When the Saints Go Marching Out
by Lawrence G. Downing | 14 September 2023 |
Chris Blake, pastor of the San Luis Obispo, CA, Adventist church; former editor of Insight magazine; and author of the book Swimming Against the Current recalls an occasion when Insight magazine printed an article that addressed the wearing of makeup without clearly condemning it.
The article’s perceived approval stimulated the piety gland of a local Adventist church’s board. The board sent a letter to Insight stating that the article did not meet their approval, and requested their subscription to the offending magazine be canceled.
There are those who might suggest the board’s action deserves the label “organizational bullying.”
So, why are they leaving?
Actions such as Blake described in his book place one more impediment to many young people’s relationship to the church, and generate the question, “Why do I wish to be a part of a group that acts like that?”
The answer in a significant number of cases is “I don’t”—and a person separates from the church that was part of her/his life since childhood. The General Conference official motto “I Will Go” too often is answered by, “You bet I will go. In fact, I’m outta here!”
When a man or woman takes action to nullify church membership, the decision can leave behind a frustrated, sad, troubled, perhaps angry and often questioning parent.
Questions multiply: what did we do wrong? We spent all this money paying for our child’s Christian education—how did that derail? How can we accept that our child may be lost? How will there be joy in heaven if our children are not there with us? Parents have agonized, prayed, and fasted—pleading with the Lord to annul their child’s decision. Is there nothing anyone can do? Tears follow, and through the tears, deep concern: “I cannot bear to think that my child will be lost!” “There is an eternity to win,” I have heard parents say, “…and our child will not be with us. What can we do? How can we bear it? Does the Lord not hold us accountable for our children?”Answers to questions such as these—and there is an endless stream to follow—are scarce and unsatisfying.
What must be affirmed is that from all we know about God and God’s methods, there is no provision for violating even your own child’s freedom of choice, nor imposing force to bring about conformity.
Some Adventists find questions like those above forbidden outside the family circle. There is a boundary that has been constructed that protects the emotions associated with adult or older children having rejected Adventism, despite being raised in a family that was committed to Adventist practices and theology.
Adventist saturation?
Many of these parents have been consistent in church attendance, involved in the various youth programs, have maintained and valued association with friends within the congregation, and by word and deed evidenced commitment to the local parish, as well as the Adventist church universal.
These activities are enhanced through the Adventist educational system that provides quality programs from preschool through graduate level. The expectation of this deep investment in the Adventist social and educational structure is that a child who has been given the total Adventist package will remain in the church.
When this expectation is not realized—when a child leaves the church to unite with another religious group, or nullifies association with any church—the result is puzzled, frustrated, and guilt-ridden parents. The frustration is compounded when the person who leaves Adventism becomes a quasi or committed nonChristian.
I have had church member parents, at times through their tears, describe how they agonized over where they would trust their child’s educational future. They described how, after soul searching and many hours spent talking to parents whose children attended the local Adventist school, they decided to place their child’s future in hands of Adventist educators.
Now, some two decades later, none of the children count themselves Adventists. They attend church on special occasions, when the parents invite them. They do not practice traditional Adventist behavior: they work on Sabbath, ignore dietary practices, and on Sabbath participate in recreational pursuits and entertainment that are inconsistent with what they learned as children. “Where did we go wrong?” the parents ask.
The questions multiply: “What if we had homeschooled?” “Might it have been better to have sent our child to the local public school? We then could have monitored activities and had more direct influence on our child’s behavior, beliefs, and extracurricular activities.”
The what-ifs have no end and—no surprise—no definitive answers! Here’s the bottom line: we parents made the best decisions we could based on experience, available options, the child’s gifts (natural strengths, talents, intelligence, interests), accessibility to alternative schools, and family economics.
This situation has no easy solution, but their questions harbor shades of guilt that hover about, awaiting release. The what ifs refuse to be quieted. Clearly, even their best efforts have proven inadequate to meet the swirl of questions that arise within the contemporary Adventist denomination. There is a context that demands consideration.
Can we keep them in?
We do well to consider the factors that attract people to continue their relationship to the church and create methods to enhance those factors.
These include but are not limited to social interaction and a safe, non-judgmental atmosphere where people are welcome to share their questions, doubts, and struggles without judgmental responses. Group Bible study is one example where it is possible to encourage questions and discussion of controversial or obscure matters.
A parish setting has a higher potential for maintaining human-to-human contact than a letter from an impersonal office. Habit is a powerful force that connects those who share and promote significant behaviors, ethics, and values and hold to common purposes and goals.
There may also be similar belief systems, some agreement when it comes to ethical and behavioral matters, and an educational structure that creates a bond that can transcend one’s picking and choosing what is theologically and morally important.
The beginning point is to welcome everyone, and implement structures, systems, and behaviors that make full acceptance the normal way of operating.
How to push them out
To see just the opposite, tune in to Mark Finley’s recent statement aired on the Adventist internet. Finley, speaking on behalf of the General Conference, spends little time getting to the point of his discourse: the LGBTQ community has no place in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
His expectations are clear: members of the queer community must by God’s miraculous powers be transformed into straight people, or they should stay away.
No surprise, then, that the community Finley denounces will oppose, reject, and disassociate from those who advocate their unwelcomeness.
A critical listener with some knowledge of Biblical laws might well ask, “Then, Pastor Finley, will you join me in stoning our pastor’s son/daughter who sassed her/his mother?”
If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his home town. And they shall say to the elders of his city, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear of it and fear (Deuteronomy 21:18 ff).
Oh, one extra bit of advice: hire a competent defense attorney before you implement this command!
Lawrence Downing, D.Min, is a retired pastor who has served as an adjunct instructor at La Sierra University School of Business and the School of Religion, and the Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies in the Philippines.
