31 May 2023 | Dr. Washburn will explore, through vignettes and a brief history of policy and practice, some of the ways that specific definitions of purity became equated with holiness, salvation, and even access to the presence of God. This exploration will also include an invitation to participants to reflect on messages they have […]
24 May 2023 | Fifty years ago, Merikay Silver sued the Pacific Press Publishing Association over their gender-based wage scale. Although the move was unpopular with Adventist leaders, women who worked for the church secretly cheered her on, and she was a hero in my liberal Adventist home. However, some 80 years before that, Jenny […]
17 May 2023 | When a group of students approached their rabbi about a difficult text in the Torah, the rabbi asked, “What do you see?” The students pointed to the words written in black ink on the page. The rabbi replied, “The words make up only half of the story; the other half is […]
10 May 2023 | This presentation focuses on the (Federal) Bureau of Investigation’s ([F]BI) surveillance of the Seventh-day Adventist Church during World War I, when scores of Adventists, both lay and clergy, and many of their institutions, were regularly watched by government agents and their associates. The Bureau infiltrated local Adventist congregations, gathered witness reports […]
3 May 2023 | Sociologists say that there are six basic life scripts that everybody follows. We will look at how these life scripts are presented in the Gospels and how they help us to live a better Christian life. Teacher: Daniel Duda is currently the president of the Trans-European Division. He earned a Ph.D. […]
26 April 2023 | Read this essay in preparation for the presentation. Almost from the beginning, Adventists have struggled to deal constructively with questions of sex and gender. Both James and Ellen White wrote books repeating common myths about “self-abuse”—a theme that devolved into abusive treatments by such Adventist medical luminaries as John Harvey Kellogg […]
19 April 2023 | Read this essay to prepare for the class. There is a growing awareness among some Adventists that our organizational structure has outgrown and outlived its usefulness. While some find the structure to be serving them well, others are convinced that many roles and functions are ineffective and unnecessary. There have been long-standing […]
16 April 2023 | In the 1970s, a defrocked Adventist pastor said he could “cure” homosexuals of their same-sex attraction. The leaders of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists strongly endorsed Cook’s untested program, and authorized financial investment in—and church publicity for—Cook’s gay-change ministry, called Quest Learning Center, located in Reading, Pennsylvania. Quest was embraced […]
5 April 2023 | The root of any human thinking endeavor is some sort of belief. In mathematics, those beliefs are called axioms: they cannot be proven, but without them there would be no mathematical thinking. The same is true of human life. Human beings live their lives based on faith. Even the most mundane […]
29 March 2023 | Mark’s gospel ends in 16:8, but there are a number of added ancient endings, many of which are still included in English translations of the Bible. Ancient scribes added endings to the existing book, and these have been copied and transmitted for almost 2000 years. One, known among Pentecostal believers as […]
22 March 2023 | Paul wrote to Timothy, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” But many Seventh-day Adventists struggle with fear: fear of end-time events, fear of not being saved, fear of rejection by God. Maury Jackson tells in this […]
15 March 2023 | Dr. Washburn will talk about her experience researching spiritual abuse and opening spaces for people to process painful stories connected to spiritual practice or religious community. Part of the discussion will center on what trauma is, and the other on why it is essential for us in religious communities to be […]
