima claimed their messages in rough something we call law. This law was I rily in terms of money, jewelry clothing and lived in the wilderness. established by people with a vision may seem a gnat. But we often Elijah and John had no use for of reform. While the law is not the forget to bring non-monetary values frippery. Though they did not re vision, it serves as a foundation for into the jewelry issue. Traditionally quire others to live as they did, they those with the vision. the jewelry question revolves around did require basic reforms. To understand the nature of the the twin issues of personal decora community that holds these stan tion and utility. Often we treat utility hether we are Elijahs or just dards, we must recognize that the as an excuse for jewelry-in the W his followers, one important Adventist denomination or move case of a flashy watch, for instance. part of our reform movement is an ment is not the church, but rather a But utility, as well as price and good intolerance of frippery. The prolif portion thereof. We proclaim this looks, plays a vital part in the value eration of frippery in the lives of our institutionally, in the law of our of a watch. Utility isn't everything, members, whether it be jewelry or denomination. Our standards are, but it does exercise a restraining expensive cars and watches, is di and should be, those of a reform influence and preserves some value rectly tied to a loss of vision. movement, but they do not define statement distinct from decoration. Our standards were established membership in the community of Jewelry that is only jewelry has no by people with this reform vision. God's family. utility. A watch may say about its The standards are not the vision and Furthermore, church standards owner, "I like to be decorated," but it do not create the vision, but they do are, by necessity, external laws. also says, "I need to know what time put limits on those who associate Externallaws are never perfect, and, it is; I have commitments." A wedding themselves with the vision. As Bursey when pressed, inevitably produce ring says, "I am married." Jewelry just pointed out, the standards are the uneven control over inappropriate says, "I like to be decorated." threshold, not the center of the vision. behavior (as demonstrated by There is jewelry that is not flashy Schneider's example of expensive and that is worn as a concession to P.S. How soon do you think we automobiles and cheap jewelry). the culture, but Adventists who want can dump the neckties? We cannot monitor lust, greed, and to wear jewelry are usually not inter hatred the way we monitor adul ested in that kind of jewelry. james E. Miller tery, theft, and violence. Although Traditionally, jewelry makes no Madison, Wisconsin 64 VoLUME 22, NuMBER 5 Spectrum Advisory Council Victor F. M. Aagaard J. Michael and Linda Hay Samuel C. Pang Delmar and Cheree Aitken Douglas Hegstad Thomas R. Pellow ! Edward C. Allred Jerry and Ketty Holt Maxine and 'Thomas Pittman Terry and Jan Anderson Darrell and Patty Holtz Ernest and Cecilia Plata Len and Nancy Bailey Eve Lou and Richard Hughes Zane Price Geneva Beatty Wilfred and Margaret Huse Gary and R. Marina Raines Ted Benedict John and Matjorie Jacobson Reuben Ramkissoon !' Kevin F. Benfield Leonor Boulin Johnson Alfredo and Martha Rasi Charles Bensonhaver Elton and Marga Kerr Robert Rausch Robert J. Berecz William and Dorane King Gordon Rick G. L. Blount James D. Klein Larry and Janene Rick Michael and Shelley Boyson Wayne and Debra Knecht William and Anieta Rippey Joseph and Cynthia Bozovich Giles and Mary Koelsche E. Arthur Robertson Bruce and Betty Branson Albert and Elizabeth Koppel James. and Thais Sadoyama Roy Branson Edwin H. Krick Elmer and Darilee Sakala Floyd and Mary Brauer Doreen and Irwin Kuhn Michael Scofield Ellen Brodersen Alvin and Verla Kwiram Eric W. Shadle M. L. S. Brown David Larson Donald and Ursula Shasky Deborah Chung Richard B. Lewis, Jr. Gordon and Lovina Short Glenn and Judy Coe David and Diane Lim "'-.. Donald and Susan Sickler Molleurus and Dos Couperus Charles and Rae Lindsa)lc Grover and Bonnie Starr William and Judy Cowling Bradley and Roberta Litchfield Walter and Lula Ann Stilson Michael A. Crane Ewald Lonser Chakarat Sukachevin Paul and Rosemary K. Dibben Felix and Lucille Lorenz Gerhard Svrcek-Seiler Merlyn and Rosemary Duerksen Edward and Marilyn Lugenbeal Leonard and Carlene Taylor Jay M. DuNesme Eino and Mary Magi Lorna Tobler Elwin and Beth Dunn Eric Magi Robin Vandermolen James and Mary DUiln Robert and Marguerite Marsh John and Nancy Vogt Thomas and Bonnie Dwyer Temple G. Matthews, III Donald E. Wahlen DanielS. Ferguson Donald McAdams Harry Wang Gary Gilbert Mario and Virginia Mendoza James and Betty Webster Linda Gilbert Ken and Mary Moe Rodney and Barbara Willard Sanford Graves Robert and Jacqueline Moncrieff William A. Woods Lyndon D. Harder Barton and Janet Moore Le and Freda Zollinger Robert and Sally Hasselbrack Don and Gwen Oliver l The Spectrum Advisory Council is a group of committed Spectrum supporters who provide financial stability and business and editorial advice to ensure the continuation of the journal's open discussion of significant issues. For more information, contact Nancy Bailey do AssociationoofAdventist Forums Box 5330 Takoma Park, MD 20912 (301) 270-0423