Back in the 1980s, the Biblical Research Institute of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists was commissioned to undertake a major study of the ordination of women in Scripture and history. The Institute asked me to write a paper on the experience of Australian non-Adventist churches regarding this issue. Entitled “The Ordination of Women in Australia: An ‘enduring problem’ in historical perspective,” the paper was presented to the Institute; it was also adapted for presentation at the tenth joint annual conference of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Theological Studies and the Australian and New Zealand Association of Theological Schools (1987).

That experience galvanised my interest in the topic of women’s role within Adventism. Earlier, that interest was nurtured by an MLitt thesis and a chapter for the book edited by Dr Noel Clapham, “Founding Mothers: Women and the Adventist Work in the South Pacific Division,” published as Seventh-day Adventists in the South Pacific Division (Signs, 1985). The thesis, presented to the University of New England in 1984, interpreted Ellen White’s concepts of women and their role in the church while she ministered in Australia and New Zealand, 1891-1900; the chapter was re-published in Adventist Heritage: A Journal of Adventist History (1986). Aspects of my research were also summarized as “The Ordination of Deaconesses,” Adventist Review, 16 January 1986; “Adventists and the Ordination of Women” Record, 29 October 1988; and “The Adventist Pastor and the Ordination of Women,” Ministry, April 1989. An earlier blog on this website (posted November 4) indicates that my interest in this topic was alive and well when I presented a short history of the subject in 2010. Sometime I must write a blog about the experience of Women in Ministry, Incorporated, the volunteer entity that for almost a decade raised funds to help create a more level playing field for women with demonstrated spiritual gifts.

The two paragraphs above indicate why I am excited with “The vote by the NAD [North American Division] to allow commissioned ministers to become conference presidents.” While that may be only a small step forward, in the context of Adventist history over the past three decades, it is significant.

I began thinking about the content of this blog when I read Bonnie Dwyer’s 16 November 2011 letter to the Spectrum community, sharing her “Top Ten Reasons for Gratitude in Adventism in 2011.” Bonnie is one of the most literate, articulate and dedicated women in the Adventist church. Here, verbatim, is her list.

10. Vision of President Ted N.C. Wilson to evangelize the cities utilizing a comprehensive approach

9. Increased enrolment at Adventist colleges in North America

8. Success of Adventist hospitals in giving us an identity based in healing and health

7. Adventist employees who daily continue to do their best to make a difference

6. Sabbath School

5. The hope and en joy expressed in Adventist worship music

4. Advocacy of Adventist Peace Fellowship for the traditional non-combatant position of SDAs in time of war

3. Work by the Adventist Alumni Foundation to improve Adventist education

2. The vote by the NAD to allow commissioned ministers to become conference presidents

And my number one reason for gratitude and hope:

1.You. As a member of the Adventist Forum you have kept alive the mission of community through conversation and independent journalism that Spectrum pursues on a daily basis.

Ten cogent reasons that impel us to break forth in thanksgiving! We could, of course, fruitfully explore each one of them, in depth. Oh yes, I admit the progress in understanding and implementing women’s roles in the church has been slow, in view of the obvious fact that when God pours out spiritual gifts upon His people, they are not gender specific. We have been hesitant to recognise many of the valuable insights that research has unearthed in recent decades. But the trend lines are unmistakable.

I don’t want to reduce Bonnie Dwyer’s list, but I do want to extend it. The editors of the Ellen White Project have asked me to read the completed manuscript, on the assumption that another pair of eyes (or two of the same) may spot  a historical problem here or there. I began reading this morning. Already I have a dilemma. The manuscript is scintillating to the point I don’t know how I’ll be able to sleep until I finish it.

Just an eleventh reason to rejoice.

 Arthur Patrick, 24 November 2012

As previously reported on this website, the Ellen White Project reached a high point on 27 October 2011, when the editors passed a book manuscript to a major academic publisher. This website will, from time to time, offer historical perspectives on the process that created this volume and, when the book is published, it will be reviewed. Here is a reflection that I wrote two months after the Portland conference. (Note some of the facts are dated; Bert Haloviak has retired, Dr David Trim is now the Director of Archives, Statistics and Research at the General Conference. And some of the spelling is American, not Australian!)

The conference held in Portland, Maine, 22-25 October 2009, may well transpose a long-continuing discussion about Ellen White into a new key.  As a working conference, it followed a long series of forward initiatives taken in various parts of the world. For instance, research into the Millerite origins of Sabbatarian Adventism began its slow development with Everett Dick’s doctoral study of 1930; the process accelerated with a conference on the rise of Adventism in the 1970s; it matured with the subsequent publication of a series of substantial volumes, including The Disappointed (1987). Ellen White Studies as a serious but still un-named discipline began a new and torturous course in 1970 when trained historians began to achieve better access to archival facilities. Adventist Studies as a named academic discipline became available as an accredited option for PhD students at Andrews University during 1993. More recently, State and Federal authorities in Australia have accredited PhD programs in education, health, history, and theology at Avondale College. Avondale’s struggles since 2006 to develop Adventist Studies as a doctoral option may be assessed with the help of a 20-page document that is available on the institution’s website, entitled “A Brief, Annotated Introduction to the Field of Adventist Studies for Higher Degree Students.” Now, in the light of the Portland conference, the future of the effervescent dialogue and dialectic about Ellen White has never seemed brighter.

The perceived success of a conference on a difficult historical/doctrinal topic that convened at Andrews University during October 2007 encouraged at least one of its organisers to join the team planning the far more ambitious event in Portland this year. The 2007 conference sought to hear voices representing the array of opinion, developed over a half-century, regarding the most controversial book ever published by Seventh-day Adventists—a volume usually referred to by its short title, Questions on Doctrine (see qod.andrews.edu). Whereas the 2007 conference was mainly theological in its orientation, the 2009 one was more overtly historical, climaxing discussions held since 1998 at meetings of the Association of Seventh-day Adventist Historians. (ASDAH, it must be remembered, had fostered The Disappointed, back in the 1980s.) Further, the 2009 conference had a much wider focus: the life and writings of Ellen Gould Harmon White (1827-1915) as simultaneously an American prophet and one of Adventism’s three co-founders (for basic information, see the Ellen White Project website).

Now that the message of Michael Campbell’s dissertation (2008) is becoming widely known, Adventists better understand the 1919 conference that engaged Adventist administrators, Bible and history teachers. Much of the wide-ranging conference agenda focused on the interpretation of Bible prophecy, but spirited discussions occurred about Ellen White, especially near the end of the conference. Since Ellen White had died in 1915, it was appropriate for the church to reflect on her life and the continuing significance of her writings. Memorable comments were recorded from loyal Adventist leaders who knew Ellen White personally and worked closely with her for decades as she wrote, compiled, and edited her major writings. These men revealed a thoroughly- informed, historically-accurate view of Ellen White, her spiritual giftedness, and the appropriate application of her writings. However, due to threats made and misinformation promulgated in a violent pamphlet war, their insights were sidelined in favor of an Ellen White heavily conditioned by Protestant Fundamentalism. So thoroughly were all memories of the 1919 Bible conference submerged that the Adventist community was startled when selected transcripts of the 1919 conversations were published in Spectrum during 1978. (Roy Branson, editor of Spectrum for 23 years, during a mealtime conversation on 24 October 2009, suggested to me that the 1978 publication of the 1919 transcripts was the journal’s most important initiative, 1969-2009. Anyone who finds it difficult to access Campbell’s dissertation about the 1919 event may care to read one of my summaries of it, such as that on sdanet.org/atissue.)

To write good Adventist history, historians require access to primary sources. Although Everett Dick in 1930 established a benchmark for Millerite historiography, it took another four decades for the Adventist community to develop a group of well-trained historians who effectively made public the results of their (still limited) access to primary documents about Ellen White. The processes described in Jonathan Butler’s illuminating essay, “The Historian as Heretic,” would rob Adventism of several of its finest scholars between 1976 and 1983. It was within that climate of vigorous debate that the first-ever International Prophetic Guidance Workshop convened at Adventism’s world headquarters, during April 1982.

As one of about 70 attendees, I listened expectantly to conversations that included Arthur L. White, Robert W. Olson, Ronald D. Graybill, and many others whose writings I had been avidly reading since my 1976 appointment as director of the Ellen G. White/Seventh-day Adventist Research Centre serving the South Pacific Division. Unlike 1919, these epochal exchanges were not stenographically reported; instead, they were recorded on cassettes. I looked forward to sharing both the 941 pages of documents distributed to attendees, and the cassettes, upon my return to Australia during April 1982. But my Division president quickly decreed that such materials should not be shared. Since 1979 in Australia, conflict over Ellen White had been escalating as a main reason why a third of the South Pacific Division’s ministers would either resign or be dismissed, between 1980 and 1988. A prime reason why destructive controversy spiralled upward was that sources for effective study were under such tight control.

Even my brief articles published on sdanet.org/atissue seem to present sufficient evidence to validate the claim that the 1982 Workshop was a sterling attempt to deal with crucial issues relating to the life and writings of Ellen White, but that the outcomes were constrained due to the limited access people had to the recorded conversations and the 941 pages of documentation, let alone essential primary sources. Reports of the Workshop were largely unwelcome, unless they were edited to the point that they retained minimal information about the event.

How different is the situation in 2009!

Interestingly, the number of participants in the conferences held during 1919, 1982, and 2009 are quite similar. But the composition of the 2009 group vastly contrasts with the all-Adventist attendees at the earlier conferences. The official list of participants given to us in Portland has 66 names on it; about a third of them are persons of non-Adventist background, mostly well-known authors who have written effectively about American religious history. The rest of the attendees were raised as Adventists, or embraced the faith, before writing doctoral dissertations or publishing studies that in some way illumine the life and writings of Ellen White. A number of the attendees contributed substantively to the intense discussions of the 1970s and 1980s before the church marginalized their participation. Fifteen other participants are current employees who are contributing to the present understanding of Ellen White due to their background as historians; a smaller number of professionals were present from such disciplines as biblical studies, theology and sociology.

Three Reasons Why the Portland Event Was Successful

In the after-glow of the Maine conference, it seems to me that its potential may be assessed in the light of observations like the following.

First, credible historiography thrives on effective access to primary sources by competent professionals. In this respect, the Portland conference towers far above all its parallels. Adventist Studies in general (and its sub-set Ellen White Studies in particular) are now quite thoroughly democratized. Access to resources for effective study could be prevented by an administrative decree as recently as 1982; currently, an unquantifiable array of primary documentation is available to anyone who has a computer connected to the Internet. (See, for instance, the website of the General Conference Office of Archives and Statistics, superintended by Bert Haloviak, and the bibliographies compiled by Gary Shearer of Pacific Union College.) If acclaimed doctoral dissertations, refereed journal articles, and scholarly books are measures of competence, many of the historians who participated at Portland are of world status. Obviously their research reaches far beyond the capabilities of the Internet, and any claim they made at the conference was subject to the immediate scrutiny of colleagues well versed in the matters that surfaced in lively discussion periods. Such a climate for research and dialogue was beyond our wildest dreams as recently as 1982. The conference revealed that a wide consensus has developed regarding the historical Ellen White; a present need is for effective interpretation to further develop along the lines of the scholarly volume that is anticipated next year, as an outgrowth of the conference.

Second, the conference highlighted crucial chapter topics that focused the efforts of 21 authors. At the foundation of the assigned chapters was a biographical sketch of Ellen White and a focus on the historiographical volumes produced about her, from the early Adventist period to the present. Next, the religious culture within which Ellen White ministered was observed as influencing the methods she chose to shape the Sabbatarian community and build a new denomination, considerably through her testimonies. One specialist contextualized Ellen White’s early religious experiences; another depicted her engagement with health issues; others treated subjects as complex as race relations, or mind and metaphysics; yet another offered perspectives on her attitudes toward popular culture. Larger contexts for the conference were provided on the first night by the scholar who wrote a recent biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and on the second night by an established author who is writing a new biography of Billy Graham. A worship experience on the second main day of the conference featured a homily entitled “Joy in the Morning” by a New Testament specialist, Dr Kendra Haloviak. Next we were led to consider Adventist understandings (and mis-understandings!) of Ellen White, her engagement with American society, her theology, her eschatology, her roles as institution builder, author and public speaker. Other chapter authors explored Ellen White’s perceptions of women’s roles and education; how observers outside of Adventism interpreted her writings; the nature of her legacy. The reflective, concluding hour of the conference began with a six-member panel whose members addressed the theme “Ellen White: Looking Forward.”  While it would be difficult to see how the conference organisers could have packed more content into the event, it is obvious that all the important data cannot be compressed within the covers of one scholarly volume.

Third, an effective dialogical process pervaded the conference. Two specialists were appointed to respond to each chapter, one an Adventist, and one a non-Adventist. Chapter authors had the option to comment briefly about the scripts that were already circulated to all attendees before the conference, then respondents shared their written observations. Next, for about ten of each 45 minutes, roving microphones facilitated the vigorous group discussion that was likely to spill over into informal conversations in the dining room or on the streets of Portland. Therefore, the conference maximised the exchange of perceptions between two groups: people who had sought for decades to understand Ellen White’s life and writings, and acknowledged specialists in American religious history.

My argument here is that, unlike any earlier era in Adventism, adequate primary sources are now readily available for serious study. The Adventist community has developed women and men who are able to offer competent leadership in the daunting process of interpreting these extensive documents coherently. Further, the conference organisers planned effective communication between specialists in Ellen White Studies and other scholars whose lives are devoted to understanding American religious history in its broad contexts. These three considerations facilitated a constructive outcome for the Portland event.

Concluding Observations

The organisers of the 2009 conference have given Adventists and the scholarly world a fresh opportunity to foster a mature, sustainable understanding of Ellen White amongst believers and the wider community, especially that of North America. From a handful of disappointed Millerites, the Second Advent Movement is now a world religion of about sixteen million baptized members. Will we, without further delay, transcend the unnecessary conflicts and the false assumptions about our church’s “mother” that have been both pervasive and destructive in the past? (Note the content of my paper on the Avondale and Adventist Today websites, entitled “Re-parenting Seventh-day Adventists.”) Will we invest a commitment comparable to that of Ellen White in spreading the message of grace revealed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and the message of hope focused in His Second Coming? Seventh-day Adventism is, above all, a global family with its eyes set towards “the truth as it is in Jesus” (a favorite refrain in Ellen White’s writings). The Alpha and the Omega of our faith has too often been supplanted by controversies that are no longer necessary, now that the facts about “the way the Lord has led us, and His teachings in our past history” are so freely available.

Afterword

The above remarks were written to offer the reader a context for the following oral presentations.

I. “Seventh-day Adventism, 1919-2009: ‘a constant process of struggle and rebirth’?” The 1919 conversations between administrators, Bible and history teachers and the October 2009 conference in Portland, Maine (on the life and writings of Ellen White), frame 90 years of Adventism’s encounter with modern and post-modern culture. A Catholic author, Paul Johnson, writes in the Epilogue to his volume A History of Christianity: “Christian history is a constant process of struggle and rebirth—a succession of crises, often accompanied by horror, bloodshed, bigotry and unreason, but evidence too of growth, vitality and increased understanding.” This presentation cited a number of doctoral studies that illumine Johnson’s comment as it applies to Adventist struggles, suggesting trends that seem likely to become more significant in the near future.

II. “The Life and Times of Ellen Gould Harmon White: Assessing Fact and Faith After the First Scholarly, Inter-faith Discussion of the Adventist Prophet.” This presentation reflected on the conference held in Portland, Maine, 22-25 October 2009. Those interested in the topic were invited to read the “backdrop” piece, mentioned above (“Re-parenting Seventh-day Adventists?”) that is available on the Avondale College website and on the Adventist Today website.

III. “Forty Years of Ellen White Studies: Tradition, Transformation, and the Adventist Future”

I expected attendees at each of these presentations to share a plethora of comments and questions, and was not disappointed. I am still in the process of listing a range of matters regarding Ellen White Studies that seem to merit particular consideration at the present time.

Arthur Patrick, 22 December 2009         

Internet addresses for further information and comment:

The official website of the conference project is http://ellenwhiteproject.wordpress.com/

For an interview with Dr. Gary Land, lead editor of the proposed book, see spectrummagazine.org.

For a report by Dr Alden Thompson see http://spectrummagazine.org/blog/2009/11/10/reflections_maine_event.

For comment about the conference by Dr Jon Paulien, see http://revelation-armageddon.com.

Photos from the conference are available at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellenwhiteproject/.

The Avondale website location of the “Re-parenting” paper http://www.avondale.edu.au/research::Journal_Articles/

For comment by Randall Stephens, Eastern Nazarene College, see http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2009/10/ellen-white-project-portland-maine.html

The writing of the past seven years has been driven by circumstances that I did not foresee well in 2004. Within the early months of 2005, several new books about Ellen White entered circulation. For authors and presses to invest time and money in that way demonstrated that ninety years after her death Ellen White retained a unique significance amongst Seventh-day Adventists. Two of the volumes presented the research of an Australian medical specialist: Acquired or Inspired? Exploring the Origins of the Adventist Lifestyle (Warburton, Victoria, Australia: Signs Publishing Company, 2005) and The Prophet and Her Critics (Nampa, Idaho, United States of America: Pacific Press, 2005).

The Prophet and Her Critics was co-authored by Dr Leonard Brand of Loma Linda University and Dr Don S. McMahon of Melbourne, Australia. Brand sought to intensify the appeal of McMahon’s research for North American readers, providing a context for re-evaluating the earlier research of Ronald L. Numbers on health (1976), Jon Butler on prophetic fulfilment (1979) and Walter Rea on literary relationships (1982) in particular, proposing that the “quality of their research” should be examined to see “(1) whether their logic meets an acceptable scholarly standard, avoiding serious logical errors; (2) whether their data support the conclusions they reach; and (3) whether their research design adequately supports their conclusions” (page 14). Then Chapter 5, entitled “The Test,” summarised McMahon’s research and suggested the value of the CD included with McMahon’s volume, making available the data from which his conclusions were formed.

The core issue treated in both these books was the doctrine of inspiration as illumined by a study of Ellen White’s writings on health. In 1976, Numbers published the first edition of Prophetess of Health, demonstrating the value of careful historical research in the primary sources of Adventist history. Numbers frankly stated that he “refrained from using divine inspiration as an historical explanation” (Preface, page xi), a somewhat understandable stance since neither his familial upbringing nor his church nurture had offered him a doctrine of inspiration that was adequate in view of his discoveries. Since then, other studies have enlarged the church’s understanding of Ellen White’s contribution with reference to health and the benefits of the Adventist lifestyle, as in a doctoral dissertation by George Reid and a volume by Gary Fraser. In addition, the doctrine of inspiration has been explored in greater depth.

Enter Don S. McMahon, M.B., B.S., F.R.A.C.S., D.L.O. McMahon’s Adventist lifestyle as a young medical student in the late 1950s was deemed by then current medical opinion as either “irrelevant” or “dangerous,” hence the labelling he experienced from a lecturer in the University of Melbourne and the “friendly ridicule” of fellow students (page 1). However, at the 25-year reunion of his class, McMahon found that many of his colleagues remembered his “humiliation” at their hands, but also by that time a lot of them had adopted important features of his lifestyle and were advocating the same for their patients (page 2).

By 1987 McMahon was re-reading The Ministry of Healing, testing his hunch “that most—if not all—modern, health/lifestyle risk factors were covered by Ellen White” (page 139). A long engagement with the historical and scientific issues followed, as he identified “health and medical statements” that implied what should be done by the individual and why it should be done. Finally, with the help of a CD-ROM that enabled him to search Ellen White’s writings on computer and date any given statement, he was ready to compare her writings with those of five other nineteenth-century health advocates. Three of his medical colleagues checked McMahon’s analyses; a statistician contributed a probability study that gave him his greatest surprise: “The chances were astronomically against random chance” (page 141). Or, as Brand expresses the outcome:

After study of his findings, I find it difficult to see how it would be possible to explain Ellen White’s health principles without a definite input of information from a non-human source, since her health principles of how we should live reveal an accuracy level far above anything available anywhere in human health concepts anytime in the 19th century. McMahon’s work also gives fascinating insight into the nature and limits of the communication Ellen White received regarding health and the reasons for these health principles (Foreword, page iv).

I suggested at the time that there may well be extended discussion amongst medicos and others about the specifics within McMahon’s analyses of the whats and the whys enunciated by Ellen White, and the ways in which these transcend or compare with the recommendations of Graham, Alcott, Coles, Jackson and Kellogg. I deemed that mathematicians and statisticians would pore over the issues of probability and variance that McMahon proposed. But the big issue seemed clear: whereas most nineteenth-century medical writers wilt under scrutiny, Ellen White is exceptional. McMahon concludes: “When the knowledge of the mid-19th century is taken into consideration, it is impossible to exclude inspiration from Ellen White’s writings”; indeed, these writings “should not be rejected; it is essential they be carefully studied and appreciatively implemented” (page 142).

McMahon’s research was widely interpreted as reinforcing the contemporary relevance of the Adventist health message. Further, bolsted by Brand’s contextual framework and prescriptions for research design, it seemed to offer a compelling case study in the process of inspiration. This appeared to make it of profound significance for historians, students of Scripture and, indeed, for everyone interested in Adventist thought, lifestyle and mission. No single finding under the rubric of Adventist Studies during the past two decades seemed to offer such potential to enrich the ongoing conversation about Ellen White and how to understand and apply her spiritual gift.

However, I soon found myself located between McMahon and a highly-skilled neuorscientist in California, Dr T. Joe Willey. The caveats outlined in the paragraph above were discussed with unsubdued energy, especially McMahon’s distinction between Ellen White’s whats and the whys, and his statistical analyses in relation to the doctrine of inspiration. A complicating factor was that many of McMahon’s affirmations were sustainable on historical grounds, but Willey’s cautions were cogent as statistical considerations. A vast quantum of data accumulated rapidly. I attempted a preliminary review of the McMahon/Brand volumes and three others in Spectrum, but the dialectic remained vigorous for years.

The other volumes that I reviewed for Spectrum were by Graeme Bradford, Alden Thompson and the Standish brothers. I was deeply concerned by the negative reactions that Bradford’s books encountered, in that for two decades he had proved one of the most believable apologists for a sustainable understanding of Ellen White and her role within Adventism. Alden Thompson’s book accorded with his well-known stance as a staunch believer who capably examines all the data and lets it speak coherently. Russel R. Standish and Colin D. Standish, friends since we were at Avondale together in the early 1950s, rated my attempts at being faithful to the evidence as producing the most “disingenuous” material ever to blight a Seventh-day Adventist publication.

However, soon even more arresting condemnations were on my desk. Twenty-five years after the Sanctuary Review Committee met in 1980 at Glacier View Ranch in Colorado, the Sydney Adventist Forum invited me and others to offer historical perspectives on that effervescent event. I was glad to be able to participate, since four years earlier, as chairman of a committee appointed by the College Church, I had spent perhaps 500 hours reviewing the literature and interviewing people who maintained an interest in Glacier View and its aftermath. Part of my presentation at the Forum was summarised in Spectrum. Our interpretations failed to accord with the mind of an Australian employed at Adventist world headquarters, who wrote on official stationery suggesting that in view of my expressed opinions, I was no longer a Seventh-day Adventist. Other criticims came to me for writing a series of articles on Righteousness by Faith that was published by Good News for Adventists.

One immediate response was to offer a staff colloquium at Avondale College under the title “Adventist Studies: Troublesome Adolescent or Maturing Adult?” With the helpful comments of colleagues in mind, I deemed that the basic analyses presented should be in the public arena as a journal article. By November 2006, a first draft was sent to the Journal of Religious History, as a follow-up to my article the Journal had published in 1987 about sources for the effective study of Adventism. The text of the latter piece, before it was twice refereed, is now on the College website; the published article finally appeared in 2010. It seemed important that the issues be discussed responsibly, fully and irenically.

The idea that thorough discussion could constructively illumine Adventist controversies seemed to be established by the outcome of a conference convened at Andrews University in 2007, as a fifty-year review of the volume Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine (1957). The organisers deliberately included high-profile representatives of the contrasting perspectives currently held with reference to the most controversial book ever published by the church. My paper needs to be read critically, in tandem with the other submissions that are available on the official website (qod.andrews.edu). The apparent success of that conference helped pave the way for an even bolder initiative, “The Ellen White Project,” aiming to prepare a manuscript for a major academic publisher, introducing Ellen White to scholarly readers. I was deeply appreciative of the opportunity to be one of 21 chapter authors, an Australian invited to participate in an essentially North American project. My chapter on Ellen White as author was commissioned to confront the issue of plagiarism; I greatly valued the Portland, Maine, conference held during October 2009, and was gratified that in its amended form my chapter was passed to the publishers, along with the others, on 27 October 2011. The outcome will be a book that, for the first time, offers a contextualised introduction to the life and writings of Ellen White for well-informed readers who are beyond the borders of the church.

Meanwhile, it seemed crucial to seek a better understanding of the ground-breaking workshop held in Washington in 1982 when, for the first time, an international group sought to assess the newly-discovered data relating to Ellen White. This endeavour developed two papers that I presented to the Ellen G. White Coordinating Committee of the South Pacific Division, and placed on sdanet.org/atissue as “The Inspired and Inspiring Ellen White, Part 1: 1982 in Historical Perspective” (2007), and “The Inspired and Inspiring Ellen White, Part 2: Assessing Five Examples of the Documented Evidence” (2008). A paper presented at the New Perspectives on Christianity conference, held at Avondale College in January 2009, was entitled “Religious History in Century 21: Reflections of the Demand for Credible Historiography.” As a backdrop for reports about the Portland conference of 2009 that I presented at Loma Linda University, La Sierra University and the Dan Diego Forum, I prepared a paper entitled “The Re-parenting of Seventh-day Adventists: Reflections on the Historical Development, Substance, and Potential of Ellen White Studies,” an intem published on the Adventist Today Foundation and Avondale College websites.

During 2006, I wrote a guide for higher degree students who might be contemplating research in the area of Adventist Studies. The content of this pamphlet was revised in 2009, and is now available in printed as well as in electronic form on the Avondale website. Forewords written for the published forms (2007, 2008) of Michael Chamberlain’s and Rick Ferret’s doctoral theses gave me valuable opportunities to assess the ongoing status of Adventist Studies. The documents named above form a major strand of a much larger body of material written since 2005 and published by Signs of the Times in the United States and Australia, Record, Ministry, Teach: Journal of Christian Education, and other sources, including the Internet. An increasing amount of my time has also been devoted to consultation with PhD students for whom the discipline of Adventist Studies/Ellen White Studies is crucial.

Conclusion

Ellen White’s importance for Seventh-day Adventism is illustrated vividly by the discussion about her life and writings that is ongoing and vigorous. It has been my privilege to engage in this dialogue and dialectic increasingly since those effervescent classes in the SDA Theological Seminary four decades ago, but more especially since 1980. The opportunities for fruitful study in 2012 are attractive indeed: the church has developed many excellent resource centres; scholars in various parts of the world have contributed important aspects of the big picture; while major outlines are beyond dispute there are many options for continuing research; we have the amazing support of computer technology. I cherish the Seventh-day Adventist communion and firmly believe in the crucial role Ellen White has for both historic and contemporary Adventism. Whether my writings are seen as problematic or constructive is a matter best left to the judgment of others. For my part, I simply desire to continue walking by faith and pursuing “the truth as it is in Jesus,” with gratitude for grace abounding in the past and vibrant hope for the future.

Arthur Patrick, 9 November 2011

For some readers this will be an ultimately boring blog, but several readers want a follow-up from yesterday’s post about how I drifted into Ellen White Studies. Therefore, this piece outlines some of what I wrote during the 25 years from 1980 to the end of 2004. All these documents may be accessed in the Ellen G. White/SDA Research Centre at Avondale College; some are available on sdanet.org/atissue, and more are available on the compact discs that the Research Centre at Avondale produces, usually each year. Another blog will cover the material written between 2005 and the present.

Various long-standing bulwarks of traditional Adventism, under increasing assault from 1970, seemed within a decade to be crumbling as the “Noonday of Certitude” gave way to open controversy. I have profiled some of this process insofar as it relates to the life and writings of Ellen White in a paper entitled “From Certitude Through Controversy Toward Consensus: An Historical Perspective on Ellen White Studies Since 1950” (2003). A companion paper, “Continuity and Change in Seventh-day Adventist Doctrine and Practice” (2003) offers a wider chronological perspective, whereas a more fully documented account is entitled “Reflections on Unfinished Business: Ellen White Studies in Historical Perspective” (2003). A further paper, delivered at a theological conference in February 2003, is entitled “Learning from Ellen White’s Perception and Use of Scripture: Toward an Adventist Hermeneutic for the Twenty-first Century.” At the Ellen White Summit on 5 February 2004, with the help of physicist Lynden Rogers as reader, I presented a paper entitled “Ellen White in South Pacific Adventism: Retrospect and Prospect,” noting again that until about 1970 Ellen White’s writings were assigned “a unique and growing status as the all-encompassing, definitive encyclopaedia of Adventist thought and practice,” whereas thereafter the church entered a period of controversy and (since about 1990) an era of growing consensus. After a brief, explanatory bibliography on pages 16 to 19, that paper offered a chronological list of over fifty of the documents that I wrote between 1980 and 2004. Of these, perhaps seven of the earlier pieces have prime importance: a paper “Ellen White in the Eighties,” 1980; an M.Litt. thesis, 1984; a Journal of Religious History article, 1987; a Ministry article, 1991; a Lucas article, 1991; a Ph.D. dissertation, 1992; an Adventist Heritage article, 1993.

It bears mention that a new phase of my engagement with Ellen White Studies began in 1997. At the time, as a visiting associate professor at La Sierra University in California, I was acutely disturbed by the way trusted colleagues throughout the Adventist world were either misunderstood or misrepresented by forthright presenters like Samuel Koranteng-Pipim. It appeared to me that a realistic appreciation of Ellen White’s spiritual gift might be a way to draw the church into more trustful fellowship and toward a better fulfilment of its mission; hence I delivered in San Francisco to the annual conference of the Adventist Society of Religious Studies a paper entitled “Re-Visioning the Role of Ellen White for Seventh-day Adventists Beyond 2000.” Fortunately, many members of the Adventist Theological Society were also present. Input or assessments from scores of thought leaders in Ellen White Studies, including Herbert Douglass and Kenneth Wood, was most helpful for my understanding. This discussion widened from North America to other parts of the world when sdanet.org/atissue placed a cluster of my papers on its website. The major 1997 presentation was updated at the request of Gary Chartier for inclusion in a symposium he hoped to edit from the Great Disappointment, Greater Hope lecture series that Paul Landa organised.

The documents cited above, especially those completed since 2002, may be read fruitfully in association with other presentations that offer brief comment upon or a context for the ongoing discussion. A paper entitled “Ellen White Yesterday and Today: Understanding and Affirming the Ministry of the Most Creative Sabbatarian Adventist” (2002) suggested why Ellen White is the Adventist transformationist par excellence. In reviews of books or dissertations by Douglas Morgan, Philip Jenkins, Rolf Poehler, Gary Land/Calvin Edwards, Merlin Burt, Michael Chamberlain, Bruce Manners, Alden Thompson and others I tried to portray issues important for Ellen White Studies within the context of 21st century Adventism. With the Ellen White Summit of 2004, the publication of a book by Graeme Bradford and the lively discussion following four interviews published in Record during February 2004, I felt the substance of my writings during the previous quarter century was either sufficiently understood or the issues were being taken care of effectively by others, as sugegsted in my report, “The Summit, the Book and the Record: Ellen White in the Ongoing Adventist Conversation” (2004).

By 2005, I wanted to more consistently apply Ellen White’s writings to the great themes of Seventh-day Adventism like, for instance, Christian education. I had begun that process with several presentations: “Does Ellen White Have a Crucial Testimony for Avondale in 1995?”; the Murdoch Memorial Lecture “Visioning and Re-Visioning Seventh-day Adventist Tertiary Education in Australia: A Centennial Assessment of Avondale College” (1997); “The Essence of Avondale: ‘A View from the Ridge’” (2003). I had also attempted a similar process with reference to the Holy Spirit (see the summation of that endeavour in two articles in Record, 4 December 1999) and in relation to the Adventist health message in a presentation entitled “Ellen Gould White: Pioneer of Adventist Health Emphases” (2004). It seemed appropriate to devote more energy toward fostering an inclusive concept of Adventist Studies as the major rubric within which Ellen White’s life and writings could best be interpreted and applied.

Arthur Patrick, 9 November 2011

Adventist Studies crucially informs the ongoing life and global witness of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. As an academic discipline, Adventist Studies has experienced remarkable maturation during the past forty years. My perceptions of this development, derived from personal experience and research, need to be checked against the understandings of many others. However, the following somewhat autobiographical account may stimulate the memories or illumine the research of individuals who wish to understand Adventist Studies in general and Ellen White Studies in particular.

From 1970-72 as a graduate student at Andrews University, I took a deep interest in the scintillating lectures of Dr Mervyn Maxwell and in due course eagerly purchased the essence of Maxwell’s classroom presentations in the form of a popular book. However, I was simultaneously aware of quite different discussions in the corridors of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, especially about issues raised in a newly established journal offering fresh research by Adventist biblical scholars, theologians, historians and others. Covert conversations of the 1960s became public debates in the 1970s and explosive controversies in the 1980s. As a deepening sense of crisis enveloped Adventism, a sorting process began to occur as many members, teachers, ministers and administrators adopted one of three options: reversion, rejection or transformation.

A Bit of Historical Background Since 1944

In 1944, celebrations in the Avondale Village Church marking the first century of Sabbatarian Adventism fired my childish imagination, as did narratives of the interactions three of my grandparents had with Ellen Gould White (1827-1915) during the founding years of the Australasian Missionary College, now known as Avondale College of Higher Education. As a Theology student at Avondale (1954-7) my youthful interest in the study of Adventist history and thought was nurtured; soon thereafter it was galvanised by the controversy surrounding Robert Brinsmead and his colleagues. As a young pastor in South New Zealand, I found my congregations were encouraged and stabilised by the study of “the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.”

The greatest problem of those years was finding adequate resources for effective research. Two of my guides at the time were Francis D. Nichol and LeRoy Edwin Froom, editors and authors based in Washington, D.C., whose oral discourses riveted my attention during their visits to Australia. R. A. Anderson’s guest lectures and his memorable book, The Shepherd Evangelist (1950) impacted my ministerial endeavours; the preaching of E. Lennard Minchin was an important stimulus for my spiritual life. Two Seminary Extension Schools (1957-8, 1965-6) intensified my engagement with Adventist heritage as I soaked up the lectures of (amongst others) Pastor Arthur L. White (Prophetic Guidance), Dr Edward Heppenstall (Law, Grace and the Covenants; Doctrine of the Sanctuary), Dr Desmond Ford (Biblical Eschatology), Dr Siegfried Horn (Biblical Archaeolgy).

At last, at Andrews University from 1970 to 1972, I delighted in access to the primary sources relating to Adventism generally and Ellen White’s life and writings particularly. The completion there of an M.A. in Systematic Theology and a Master of Divinity (Pastoral Ministry), building on earlier Seminary Extension Schools and other events, such as classes offered in Chicago by Dr Gottfried Oosterwal, made me confident in the integrity of Adventism yet aware of its maturing status. Since Andrews was not then accredited to offer doctoral studies, with the sage advice of the Seminary Dean, Dr W.G.C. Murdoch, I undertook a D.Min. (Biblical Studies, but including Clinical Pastoral Education) in Indianapolis at Christian Theological Seminary. So, by late 1973, I was back in Australia with a passion to evangelise an area of Sydney that had only one small Adventist congregation amongst a million people. However, after five days of residence in Sydney, I was appointed to Avondale College, the geographical location for my endeavours during the next eighteen years.

After a couple of years as a lecturer in the Department of Theology at Avondale, I was concurrently appointed curator (later the job title was changed to director) of the newly established Ellen G. White/Seventh-day Adventist Research Centre located on the Avondale campus but serving the Australasian Division (now called the South Pacific Division). This was a time of comparative peace in Australasian Adventism, following the tumult of the 1960s, despite new and vigorous debates that were escalating within the church. The issues raised in Spectrum from 1970, like the shock waves emanating from the Ronald L. Numbers volume Prophetess of Health (1976), were little known or felt in Australasia at the time, even though the approaches of such groups as the Concerned Brethren were eliciting a vigorous response from the Biblical Research Committee of which I was a member. However, by 1980, the researches of Numbers, Don McAdams, Jon Butler, Walter Rea, Ron Graybill, Desmond Ford and many others were becoming better known. During the early 1980s, I formed and tested the impression that my ministry and teaching, illumined by attendance at study conferences in Washington during 1978 and 1982, might best focus on the life and writings of Ellen White in the context of the history and thought of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. This focus persisted after my employment changed in 1984 to academic administration and later to chaplaincy and other roles.

Therefore, between 1980 and 2004, well over a hundred items that I wrote (brief reports, book reviews, occasional lectures, magazine and journal articles, book chapters, a thesis, a dissertation, a book and such) principally relate to Ellen White and her symbiotic relationship with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In another blog I will offer an overview of some of the documents I wrote between 1980 and 2004. Later, in yet another blog, I’ll address the period from 2005 to the present.

Arthur Patrick, 8 November 2011