5 June 2023 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, The way people dress for church nowadays is disgusting. Even restaurants and pubs have a dress code. And yet people seem to come to church in almost anything. I’ve even been surprised by what some pastors wear in the pulpit. What happened to a nice long dress and […]
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 […]
29 May 2023 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, Every time someone experiences a tragedy, some dear old saint has to chime in and tell the grieving person that they just have to trust God’s will. It makes me want to scream. I know they mean well, but telling a person that God wanted this tragedy to […]
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 […]
22 May 2023 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, My son is a postgraduate who wants to date Christian girls but is having difficulty finding suitable individuals. Where do you recommend he should look to meet decent girls with his academic background? Signed, Concerned Mother Dear Concerned, How to find an Adventist wife or husband is among […]
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 […]
15 May 2023 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, Protestants historically hold to the idea of “biblical sufficiency”: that the Bible is the final authority for Christians, and that all other authorities are subservient to it. Our first Fundamental Belief affirms that the Bible is “the written Word of God, given by divine inspiration,” that it 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 […]
8 May 2023 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, How unChristlike were your comments about the founder and family of 3ABN! The devil is the accuser of the brethren. What I want to know is why denominational leadership changed our logo from the three angels to a logo that looks just like the Methodists and Presbyterians—without even […]
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. […]
1 May 2023 | Dear Aunt Sevvy, Can you resolve a discussion a friend and I had this past Easter? She believes Jesus left his body and preached to the dead the Sabbath after His death, before His resurrection on Sunday morning. I have never heard this before. Can you shed some light, please? Signed, […]
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 […]