Must we see Ellen White as either authoritative as the Bible, or a fraud? Is there a middle path?
30 December 2024 |
Dear Aunt Sevvy,
Is there a path between regarding Ellen White as being as authoritative as Scripture, and seeing her as a plagiarist and fraud?
Signed, Searching for a Middle Way
Dear Searching,
Yes, of course there is. But it would involve correcting some long-held attitudes that Seventh-day Adventists have about who Ellen White was to us.
Although our church insists that we rely upon the teachings of the Bible alone, that’s not really true. That you’ll never catch us accepting any biblical interpretation that is contrary to Ellen White proves that her writings are effectively held above the Bible.
Ellen White was indeed an important pioneer, and we have much to thank her for. We could have appreciated her guidance and encouragement without making her infallible. We would have been a much better church had we regarded her as a respected foundress rather than a saint: we would today be more biblical, less legalistic, and less isolated from other Christians.
We would also be more appreciative of women leaders—and maybe we wouldn’t be stuck with the immovable male gerontocracy that we have now.
While some people believe Ellen White was humble about her prophetic gift, that isn’t true. Frequently she was extremely forceful, judging harshly those who didn’t obey her explicitly, and who failed to regard her writings as equal to the Bible. This is noteworthy because even when she says “God showed me…” she was sometimes plagiarizing passages from other writers, whom she didn’t footnote. That alone should have been enough for us to demote her from “infallible prophet” to “respected foundress.”
Aunty still holds out hope that we will eventually make a correction in how we understand Ellen White’s role, and how we use her writings.
Aunt Sevvy
Aunt Sevvy has collected her answers into a book! You can get it from Amazon by clicking here.
You can write to Aunt Sevvy at DearAuntSevvy@gmail.com. Your real identity will never be revealed.
