Electronic Journal of Adventist History - Home :: Andrews … · 2016-08-31 · On the threshold of the Civil War, both Yankee and Confederate Protestants believed ... persisted in

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Electronic Journal of Adventist HistoryFall of 2001

Erin Reid. "The Army of the Lord": Principle, Precept, and Practice in AntebellumAdventist Abolitionism, 1856 – 1861.

Erin Reid currently works for the Bradford Cleveland Institute at Oakwood College. She is working on amasters in History at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. She has an undergraduate degree from AtlanticUnion College.

Samantha Ryce. The Development and Spread of the Sabbath Keeping Doctrine of theSeventhday Adventist Church.

Samantha Ryce is a school teacher in Nashville, Tennessee. She is a recent graduate of Oakwood College

Nigel Barham. War and British Adventist

Nigel Barham is professor of History at Oakwood College. His Ph.D. is from the University of Michiganwhere he did a dissertation on the history of the Adventist Church in England.

Ciro Sepulveda. Reinventing Adventist History: How Adventist Historians TransformedAdventist Heritage So That It Would Fit Neatly Into the National Mythology.

Ciro Sepulveda is the Chair of the History Department at Oakwood College. This paper was presented at theAdventist Theological Society Meeting at Nashville, December 2000. His Ph.D. was obtained at theUniversity of Notre Dame.

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8/31/2016 Antebellum Adventist Abolitionism

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“The Army of the Lord”: Principle, Precept, andPractice in

Antebellum Adventist Abolitionism, 1856 – 1861Erin Reid

Once when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before himwith a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us, orone of our adversaries?” He replied, “Neither; but as commander of the army of the LORDI have now come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and he said tohim, “What do you command your servant, my lord?” The commander of the army of theLORD said to Joshua, “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand isholy.” And Joshua did so. [1]

On the threshold of the Civil War, both Yankee and Confederate Protestants

believed that God would fight for them and against their adversaries. [2] Adventists, a

fingernail remnant of the midcentury Millerite fervor, also believed that God would

command the events of the coming conflict. In the six years preceding the war, the small and

scattered group meticulously recorded the deteriorating state of the nation in their one

publication, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. Atop their catalog of spiritual

infirmities sat the institution of slavery. Like other Northern evangelical abolitionists,

Adventists criticized the churches of the North and South for their complicity in maintaining

this “national sin.” However, unlike other evangelical abolitionists and the churches they

rebuked, Adventists did not prescribe God’s political loyalties. Prewar writers in the Advent

Review applied an apolitical, apocalyptic theology to the United States and its institution of

slavery and developed a distinctive ethical imperative. While the essential dynamic bore

resemblance to the motivational development of other evangelical abolitionists, it differed

fundamentally in principle, precept, and practice.

Although American historians have generally recognized a relationship between religion and

antislavery sentiment, the systematic exploration of evangelical theology as the primary

motivating force behind radical abolitionism is a relatively recent phenomenon. Historians

of abolitionism have had a longer history of identifying less flattering impulses. Up through

the early twentieth century, abolitionists were considered fanatical, mentally unstable, self

righteous, and motivated by personal psychological needs. This caricature was redrawn in the



1960s when historians of the Civil Rights era began to focus on the moral nature of

abolitionist protest. [3] Concerns with social justice gave way in the following decades to an

increasing consideration of the religious origins of antislavery sentiment. [4] The dominant

position among these historians places the Northern churches in the “antislavery

vanguard”—a position that requires reassessment according to John R. McKivigan. [5] In

an impressive and growing body of historical research, McKivigan demonstrates that the

relationship between radical evangelical abolitionists and Northern churches was one of

conflict not cooperation. Typical churchgoers were reluctant to take a public position against

slavery; churchgoing abolitionists challenged their complacency. [6]

Theologically motivated abolitionism took shape in a fourpart dynamic: religious

awakening, theological formation, identification of slavery as sin, and ethical imperative.

The essential movement is from principle through precept to practice. At the end of the

eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, “revival preachers” such as Charles

Finney and “New England clergymen” such as Lyman Beecher began preaching an

evangelical message that brought Americans back to church in droves. [7] The theology of

the “Second Great Awakening,” as this period has been called, emphasized the perfectibility

of humankind and free moral will. Individuals believed they possessed the ability and the

responsibility to reform themselves, and, by extension, their societies, of all sin. [8] Success

at this sociospiritual enterprise was thought to usher in one thousand years of perfect peace

and human harmony, a concept known as postmillennialism. [9]

Evangelical principle translated into precept when applied to specific sins. Because

evangelical abolitionists viewed slavery as a sin, and because their theology held that sins

must be immediately repented and reformed, they preached that slavery should be

immediately eradicated. [10] Failing to take this necessary spiritual step was thought

tantamount to forsaking one’s eternal salvation, preventing millennial dawn, and inviting

divine judgment. [11] In the view of a radical evangelical abolitionist, moderates or

conservatives who advocated “gradual emancipation” were essentially advocating “gradual

repentance” or the “gradual abolition of wickedness.” [12] This would not do. Radical

abolitionists, motivated theologically, strove for “holiness” and temporal perfection; their



burning conviction made them willing to take public stands, which frequently meant social

ostracism and ridicule.

Evangelical abolitionists began their immediate emancipation campaign at home—amongst

their church brethren. [13] McKivigan organizes the composition of the Northern churches

in regards to antislavery sentiment into a continuum, stretching from outright proslavery

members, who used literal interpretations of the Bible to support the morality of slavery, to

radical antislavery members, who accepted no less than immediate repentance. [14] These

extremes encased the dominant conservative and moderate middle ground. Conservatives

believed that slavery was morally neutral and that any related action was the sole business of

the secular sphere. [15] Moderates viewed slavery as an evil but avoided any immediate or

direct action. They believed in gradual emancipation and resented antislavery disturbers of

the status quo. [16] Many of these moderates were economically dependent on Northern

industry, which, in turn, was economically dependent on slavery in the South. [17] Many

radical evangelical abolitionists spent the 30 years prior to the Civil War working to reform

Northern churches, proclaiming the sinfulness of slavery, and calling for repentance. [18]

When immediate abolitionists sensed the determined resistance of the churches, many

“cameout” and formed new sects that maintained membership purity. [19] As the

nineteenth century progressed, ethical practice took other new and diverse directions. Some

abolitionists created or joined antislavery societies, while others participated in political party

reform. Some followed the lead of Garrison and moved toward “anarchism” or revolution,

believing political parties and churches hopelessly flawed, the Constitution a proslavery

document, and voting futile. [20] Developments like the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 pushed

a number of immediate abolitionists to the extremes of direct confrontation, disunionism, and

violence to make their voices heard. [21]

Another voice in the antislavery milieu was the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald,

the paper of the fledgling Adventist church in upstate New York. In the 1850s, this “church”

was actually a looseknit group of geographically dispersed believers, whose one formal

connection was their weekly newspaper. Adventism was not yet an organized denomination

and did not become so until 1863 at which time total membership numbered at approximately



3,500. [22] Thus, at the beginning stages of church growth, the early writers and editors of

the Review assumed primary responsibility for publicizing, exchanging, and shaping

Adventist thought. James White, Uriah Smith, John Andrews, John Loughborough, Ellen

White, and others, functioned as the preceptors of an emerging denominational toddler.

Adventist antislavery sentiment, as expressed in the Review, followed the same

dynamic as immediatist evangelical abolitionism, but differed in the details. Evangelical

reformers, aroused by the “Second Great Awakening,” adjusted their theology to embrace

perfectionism and adopted a postmillennial eschatology, thus necessitating their public and

political action toward the immediate abolition of the sin of slavery. Adventists, on the other

hand, differed in specific theological motivation, and, thus, in moral instruction and ethical

action. Ignited by William Miller’s preaching of Christ’s immanent return, Adventists

persisted in their expectancy even after the flames of Millerism fizzled. The small band of

believers developed a post1844 theology that remained premillennialist. They believed that

the world would deteriorate progressively until Christ came and inaugurated a heavenly

millennium. The “signs of the times” showed that this would be soon.

Adventists identified the sin of slavery as a central sign of the evil of current human

structures and the near end of the world. The Review team taught that the proper ethical

response was to prepare themselves and others for Christ’s return, which meant

disassociating themselves from fallen civil and ecclesiastical power structures, exercising

private conscience in legal matters, and publicly proclaiming the sin of slavery. Unlike the

reformist position of some postmillennialists, the Adventist position was to avoid national

political entanglements. However, unlike many premillennialists, who believed “no

particular human action was required to hasten the coming of the Kingdom,” [23] Adventists

were actively engaged in personal transformation, church (re)formation, and societal

evaluation. Thus, Adventists were akin to evangelical abolitionists in their unmitigated

criticism of the institution of slavery and the complicity of northern established churches, but

because their theological principles differed, their precept and practice were unique.

Modern Seventhday Adventist historians have devoted little attention to

understanding the early church’s antislavery position. Official denominational history texts



include passing references to abolitionist sentiment, pausing on the more fully investigated

relationship between Millerites and abolitionists, but their general emphases are elsewhere.

[24] Chancing a fresh historical gaze, Roy Branson, in 1970, wrote two influential articles,

which characterize Adventist antislavery thought as “radical abolitionism” of the Garrison

ilk. [25] In Seeking a Sanctuary (1989), Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart briefly but firmly

argue against Branson’s view, suggesting that Adventists were too preoccupied with

millennialism to possess any social conscience, much less any genuine concern about slavery.

[26] Both studies slide into an interpretive pitfall. Each author has taken a narrow range of

oftquoted Review documents and “read” them according to his own (undisclosed) definitions

of “true abolitionism” and “valid social consciousness.” In other words, each has rushed to

historical judgment before lingering on careful historical investigation. A prudent analysis

must first set up a reasonable historical context and then look to Adventist antislavery

thought itself for a working definition of proper moral duty. [27] The first portion of this

study has sought to provide a summary contextual framework. The remaining pages will

examine Adventist antislavery principle, precept, and practice as evidenced in the Review

during the immediate prewar years of 1856 to 1861. [28]

Adventist antislavery principle composes the most basic, and thus the most crucial,

element of the three movements and will receive the most attention. The Review’s

principled critique of slaverysympathizing institutions was rooted in a distinct theological

interpretation of reality. Unlike evangelical abolitionists, Adventists did not believe that the

political and social structures of the world were perfectible. Rather, they believed just the

opposite—that all governments, including the United States, were hopelessly corrupted.

What is more, they believed that this corruption was predicted in biblical prophecy and thus

was not alterable. Adventist historians of the midtwentieth century recast the early

Adventist position on government. Arthur Whitefield Spalding in Origin and History of

Seventhday Adventists, published in 1961, states that “Seventhday Adventists were

practically unanimous in their abhorrence of slavery and in their support of government.”

[29] Ciro Sepulveda in “Reinventing Adventist History,” suggests that the historical motive

for such revisionism was to ally the church with the nation and develop a mainstream,

middleclass Protestant identity. [30] Indeed, evidence from the Adventist publications of



the 1850s suggests that the fledgling group of believers was establishing an identity that was

anything but mainstream or middle class.

Many of the antislavery articles printed in the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald

between 1856 and 1861 associate the United States with the “twohorned beast” of

Revelation 13:11: “And he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.” The

character of this beast is that his motives, intentions, and desires are all like a dragon, but his

outward appearance, his outward profession, is like a lamb. When the beast acts in authority,

he betrays his true identity except to those “whose patriotism may for a moment get the better

of his judgment.” [31] The character of the “voice of a dragon” is to profess one thing and

practice the reverse, to be “twofaced” and “hypocritical.” His lamblike appearance is a

deception, hiding the “fierce promptings” of a dragon’s heart within a mild and innocent

exterior. [32]

The mild profession of the United States is symbolized in the two horns of the beast,

which are taken to mean civil or ecclesiastical rulers that appear innocent. In an extensive

article on the topic, J. N. Loughborough identifies these two “horns” in the United States as

“Protestant ecclesiastical power” and “Republican civil power.” He asks, “Where is a

government to be found more lamblike in its appearance than our own nation, with its

Republican and Protestant rulers?” [33] He demonstrates Republican profession by quoting

the Declaration of Independence: “’We hold these truths to be selfevident: That all men are

created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that

among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’” [34] Protestants, of course, also

say “amen” to the Declaration of Independence and add freedom of conscience and the Bible

as the only standard of faith. “Against the profession of Protestants and Republicans we have

nothing to offer: their profession is right. We might expect a millennium indeed, were their

profession lived out.” [35] Of course, Adventists did not expect a millennium, and so

Loughborough’s comment reveals scarcely concealed sarcasm. [36]

Loughborough contrasts the nation’s lamblike profession with dragonlike action.

The institution of slavery is the specific trait that demonstrates the true nature of the entire

nation:



Yes, that very national executive body, who have before them this Declaration of

Independence, and profess to be carrying out its principles, can pass laws by which 3,200,000

slaves can be held in bondage. The Declaration of Independence was professedly based on

selfevident truths… But it is a selfevident truth now that a large number of our race are born

into slavery. To produce a harmony between our laws and their professed basis, the

Declaration of Independence should read, All men are created equal except 3,200,000. [37]

He further argues that individual conscience is violated with the enforcement of the

fugitive slave law. A person who believes that “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master, the

servant which is escaped from his master unto thee” (Deuteronomy 23:15) is by law not

allowed to follow his conscience. [38]

An unsigned article, following Loughborough’s by about a year, takes his premise

and develops further evidence. “LambLike Profession” and “DragonLike Action” are

organized into two columns, which systematically expose national contradictions regarding

slavery. Under “Profession” is the declaration of equality from the Declaration of

Independence and the constitutional claim that it shall be the supreme law of the land over all

the states. Under “Action” is a quote from the law of South Carolina declaring slaves to be

“chattels personal.” [39] Under “Profession” is the constitutional guarantee of a Republican

government, which is defined by Thomas Jefferson as preserving the “equal rights of every

citizen, in his person and property.” Under “Action” is Judge McLean’s Supreme Court Act

of 1740 setting the legal status of “Negroes” as “absolute slaves.” [40] The list continues for

several columns, ending with a selected poem:

Are you republicans?—away!

‘Tis blasphemy the word to say.

You talk of freedom? Out for shame!

Your lips contaminate the name.

How dare you prate of public good.

Your hands besmear’d with human blood?

How dare you lift those hands to heaven,

And ask, or hope to be forgiven?



How dare you breathe the wounded air,

That wafts to heaven the negroe’s prayer?

How dare you tread the conscious earth

That gave mankind an equal birth?

And while you thus inflict the rod,

How dare you say there is a God

That will, in justice, from the skies,

Hear and avenge his creature’s cries?

“Slaves to be sold!” hark, what a sound!

Ye give America a wound,

A scar, a stigma of disgrace,

Which you nor time can e’er efface. [41]

The identification of the United States as the “twohorned beast” of prophecy is

supported repeatedly with evidence from current political events. Any situation involving

slavery and/or internal national contradiction is taken as evidence of dragon voice and

action. The threefifths clause, the Fugitive Slave Law, the coastal slave trade, the Dred

Scott decision: dragon voice. Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas,

Utah, New Mexico, bleeding Kansas: dragon action. [42]

The implication of repeatedly exposed contradiction was not just that the United

States was not living up to a good profession, but that the profession itself was nothing but a

mask. American claims of liberty, democracy, and freedom possessed no inherent meaning

except as a deception for the nation’s true nature. Thus, Adventists theologically rejected the

notion of “America” being a Godordained political enterprise. Unlike other Protestants who

rooted themselves theologically and politically in the belief that the nation was founded on

providence and divine will,—a city set on a hill—Adventists believed that no government

was “godly.”

Joseph Clarke, one of the regular contributors to the Review on the topic of slavery,

challenged in a letter to the editor the viewpoint of a prominent Protestant preacher who



claimed that “the constitution of the U. S. A. does not degrade the black man.” Clarke

argued that the constitution itself was a proslavery document due to the threefifths clause

and that

to assert that our constitution does not legalize slavery is simply absurd, and the effort

by professed teachers to exalt the constitution as faultless is most certainly criminal. Let the

axe be laid at the foot of the tree. The Christian prays, Thy kingdom come, or in other

words, for a Theocracy. Can he then be a consistent Democrat who in his heart is praying for

the coming of Christ’s kingdom? Let us come out fearlessly and honestly, lay aside the mark

of hypocrisy, and shout, Live forever glorious King! [43]

Clearly, slavery was at the heart of early Adventists’ principled critique of existing

political power structures.

Like other evangelicals, Adventists condemned slavery not because it was

wrong in an abstract moral sense, but because they viewed it as sin. [44] Accepting slavery

as sin meant rejecting mainline Protestant churches who refused to confess and repent of this

sin. Politicians may be expected to violate biblical principle, but certainly not fellow

believers and ministers. Adventists agreed with Albert Barnes of Philadelphia who charged

that American churches were the very “bulwarks of slavery. [45] Like Barnes, Adventists

did not limit their critique to Southern proslavery churches; in fact, their fiercest critique was

volleyed at the North.

The profession of Protestant churches was the second horn of Loughborough’s

lamblike beast. According to Loughborough, one practice that already revealed their true

dragonic identity was their expulsion of hundreds of dissenting believers from their

communion for “no other reason cause, than believing and talking to others the Bible

doctrine of the near, personal return of the Saviour.” [46] Of course, Loughborough is

referring to the experience of many Adventists during the Millerite movement. But his

evidence does not end there. He summarizes: “Protestants and Republicans, both unitedly

and separately, speak as a dragon. We inquire, Who are Republicans? To a greater or less

extent they are Protestants. Protestants aid in making and carrying out laws, that hold men in



slavery.” [47] Additionally, Southern Protestants who own slaves are frequently

fellowshipped by Northern Protestants who do not. Loughborough implies that

fellowshipping slaveholders is unacceptable. [48]

Adventists took most of their remaining articles against Northern religious hypocrisy

from other newspapers. The sheer quantity and consistency of these articles suggest a valid

reflection of the concerns of the Review editors. One such article criticizes the common

Northern church practice of inviting slaveholding ministers to speak in their pulpits and sit at

their communion tables. [49] Another expresses dismay that many Northern churches

disallow members from publicly praying for slaves for fear of causing commotion and

tension in the congregation. [50] A news story mixes in an indictment of Northern churches

for their contradiction between profession and practice, which causes a loss of respect for

Christianity. Who then can blame the “infidel” for wanting nothing to do with a

contradictory religion? [51] The crowning contribution is a lengthy article from Harriet

Beecher Stowe, condemning the Northern churches for their complicity in slavery and the

slave trade; their unwillingness to speak out was tacit affirmation of slaveholding. “Not to

condemn is to approve.” [52]

To Adventists, approval of slavery meant condemnation by God. As the

nation approached the crisis of 1861, Adventist predictions of divine judgment intensified.

An 1858 article on the twohorned beast ends with a foreboding quotation from Erdix Tenny:

We may sleep upon the mouth of a volcano. When its general dominion, which

seems approaching in mad haste, is perfected, an Egyptian darkness covers us—and Egyptian

retribution has overtaken us. The experience of other nations, the divine rebukes of similar

sins far less aggravated, warn us of a hastening catastrophe, more signal and terrific, than was

visited upon those nations, as our guilt is deeper. [53]

An 1858 article appraises the discordant times and postulates that God must be

exercising a restraining influence, temporarily holding back the winds of Revelation 12:1.

[54] By the beginning of the Civil War, Adventists were writing that punishment had finally

come.



Most evangelical abolitionists believed that the United States was in a state of

corruption due to the unrepented sin of slavery. Adventists were distinct in that they did not

expect the character of the nation to improve over time. Biblical prophecy predicted that the

dragonic character of the lamblike beast would not change before Christ’s return. [55]

Hence, the person who “looks for good, or hopes for reform in the legislative or executive

departments of this government is doomed, we think, to utter and hopeless disappointment.”

[56] Because Adventists held this pessimistic view of earthly institutions, their definition of

proper ethical behavior could not be the same as that of progressive, optimistic, perfection

obsessed reformers. This, however, does not signify an ethical vacuum. Adventists were

obsessed with the practical outcomes of theological principles; this obsession translated into

many pages of moral instruction in the Review.

Adventist precept was established both negatively and positively. In negative

terms, Adventist preceptors outlined inappropriate behavior for “true Christians.” First came

voting. Adventists were cautioned against voting because voting in a corrupt system was

ultimately futile. A letter to the editor from D. Hewitt of Battle Creek, Michigan, warned

that even those politicians who professed to be antislavery were not authentically concerned

with the plight of slaves. What is more, they had no genuine intent to liberate slaves. [57]

Hewitt’s personal counsel was followed up the next month by a rather complex

argument against voting written by one of the Review editors, Raymond F. Cottrell. Cottrell

reiterated a common theme in Adventist apocalyptic writing: that the Protestant Church (as

opposed to the Catholic) would eventually don the garb of civil authority and thus “constitute

an image to the beast” of Revelation 13. [58] This image would then, according to

prophecy, begin a reign of persecution on religious dissenters. Cottrell believed that voting

for the formation of the image would be voting for persecution and abomination; but voting

against it would be voting against prophecy’s fulfillment. [59] Likewise, voting against

slavery would be vain, because prophecy showed slavery would exist until Christ returned.

Signs of emancipation would “only exasperate their masters, and cause an aggravation of

those evils it was intended to cure.” [60]



Implicit in the rejection of voting was a rejection of political parties. Hewitt

characterized politicians as dishonest and foretold that “all political parties” would be cast

“into the great wine press… of the wrath of God.” [61] Cottrell summarized his position

against institutional politics: “Again, I cannot vote for a bad man, for that is against my

principles; and, under the present corrupt and corrupting state of politics, I could not wish to

elevate a good man to office, for it would ruin him.” [62] Joseph Clarke, who wrote that

Christians could not be Democrats and followers of God, subsequently added that any

activity in the sphere of institutional politics was contrary to Christian faith. [63]

Lastly, the contributors to the Review contended that Adventists should not engage in

fighting, much less in killing. [64] E. Everts argued that it was indeed the Christian’s duty

“to help suppress all oppression and evil” and “to do your utmost to propagate and diffuse

good laws.” But, biblically, Christians could not serve two masters. Aligning oneself with

the government would inevitably mean breaking the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not

kill.” [65]

The positive aspect of Adventist antislavery precept, as printed in the Review,

was also threefold. First, and foremost, Adventists, and Christians in general, were

repeatedly advised to “come out of Babylon,” to forsake the corrupting influence of the

national beast with the twin horns of civil and ecclesiastical power. Although Adventists

were themselves not aligned with any major denomination, article after article reminded

them of their unique place and purpose in the world. Clarke reaffirmed this uniqueness when

he wrote, “Let men who work for God work legitimately and in their sphere. Let not Paul or

Peter attempt the reformation of the Roman form of government, but rather the purification

of the church and the interests of those who are ready to crucify the flesh. Let teachers and

shepherds look to the lost sheep, and not to the taming of wild beasts.” [66] Everts’ article

suggested that “coming out” was not just a negative moral imperative, but also a positive,

proactive service. Adventists were to use “Gospel weapons,” which essentially amounted to

the command, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,

and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” [67]



At the same time, Christian love was not without backbone. Love meant

justice as well as mercy. Thus, Adventists were repeatedly counseled to exercise their

personal moral consciences in legal matters. In other words, if a human law was felt to be in

conflict with “higher law,” Adventists should break the human law and suffer the

consequences. This was particularly advised in regard to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Adventists were also counseled to exercise their corporate conscience by voicing

objection to sin. The Review reprinted numerous articles that were exceedingly critical of the

American Tract Society, which had forsaken its moral duty to publish the sinfulness of

slavery with the rationale that such action would halt their work in the South. [68]

Immediately following an eloquent indictment of the Tract Society by evangelical reformer

John G. Fee, Adventists ran a general piece entitled “Hypocrite.” [69] Using the biblical

examples of Paul, Jonah, and John the Baptist, a subsequent issue contained an Adventist

written piece, which claimed that the Tract Society’s expediency argument functioned to

“crucify the gospel.” A gospel that sanctioned sin with silence was worse than no gospel at

all. [70]

Little evidence from the 1850s is available to demonstrate whether or not Adventists

actually practiced their precept. Church founder and original Review editor, James White,

wrote during the Civil War that Adventists “to a man” supported Lincoln, but this pledge of

loyalty may have reflected a change in Adventist thought due to the war crisis. Its evaluation

belongs in another study. Similarly, evidence of Adventist participation in the Underground

Railroad came from the 1830s and 1840s. Before experiencing Millerite conversion (and

indeed before there was even Adventism), many “Adventists” had been involved in local

antislavery societies. Some of these folks maintained ties with abolitionists such as William

Lloyd Garrison up to the disappointment of 1844—at which time there was a general

fragmenting. [71] Bull and Lockhart suggest that those Adventists who organized into the

Seventhday Adventist Church represented the conservative right of the previous group, who

broke away in order to emphasize theology instead of social consciousness.

If premillennialist Adventists can be considered theologically obsessed, the same can

be argued of postmillennialist reformers. The difference lies in the content of the theology



and its implications for ethos building. Reformers were just as concerned with the sin of

slavery preventing millennial perfection as Adventists were with the sin of slavery

demonstrating the nearness of the Second Coming and the impenetrable corruption of the

American government. Adventists may have been pessimistic about human moral

enterprises, but they were hopeful of God’s final and perfect justice.

Even so, it is clear that Adventists followed their own counsel on voicing the true

nature of slavery and society. They combated social and spiritual silence when they

published their antislavery articles in the 1850s and 1860s. Although they were opposed to

institutional politics in principle and precept, their practice of publishing a radically

antislavery paper was political. It was political in its publicizing of unpopular ideas. The

fact that the Review was banned in many slave states demonstrates the sometimespolitical

nature of using one’s “spiritual voice.” [72] Although the Review served the function of

theological development and church organization, it also served the larger purpose of moral

suasion.

Adventist editors believed their evangelical voice was so important, they were willing to

make tremendous sacrifice to make it heard. In the first history of the Advent movement, J.

N. Loughborough describes the conditions of the early Review office. The small staff

worked for no salary, only for board and clothing. Each was responsible for numerous tasks

that were predominantly manual and laborious. For instance, paper trimming was done by

hand with a pocketknife. Furthermore, the staff lived in the same house in which the paper

was written, type set, and published. Furniture was makeshift, and food was simple. [73]

The Adventist press of the 1850s was a far cry from the denomination’s current multi

milliondollar publishing companies.

Adventists—if their newspaper accurately reflects principle, precept, and practice—

were a strange nineteenthcentury hybrid. They were not Garrisonian activists, but neither

were they worldescaping premillennialist ostriches or proponents of political expediency

and compromise. More than any earthly enterprise, Adventists kept a keen eye for the final

abolition of all sinful things at the immanent coming of Christ; but while on earth they had

the responsibility to call sin by its name. Although the sinfulness of slavery pervades the



pages of the Review, church founder Ellen White made the most cogent statement a few

months after the beginning of the Civil War. White’s words provide an apt concluding

summary of Antebellum Adventist abolitionism and a radical view of God’s moral order:

God is punishing this nation for the high crime of slavery. He has the destiny of the

nation in his hands. He will punish the South for the sin of slavery, and the North for so long

suffering its overreaching and overbearing influence… God will restrain his anger but a little

longer. His anger burns against this nation, and especially against the religious bodies who

have sanctioned, and have themselves engaged in this terrible merchandise… The cries and

sufferings of the oppressed have reached unto heaven, and angels stand amazed at the hard

hearted, untold, agonizing suffering, man in the image of his Maker, causes his fellowman.

The names of such are written in blood, crossed with stripes, and flooded with agonizing,

burning tears of suffering. God’s anger will not cease until he has caused the land of light to

drink the dregs of the cup of his fury. [74]

Antebellum Adventists, as represented in their mouthpiece, were a group of peaceful

dissidents who did not embrace the nation’s core ideology, did not consider themselves

citizens, and would not shut up about it. They composed a strange army—an army without

guns, party uniforms, or patriotic loyalty. Their flimsy, roughcut newsprint was their

spiritual weapon. Through it, they held the sword of truth to the twin necks of a twoheaded

beast. In doing so, they proclaimed their loyalty to only one master and invited their friends

and foes to do the same. Antebellum Adventists removed from their feet the sandals of this

world but walked ever more resolutely in it. A long and grueling war would prove the

ultimate test of their walk.

Bibliography

Primary SourcesAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald. 18561861. Ellen G. White Estate Branch Office,

Oakwood College. Huntsville, Alabama. (app. 60 articles).



Loughborough, J.N. The Great Second Advent Movement: It’s Rise and Progress. 1905

Edition. Washinton, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1992.

Secondary Sources

Beringer, Richard E., et al. Why the South Lost the Civil War. Athens: The University of

Georgia Press, 1986.

Branson, Roy. “Ellen G. White—Racist or Champion of Equality?” Review and Herald. (9

April 1970), 23.

Branson, Roy. “Slavery and Prophecy.” Review and Herald. (16 April 1970), 79.

Bull, Malcolm, and Keith Lockhart. Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventhday Adventism & the

American Dream. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.

David Brion Davis. “The Emergence of Immediatism in British and American Antislavery

Thought.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 49 (1962), 222ff. Printed in Abolitionism

and American Religion. Vol. 1. Series History of the American Abolitionist Movement: A

Bibliography of Scholarly Articles. Ed. John R. McKivigan. New York: Garland

Publishing, Inc., 1999.

Duberman, Martin B. “The Abolitionists and Psychology.” Journal of Negro History. 47: 3

(July 1962), 183191.

Graybill, Ron D. “The AbolitionistMillerite Connection.” The Disappointed. Ed. Ronald

L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler.

Howard, Victor B. Conscience and Slavery: The Evangelistic Calvinist Domestic Missions,

18371861. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1990.

Loveland, Anne C. “Evangelicalism and ‘Immediate Emancipation’ in American

Antislavery Thought.” Journal of Southern History 32 (196), 176ff. Printed in Abolitionism

and American Religion. Vol. 2. Series History of the American Abolitionist Movement: A





McKivigan, John R. “The Antislavery ‘Comeouter’ Sects: A Neglected Dimension of the

Abolitionist Movement.” Civil War History 26 (1980), 142ff. Printed in Abolitionism and

American Religion. Vol. 2. Series History of the American Abolitionist Movement: A



McKivigan, John R. “The Northern Churches and the Moral Problem of Slavery.” The

Meaning of Slavery in the North. Eds. David Roediger and Martin H. Blatt. New York:

Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998.

McKivigan, John R., and Mitchell Snay, eds. Religion and the Antebellum Debate Over

Slavery. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1998.

McKivigan, John R. The War Against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern

Churches, 18301865. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Pease, Jane H., and William H. Pease. “Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s.” Journal

of American History 25 (1959), 923ff. Printed in Abolitionism and American Religion. Vol.

1. Series History of the American Abolitionist Movement: A Bibliography of Scholarly

Articles. Ed. John R. McKivigan. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999.

Schwarz, R. W. Light Bearers to the Remnant: Denominational History Textbook for

Seventhday Adventist College Classes. Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing

Association, 1979.

Sepulveda, Ciro. “Reinventing Adventist History.” Unpublished manuscript, 2000.

Spalding, Arthur Whitefield. Origin and History of Seventhday Adventists. Washington,

DC: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1961.

Stachiw, Myron O. “’For the Sake of Commerce’: Slavery, Antislavery, and Northern

Industry.” The Meaning of Slavery in the North. Ed. David Roediger and Martin H. Blatt.



New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998.

Strong, Douglas M. Perfectionist Politics: Abolitionism and the Religious Tensions of

American Democracy. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999.

[1] Joshua 5:1315, New Revised Standard Version.

[2] Richard E. Beringer, et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: The University of Georgia Press,1986), 92.

[3] Martin B. Duberman, “The Abolitionists and Psychology,” Journal of Negro History. 47 (July 1962): 183184.

[4] John R. McKivigan and Mitchell Snay, eds., Religion and the Antebellum Debate over Slavery (Athens:University of Georgia Press, 1998): 34, 6. Gilbert Barnes made an early connection between abolitionism andevangelical Protestantism in The Antislavery Impulse, 18301844 (1933).

[5] John R. McKivigan, “The Northern Churches and the Moral Problem of Slavery,” in The Meaning ofSlavery in the North, eds. David Roediger and Martin H. Blatt (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), 77. Victor B. Howard argues that northern churches spawned and then coupled with the political abolitionism ofthe 1850s, sharing primary responsibility for the coming of the war and the termination of slavery. Victor B.Howard, Conscience and Slavery: The Evangelistic Calvinist Domestic Missions, 18371861 (Kent, OH: TheKent State University Press, 1990): xv.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Loveland, Anne C. “Evangelicalism and ‘Immediate Emancipation’ in American Antislavery Thought,”Journal of Southern History, 32 (1966): 176177.

[8] Ibid.,

[9] Douglas M. Strong, Perfectionist Politics: Abolitionism and the Religious Tensions of AmericanDemocracy (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999): 30.

[10] Loveland, 182185.

[11] David Brion Davis, “The Emergence of Immediatism in British and American Antislavery Thought,”Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 49 (1962): 222.

[12] Loveland, 187.

[13] John R. McKivigan, The War against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches,18301865, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984): 13.

[14] McKivigan, “Northern Churches,” 7980.

[15] Ibid., 80.

[16] Ibid., 81.

[17] Myron O. Stachiw, “’For the Sake of Commerce’: Slavery, Antislavery, and Northern Industry,” in TheMeaning of Slavery in the North, eds. David Roediger and Martin H. Blatt (New York: Garland Publishing,1998), 3343.

[18] McKivigan, War, 7, 1317.

[19] John R. McKivigan, “The Antislavery ‘Comeouter’ Sects: A Neglected Dimension of the AbolitionistMovement,” Civil War History, 26 (1980): 142143. The comeouter sects broke away from mainline Northern



churches before, during, and after the sectional schism of the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and otherdenominations in the 1840s and 1850s.

[20] Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, “Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s,” Journal of AmericanHistory, 25 (1959): 9234.

[21] Ibid., 927937.

[22] Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventhday Adventism & the American Dream,(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989): 111112. The 1863 statistic is from early church leader Uriah Smith,quoted in Borge Schantz, “The Development of Seventhday Adventist Missionary Thought: A ContemporaryAppraisal” (Ph.D. dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1983), 232. The first real census, taken in 1867,shows 4,320 members (Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 28 May 1867).

[23] Beringer, et al., 94. Although Beringer here discusses the specific nature of Southern Protestantism, hisdefinition of premillenialism is generally applicable.

[24] Arthur Whitefield Spalding, Origin and History of Seventhday Adventists, Volume One, (Washington,D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1961). (Cf. Schwarz, Light Bearers to the Remnant, 1979).

[25] Roy Branson, “Ellen G. White—Racist or Champion of Equality?” Review and Herald. (9 April 1970): 23. Roy Branson, “Slavery and Prophecy,” Review and Herald (16 April 1970): 79.

[26] Bull and Lockhart, 193197.

[27] If judgment then follows, it will gain its credibility by resting on solid evidence and not on presumption.

[28] The scope of this study is limited to the years 18561861 because currently available studies have focusedeither on the Milleriteabolitionist connection (1840s) or the church’s Civil War years (1860s) and haveneglected the window between. Understanding Adventist antislavery sentiment in the crucial prewar yearsaids understanding Adventist antislavery sentiment during the Civil War.

[29] Spalding, 329.

[30] Ciro Sepulveda, “Reinventing Adventist History,” (unpublished manuscript, 2000).

[31] “The TwoHorned Beast.—Rev. xiii. Are the United States a Subject of Prophecy?” Advent Review andSabbath Herald (19 March 1857): 156.

[32] Ibid.

[33] J. N. Loughborough, “The TwoHorned Beast of Rev. XIII, A Symbol of the United States” Review, (2July 1857): 65.

[34] Ibid. (author’s italics)

[35] Ibid.

[36] Bull and Lockhart misinterpret Loughborough’s comment as it first appears in identical form in theReview of March 21, 1854. They read it literally as an admission of a potential hole in Adventist theology andsuggest that Loughborough denounced America as a way of protecting the distinctive “Adventist hope” (Bulland Lockhart, 48). An ironic reading is supported by the presence of other ironic millennial comments. Cf.Wm. S. Foote, “Notes on Men and Things: Bible Vs. Modern Theology,” Review (8 January 1861):64.

[37] Loughborough, “Beast,” 65. (author’s italics) Another ironic jab at the government. Did Loughboroughreally think that the Declaration of Independence should include “except 3,200,000” in its wording? (No.)

[38] Ibid., 66.

[39] “Our Government,” Review (22 April 1858): 179.

[40] Ibid.



[41] Ibid.

[42] “The Dragon Voice,” Review (5 February 1857): 106; “The TwoHorned Beast,” Review (19 March 1857):156.

[43] Joseph Clarke, “Two Baals: Which is the Best?” Advent Review and Sabbath Herald (4 June 1857): 37.

[44] This idea receives further development at the end of the paper.

[45] Review (12 June 1856): 55.

[46] Loughborough, “Beast,” 66.

[47] Ibid.

[48] This position is explicitly articulated in contemporaneous and later published and unpublished works ofEllen White and others, who expand disfellowship to include proslavery Adventists; however, the scope ofthis study limits consideration of only those articles published in the Review between 1856 and 1861.

[49] “So It Goes: All Right! All Honey!” (from Golden Rule), Review (8 December 1859): 19.

[50] “How Dwelleth the Love of God in Such?” (from Wesleyan), Review (14 October 1858): 163.

[51] “Dr. Cheever’s Sermon: Slavery and the Pulpit,” (from Tribune), Review (14 April 1859): 162.

[52] Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Church and the Slave Trade,” Review (20 November 1860): 2.

[53] Review (19 March 1857): 156.

[54] “The Winds Held. Rev. vii, 1,” Review (29 April 1858): 192.

[55] Editor’s note. Review (2 September 1858): 124. This note accompanied an extract from a speech byAbraham Lincoln, promising that the Union would cease to be divided and become either for or againstslavery.

[56] Ibid.

[57] D. Hewitt, “The Vine of the Earth,” Review (11 September 1856): 150.

[58] Raymond F. Cottrell, “How Shall I Vote?” Review (30 October 1856): 205. (author’s italics)

[59] Ibid.

[60] Ibid. Many Adventists did, in fact, vote.

[61] Hewitt, 150.

[62] Cottrell, 205.

[63] Clarke, “37.

[64] During the Civil War, this translated into a noncombatant position.

[65] E. Everts. “Follow Me.” Review (14 August 1856): 119.

[66] Clarke, 37.

[67] Everts, 118119.

[68] “The Tract Society,” (from New York Tribune) Review (15 October 1857); John G. Fee, “Good Tidings—To All People,” (from Christian Press) Review (21 October 1858): 171.

[69] “Hypocrite,” Review (21 October 1858): 171.

[70] “The Tract Society and Slavery, Illustrated from Paul, Jonah, and John,” Review (25 November 1858): 23.



[71] Ron Graybill, “The AdventistMillerite Connection,” The Disappointed, Ed. Ronald L. Numbers andJonathan M. Butler.

[72] Schwarz, R. W., Light Bearers to the Remnant: Denominational History Textbook for SeventhdayAdventist College Classes (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1979): 98.

[73] J.N. Loughborough, The Great Second Advent Movement: It’s Rise and Progress, 1905 Edition, (Washinton, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1992).

[74] Ellen White, “Slavery and the War,” Review (27 August 1861): 101.

8/31/2016 The Development and Spread of the Sabbath Keeping Doctrine of the Seventhday Adventist Church

http://www.oakwood.edu/historyportal/Ejah/Sabbath%20Ryce.htm 1/8

The Development and Spread of the Sabbath KeepingDoctrine of the Seventhday Adventist Church

Samara Ryce

The Adventist church in America has changed dramatically over the past one

hundred fifty plus years. From its birth in the New England states in the early 1800s to the

present day worldwide body of believers, the Adventist church has gone through many stages

in the development of its fundamental beliefs. One particular doctrine of major importance

in the Adventist church relies in the biblical importance of the observation of the Seventh day

Sabbath. This doctrine became of such great importance that it has found a place in the very

name of the denomination.

The truth concerning the Sabbath, unlike popular belief, was not an overnight

discovery for the believers. Many factors contributed to the emergence of the

Seventhday Sabbath principal as we know it today.

The nineteenth century in America marked an era of change. Almost every aspect of

American life was affected by these changes. [1] Among those changes, and maybe at the

root of those changes lay a drastic increase in the population. The 1840s found Europe in a

state of revolutions and rebellions. People began to lash out against their totalitarian

governments and churches. As a result, many had to flee their countries. A number of these

revolutionaries came to America. Many Irish, in particular, sought out refuge on the banks of

American shores after severe potato crop plagues left millions to die of starvation. Many

Irish settled in New England because of the abundance of jobs and the promise of a better life

that the industry boom afforded. They left their agricultural lifestyles because of the

uncertainty that often plagued the crops. [2]

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, many people were moving their families out of

the rural areas and into the cities where jobs were plentiful. People no longer operated

businesses from their homes. They went to factories to become a part of the new American

way of life. Although moving to the cities created regular jobs, city life also gave rise to



poverty. The invention of the railroad provided jobs for many men laying the railroad lines.

It also increased the transportation of goods. Textile factories brought women and children

into the workplace for the first time. Sometimes each member of the family would work

fifteen hours each under harsh conditions so that the family could pool their salaries together

all for the purpose of daily survival. [3]

With immigration, industry, and employment on the increase, there rose a need for the

promotion of education in the American culture. At first, the mention of sending children to

school was not met with enthusiasm. Children were a vital part of the family's economic

wellbeing. As the conditions in factories worsened people considered better opportunities

for children. Horace Mann, known as the "Father of the Common School Movement"',

became the proponent of free public education. His letters, essays and papers on the

importance of education helped the nineteenth century Americans to promote and provide

public schools [4]

Not everyone in the middle 1800s obtained the opportunity of employment and education.

By 1865 the slaves were freed from one type of slavery only to enter another. They found

themselves freed from being owned but were not offered concessions by the country that

oppressed them for many years. Because White Americans saw them as less human, Blacks

in America struggled to survive in a country where death was more prominent in their lives

than ever before. [5]

In spite the problem of the injustice towards the Black people, many whites found Biblical

confirmation for their actions. It was in this changing America that religion took on an

important role in the lives of people, especially that of poor immigrants as well as poor

Americans. And the religious revivals that appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth

century were usually among the most displaced persons in society. The growth in religious

interests is especially visible in the increase in the publication of Bibles. Between 1840 and

1850, Bible production was at its peak ranging from over 150,000 in 1841 to over 700,000 at

the end of 1848. With prices ranging from .30 for the most inexpensive Bibles to *1.12 for

the most costly, numerous Americans were becoming readers of the Word of God. [6]



From this religious awakening sprouted the roots of the Seventh Day Adventist church. Led

by William Miller, the group preached the soon coming of Jesus Christ according to the

interpretations of the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. Many left their respective

churches to join the Millerite Adventists after hearing the messages of Miller. Among those

who accepted this new truth were Joseph Bates, James White and Ellen White. These three

people would later become cofounders in the Seventh Day Adventist church. As the

movement progressed Miller began to predict the day of the Second Coming. After a first

disappointment, he studied the prophetic books of Daniel and Revelation more earnestly and

then arrived at a second date for the coming of the Lord. When October 22nd, 1844 came

and went without Jesus' coming, many of the Advent believers became discouraged. [7]

Some continued in their studies but some, too ashamed to return to their previous churches,

scattered to the many religious sects of the time. A few examples of these sects are the

Shakers, formed by Ann Lee and the Oneida Community. The Shakers' main doctrine was

celibacy. They proposed that sex was a great sin. The members soon decreased in number

because they failed to reproduces The Oneida Community had beliefs on the other extreme.

They believed in Communal Marriage. This meant that all members were married to one

another. They believed that they could no longer sin since Jesus had actually come in the

spirit. After a number of years, this group also disbanded. [8]

The faithful Adventists kept in prayer and study of the Word. Among them was Ellen

Harmon, later Ellen White, a seventeenyearold girl from Maine. While praying with her

friends, the Lord gave Ellen her first vision. In this vision, she was given reassurance that the

Lord had not left the believers. Ellen's telling of her vision helped to restore the faith of a

large number of believers. [9]

A few years prior to the Great Disappointment, a Seventhday Baptist woman named Rachel

Preston moved to New Hampshire with her husband. Upon meeting a group of Adventists

she realized that she shared many of their beliefs including that of the Second Coming. The

Adventists, however, kept Sunday as their Sabbath. Mrs. Preston introduced the Seventh

Day Sabbath to the Adventists in her community through many of the Seventh Day Baptist

publications. [10]



James White stated that the attitudes of the few Sabbath keeping Adventists before the

Disappointment differed than those of the Post Disappointment Church. He expresses,

These did not see the Sabbath reform in connection with the Third Angel's Message of

Revelation 14, and not holding the Lord's Sabbath as a test of Christian fellowship, did not

feel the importance of giving the light to others, as many now do, and some of them went

back to the

Roman Sabbath." [11]

One of the first people to accept the message was a minister named T. M. Preble. Preble was

a prominent figure in the Advent movement. He frequently wrote articles for the Advent

papers to help in the evangelism of the message. [12] A combination of tracts from the

Seventh Day Baptist religion and a tract by another Sabbath believer, Joseph Bates, helped

convert many families in Maine. [13] An example of the work of his tracts occurred in 1845.

A tract about the Sabbath was sent to the father of Marian Stowell Crawford, an Advent

believer. Intrigued by the truths revealed, Maria read it and then gave it to her brother to

read. Because of what they learned from the tract, Marian and her brother immediately

became convicted and began to keep the Sabbath that Friday evening [14]

Preble's theology was simple. He argued that the Sabbath was never changed by God but by

man. In AD 603, a decree by Pope Gregory changed the Sabbath from the seventh day to

the first day. He suggested that many people recognize that the Sabbath is still binding but

they are inconsistent with their beliefs. In other words, convenience is mostly chosen over a

commandment " written by the finger of God". Many use the rationale that they worship on

the first day because Jesus rose on the first day. This excuse is not in the least bit valid,

however. Although the disciples commemorated the first day in honor of the resurrection of

Jesus, they never ceased keeping the Sabbath holy. [15]

Another person who played a vital part in the spreading of the seventh day Sabbath doctrine

among the Adventists was Joseph Bates. Bates was a retired sea captain who became

converted after the death of one of his friends at sea. On October 24, 1824, Bates made a



covenant with God and decided to try to do His will? Of his first experience with prayer,

Bates expresses,

"The first time I bowed the knee here in prayer, it seemed to me that the hair on my head was

standing out straight, for presuming to open my mouth in prayer to the Great and Holy God.

But I determined to preserve until I found pardon and peace for my troubled mind' [16]

Bates was a man who was committed to the work of God. When presented with the Sabbath

day truth, he readily accepted it. Through earnest study of the scriptures, Bates developed a

number of main points on the Sabbath. Much like Preble’s rational, Bates said that God

sanctified the seventh day, commanded it, and rested on it. The apostles and the early

Christians kept it. He also agrees with Preble that the Sabbath was changed by man. [17]

Bates took a position on the proper time of the observation of the Sabbath. He stated that

Sabbath should be kept from even to even, in other words, from the time of 6 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Although the nineteenth century Seventh Day Baptists kept Sabbath from 6 p.m. to 6 p.m,

Bates did not adopt his views from the group. His conclusions came from his knowledge of

equatorial time. Equatorial time, simply, is the length of the daylight and night hours at the

equator. Bates also backed up his belief by using the texts, Leviticus 23:32 and Matthew

20:16. These texts, he explained, stress the beginning of a biblical day from even to even.

By measuring the time of the twelvehour Jewish workday, Bates arrived at the conclusion

that the time of even was 6 p.m. Also this argument would be universal and would include

those believers who lived in parts of the world where the pattern of the daylight time was

abnormal. Because of his Christian image this position was accepted for as long as ten years

without thorough investigation. [18]

Among the many people that Joseph Bates introduced the Sabbath to, were James and Ellen

White. Although he thought Sis. White to be a sincere speaker from God, Bates did not

immediately believe in her visions. Similarly, as Ellen White listened to Bates' testimony on

Sabbath observance, she felt that he stressed the forth commandment too much. Sis. White

believed that the Sabbath commandment was not as binding as the other nine. [19]



Ellen and James White decided to study the Sabbath issue and prayed that God would reveal

the truth to them message by the Whites, there were only about twentyfive believers in the

area. [20] Although small in number, they continued to study the Word. For some the issue

of the time to commence the Sabbath seemed unresolved. J. N. Andrews, a prominent

Advent speaker and missionary of the time was commissioned to research the issue. On

November 12, 1855, Andrews presented the result of his findings to the believers at the

Sabbath Conference. He had two simple points. The New Testament definition of evening is

sunset. The 6 p.m. to 6 p.m. observance of Sabbath was not valid because it would have

depended on clocks or watches. Both of which the Jews did not have. Two days after

Andrew's presentation, Sis. White had a vision that confirmed the sunset conclusion. [21] In

an article in the Review and Herald the same year James White stated,

"Some have the impression that six o'clock time has been taught among us by the direct

manifestation of the Holy Spirit. This is a mistake. 'From even to even' was the teaching

from which six o'clock has been inferred. We now rejoice that Bro. Andrews has presented

the Bible testimony on this question, in his accustomed, forcible, candid manner, which

settles the question beyond all doubt, that the Sabbath commences not only at even, but at the

setting of the sun." [22]

After the issue of the time of the Sabbath was resolved, Adventists turned to the Word again

to understand the proper ways of observing the Sabbath. J. Clarke, a regular writer for the

Review and Herald, saw that the Sabbath was slowly turning into a day filled with exhausting

services and meetings. He stated that to many Adventists, the Sabbath is a day that ends

without rest. The day is filled with trivial affairs that provide no spiritual growth. He

indicated that if one follows the Creator's pattern, he would rest, pray, and meditate upon the

works of God. It is then that the Sabbath would be delightful and honorable instead of

repulsive and unsightly. [23]

In the early day Adventist did no try to evangelize people who had not believe in the Advent

before “The Great Disappointment”. This practice was rooted in what they called the “Shut

Door” policy. The explanation that God went from the Holy Place to the Most Holy Place in

the Heavenly Sanctuary helped the Advent believers to realize that October 22, 1844 was not



without its purpose. The Post Disappointment church felt that Christ's work as the

intercessor had ended. Their work for the world, in turn had also come to an end. Their

obligation until the Second Coming, they thought, was to encourage one another in their

faith. To them, probation had ended and "the door of mercy was shut". Upon further

investigation, however, the Adventists realized that the “Shut Door” referred to the door of

the Holy Place. The door of the Most Holy Place was opened so that Christ could begin

another portion of His intercessory work. [24] This discovery marked the beginning of the

urgency to spread the Sabbath message into all parts of the world to people of many different

walks of life, not just to those that had accepted the teachings of William Miller. After that

missionaries, SDA publications, and Seventh Day Adventist church members helped spread

the message.

Gaining an understanding of the Sabbath was extremely important for the Advent Believers.

Their habit of searching the scriptures thoroughly had kept them alive through the times of

disappointment. Because they viewed the world as evil, worshiping on the same day as most

of the people they believed were to be the Beast was out of the question. The Seventh Day

Adventists were in a sense rebels. The early leaders of the church were in fact

revolutionaries and visionaries. Their insistence to follow God through the observance of the

Sabbath sent a message to the rest of the world. It said that they were nonconformists. Their

growing numbers showed that they were a movement. The people they touched with the

good news of the Three Angels Message bore witness to the desire in the hearts of the early

SDA believers for all to be saved and none to miss out on the Second Coming of the Lord

Jesus Christ.

[1] Mann, Horace. Horace Mann on the Crisis in Education. (Ohio. Antioch Press. 1965) pp. 134136

[2] Collier, Christopher and James. A Century of Immigration. (New York. Benchmark Books.2000) pp. 1831.

[3] Collier, Christopher and James. The Rise of Industry. (New York. Benchmark Books. 2000) pp. 1123

[4] Mann, Horace. Horace Mann on the Crisis in Education. pp. 134136

[5] See Joe William Trotter Jr. The African American Experience. New York: Houghton Muffin Company2001

[6] Gutjahr, Paul., An American Bible. (Stanford. Stanford University Press. 1999) pp. 182189



[7] See Richards Sshwarz. Light bearers to the Remnant. Boise Idaho: Pacific Press 1979

[8] Ibid.

[9] Arthur L. White Ellen White: The Early Years Washington D.C.; Review and Herald PublishingAssociation 1985

[10] Crawford, Marian S. "How Preble's Tract Converted Two Families" The Southern Watchman, Apil 25, 1905

[11] White, James. "Unnamed article". Review and Herald. Dec 31, 1857. pg 61

[12] Preble, T.M and Wheeler, Frederick. "Sabbathkeeping" Review and Herald. Aug 23,1870. p.73

[13] White, Ellen. Testimonies. Vol. 1.(Oshawa: Pacific Press Publishing Association. 1885) p.77

[14] Crawford, Marian S. "How Preble's Tract Converted Two Families" The Southern Watchman, Apil 25, 1905

[15] Preble, T.M. "A Tract Showing that the Seventh Day Should be Observed as the Sabbath..." found in Murry andkiinball. 1845. www.aloha.net/mikesch/tract.htm

[16] Bates, Joseph. "Time to Commence the Holy Sabbath 'Review and Herald. April 21, 1851

[17] Bates, Joseph. The Autobiograhy of Joseph Bates. (Battle Creek. Steam Press of the Seventh DayAdventist Publishing Association. 1868) pp. 182185, 303

[18] Bates, Joseph. "Time to Commence the Holy Sabbath 'Review and Herald. April 21, 1851

[19] White, Ellen. Life Sketches. (Oshawa. Pacific Press Publishing Association. 1915). pp. 9596

[20] White, Ellen. Testimonies. Vol. 1.( Oshawa. Pacific Press Publishing Association. 1885) p.77

[21] Bacchiocchi, Samuele. "The Reckoning of the Sabbath" www. northwood, edu/rovei/sbrecsb,txt.

[22] White, James. "Time of the Sabbatth”', Review and Herald, Dec 4, 1855.pg 78

[23] Clarke, J. "Keeping the Sabbath Holy" Review and Herald. Vol. I 1. No25

[24] White, Ellen. Spirit of Prophecy. Vol. 4. (Oshawa Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1870) pp. 268269

8/31/2016 www.oakwood.edu/historyportal/Ejah/War and English Adventists.htm

http://www.oakwood.edu/historyportal/Ejah/War%20and%20English%20Adventists.htm 1/9

War and English AdventistsDr. Nigel Barham

English Adventists faced a series of challenges and obstacles

during the first half of the twentieth century as they sought to grow and

proclaim the gosple in a nation that was torn by the two world wars. In

spite of the many challanges that the members of the church encountered

because of the wars and the society around them, they never lost sight of

their mission. The pressure put on them by a war torn government

struggling for survival only strenghtened their resolve and determination

to grow, survive, and maitain their unique identity. This paper shows the

obstacles they faced and how they kept their uniqueness as Seventhday

Adventist.

Partly due to the impetus from an earlier visit by J. N. Andrews,

the General Conference sent John Loughborough to England in 1878 to begin

the work of the Adventist Church . The work grew slowly, however, and by

1914 the membership was only just over 2,500.

The First World War had little impact on the Seventhday Adventist

Church in England. The buildings housing the sanitarium and the college

near London had been offered to the Government as medical facilities, but

this had been declined. [1]

Then in January, 1916, the English Parliament passed the Military Service

Act, introducing conscription. This allowed exemption for regular ministers

of any recognized religious denomination, though the licentiates

encountered some problems until the test cast ofF. L. Chapman in 1917, when

Stephen Haughey—the South England Conference president—successfully

defended their right to exemption as well. [2] The laymen were also able to

avoid actual combat as the act allowed them to register as conscientious

objectors.

The official position of the Seventhday Adventist Church since

the time of the American Civil War had been that of noncombatanccy. Its

members, however, wer willing to assist in any other branch of service—such



as medical care or factory work—providing that unnecessary labor on the

Sabbath was omitted. The British UnionCommittee maintained this position,

and issued certificates of verification for the baptized members of the

church to take to the local tribunals which were established to determine

the classification of conscientious objectors.

About 130 Adventist youth were conscripted during the war and most

of them served in the NonCombatant Corps. In general they met little

opposition to their request for Sabbath privileges, once their

determination and sincerity was apparent, because they were prepared to

care for the sick and wounded and perform other humanitarian acts on the

Sabbath. Though they refused to engage in routine work connected with camp

life, they were willing to make up the time at any other period designated

by the officers.

Third Eastern Noncombatant Corps at Bedford Barracks. They were

then sent to Northern France to work on the docks near Le Havre. On

Saturday, June 16, Worsley Armstrong—later the British Union president

(195058) and James McGeachey were severely punished for refusing to

cooperate. They were made to stand in full view of the other workers for an

hour and a half with the hope that opposition and ridicule would break

their resistance. They were then brought before the captain and sentenced

to fourteen days field punishment, which consisted of hard labor during the

day followed by two hours crucifixion—being strapped together, backto

back, with the arms tied to a gun carriage or a tree.

There were, however, some cases of hardship reported as certain

military personnel considered obeying orders and discipline essential to

army morale and authority. The best illustration of this is seen in the

experiences of sixteen young men from the Watford area, just north of

London, who in May, 1916, were inducted into the Fortunately for them this

punishment was never carried out because regulations required that a

medical examination was necessary first, and a doctor was not,immediately

available. In the morning, as Armstrong reported in a letter to the Watford

church at the time, the commanding officer reversed the sentence:

Now you boys are an intelligent set and the reports of your work

are excellent. You are the best set we have down at the docks. It seems too

bad that there should be such an unfortunate hitch in your work. I with the



other officers have considered your cases, and have decided to offer you

the Sabbath off on condition that you make up the time during the week. [3]

For the next year the group, now reduced to fourteen members due

to two being transferred, encountered no problems over the Sabbath. Then,

in November of 1917, the senior officer was replaced by a younger captain

who was not sympathetic to their views. When they refused to work on

Friday evening after sunset they were immediately courtmartialed and

sentenced to six months hard labor at No. 3 Military Prison, Le Harve. One

of them, Harry Lowe—who also became the British Union president later on

(193646)vividly recalled some of their experiences. [4]

On arrival at the camp they requested to see the commander and

presented their Sabbath problems: “They were told in no uncertain terms

that in this prison everybody worked seven days a week, and that ‘dead men

tell no tales’.” They were then ordered to select a friend with whom they

would like to work as the prison was divided into small barbed wire pens

each with a few men living in a tent. Innocently they fell into a trap, for

they never were with a friend again; indeed, they were never with another

Adventist again during their whole time there. This put intense personal

pressure on each man, and brought experiences that had to be fought out

alone.

They were then dismissed from the commandant’s office and marched off. From that momentthey rarely walked a step in that prison, because everything from morning till night was done“on the double.” They were at all times under armed guard and the daylong “left, right, leftright” was demoralizing and hard to bear.

Some days they were marched down to the docks to unload American Liberty ships bringinggrain, timber, tents, etc., all of which was stacked and later shipped up the line. It was heavystevedore work to which they were unaccustomed. At other times some of them were kept inthe camp and made to saw logs with dull, rusty hand saws for hours. Others were made tomarch in the open air from one point to another with a heavy concrete slab on the chest andanother on the back, tied over the shoulders with a wire rope. Under this latter treatmentsome men collapsed. The armed guards were not blessed with the milk of human kindnesswhen administering these punishments. On some occasions a man would be tied to a wheel incrucifixion fashion for hours in the sun. All prisoners dreaded what they called “crucifixion.”

At night, after a heavy day’s work, they were made to select six

rusty horseshoes from a pile outside the barbed wire pens, and with an old



piece of sacking they went back to their compounds and had to polish the

shoes bright before they went to bed. These shoes were inspected in the

morning and then they threw them back on the pile to rust again. This kind

of treatment was deliberate harassment calculated to crush the human spirit

and all the prisoners were embittered by it.

When the first Sabbath came they were working inside the prison

sawing logs, and late in the afternoon the guards were doubled, obviously

because they were determined not to allow them to cease work at sundown.

The first man to stop work was attacked with fists and sticks and one by

one they were manhandled, and then rushed off to the cell block.

Each man was placed in solitary confinement in irons, and given

bread and water twice a day. The cells were lined with black steel plates

and measured about nine by five feet. The irons were shaped like a figure

eight, hinged at one end. They were placed over the wrists held high in the

middle of the back and then screwed tight at the other end of the iron.

After eight daylight hours in irons it was extremely painfiul to bring the

arms forward, and after several days of this it was hard to sleep at night

because of pain in the

arms and shoulders.

Worsley Armstrong gave his own account of his experiences then:

In the cell passage the sergeants agreed that I was theringleader, probably because I was the tallest. The smallest pair of“figure eights” was brought and screwed down on my wrists. So small was thepair that to get then on, my flesh was ripped and cut in several places.The circulation was practically cut off, leaving my hand dead. I was thenpushed into a cell, and pinned against the wall by one sergeant, whilst theothers in a most passionate rage struck me continually about the head andin the stomach. Then one burly NCO lifted me up bodily, and with his kneethrew me backward to the other side. The contact with the iron wall causedthe irons to cut more, and sent acute pain to all my nerves. This kind Oftreatment continued until I dropped to the floor. I was picked up, but thencollapsed again, whereupon I was kicked several times in the middle to theback. Finally, I became unconscious. [5]

About lOam the next morning he was taken out of his cell, and

two cement blocks weighing about 35lb each were roped round his neck, one

hanging upon his chest, the other upon his back. With his wrists still in

irons behind his back, he was made to pace the passage at a quick march. At

last, from exhaustion, he sank beneath the strain, and remained unconscious



for about an hour. When he came to, he was placed in the cell again till

the afternoon, when the governor visited him and gave permission for him to

have his blankets. At 4pm he was given six ounces of bread — the first food

for twentyfour hours.

Armstrong remained in his cell that night, and until noon the next

day, without medical attention, even though he had made no opposition by

force, or even uttered a word which could have given the slightest offence

during this whole ordeal.

Fortunately, this type of torture did not last long and after a

month the group was transferred from France to Wormwood Scrubbs Prison in

London, which they considered an excellent Christmas present! Their removal

was mainly because a statement which they had signed in prison about their

treatment had reached the War Office and awkward questions were being

asked. In January, 1918, the British Union Executive Committee voted to

protest to the War Office and W.T. Bartlett, the secretary, was informed

that there had been a full investigation of the complaints. Several

officers had been reprimanded and some even reduced in rank and assurance

was given that similar punishment would not be given to Sabbatarians in the

future.

The fourteen soldiers were eventually released from prison and the

army and allowed to return to civilian life providing they found work of

national importance. Many of them were to make a significant contribution

to the Adventist work in later years. Besides Armstrong and Lowe who became

British Union Presidents, George Norris became manager of the food factory

(195 164), and Jesse Clifford and W. G. Till were missionaries for many

years in West Africa.

Other laymen also encountered difficulties with~ Sabbath

observance during the war as conscientious objectors. In 1916, for example,

H. Osbournelater the manager of the food factory (192335) spent several

weeks in the guard tent for refusing to load ships on the Sabbath, and was

then taken to Lewis Military Prison. He described one of his experiences

there:

On the Sabbath I refused to work with a spade. For punishment thesergeantmajor ordered me to put all my kit on my back. There was steeprising ground at the rear of the camp, and up there I was compelled tomarch up and down, forward and backward for nearly an hour. It was a very



hot day and I was perspiring heavily. The whole camp of conscientiousobjectors were all the time shouting: ‘Throw it down, throw it down. [6]

When he continued to refuse to work, Osbourne was confined to a guard tent and thensentenced by a military tribunal to six months imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubbs Prison inLondon.

Another group of seventeen Adventists were sent to Dartmoor prison

in Devon in 1917, including Jack Howard, later to be president of the Welsh

Mission (194654), and Hector Bull, later to be a pastor.

In general, however, the denomination itself did not suffer much

as a result of the war though conscription obviously hurt the factories and

the college enrollment, and the printing press was also inconvenienced due

to the paper shortage. The war also meant that most of the remaining

American workers returned home. The most noteworthy example was W. J.

Fitzgerald, the British Union Conference President, who incurred the

displeasure of the rest of the British Union Conference Committee by

advocating combatant service for church members, a view at odds with the

worldwide denominational stance. Eventually, the dispute led to his

resignation at the end of 1916 after nearly nine years as president. [7]

In the period between the two World Wars the Adventist Church

continued to grow in Britain, the membership almost doubling to nearly six

thousand. When the Second World War began, the Adventist members did not

encounter the same type of problems with Sabbath observance and

imprisonment. This was mainly because for some time the denominational

leaders had been concerned about the possibility that the misunderstandings

of the First World War might be repeated during another major conflict. In

fact, the British Union Conference Executive Committee had sent an official

declaration of its position to the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, on

March 13, 1935, ending with the following statement:

While we have always held, as a denomination, the noncombatantposition in relation to War, which was recognized in all parts of theBritish Empire during the Great War, we hereby, in this time of peace,reaffirm our position on this matter so that in the event of any futureoutbrreak of hostilities, there may be no question as to the sincerity ofour convictions. [8]



Four years later, when a compulsory Military Training bill was being discussed inParliament, the executive committee wrote again to the Prime Minister—now NevilleChamberlainon May 4, 1939, reminding the government of its attitude to war with respectto military service and Sabbath observance and of its desire to cooperate otherwise:

We recognize our definite responsibilities as British citizens,and as Christians, human suffering.., many of our church members are activeparticipants in the St. John Ambulance Association and the Red CrossSociety. [9]

When the Military Training Bill became operative shortly afterwards,

reintroducing conscription, it allowed tribunals to give ministers of religion an unconditionalexemption. It also permitted an exemption conditional upon performing work of nationalimportance, and most of the eligible Adventist laymen took advantage of this category byengaging in building, agricultural, or hospital work. A few of them entered theNoncombatant Corps but they did not encounter any particular problems with Sabbathobservance this time.

The denominational buildings, however, were not so fortunate. The

sanitarium and the hospital were both taken over by the Government for the

duration of the war. To start with they became a Ministry of Health

Psychiatric Hospital, though all the staff were retained except the doctors

and the chaplain. From 1941 onwards the buildings were used as an overflow

for the University College Hospital, London. [10] The Granose food factory

and the Stanborough Press remained under denominational control, though the

shortage of supplies caused problems for both of them. The college property

in Rugby was finally taken over by the Royal Air Force early in 1942 and

the campus had to be moved to a small school at Packwood Haugh about

twentyfive miles away. The church school at Walthampstow was evacuated as

soon as the war began, and two years later the school at Plymouth was

forced to follow suit. [11] This left only the school at Stanborough Park,

which in 1940 had expanded into a secondary school and soon had nearly 250

pupils.

Other denominational buildings besides those of the various

institutions were also affected by the war. In October of 1939 the South

England Conference headquarters were moved from Holloway Road, London, to

780 St. Albans Road, Watford—remaining there for nearly twelve years—making

travel much easier and safer for the staff. This was just in time, for soon



heavy bombing caused a lot of damage in London and the south as the

Luftwaffe tried to terrorize the nation into surrendering after failing to

defeat it during the Battle of Britain. In September, 1940, two church

members were killed during air attacks; one by a bomb on a house, and the

other by a bomb on an air raid shelter. [12] The next month the church at

Lewisham was severely damaged by bombs as well as the caretaker’s house,

and early in November the church at Wimbledon was almost totally destroyed.

Three of the four walls collapsed and the roof caved in when two bombs fell

on the corner, and although services continued to be held in a small back

room the place was soon abandoned. [13]

The devastation then began to affect the members in the north as

Goering increased the attacks on industrial targets. In November an elderly

lady was killed during a raid on Merseyside, and twenty families were left

homeless from the heavy bombing on Coventry. [14] In January of 1941 the

church at Sheffield was destroyed, forcing the members to meet in private

houses, and J. E. Bell, the oldest minister in the conference, had part of

his house demolished in Liverpool. The worst air attacks ended that

year,though the church in Folkestone was evacuated, but in 1942 the Norwich

church was partly demolished by a bomb blast and closed for nearly a year

and the meeting place of the small Cambridge church was destroyed. Two

years later the hall at Ilford was shut due to bomb damage and in November

the church building at Canton Colville, near

Lowestroft in East Anglia, was completely demolished by a flying bomb. (15)

Altogether during the war, twenty church properties were destroyed or damaged, though onlya few members lost their lives or were seriously injured.

Despite these hardships, however, the Adventist membership

continued to grow during the war years and several new churches were

organized.

[1] Minutes of the British Union conference Committee Meeting, March 2730, 1916, p3

[2] S.G. Haughley, Our Licentiates Excepted,” Worker, XXXI August 1917 8283

[3] “A moving letter,” British Advent Messenger. LXXVIII December 28,1973, 24

[4] “Valiant fot Truth” British Advent Messenger LXXVIII December 28, 1973 pp. 24

[5] The Tribunal April4, 1918



[6] H. Osbourne, “Sabbath Testimony,” Messenger. LXXX Jan 24, 1975 p.5

[7] Minutes of the British Union Conference. January 1, 1917 p.7

[8] “Our Relationship to War,” Messenger. XLI April3, 1936 p. 1

[9] The letter is qouted in full by H.W. Lowe, “Adventist and the Military Training Bill,” Messenger, XLIVMay 12, 1939, pp12

[10] A.H. Thompson, “Manager’s Report” Messenger, LI September 6, 1946 pp2829.

[11] Minutes of the British Union Conference May 5, 1941 p.40

[12] H.W. Lowe. “Air Raid Casualties,” Messenger, XLV September 27, 1940 p.3

[13] H.W. Lowe. “Our church is down, but our Spirits are up!” Messenger XLV November 20, 1940 p.2.

[14] H.W. Lowe. “Air Raid Casualties,” Messenger, XLV September 27, 1940 p.2

8/31/2016 The Myth of the Yankee Church

http://www.oakwood.edu/historyportal/Ejah/Reinventing%20SDA%20history.htm 1/17

Reinventing Adventist History: How Adventist HistoriansTransformed Adventist Heritage So That It Would Fit

Neatly Into the National MythologyCiro Sepulveda

In the late 1840s and early 1850s, when Sabbathkeeping itinerant preachers

journeyed through small towns and villages in New England on the American frontier, they

usually carried a carpetbag full of charts, pamphlets, and books. When invited to preach,

they pulled out the charts to illustrate their fiery sermons. The charts, with cleverly contrived

illustrations, drew the attention and awe of their audience. One of the illustrations that

jumped out at the listeners was a twohorned beast, taken from Revelation 13. The ugly and

evil monster, according to the itinerants, was the government of the United States

Today the twohorned beast has all but disappeared from Adventist literature and

preaching. In fact, most Adventist preachers rarely mention the beast in their sermons. The

antigovernment stance that stood as a central pillar of the early Adventist worldview no

longer exists. In fact, today many Adventist see their fate tightly bound to, rather than in

opposition to, the values and goals of the nation. Most Adventists in the United States no

longer see their government as a twohorned evil monster, but rather as the most democratic

and freedom loving nation on the planet.

The nineteenth century identity of the early Adventist founders, which stood in firm

opposition to the culture, vanished. By the second or third decade of the twentieth century,

Adventists grew very comfortable soaking up the national mythology and assimilating into

the cultural mainstream of the nation. The change from a radical Christian community to a

community of conservative Christians surfaced noticeably in the historiography of the church

by the second decade of the twentieth century and helped construct a new Adventist identity.

By the end of the twentieth century, Adventist historians succeeded in reinventing the past,

helping to place Adventist rootage and identity in the cradle of the national experience.

In this paper I argue that Adventist historiography, reacting to the changes within the

Adventist community, helped to create a new Adventist identity. To do so, Adventist



historians reinvented the past. The worldview and values of the early founders slowly

vanished or received shading of softer hues in the pages written by Adventist historians. In

the early decades of the twentieth century the lure of respectability and an effort to

disassociate the church from its workingclass and immigrant roots enticed Seventhday

Adventist historian to reshape their past and make it more “American” or more middle

class.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the identity of the early church founders became

unwanted baggage. And the Puritan mythology of the nation surfaced as the perfect solution

to the dilemma. As Winthrop S. Hudson states: “…American people over a considerable

portion of their history have had their fundamental rootage in a Puritanism which they have

found most easy to identify in terms of New England.”[1]

The desire to become part of that mythological past, coupled with the fact that several of the

founding leaders of the Seventhday Adventist Church were born in New England, paved the

way for this transition. Late twentieth century biographies of such prominent Adventist

leaders as Ellen White,[2] James White,[3] Uriah Smith,[4] George Butler,[5] J.N. Andrews,

[6] John Harvey Kellogg,[7] and W. W. Prescott,[8] among others, spare no effort in

depicting Adventist leaders as descending form “hardy New England stock.” And most of the

histories of the church produced in the twentieth century followed the same path.[9]

Seventhday Adventists and Puritans

To understand how Adventist historians reinvented their history and helped

created a new identity, I briefly outline the sharp contrast that exists between the early

Adventists and the Puritans.

The Puritans were at their core Anglicans. Their outward structure, which they

brought from England, remained unchanged in the New World. The Book of Common

Prayer, which was central to Anglicanism in England, continued to be the focal point of

church life in America. In New England in particular, Anglicans became Congregationalists,

a type of Anglicanism. Although two types of Congregationalist surfaced in Massachusetts,



in truth, there was not much difference between the Plymouth Rock Colony and the

Massachusetts Bay Colony.[10]

The New England Congregationalists belonged to a structured church polity full of traditions,

which boasted of a highly trained clergy. The Puritans were proud of the fact that they were a

learned people. Before 1647 they had no less than 130 graduates from Oxford and

Cambridge active in their colony. From the very beginning only a small minority of their

clergy was not formally trained. The value they placed on education led to establishment of

free schools for townships of 50 or more residents.[11] Their interest in academic learning

nurtured a wellreasoned theology, which they laid out in many books and treatises.[12]

In contrasts to colonial Puritans, the early Seventhday Adventists, of the mid nineteenth

century, treated book learning as an unnecessary luxury. Most Adventist leaders held very

little if any formal education, and only a couple of the founding leaders attended, but not

graduated from a college or a university. In fact, during the Civil War the Seventhday

Adventist in Battle Creek, Michigan their stronghold, could not even support a school for

their children because most of them considered education to be unnecessary.[13]

Besides differences in attitude toward education the two groups were very different in terms

of religious expression. The Puritans founded rural churches with most of its congregants

scattered throughout New England on farms and in small villages. By enlarge the Puritans

were farmers convinced that the Lord had chosen them to establish a new society free of all

of the vices that plagued the church in England. It was this worldview that they brought to

church on Sundays. Their worship was formal, rigid, and followed longestablished norms

and patterns. Emotions did not cloud Puritan thinking. They took pride in being a cerebral

people, guided by principles and not by feelings.[14]

Unlike the Puritans, who fled to the New World wanting to establish a “city set on a hill” and

become the spearhead of Puritanism,[15] the Adventists wanted Jesus to come and rescue

them from a world totally corrupt and beyond redemption. The Puritan universe revolved

around farms, while the SeventhDay Adventists emerged on the frontier and quickly moved

to cities, into a world of factories and tenement houses where the poor did not get enough to



eat, living in illness and poverty. The Puritans left their farms on Sundays and worshiped in

wellconstructed edifices where religion became a complex and highly intellectualized affair.

[16] The Adventists lived in cities, worshiped in private homes, and took their inspiration

from visions, testimonies, lively songs, camp meetings, and pamphlets. For Adventists,

religion was an affair of the heart, not of the intellect.[17]

Not only did the Puritans differ from the Seventhday Adventists in terms of religious

expression; they also came from different social classes. The Puritans came from the middle

class and the Seventhday Adventists from the working class. As J. N. Loughborough, who

wrote one of the first histories of the Adventist Church, states in the last pages of his book,

The Great Second Advent Movement, summarizing the birth and development of the Seventh

DayAdventist Church: “We have shown how from obscurity and poverty, this message has

advanced with accelerated force and power…”[18]

Ellen and James White, two of the three most prominent founders of the church, provide a

good example of the social class that gave birth to Seventhday Adventists. Originally from

Maine, they belonged to a charismatic group whose leader was put into jail for being critical

of the established churches in Portland. Poverty forced James and Ellen from Portland to

Connecticut. In Connecticut they could not make it, so they moved to New York, then back

to Maine. From Maine they returned to New York, hoping to find better grounds for

survival. From Saratoga, New York, they again fled to Rochester, New York. Poverty

forced them once again to move from Rochester, New York, to Battle Creek, Michigan.[19]

Like the Whites most Seventhday Adventists in the nineteenth century were

displaced persons. Unlike the middle and lowermiddleclass Puritans who fled Europe

because their religious conviction clashed with the established church, the Seventhday

Adventists migrated or immigrated because of the oppressive conditions created by the

Industrial Revolution in the United States or the revolutions in Europe. The Puritans were

ideological reformers, the Seventhday Adventists economic refugees.

The great migrations from the country to the cities in the middle of the nineteenth century

came at a time when millions of Europeans were pushed out of Europe by revolutions and



pulled to America by the insatiable need for cheap labor generated by industrial capitalist.

From this sector of the population, the poor, the bluecollar workers, the huddled masses,

grew the rolls of the Seventhday Adventist Church.[20]

The values of the Puritans were also radically different from those of the Seventhday

Adventists. The Puritans were about the business of founding a perfect society, creating

institutions and imposing their values on the world around them. They wanted to prosper and

show the world the model society. It did not take them long to discover that slavery could

enrich and strengthen their new society. Only a generation after their arrival in

Massachusetts most Boston homes kept at least one black or Indian slave in the household,

(many households possessed five or six). Much of the wealth generated in New England

during the colonial era by the Puritans and their children, well into the nineteenth century,

came from slaves and the slave trade.[21]

In contrast, the Seventhday Adventists possessed no desire to found a “city set on a hill,” but

rather hoped for the eminent return of Jesus so they could abandon the society full of

corruption and injustice in which they lived in. They considered the United States to be the

twohorned beast of Revelation 13, a demonic power in collusion with forces of evil.[22] The

words of Joseph Bates in the early days of the movement clearly state how the Sabbath

keeping Adventists felt about the society in which they lived:

“Then I suppose we shall begin to think (if not before) that the third woe has come upon this

nation, this boasted land of liberty, this heavendaring, soul destroying, slave holding,

neighbor murdering country.”[23]

Adventists were not only suspicious of the nation as a whole but also of its leaders, whom

they considered hypocritical. They spent no energy trying to reform the world around them

because they saw it as totally corrupt. They felt very strongly about the undeclared war

against Mexico, which was, at its core, a selfish desire to acquire more land. They detested

slavery and wanted nothing to do with the hypocritical war that had little to do with its

abolishment.



Sabbathkeeping Adventists took seriously the Biblical claim that all humans were the

children of one God. Joh Byington, the first president of the General Conference, before

moving to the Old West, not only welcomed Blacks and Indians into his home in Vermont but

also helped many fugitive slaves escape to freedom. He left the Methodist church in his home

town when it became clear that they were going to continue to support slavery. And John

Preston Kellogg, the father of the doctor and cereal maker, ran an Underground Railroad

Station on their farm in southern Michigan.[24]

The distaste that Sabbathkeeping Adventists harbored for the nation led them to

advocate civil disobedience. They had little respect for the Congress and the president of the

nation, who filled their rhetoric with words of justice and freedom while bolstering slavery.

Many Adventists were willing to go to jail before obeying the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. A

law that required Americans to return runaway slaves to their masters. J. B. Frisbie

commented on the Fugitive Slave Law in the Review and Herald in 1860:

“We have been accused of not quoting this law correctly. We have therefore taken

pains to procure the law, and copy out the part that we make use to show the dragon voice

from the dragon mouth of the two horn beast, showing how it makes us all slave catchers

under penalty of 1,000 dollars fine or six months imprisonment.”[25]

The Adventist past and the Puritan past had little in common. The task to merge the

two experiences into one became the great obstacle that Adventist historians would have to

overcome.

The Adventist World View, Nineteenth Century

At the core of the nineteenth century Adventist worldview laid the idea that the world is a

corrupt place full of injustice, with no hope for improvement. The first Adventist

communities developed a deep burning hope that Jesus would return to this world and

liberate them from the corruption of the culture around them. Early Adventist itinerant

preachers attracted the attention of new believers precisely because they provided, through



the second coming of Jesus, a solution to the daily problems people faced in the factories and

slums where they lived.[26]

Adventist distrust of the culture was not only geared toward public or civic authorities but

also the religious hierarchies. Most of the early Adventists came from Methodist or Baptist

churches, which at that time constituted about 70 percent of the Protestant churches in the

United States. Between 18321854 the population of the United States had increased 88

percent, while the evangelical clergy increased 175 percent. The rapidly changing conditions

of the country, where poverty and misery abounded, created chaos and confusion, forcing

thousands of people to look for grounding. Like early Adventists, many of the migrants and

immigrants arriving in the Old West, today’s Midwest, distrusted the established churches.

Hundreds saw no hope in the traditional denominations and simply left.[27]

The profound distrust that Adventists had for the world around them surfaced clearly in the

experiences of James and Ellen White immediately after the disappointment of 1844. They

belonged to an Adventist community in Maine that in the opinion of many of the respected

citizens of the city of Portland exemplified strange and aberrant behavior.[28] Not only did

the locals see Adventists as strange; the Adventist movement in general looked at the

Portland group with suspect. Joshua Himes, chief promoter of the Advent movement,

writing to William Miller states that the believers in Portland are in a “bad way”.[29]

For the firstgeneration Seventhday Adventists the world was not a nice place. In fact, their

vocabulary, still in use today, reflects the prevailing notion that they were pilgrims in a

tainted world. When Adventists talked about the “world,” they were talking about a place

full of sin and corruption. In the words of James White in the first issue of the Present Truth:

“The storm is coming. War, famine and pestilence are already in the field of slaughter. Now

is the time, the only time to seek a shelter in the truth of the living God.”[30]

A second tenet of the early Adventist worldview held that Adventists were part of a

kingdom more powerful and influential than the governments of the world, the kingdom of

God. Belonging to the kingdom of God gave Adventists identity. Although they did not

belong to the nations or kingdoms of this world, they were not homeless. Because they



belonged to the Kingdoms of Heaven, an ardent hope, rather than pessimism, burned in their

hearts. This idea made them optimistic and forwardlooking. They were not at all

discouraged by injustice, oppression, or the evils of the world, because they were convinced

that soon, very soon their kingdom would take control.

Two of the most important teachings in the preaching and writings of the early Adventists

was the second coming of Jesus and the seventhday Sabbath. Both doctrines gave them a

unique identity. The Second Coming assured them that they belonged to a divine kingdom,

that would soon put an end to the current kingdoms. And the Sabbath was a sign that they

indeed were part of that kingdom. By keeping the Sabbath they were the only ones in the

world who were truly being loyal to the kingdom of God.

Ellen White played a central role in encouraging the members of the movement to keep their

hopes up, to look toward the future, to be of good cheer. Her articles and books became

central to a forwardlooking spirit. Her tone and voice are clearly seen in the first articles of

the Present Truth. In September of 1849 she writes: “In this time of trial, we need to be

encouraged and comforted by each other.” She goes on to say: “God has shown me that He

gave His people a bitter cup to drink, to purify and cleanse them. It is a bitter draught, and

they can make it still more bitter by murmuring, complaining, and repining.”[31]

A third tenet of the Adventist worldview was the notion that they were to identify

with the victims of injustice. In other words, they were not to separate from the world or run

away from the world, nor were they to reform the world, but rather they were to be about the

business of helping the victimized of the world. They were to help the poor, heal the sick,

give sight to the blind, help the lame to walk, feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and bring

liberation to slaves.

It is in this context that Adventists established sanitariums, schools, city missions,

orphanages, vegetarian restaurants, and bakeries and sold books. Their institutions were not

moneymaking enterprises. They were not budding entrepreneurs in search of power or

prestige. Their institutions were not intended to increase profits and make money for



investors; they were simply designed to educate, heal, and aid the weak, the poor, and the

victimized.

And a fourth tenet of the early Adventist worldview was the conviction that the kingdom of

God is advanced through service and love, not might, force, politics, or violence. Reforms, in

the thinking of the early Adventists, were of no use. By and large, Adventists did not belong

to national temperance movements, suffrage movements, or any other reform movement of

the times. Suffrage, temperance, and the other reform movements of the time, in their

opinion, were but a superficial bandage. Unselfish disinterested love lay at the heart of the

way Adventists were to behave in the world in which they belonged.

Adventist HistoriographyThe early Adventists saw themselves as a remnant apocalyptic community. The first persons

who wrote an Adventist history, J. N. Loughborough, did not see the Adventist movement as

part of a historical continuum, but rather as a movement that came out of the lower classes in

response to apocalyptic prophecies. The mission of the movement was to proclaim the end

time, not to reform the Protestant denominations or the culture of the United States. Early

Adventists did not see themselves as reformers.

Loughborough, in his book The Great Second Advent Movement, published in 1905, started

his history of the Adventist Church in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, then jumped

to the time of Jesus. In chapter 4, “The Time of the End”, Loughborough hopped from the

time of Christ to the eighteenth century, where he found historical evidence to support

statements found in the books of Daniel and Revelation. In chapter 5, “The Second Advent

Message”, he enumerated the signs of the Second Coming as documented in events that took

place in the nineteenth century. From Chapter 6 to 28 he traced the history of the church

from the middle to the end of the nineteenth century.[32] Note that Loughborough gives no

space or attention to the Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation, or Colonial America.

Clearly the early Adventists did not see the history of the Adventist Church as part of a

Puritan or European tradition. They saw themselves as, not part of any “worldly” movement,



but rather as part of a revolutionary religious movement that was about to welcome in the

kingdom of God. They were modernday prophets in the tradition of the Old Testament

prophets. In other words, Adventists believed that they were part of a preordained divine

plan that was clearly outlined in the books of Daniel and Revelation. In the apocalyptic

literature they found their origins. They were not reformers, but rather a prophetic people

about to witness the destruction of all manmade institutions.

In the 1920s the young people’s Missionary Volunteer Department of the General

Conference sponsored another history of the SeventhDay Adventist Church, the Story of the

Advent Movement, by Matilda Erickson Andros. This rendition of the church’s history,

published in 1926, began in the nineteenth century with William Miller. Like Loughborough,

Erickson Adros does not bother to link the history of the Adventist Church to European or

Puritan currents, but rather started her history with the Millerite movement. The first chapter

of the book, “The Morning Star of the Advent Movement” referred to William Miller.[33]

Clearly this volume reflected the notion that the Seventhday Adventists were a people born

of prophecy.

The lure and desire to become fullblooded Puritans, which is not seen in the

literature of the Adventist community prior to the 1920s, apparently surfaced after the death

of Ellen White (1915), when the children of the German and Scandinavian immigrants who

had entered the church in the second half of the nineteenth century, began to take leadership

positions in the church. By the beginning of the twentieth century several dozen secondand

thirdgeneration immigrant Adventistd came into leadership positions in the church. By the

1890s their presence was so influential that they elected the first immigrant General

Conference president, O. A. Olsen.

By the second decade of the twentieth century a deepseated hatred, in American

society, toward anything German or foreign forced Adventist leaders to reevaluate their

identity. Anyone who sympathized with the Germans during World War I became a victim

of severe discrimination. Thousands of persons with German last names changed their

names for the purpose of survival. These changing values in American society fanned flames

that led to a change in Adventist identity.



Incidents like the one in Collinsville, Illinois, where a mob of 500 lynched a German

immigrant and the local courts exonerated the mob’s leaders, pushed many immigrants to

hide their German roots. The fact that in Iowa a politician announced that 90 percent of all

men and women who taught the German language were traitors reveals the deep hatred

toward anything German in society and hints at the kinds of reactions that must have

surfaced among immigrants and their children.[34]

The Adventist Church had prospered with the influx of northern European

immigrants in the second half of the nineteenth century. The immigrants, in turn, influenced

the shape of Adventist culture and created institutions that fit their needs. By 1910 they ran

three seminaries in the United States. DanishNorwegian Adventist immigrants ran

Hutchison Theological Seminary in Minnesota. The Swedish Adventists founded the

Broadview Swedish Seminary in Chicago. And the German Adventists ran Clinton German

Theological Seminary in Missouri. During the World War I, the German seminary dropped

the German in the name and simply became Clinton Theological Seminary.

Mahlon Elsworth Olsen’s book Origin and Progress of the Seventhday Adventists became

the standard history text for the church in the late 1920s and 1930s. The book, published a

year before the Andross book of 1925, mirrored the changes that took place in the Adventist

identity and how the historiography of the church began to reflect those changes. Olsen was

the son of O.A. Olsen, General Conference president, who had come to the United States at

the age of five with his parents from Norway to Wisconsin. M. E. Olsen, his son, graduated

from Battle Creek College in 1894 with a B.A. degree and received a Ph.D. degree in English

from the University of Michigan in 1909.[35]

Olsen’s book went through several editions in the 1920s and 1930s. The introduction

contains a section of almost 20 pages on the history of the Christian church in northern

Europe with 12 illustrations where Martin Luther plays a prominent role. The following

section, “Later Reformers”, provides the history of English and Puritan reformers. An

illustration of the Mayflower arriving in Massachusetts and a group of Puritans worshiping

on the deck of the Mayflower before landing appeared in that section.[36]



Olsen’s book demonstrated that Seventhday Adventists were slowly drifting away

from the counter cultural prophetic identity of the nineteenth century. By the third decade of

the twentieth century they were no longer swimming against the current, but rather quite

comfortabl flowing in the national culture. By World War I Adventists had dropped their

revolutionary stance and worldview, and turned into cooperative mild reformers fitting

comfortably in society.

By the middle of the century, when Le Roy Edwin Froom published his fourvolume work,

The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers: The Historical Development of Prophetic Interpretation,

it became evident that Adventists had shed all of the nineteenth century rootage and were

now comfortable with a new Puritan identity. Froom’s third voluminous tome was wholly

dedicated to the Puritan roots of Adventist history. The section entitled “Prophecy’s Key

Place in Colonial American Thought” goes to great lengths to demonstrate how Adventist

theology is firmly grounded in the works of the Puritan divines.[37]

The new historiography reflected the accommodating style and identity that the Adventist

church had embraced by the middle of the twentieth century. When the United States Army

created a program to develop germ weapons in the 1950s and solicited the aid of the

Adventist Church in procuring human guinea pigs, the General Conference was more than

willing to abide. Between 19541973, about 2,300 SeventhdayAdventist young men

volunteered at the request of the General Conference Medical Department. In the words of

Dr. Theodore R. Flaiz: “We feel that if anyone should recognize the debt of loyalty and

service for the many courtesies and considerations received from the Department of Defense,

we, as Adventists, are in a position to feel a debt of gratitude for these kind

considerations.”[38]

The shift in identity that surfaces in the 1950s is clearly found in A. W. Spalding Origin and

History of SeventhDay Adventists published in 1961. This threevolume history of the

Seventhday Adventist church graphically illustrated the radical changes that had taken place

in the Adventist identity. The wild hideous boar with a dozen ugly teeth protruding from its

mouth that had appeared in the early Adventist evangelistic literature had been transformed.



In Spalding’s 1961 history, the twohorn beast surfaces again, but now not as an ugly beast,

but rather a tame American buffalo.[39]

Clearly the Spalding history of the Adventist Church was not a history of a counter cultural

apocalyptic community that emerged in the Old West in the 1850s, but rather a community

comfortable and acculturated. Most of the illustrations in Spalding’s book characterize the

Adventist founders as proper Bostonians wearing welltailored suits, with carefully groomed

facial hair, and the pleasant smiles of a people who could neatly fit into the world of the T V

program Leave It to Beaver.[40]

The desire to fit in and become part of the established order continued eating away at the

Adventist culture in the last decades of the century. In the early 1970s Adventist historians

pulled off an admirable feat when they received the blessing of the Academy. A Loma Linda

history professor arranged a meeting with some of the most respected historians of the

American religious experience, inviting them to present papers at Loma Linda University.

This landmark meeting signaled that Adventists were no longer a cult, but had finally entered

the ranks of the denominations. One of the Adventist historians, commenting on Ellen

White, suggested that “Mrs. White, once the lioness on racial issues, encouraged discretion to

the point of racial separation so that the ‘gospel’ would not be impeded among white

southerners.”[41] In the early Adventist histories Ellen White had been painted as a radical

abolitionist. Now, in the revised histories of the twentieth century and the compilations made

from her writings and letters, she surfaced sitting comfortably in the company of

segregationists.

The reinventing of Adventist history became even more evident the 1980s when a group of

Adventist historians produced a book entitled The World of Ellen G. White. In fourteen

chapters they described American society in the nineteenth century, from the perspective of

an Adventist scholar. However, in the introduction they were quick to point out: “Ellen

White is not the subject of this volume; hence she appears only occasionally in theses

pages.” In the text it is evident they preferred to skirt the problem of placing Ellen White in

the society in which she lived. Clearly they wanted to document the history of their church,



but were uncomfortable with the female prophet and the many thorny issues her presence

raised.[42]

Articles in Spectrum, Adventist Heritage, and other Adventist journals that cranked out

Adventist history in the second half of the century clearly supported the trend. In 1976

Ronald D. Graybill set forth the notion that a “new Adventist history” was on the verge of

bursting on the scene. He argued that the early historians, J. N. Loughborough and James

White wrote providential history. And that Nichols and Froom, in the middle of the century

produce apologetic history. However, with the advent of young Adventist historians with

Ph.D. degrees from prestigious American universities, the historiography of the church was

about to produce the “real stuff.” In his words: “Those who write this history should strive to

make Adventist history useful and credible to non Adventist scholars.”[43]

At the end of the century the works of the popular church historian George Knight clearly

reflected the trend in Adventist historiography.[44] His last book, A Search for Identity: The

Development of SeventhdayAdventist Beliefs, starts by stating that if the founders of the

Seventhday Adventist Church were to be brought back to life today, they would not be given

membership in the Adventist community. Using theological categories and sidestepping

social and economic categories, Knight argues that the Adventist Church dramatically

changed its identity. He also makes a case for the notion that the early founders would have

approved because they believed in what he terms “a dynamic concept of the present truth.”

Conclusion

Adventist historiography passed through several stages as it evolved from the nineteenth

century to the beginning of the twentyfirst century. A burning desire on the part of second,

third, and later generations to become “respectable” or “centered” aided the process of

pushing the church into the current of the mainstream. The church’s ability to build

successful institutions and become closely linked to the interests and values of the larger

society contributed to the ongoing efforts to merge with the dominant culture. And the fact

that in the United States a portion of the membership, and especially the leadership of the



Adventist Church made the transition from the working class to the middle class added

momentum to the process.

Although nineteenth century SeventhdayAdventists had little in common with 17 Century

Puritans, the new Adventist history that emerged in the twentieth century washed away such

distinctions. In the new history, Adventist no longer felt they lived in a world in which evil

and injustice reigned. The passion for the Second Coming because the world around them

was falling apart disappeared. The desire to help the poor was replaced by the feeling that the

poor needed to help themselves. And the urge to advance the cause through service lost its

appeal and was replaced with a love for change through reform, political action and

technology.

In summary, the historiography of the Adventist Church helped create a new identity for the

modern Adventist. An identity no longer burdened by the troublesome baggage or

worldview of the early founders, one that no longer saw the government of the nation as an

evil beast in collusion with satanic powers. An identity no longer pressed to proclaim the

second coming of Jesus because the world, after all, is not that bad. Unlike the Adventists of

the middle nineteenth century who saw the nation as a warmongering twohorned beast, the

modern Adventist feels very comfortable embracing the values and culture of the nation and

its neverending search for power and dominance.

[1] Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America: An Historical Account of the Development of AmericanReligious Life. (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1965) p. 7

[2] Arthur White, Biography of Ellen White. (Washington D.C. Review and Herald Publishing Association,

[3] Virgil Robinson, James White (Washington D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1976)

[4] See Eugene F. Duran, Yours in the Blessed Hope, Uriah Smith. (Washington D.C. Review and HeraldPublishing Association, 1980) especially his chapter entitled New Hampshire Granite.

[5] Emmett K. Vande Vere. Rugged Heart: The Story of George I. Butler (Nashville, TN: Southern PublishingAssociation, 1979).

[6] Virgil Robinson, John Nevins Andrews: Flame for the Lord (Washington D.C.: Review and HeraldPublishing Association, 1975).

[7] Richard W. Schwarz, John Harvey Kellogg (Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1970)

[8] Gilbert M. Valentine, The Shaping of Adventism: The Case of W.W. Prescott. (Berrien Springs, Michigan:Andrews University Press, 1992).



[9] See the Bibliography of Books in Richard W. Shwarz and Floyd Greenleaf Light Bearers: A History of theSeventhday Adventist Church (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 2000)

[10] See Sydney Armstrong… and Winthrop S. Hudson. Religion in America: An Historical Account of theDevelopment of American Religious Life (New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1956).

[11] Iain Murray “Spiritual Characteristics of the First Christian Society in America.” Found on Internet atpuritansermons. com

[12] See also Samuel Eliot Morison. The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England (Ithaca, New York:Cornell University Press, 1956.)

[13] Richard Schwarz and Floyd Greenlief. Light Bearers: A History of the seventhdayAdventist Church.

[14] See Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker. The Puritan Oligarchy: The Founding of American Civilization(New York: Grosset and Dunlap,1947) also Edmund S. Morgan. The Puritan Dilemma (Boston: Little Brown,1958)

[15] Edmund S. Morgan. The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Boston: Little, Brown andCompany, 1958) pp 46,47.

[16] Perry Miller and Thomas A. Johnson.. The Puritans: A Source Book of their Writings. (New York: Harperand Row Publisher, 1938) pp. 35

[17] See first five chapters of Ciro Sepulveda. Ellen White: The Troubles and Triumphs of an American Prophetforth coming book

[18] J.N. Loughborough. The Great Second Advent Movement (Washington D.C.: Review and HeraldPublishing Association, 1905) p.436

[19] Sepulveda. Ellen White

[20] See Ronald E. Shaw. Canals for a Nation: The Canal Era in the United States 17901860. (Lexington.Kentucky University of Kentucky Press, 1990), Robert W. Richmond and Robert W. Mardock. A NationMoving West: Readings in the History of the American Frontier (Lincoln Nebraska, University of NebraskaPress, 1966), Marcus Lee Hansen. The Immigrtant in American History (New York: Harper Torchbooks,1940).

[21] Hugh Thomas. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Simon and Schuster: 1997) pp.194, 206, 260261, 272.

[22] This idea is found repeatedly in the early Adventist Journals see Review and Herald May 8, 1856,November 7, 1871, and December 12, 1871.

[23] Joseph Bates. The Second Advent Way Marks and Heaps, or a Connected View of the Fulfillment ofProphecy By God’s Peculiar People, from the year 18401847. (New Bedford: Press of Benjamin Lindsey,1847).

[24] Jonathan Butler. “Adventism and the American Experience” in Edwin Scott Gaustad. The Rise ofAdventist (New York: Harper and Row, Publisher, 1974).

[25] J.B. Frisbie, “The Fugitive slave Law of 1859” Review and Herald XVI (September 11, 1868) p. 134

[26] J.N. Loughborough. “The Rise of the Two Horned Beast” Review and Herald August 7, 1855 and J.N.Andrews Review and Herald. May 1851.

[27] Timothy Smith rivivalism. p17

[28] see Piscataquis Farmer Dover, Maine Volume 3 March 7, 1945.

[29] George Knight. Millennial Fever and the End of the World Boise (Idaho: Pacific Press PublishingAssociation, 1993) p 526

[30] James White, The Present Truth, July 1849, p. 1



[31] Ellen White. The Present Truth September 1849.

[32] J. N. Loughborough, The Great Second Advent Movement

[33] Matilda Erikson Andros. Story of the Advent Message (Takoma Park, Washington: Review and HeraldPublishing Association, 1926) p. 8

[34] Paul S. Boyer. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C.Heath and Company, 1996) p. 754

[35] SeventhDay Adventist Encyclopedia. Volume p. 243.

[36] M. Ellsworth Olsen. Origin and Progress of SeventhDayAdventist (Washington D.C.; Review andHerald Publishing Association, 1925). pp. 1172

[37] Le Roy Edwing Froom. The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers: The Historical Development of PropheticInterpretation (Washington D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1846)

[38] Martin Turner. “Project Whitecoat” Spectrum Magazine Summer 1970

[39] A.W. Spalding. Origins and History of SeventhDayAdventist. (Washington D.C. Review and HeraldPublishing Association, 1861)

[40] Ibid.

[41] Jonathan M. Butler. “Adventism and the American Experience” in Edwin Scott Gustad. The Rise ofAdventism (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1974) p. 192.

[42] Gary Land. Ed., The World of Ellen White (Washington: D.C.: Review and Herald PublishingAssociation, 1987)

[43] Ronald D. Graybill “The Rise of a New Adventist History, A Book Review” Spectrum Volume 7 Number4 1976 p.47

[44] George Knight. A Search for Identity: The Development of SeventhdayAdventist Beliefs (Hagerstown,MD, Review and Herald Publishing Association, 2000)

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