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Seventh-Day Adventist Historiography: A Work in Progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2018

Jonathan M. Butler
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Extract

In the past decade, Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) historiography has enjoyed an efflorescence that warrants the attention of church historians. Two notable books mark the surge of interest in Adventism and its prophet: one of them an extraordinary denominational history, Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream, by Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart (1989; 2007); the other an excellent collection of essays, Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, edited by Terrie Dopp Aamodt, Gary Land, and Ronald L. Numbers (2014). Both books remind church historians that Seventh-day Adventism deserves its due as one of America's original religions. Since 2005, however, a number of books have appeared that understandably have received less scrutiny. The Adventist Pioneer Series, in particular, produced by SDA scholars and published by SDA presses, has largely escaped the notice of the wider, non-SDA historical community. This is unfortunate. There is the inevitable unevenness among these volumes, and given their intent to serve a popular Adventist audience, there is also the predictable parochialism in them, in some more than others. Nevertheless, to date there are several books in the series, and no doubt more to follow, which should command serious scholarly interest. To make our way through this largely unfamiliar historiographical landscape calls for a little mapping. Most of these authors come from SDA backgrounds, whatever distance they have gone from them. It will be necessary, then, to reflect on the differences between a historian of Adventism and an Adventist historian, secular versus supernatural history, and apologists who rate scholarly notice and those who do not. It will be important as well to realize that there is no hard, unyielding line between these differences.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Church History , Volume 87 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 149 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2018 

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References

1 Bull, Malcolm and Lockhart, Keith, Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1989; rev. ed., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; and Aamodt, Terrie Dopp, Land, Gary, and Numbers, Ronald L., eds., Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, foreword by Wacker, Grant (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

2 The Adventist Pioneer Series, for which George R. Knight is senior editor, has published biographies of the following figures: James White (by Gerald Wheeler), Joseph Bates (by Knight), W. W. Prescott (by Gilbert Valentine), John Harvey Kellogg (by Richard Schwarz), E. J. Waggoner (by Woodrow Whidden), Lewis Sheafe (by Douglas Morgan), A. T. Jones (by Knight), J. N. Loughborough (by Brian Strayer), Uriah Smith (by Gary Land), and S. N. Haskell (by Wheeler). Forthcoming subjects will include J. N. Andrews (by Valentine), Ellen White (by Aamodt), D. M. Canright (by Jud Lake), and LeRoy Froom and F. D. Nichol (authors not yet announced).

3 Loughborough, John N., Rise and Progress of the Seventh-day Adventists (Battle Creek, Mich.: General Conference Association of Seventh-day Adventists, 1892)Google Scholar; and Loughborough, , The Great Second Advent Movement (Nashville, Tenn.: Southern Publishing Association, 1905)Google Scholar. For providential histories in the Loughborough tradition, see Spalding, Arthur W., Origin and History of Seventh-day Adventists (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association [hereafter referred to as RHPA], 1961)Google Scholar; Mervyn Maxwell, C., Tell It To the World (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Publishing Association [hereafter referred to as PPPA], 1976)Google Scholar; and Arthur L. White, Ellen G. White, 6 vols. (Washington, D.C.: RHPA, 1981–1986). As grandson of the prophet, Arthur White chronicles the prophet's life with a preternatural emphasis.

4 Froom, LeRoy E. looks for antecedents to Adventism's premillennialism in The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers: The Historical Development of Prophetic Interpretation, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: RHPA, 1950–1954)Google Scholar; and he similarly traces the history of conditional immortality in The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers: The Conflict of the Ages Over the Nature and Destiny of Man, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: RHPA, 1965–1966)Google Scholar. Two of F. D. Nichol's works convey their apologetic purposes in the subtitles: The Midnight Cry: A Defense of the Character and Conduct of William Miller and the Millerites (Washington, D.C.: RHPA, 1945)Google Scholar; and Ellen G. White and Her Critics: An Answer to the Major Charges that Critics Have Brought Against Mrs. Ellen. G. White (Washington, D.C.: RHPA, 1951)Google Scholar.

5 With the editorial assistance of Gary Land, Everett N. Dick posthumously published his William Miller and the Advent Crisis, foreword and historiographical essay by Land (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press [hereafter referred to as AUP], 1994). For the sixty-four-year-old graduate study on which it was based, see his “The Adventist Crisis of 1843–1844” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1930). See also, Dick, , “The Millerite Movement, 1830–1845,” in Adventism in America: A History, ed. Land, (Berrien Springs, Mich.: AUP, 1998), 1–28Google Scholar. Land reports how the apologists thwarted the academic in his foreword to Dick, William Miller and the Advent Crisis, vii.

6 Bull and Lockhart, Seeking a Sanctuary, 2nd ed. (2007), 321–322.

7 Gary Land discusses the increasing insulation of the church's seminary in: “The SDA Theological Seminary: Heading Toward Isolation?” Spectrum 18, no. 1 (October 1987): 38–42Google Scholar.  Alumni of The University of Chicago who have written new SDA history include (in alphabetical order): Eric D. Anderson, Jonathan M. Butler, Benjamin McArthur, Douglas Morgan, A. Gregory Schneider, and Graeme Sharrock. (C. Mervyn Maxwell became the anomaly; trained in early church history at Chicago, he wrote Adventist history as a traditional apologist.)

8 Marty, Martin E., “Two Integrities: An Address to the Crisis in Mormon Historiography,” Journal of Mormon History 10, no. 1 (1983): 3–19Google Scholar. For his definition of “primitive” and “second” naïveté, see Ricoeur, Paul, The Symbolism of Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 351–353Google Scholar.

9 For Numbers's forty-page CV, see Department of Medical History and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, accessed 14 October 2017, https://medhist.wisc.edu/faculty/numbers/cv.pdf. Knight's bibliography appears in Valentine, Gilbert M. and Whidden, Woodrow W. II, eds., Adventist Maverick: A Celebration of George R. Knight's Contribution to Adventist Thought (Nampa, Idaho: PPPA, 2014), 251–269Google Scholar.

10 Knight's biography of A. T. Jones, which appears in the Adventist Pioneer Series, illustrates the criticism and praise that Knight can prompt. See Hokama, Dennis, “Knight's Darkest Hour: Biography as Indictment,” Adventist Currents 3, no. 1 (April 1988): 37–42Google Scholar; and Hoyt, Frederick, “Knight on A. T. Jones: Biography Without Hagiography,” Spectrum 19, no. 3 (February 1989): 58–60Google Scholar. Recently Knight weighed in on SDA church leadership's opposition to women's ordination as an overreach of its authority in Adventist Authority Wars, Ordination, and the Roman Catholic Temptation (Westlake Village, Calif.:  Oak and Acorn, 2017), 131–135, 139–146Google Scholar. As a result, the Michigan Conference bookstores banned the sale of his books.

11 Numbers, Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White (New York: Harper & Row, 1976; 2nd ed., Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992; 3rd ed., Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2008)Google Scholar. For the personal sturm und drang associated with Numbers and Prophetess of Health and its larger historical milieu, see Butler, Jonathan M., “Historian as Heretic,” in Prophetess of Health, 3rd ed. (2008), 1–41Google Scholar. For responses to the book from SDA historians, see Schwarz, Richard, “On Writing and Reading History,” Spectrum 8, no. 1 (January 1977): 20–27Google Scholar; and Frederick Norwood, W., “The Prophet and Her Contemporaries,” Spectrum 8, no. 1 (January 1977): 2–4Google Scholar. Non-SDA historical analysis appears in: Sandeen, Ernest, “The State of a Church's Soul,” Spectrum 8, no. 1 (January 1977): 15–16Google Scholar, and Brodie, Fawn, “Ellen White's Emotional Life,” Spectrum 8, no. 1 (January 1977): 13–15Google Scholar. The White Estate takes the book to task for its naturalism in Critique of the Book Prophetess of Health (Washington, D.C.: Ellen G. White Estate, 1976)Google Scholar. Gary Land reviewed Critique of the Book Prophetess of Health in “Faith, History and Ellen White,” Spectrum 9, no. 2 (March 1978): 51–55. See also, McAdams, Donald R., “The Shifting Views of Inspiration: Ellen G. White Studies in the 1970s,” Spectrum 10, no. 2 (March 1980): 27–41Google Scholar.

12 In response to the essayists in his festschrift, George Knight provides a personally revealing account of his writing career in “An Academic ‘Mutt's’ Search for Meaning,” in Adventist Maverick, ed. Valentine and Whidden, 217–250.

13 Numbers refrains “from using divine inspiration as an historical explanation” (Prophetess of Health [2008], xxxii), which continues to disturb many Adventist insiders who misconstrue this to mean that Numbers assumes “the non-reality of inspiration,” and therefore writes flawed, reductionistic history (Nicholas Miller, “Naked in the Garden of the Past: Is There a Seventh-day Adventist Philosophy of History?” [unpublished manuscript, n.d.], http://www.academia.edu/5621656/Naked_in_the_Garden_of_the_Past_Is_There_an_Adventist_Philosophy_of_History). Ricoeur defines the “hermeneutics of suspicion” in Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970), 27Google Scholar. For the two historians relative to agnosticism, see: Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 13Google Scholar; and Knight, “An Academic ‘Mutt's’ Search for Meaning,” in Adventist Maverick, 224.

14 Ben McArthur, “Prophetess of Health: A Fortieth-Anniversary Retrospective,” Spectrum, https://spectrummagazine.org/article/2016/07/20/prophetess-health-fortieth-anniversary-retrospective. In an article entitled “Ronald Numbers: Transformer of History,” Spectrum identifies the historian as one of the five most influential figures in Adventism in the first twenty-five years of the journal's existence: [Roy Branson?], Spectrum 24, no. 3 (December 1994): 6–8.

15 It is instructive to examine the two editions of the current college-level SDA history textbook on health reform: Schwarz, R. W., Light Bearers to the Remnant: Denominational History Textbook for Seventh-day Adventist College Classes (Mountain View, Calif.: PPPA, 1979), 104–117Google Scholar; and Schwarz, Richard W. and Greenleaf, Floyd, Light Bearers: A History of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, rev. ed. (Nampa, Idaho: PPPA, 2000), 100–113Google Scholar. In both editions, the narratives on Ellen White and health reform obviously rely on the Numbers study, but Prophetess of Health is not referenced. Only Numbers's popular article for a general Adventist audience is cited: “Dr. Jackson's Water Cure and Its Influence on Adventist Health Reform,” Adventist Heritage 1, no. 1 (January 1974): 11–16, 58, 59Google Scholar. In the second edition, Numbers's importance to 1970s revisionism does receive notice (p. 632).

16 Grant Wacker, “Retrospective on Conference on Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet,” (Regency Hotel, Portland, Maine, 25 October 2009).

17 Numbers, Prophetess of Health, 3rd ed. (2008) includes the following supplements added since the first edition: a preface in which Numbers discusses historiographical developments on Ellen White since the late 1960s (pp. xi–xxv); an original essay by Numbers and Janet S. Numbers, “Ellen White on the Mind and the Mind of Ellen White,” (pp. 267–290); and several important appendices, including autobiographical materials on the prophet's health, in “Physical and Psychological Experiences of Ellen G. White: Related in Her Own Words” (pp. 291–319); also White's report of a phrenological head reading of her sons in “The 1864 Dansville Visit,” (pp. 320–325); a court transcript placing White in an enthusiastic setting leading to arrests in “The Trial of Elder I. Dammon,” (pp. 326–341); and verbatim minutes of a meeting in which Adventist churchmen struggled with the issue of White's authority four years after her death in “The Secret 1919 Bible Conferences,” (pp. 344–401). Jonathan M. Butler, “Historian as Heretic,” appears in the second and third editions (pp. 1–41).

18 Gaustad, Edwin Scott, ed., The Rise of Adventism: A Commentary on the Social and Religious Ferment of Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York: Harper & Row, 1974)Google Scholar; Numbers, Ronald L. and Butler, Jonathan M., eds., The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987; repr., Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Aamodt, Land, and Numbers, eds., Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet; Numbers, Ronald L., The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)Google Scholar; and Numbers, Ronald L., The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

19 Valentine and Whidden, Adventist Maverick, 247.

20 Benjamin McArthur provides an insightful analysis of Knight's thought in “Historian and Provocateur,” in Adventist Maverick, ed. Valentine and Whidden, 15–21.

21 Knight, George R., Millennial Fever and the End of the World: A Study of Millerite Adventists (Boise, Idaho: PPPA, 1993)Google Scholar; Knight, , Myths in Adventism: An Interpretive Study of Ellen White, Education, and Related Issues (Washington, D.C.: RHPA, 1985)Google Scholar; Knight, , Meeting Ellen White: An Introduction to Her Life, Writings, and Major Themes (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 1998)Google Scholar; Knight, , Reading Ellen White: How to Understand and Apply Her Writings (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 1997)Google Scholar; Knight, , Ellen White's World: A Fascinating Look at the Times in Which She Lived (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 1998)Google Scholar; and Knight, , Walking with Ellen White: The Human Interest Story (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 1999)Google Scholar. Knight adds two offerings of his own to the Adventist Pioneer Series in Joseph Bates: The Real Founder of Seventh-day Adventism (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 2004)Google Scholar; and Knight, , A. T. Jones: Point Man on Adventism's Charismatic Frontier (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 2011)Google Scholar.

22 Bull and Lockhart, Seeking a Sanctuary (2007), 17, 25–26, 102–104, 300–314, 324, 359–361.

23 Morgan, Douglas, Adventism and the American Republic: The Public Involvement of a Major Apocalyptic Movement, foreword by Martin E. Marty (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001), xiii, 20–26, 56–57, 209–212Google Scholar.

24 Morgan, Douglas, Lewis C. Sheafe: Apostle to Black America (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 2010), 17–19, 70–83, 177–289, 385–391, 417–419, 425–427Google Scholar.

25 McArthur, Benjamin, The Man Who Was Rip Van Winkle: Joseph Jefferson and Nineteenth-Century American Theater (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. McArthur also published Actors and American Culture, 1880–1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984; repr., Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

26 McArthur, Benjamin, A. G. Daniells: Shaper of Twentieth-Century Adventism (Nampa, Idaho: PPPA, 2015), 16, 64, 72–73, 105–108Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., 93–96, 177–209.

28 Valentine, , The Prophet and the Presidents (Nampa, Idaho: PPPA, 2011)Google Scholar. With the exception of Knight, the most prolific of contemporary Adventist historians is Valentine, whose résumé also includes The Shaping of Adventism: The Case of W.W. Prescott (Berrien Springs, Mich.: AUP, 1992; rev. ed., Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 2005)Google Scholar; and The Struggle for the Prophetic Heritage: Issues in the Conflict for Control of the Ellen G. White Publications, 1930–1939 (Muak Lek, Thailand: Institute Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

29 Valentine, The Prophet and the Presidents, 20–21, 54, 58, 60, 65, 84, 88, 108, 121–140, 153, 166, 181.

30 Aamodt, Land, and Numbers, eds., Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, foreword by Wacker (2014), xii, xiv, 339. In the interest of full disclosure, I should rely on others to comment on the two essays that I wrote for the volume: “A Portrait” (pp. 1–29) and “Second Coming,” (pp. 178–195).

31 In his review of the book, David Holland identifies the authors who do more contextualizing of White's life as Jonathan Butler, Ann Taves, Ronald Numbers, Rennie Schoepflin, Douglas Morgan, Benjamin McArthur, Eric Anderson, and Laura Vance; see his “Making History: A Review of Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet,” Spectrum 42, no. 2 (Spring 2014): 35–38Google Scholar.

32 Land's select Adventist bibliography includes his Historical Dictionary of the Seventh-day Adventists (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014)Google Scholar; Land, , ed., The World of Ellen G. White (Washington, D.C.: RHPA, 1987)Google Scholar; Land, , ed., Adventism in America: A History (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Edwards, Calvin W. and Land, , Seeker After Light: A. F. Ballenger, Adventism, and American History (Berrien Springs, Mich.: AUP, 2000)Google Scholar. For teaching and writing history from an Adventist perspective, see also Land, , Teaching History: A Seventh-day Adventist Approach (Berrien Springs, Mich.: AUP, 2000)Google Scholar.

33 Land, Gary, Uriah Smith: Apologist and Biblical Commentator (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 2014), 11, 30–31, 43–45, 78–81, 86, 99–101, 108, 178–186, 246Google Scholar. For his defense of Ellen White, see Smith, , The Visions of Mrs. E. G. White: A Manifestation of Spiritual Gifts According to the Scriptures (Battle Creek, Mich.: Steam Press of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1868)Google Scholar.

34 As a specialist in French history, Strayer has spent his career studying Jansenists, Convulsionnaires, Huguenots, and eighteenth-century prisons; see, for example, Strayer, , Suffering Saints: Jansenists and Convulsionnaires in France, 1640–1799 (Portland, Oreg.: Sussex Academic, 2008)Google Scholar; and Strayer, , Romans Were Known for Their Aquaducks: And Other Gems of Wit and Wisdom in Western Civilization (Albany, N.Y.: Spyderwort, 2015)Google Scholar. On Adventist history, see Strayer, , J. N. Loughborough: The Last of the Adventist Pioneers (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 2014)Google Scholar; and his forthcoming biography of John Byington, Adventism's first General Conference president.

35 Strayer, J. N. Loughborough, 18, 107–108, 127–129, 269, 326–328, 387, 391–399, 461, 481–484.

36 Valentine, , W.W. Prescott: Forgotten Giant of Adventism's Second Generation (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 2005), 14Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., 33–51, 122–123, 167–191, 258–260.

38 Schwarz, Richard, John Harvey Kellogg, M.D.: Pioneering Health Reformer (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 2006)Google Scholar; it is a reprint of his John Harvey Kellogg, M.D. (Nashville, Tenn.: Southern Publishing Association, 1970). Neither book is footnoted, but for documentation, see Schwarz, “John Harvey Kellogg: American Health Reformer,” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1964).

39 Schwarz, John Harvey Kellogg, M.D. (2006), 179–195; see also Schwarz, , “The Kellogg Schism: The Hidden Issues,” Spectrum 4, no. 4 (Autumn 1972): 23–39Google Scholar. For another perspective on Kellogg's theology, see Wilson, Brian C., Dr. John Harvey Kellogg: And the Religion of Biologic Living (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 85–105Google Scholar.

40 Fortin, and Moon, , eds., The Ellen G. White Encyclopedia (Hagerstown, Md.: RHPA, 2013)Google Scholar. For a window into the volume's shortcomings on context, change, and character, see the chapter on “Current Science and Ellen White: Twelve Controversial Statements,” 215–240; for a fuller critique of the encyclopedia, see Butler, Jonathan M. and Numbers, Ronald L., “The Hedgehog, the Fox and Ellen G. White,” Spectrum 42, no. 2 (Spring 2014): 52–57Google Scholar; and for Fortin's comments on the apologetical stance of the book, see “The Ellen G. White Encyclopedia: A New Church Resource,” Focus: The Andrews University Magazine 50, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 23Google Scholar.

41 White, Ellen G., Steps to Christ, with historical introduction and notes by Fortin, Denis (Berrien Springs, Mich.: AUP, 2017), xiii, xv, 10–20Google Scholar. In a broader philosophical discussion, which encourages a functional approach to White's writings based on Ricoeur and David Tracy, Seventh-day Adventist theologian Richard Rice (another Chicago man) notes that Adventists “have been preoccupied with the origin of these writings, . . . that God was directly involved with their production.” Instead they “should concentrate on the content of the texts—the thought world that the texts present, or the possible mode of being in the world that they suggest.” See Rice, , “Ellen White's Writings as Religious Classics: A New Approach to the Old Problem,” Spectrum 37, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 29Google Scholar.