5 July 2023 | Read this essay in preparation for the presentation. So many people I know are struggling right now—significant things like death, suicide, abuse, divorce, depression, discrimination, panic attacks, mental health disorders, cancer, failure, debt, job loss, marriage struggles, substance use, and more! So why has everything gotten so difficult? The speed and […]
28 June 2023 The topic for our seminar this week focuses on a single biblical book—Esther. However, the implications arising are much broader and potentially profound. These include questions such as, How should we read the Bible? What presuppositions should we bring to our reading? What should we do when traditional interpretations do not seem […]
14 June 2023 Early Adventists took steps to support women in ministry, and there was a context to those actions. What was that context? This presentation explores the documentary record, both in Adventist archives and newspapers across the United States. Expect to learn something about women in Adventist ministry that you didn’t know before! Teacher: […]
14 June 2023 Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. The clashing cognitions may include ideas, beliefs, or the knowledge that one has behaved in a certain way. According to the social scientist Leon Festinger, “When a person experiences cognitive dissonance the […]
7 June 2023 There has never been complete unanimity regarding Adventist beliefs. Which ones can I question and still remain Adventist? How many could I disbelieve, and still call myself a real Seventh-day Adventist? Does the denomination have the right to specify what people need to believe in order to be members of the church? […]
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 […]