Loren Seibold
About Loren Seibold
Posts by Loren Seibold:
Walla Walla University, Self-Righteousness and the Gender of God
By Loren Seibold | 2 April 2019 | When in March I Cantori, a choir at Walla Walla University, sang the Bobby McFerrin setting of the 23rd Psalm, the indignation meter among a certain set in the Seventh-day Adventist Church kicked way over into the red zone. The presenting cause is that the song […]
What Constitutes Proper Sabbath Entertainment?
29 March 2019 | Dear Aunt Sevvy: We’re having an argument in our family about Sabbath entertainment. I take a broad view: I feel like anything that’s wholesome entertainment can be enjoyed on Sabbath. For example, I’d watch the movie The Sound of Music: it has clean, unsexy music, and even some nuns. My spouse […]
The Hidden Agenda of Revelation
By Werner E. Lange | 26 March 2019 | This is commentary on Lesson 13 for March 23-29, “I Make All Things New” Besides the obvious theme of the Revelation (Satan’s fight against the faithful remnant of God’s church, cf. Rev 12:17), there is a hidden agenda. In the description of the seven last plagues […]
Why Are We Still Fussing About Jewelry?
Dear Aunt Sevvy: I’m a church school teacher. Every year we have the same battle over the student handbook: jewelry. Here’s the thing: the majority of the students’ moms wear jewelry themselves. Yet it’s an issue the school can’t let go of. The proponents say it’s about simplicity and economy in lifestyle. But we don’t […]
Sabbath Work and Rest: Melakhah vs. Menuchah
by Roger Lang | 22 March 2019 | “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor [melakhah] and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, […]
Part 2: How the Church Changed Because of Desmond Ford
by Loren Seibold | 20 March 2019 | Read part 1 here. Des, with the help of friends, set up an independent gospel ministry called Good News Unlimited. Though Des never regained the audience he’d had before, yet the church was changed because of Des and the questions he raised. Adventist theology went underground. When […]
How Des Ford Changed Us, Part 1: Why Des Had to Go
By Loren Seibold | 19 March 2019 | It was my first year after seminary, and we pastors were working at the campground, replacing broken underground plumbing in the RV park. (I remember this detail, because as one of the young cohort, I was always put on the handle end of a shovel, while the […]
When My Pastor Becomes an Atheist, Must I Get Rebaptized?
15 March 2019 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, My husband and I were baptized by a popular and charismatic Adventist pastor, who we deeply admired. Not long after our baptism, though, that pastor quit the ministry and declared himself an atheist. My husband feels like it’s left a tainting of our baptism, and he’d like to […]
Is Ted Wilson a Racist?
By Christopher C. Thompson | 14 March 2019 | Usually these meetings come and go without anyone’s even noticing. But not this time. It started with the announcement that for the 2018 General Conference Annual Council (GCAC18), male leaders were encouraged to grow extravagant beards to pay homage to the great graybeards of Adventist antiquity. […]
Christ the Eschatos: A Meeting with GNU and the General Conference
by Smuts van Rooyen | 14 March 2019 | A good while after Glacier View—I forget how long—Elder Duncan Eva from the General Conference (GC) suggested a meeting with the purpose of effecting reconciliation between the denomination and Good News Unlimited (GNU, the new ministry set up for Des Ford) to take place in San […]
David Trim Answers Questions about World Membership Statistics
14 March 2019 | Recently Alexander Samuel wrote in Adventist Today about possible problems with claimed membership in the Southern Asia Division. Alex reached out to Dr. David Trim, Director of Archives, Statistics, and Research at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, who answered some of the questions he had about membership and how it […]