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 […]
2 March 2023 | The Seventh-day Adventist Church faces a crisis: how to read the Bible. Almost every debate dividing Adventism today relates to the issue of hermeneutics. According to church leaders, it’s the fundamental problem preventing Adventism from moving forward missionally. Those at the top of the church seem to believe the path to […]
23 February 2023 | The big challenge with studying Jesus in Revelation is this: how do you reconcile “the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1:1) with narrative horrors like the fifth trumpet (Rev 9:1-11)? What do events like the fifth trumpet have to do with Jesus? In this class we will dig below the surface […]
15 February 2023 | The crisis in Adventist eschatology is due to its reliance on Millerism’s faulty methodology and falsified prophetic predictions. Ellen White taught that Father Miller’s sole authority was Scripture and a concordance, that his interpretations were literal commonsense, and, most importantly, that God had originated his date-setting conclusions by repeated angelic guidance. […]
25 January 2023 | by Maury Jackson 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 […]
2 February 2023 | by Olive Hemmings | May God make space for Japheth, and let him live in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his slave. (Gen 9:27) This text and the surrounding story is all that many people know about Black people in the Bible. For generations this story has been […]