THE MISSIOLOGICAL ROOTS OF ADVENTIST HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE ONGOINGBattle Creek College TENSION BETWEEN ADVENTIST MISSION AND ACADEMIC VISION BY GEORGE R. KNIGHT The birth of Seventh-day Adventist t was no accident that higher education [was] filled with tension our present circumstances. But the establishment of we can do it if the Lord bless Adventism’s first col- between the missiological/theological our effort in the establishment of lege and the sending goals of the ecclesiastical leaders who our proposed school. Men of of its first official for- founded it and the academics who other nationalities desire to be in- eign missionary took structed concerning” the Second place in the same year operated it. Both had something valuable Advent.1 (1874). After all, the to contribute. In a similar vein, General Con- founders of the col- ference president George I. Butler lege had been quite clear in noted just before the opening of stating their goals. For them, the college that the denomination would the college was seen as a nec- soon need hundreds of its members ed- essary institution for the ucated for mission service.2 There was training of missionaries for absolutely no doubt in the minds of the both the homeland and over- founders of Battle Creek College that seas. their educational institution was to have a missiological focus. Born in Tension But then there were the teachers. Even Thus, J. N. Andrews could more basic yet was the question of where write in 1873 that “the calls the budding denomination could even that come from every quarter, find faculty. Fortunately, they had at least from men speaking other one university graduate in their midst. languages, must be answered Sidney Brownsberger had graduated from J. N. Andrews George I. Butler by us. We cannot do this in the classical-studies program of the Uni- 20 The Journal of Adventist Education • April/May 2008 http://education.gc.adventist.org/jae versity of Michigan in 1869 place in the school’s offer- may have been an excellent academic, and would be awarded an ings. In fact, there were no but under his leadership, things went M.A. by the same institu- regular religion courses, from bad to worse. The institution closed tion in 1875.3 Given the let alone required ones. for the 1882-1883 school year with no needs of the church and While it’s true that Uriah certainty that it would reopen. Brownsberger’s education Smith hobbled over on It is into the mess of the McLearn lead- and dedication to Adven- his one real leg to provide ership that Ellen White waded with a tism, he was the obvious some dusty elective lec- testimony entitled “Our College,” a paper choice to head up the new tures on Bible prophecy, it read in College Hall in December 1881 college. appears that he didn’t have before the ecclesiastical and educational There was only one a large number of takers. leaders of the denomination. drawback to his appoint- The college catalogues “There is,” she stated emphatically, ment. While he excelled in advertised that “there is “danger that our college will be turned Sidney Brownsberger academics, Brownsberger nothing in the courses of away from its original design. For one had next to no understand- study, or in the rules and or two years past, there has been an effort ing of how to implement the goals of the practice of discipline, that is in the least to mold our school after other colleges. founders. At a meeting of the board, the denominational or sectarian. The biblical . To give students a knowledge of new president confessed that he did “not lectures are before a class of only those books merely is not the purpose of the in- know anything about the conducting of who attend them from choice.”5 Again, stitution. Such education can be obtained such a school.” Apparently no one else “the managers of this College have no at any college in the land. If a worldly did either, so W. C. White (Brownberger’s disposition to urge upon students sec- influence is to bear sway in our school, roommate at the time) recalled, “it was tarian views, or to give such views any then sell it out to worldlings and let them agreed that the work of the school prominence in their school work.”6 take the entire control; and those who should be organized on the ordinary have invested their means in that institu- lines” and that adjustments be made uch was the birth of Seventh- tion will establish another school, to be later.4 day Adventist higher educa- conducted, not upon the plan of popular The young educational leader did what tion. It was a birth filled with schools, nor according to the desires of he knew best. The school that he devel- tension between the missio- principal and teachers, but upon the plan S 8 oped in the mid-1870s had as its cur- logical/theological goals of the ecclesi- which God has specified.” ricular core a traditional liberal arts prep astical leaders who founded it and the Ellen White’s rousing thrust left no one school and a collegiate course focusing academics who operated it. Both had in doubt about the disaster of having put on Latin, Greek, and the “heathen clas- something valuable to contribute. “the moral and religious influences . in sics” even though most of the students To put it bluntly, Adventist higher educa- the background.” She called in no uncer- were not qualified to enter that elite tion was born in tension. That tension did tain terms for the centrality of the Bible track. not end with the beginnings of the sys- and its worldview.9 Bible study and religion found scant tem. We still have it today. I will argue in With such a raft of pronouncements, the balance of this article that the tension one might surmise that she desired for is not only an ongoing reality but one of Adventists to develop a Bible college or crucial necessity. Without it, Adventist a Bible institute. Such a call, had it been higher education would drift toward one implemented, would have eliminated the or the other of two unhealthy extremes. tension between mission and academic vision and set Adventism’s higher schools Bible College or Liberal Arts on a certain course toward one extreme Institution? of a bipolar dynamic. Those thoughts bring us to the next But such was not Ellen White’s vision. major round of events in the tension be- In her second sentence, she plainly stated tween Adventist mission and academic that “God’s purpose has been made vision. Brownsberger resigned in 1881 known, that our people should have an and was replaced by Alexander McLearn, opportunity to study the sciences and at the who arrived at Battle Creek with the ad- same time to learn the requirements of His vantage of having an exalted Doctor of word.” By sciences, she meant what we Divinity degree but the disadvantage of call the arts and sciences. The overall either not being an Adventist or of being thrust of her remarks was that the de- a recent convert.7 Brownsberger may not nomination’s young people should not have understood the needs of a genu- “merely” study books, but do so in the inely Adventist education, but McLearn context of the biblical worldview.10 Ellen G. White didn’t even understand Adventism. He It is of the utmost importance to recog- http://education.gc.adventist.org/jae The Journal of Adventist Education • April/May 2008 21 nize that Ellen White at that crucial It is of the utmost importance The remarkable outcome of juncture of our history steered the to recognize that Ellen White at that controversy is that Ellen denomination away from the Bible White opted for a precarious bal- college model of higher education that crucial juncture of our history ance in higher education rather and toward what we could call a steered the denomination away than a more comfortable polar Christian liberal arts approach. extreme. With that stand, she She also supported the liberal from the Bible college model of helped position the denomina- arts orientation later in the 1880s in higher education and toward what tion’s system of higher education the curricular struggles of recently we could call a Christian liberal arts for ongoing tension, but she also founded South Lancaster Academy. helped ensure its relevance in the There S. N. Haskell, the confer- approach. professional marketplace of the ence president and board chair, 20th and 21st centuries. Without sought to steer the institution toward a nation in 1888 for further study at Har- that positioning, Adventist higher educa- Bible college design against the wishes vard.11 tion would have been pushed toward of Principal Charles increasing irrelevance, except Ramsey, who argued perhaps for the training of for a broader perspec- clergy, in the increasingly rig- tive. Once again, Ellen orous professional atmosphere White sympathized of the first half of the 20th with the broader per- century. spective, even though she feared Ramsey From One Extreme to the didn’t understand the Other proper balance between The third round in the academic and religious tension-filled struggle be- knowledge. And he tween Adventist mission and didn’t. An early casualty academic vision was stimu- of the struggle between lated by events related to the academic vision and momentous 1888 General Adventist mission, he S. N. Haskell W. W. Prescott Conference session at Min- departed the denomi- neapolis. Those meetings, with their emphasis on Christ’s righteousness and the need for more in- tensive Bible study by the denomination’s clergy,12 led to a series of field schools for ministers in the late 1880s and early 1890s.