First Woman to Serve as Chief Editor of a Prominent Adventist Periodical
by AT News Team
Carmella Monk Crawford has been hired as editor of Message, one of the major outreach magazines of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America, published by the Review & Herald Publishing Association. She is the first woman to serve as the chief editor of Message, which targets the African American population, or Signs of the Times published at Pacific Press near Boise, Idaho.
“I think my selection is a strong statement, not just within the Adventist community, but to those with whom we share the gospel,” she stated in a news release from the publishing house. “There is too much work to do, and we need more people on it. Adventist women like me must continue to serve substantively and competently on every level throughout this movement. It’s time for us all to get on it.”
Pastor Washington Johnson resigned recently from the editor position because he is being deployed to Afghanistan. He is a U.S. Navy Reserve chaplain.
Message has a long relationship with the Regional Conferences in the North American Division of the denomination. It has been sustained through depressions and recessions, wars overseas and urban turmoil here in the U.S. by the commitment of historically black congregations to meet fund raising goals and circulate the magazine in local neighborhoods. It is believed to be the oldest continually-published religious magazine circulated among African Americans.
Maybe the editors need to refresh their geography course. Boise is in Idaho not Montana.
Congrats to Ms. Crawford on her new appointment. I applaud the leadership at the Review & Herald for appointing the best person for the job, regardless of gender. However, I must point out that Aileen Sox has been the chief editor of two prominent Adventist periodicals, Primary Treasure and Our Little Friend, for 25 years. Still, it is exciting to see a woman at the helm of one of our church's sharing magazines.
It no longer is surprising to to realize how geography and history are missing in what should be expected of people who write. Guess we will just have to get used to it. Hope the moving company gets the right address. There are still maps and many are superior to GPS.
Well, you know how it is, editors enjoy seeding bits of improbable factoids into their work to test readership—it stimulates comments when we substitute the name "Neal" for "Ted" once in a while (we've not done that one yet to my knowledge, but give us a chance later on this year!) just to see if the readership is awake.
Boise remains firmly planted in Idaho, though I assume a lot of Canadian-born Pacific Press employees would PREFER to work in Montana, a bit closer to their own cool and inviting homeland this time of year. About now, Montana still has a tremendous amount of snow in the hills—not so the rapidly melting slopes of the Treasure Valley
Idaho is known as the refuge for non-conformists who defy authority (Ted Kazynski (sp) anyone?. A good pick for Adventists adhering to their "flee to the mountains" message, although it's doubtful if has avoided any sin even in that location (homegrown, that is).
Is the title misleading? Joyce McClintock served as the editor of Life & Health in the late 70's and early 80's.
Is Montana closer to Canada than Idaho is? Of course, Boise is near the southwest corner of Idaho. Lots of adventists there, including friends I went to academy with…. Nice enough area, though. Good Basque food. Red wine and lamb, etc. Sad for those who don't enjoy those….
Back in 1984, the denomination threw a bit of a blessed whammy at southwestern Idaho, when it moved one of its then-largest publishing houses from California to an area just a few miles north of Boise.
Pacific Press's arrival in Idaho was an early manifestation of other corporations' moves from large metropolitan areas to mid-size or even smaller urban centers. Boise, Bozeman, Butte, Billings—they all have a bit of the Montana ring to them. I'm sure Montana would gladly annex modern Boise, if only Boise were snuggled up a bit closer to the Montana border. On a a bit of a tangent, I found while living in Southern California during the 1960s, that "Boise" was pronounced "Boice" down. To many who have lived in the Southwestern United States, Idaho and Montana are a bit of an enigma, geographically and demographically—but as hundreds of thousands of Southwesterners have moved to Idaho and Montana during the past 40 years or so, the states are becoming a bit more intertwined socially.
How can the existence of Message Magazine, targeted to one ethnic group, be justified when other "groups" have no special publication?
Isn't the new editor's statement self-serving? If Wilson said something similar the liberals would be all over his case. Another indication of a dual standard?
I suggest there be a magazine for Homosexual Adventists. As far as is known, this is a group that does not have a special publication. Maybe one for very conservative SDAs; another for most liberal SDAs. Lots of possibilities.
Truth Seeker, "Message" is not the only Adventist magazine published for a specific group. "Shabbat Shalom" is published for a Jewish audience. "El Centinela" is published for Hispanics. Special editions of magazines have been published for such groups as American Indians.
There have, of course, been numerous woman editors throughout Adventist history, though Crawford is the first woman to edit "Message." She served as an associate editor on the magazine about twenty years ago.
Of course, Tompaul, when I saw this headline the first woman I thought of was YOUR MOM, editor of Guide way back in the 80s. And then I saw the comment by Jerry reminding me of Aileen Sox and her long-standing editorship of Primary Treasure and Our Little Friend. I guess magazines reaching out to children and youth are not considered prominent Adventist periodicals??
James White and Uriah Smith are still regarded culturally by many in the church as the fundamental role models of "the way Adventist editors ought to be." These two men, though enlightened in many respects, were very much old-school boys who spoke the Victorian language of power, frequently to the exclusion of nuance and persuasion. I suspect that back then, and to a degree today, it was and is envisioned that a female personality simply could not rise to the strength of purpose required of an editor in publications still deemed by many readers as commissioned to "defend the remnant against error."
In my editorial work here and abroad, I have seen that Adventist leaders perhaps subliminally still see women as less resilient in defense of truth and conviction than their male brothers. Women are seen as more open and amenable to compromise than their ordained elders—and this concerns leadership that sees the church's general publications as "defending the truth" rather than "advancing in present truth." There is great fear among many Adventist leaders that women are simply genetically less capable of standing firm for the landmarks. It's a man's job (lol). Seriously, I have always found women to be more capable in language, syntax, and grammar than most men—but for editorial stubbornness, nothing beats a determined man…
Any college English teacher worth his salt knows that women are more eager learners, and better writers.