Ellen White ConferencePortland, Maine Oct. 22-25

October 22Joan Hedrick

“Writing a Woman’s Life”

“I’m very excited about this occasion because I think this conference is bringing into visibility a woman who was a very important spiritual and institutional force that many people didn’t know about and I didn’t know about. . . . I really applaud this effort to bring Ellen White back into visibility.”

Ciro Sepulveda, Oakwood:

“It’s clear from hearing your talk that you have profound admiration for your subject, but how do you deal with the flaws?”

“I view them as great complications of the plot, as good material for biographers. And they really do–the flaws, that’s what brings a person into sharp focus. Nobody is human without having flaws. To see the flaws as well as the virtues, and how they intersect–we can all see in ourselves that our strengths also have a downside. Seeing the human is seeing the human being whole. I don’t see it as a problem but I see it as a possibility. I see it as great literary material and sometimes as great didactic material. I see the greatest problem of Harriet Beecher Stowe as the author of UTC that in her own relationships with black women she was not the egalitarian that I would have hoped she was. That has to be said about most abolitionists in the 19th century. They wanted to abolish slavery, but that did not mean they wanted to be social equals with black people. They just wanted to have that legal institution gone, but they did not want to have lunch with them. The North segregated the lunch counters and the trolley cars and all of this–I was very aware at various points that Stowe was seeing black people through her middle class white eyes and wasn’t really seeing the people that were right in front of her, in spite of writing that wonderful story of a life.”

Friday, October 23

Biographical Sketch—Jonathan ButlerCraig Newborn/Heather Curtis

Historiography—Gary LandDon McAdams/Amanda Porterfield

Religious Culture—Ronald GraybillA. Gregory Schneider/Joseph Conforti

Shaping the Sabbatarian Community—Merlin Burt

Gilbert Valentine/Margaret Bendroth

The Testimonies and Adventist Community—Graeme Sharrock

Beverly Beem/David RoweEarly Religious Experiences—Ann Taves

Ginger Harwood/Robert FullerScience and Medicine—Ronald Numbers

Daryll Ward/Jean Silver-IsenstadtRace Relations—Eric Anderson

Joan Francis/John GraysonMind and Metaphysics—Rennie Schoepflin

T. Joseph Willey/Jon RobertsPopular Culture—Benjamin McArthur

Roy Branson/Charles Reagan Wilson

John Grayson’s response to Eric Anderson

The surprise for me in Anderson’s paper was a citation on page 7 taken from Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 1, p. 193. I had never seen this quote before. Here, Ellen White states:

“I saw that the slave-master would have to answer for the soul of his slave whom he has kept in ignorance; and all the sins of the slave will be visited upon the master. G-D cannot take the slave to heaven, who has been kept in ignorance and degradation, knowing nothing of G-D, or the Bible, fearing nothing but his master’s lash, and not holding so elevated a position as his master’s brute beasts. But he does the best thing for him that a compassionate G-D can do. He lets him

be as though he had not been …”

Notice, in this particular citation Ellen White states that slaves will be counted among the ‘lost’ and will be treated ‘as though they never existed.’ Most troubling of all, these ‘lost souls’ will have been ‘punished’ twice – once by their earthly masters and oppressors simply because accident of circumstance caused them to have been born ‘persons-of-color’ in an oppressive society, and secondly, by a ‘Compassionate G-D’ who will deny them entrance into heaven simply because they ‘knew nothing of G-D or the Bible.’ I have grave difficulty accepting this deterministic view regarding human destiny. Slaves knew much about Nature, and nature was one of G-D’s canvases – along with the Bible – for Self-revelation. It is equally difficult for me to accept this exclusive construct of a ‘Compassionate G-D.’ It ‘flies in the face’ of all that I imagine about Divine compassion.

Of the three religious default assumptions that informed and prejudiced the American discourse on race in the Nineteenth century, Ellen White seems to have endorsed two. I continue to be mystified by the question: How could an ‘inspired prophet’ like Ellen White reconcile her ‘progressive’ pronouncements regarding slavery – as Anderson shows, there were many – with the regressive ethnological assumptions that she also espoused? I also wonder if this accounts for the decision by a “Compassionate God” to let slaves “be as though they had not [existed]”?

Grant Wacker“Billy Graham and the Challenges of Cultural

Biography”

• “This conference ranks at the top of what I’ve learned. Already, in reading these papers, it’s been enormously instructive.”

“[According to Martin Marty:] All good history [or, read: biography] enables us to live the present in the light of the past. It turns the evaluation question around: the task is not so much for us as biographers to evaluate them, but to stand back, and, with humility, allow their lives to evaluate us.”

them, but to stand back, and, with humility, allow their lives to evaluate us.

Sabbath, October 24Kendra Haloviak

“Joy in the Morning”• Ellen White’s favorite hymns

Jesus, Lover of My SoulWhen I Survey the Wondrous CrossRock of AgesJesus, Saviour Pilot MeAll Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name

An early Advent hymnI Saw One Weary

Psalm 30:5

Psalm 137

“I’m drawn to theology that takes seriously the experience of weeping at night and doesn’t let an absent God off the hook. But in the anger and agony of experiences of disorientation keeps talking with God, even if it’s to raise a fist and voice in protest. Somehow in that action–that action of refusing to give up on a God who seems to have given up on us–somehow there is a new experience of the presence of God, a rushing in of new wonder and gift and gratitude.”

“The psalms, the songs of disorientation, are a bold act of faith. It’s a bold act of faith to say you can’t sing in a strange land even as you sing a new song. It’s a bold act of faith to shake a fist to the heavens on October 23 and to say, “Where are you?” because more than anything you wanted to be in the presence of God. And shaking a fist is at least aimed somewhere. It’s a bold act of faith to attend a conference and to ask tough questions of Adventist history and then to participate in an Adventist worship service early in the morning, on a Sabbath morning. The psalms of disorientation are a bold act of faith. They are act of re-creation, a new song. The voices, in a state of alienation and bondage and disorientation, the loss of all that is familiar–those very voices will testify, will create new songs, new sacred songs.”

“Those voices will sing once again. How does it happen? What moves the poetry from weeping to hope? What transforms the weeping itself into song? How is is possible to sing our holy songs in a strange land? How to sing when our children’s voices are no longer with us around the family altar? When we stand at a grave site? When nights seem endless and sleep doesn’t come? When there’s no easy forgiveness of our enemies, of our plight, of our God? The psalms take seriously the experience of disorientation. Disorientation means real loss–or a companion, of a child, of a church we no longer recognize, of an imagined future, of a heritage that must be revaluated, reconsidered. Disorientation means real loss, and the psalms take disorientation seriously. They are honest about tragedy–tragedy that makes it difficult to breathe, to move, to put one foot in front of the other.”

“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. How does one move from the poetry of night to the joy of the morning. How does one move from “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” to “Praise God from whom all blessings flow?” As Bruggeman works through these psalms he observes: “the speaker and the community of faith are often surprised by grace when there emerges in present life a new possibility. It is inexplicable, neither desired nor extrapolated but wrought by the inscrutable power and goodness of God.”

“At their best, communities of faith do what the psalms do. They take the seasons of life and bring them to speech–seasons of orientation and disorientation and new orientation. Communities of faith know great disappointments and they weep and they weep until the day dawns. But then–there’s a brand new day, and those same communities of faith sing their Advent hymns once again.”

Adventist Understandings of EW—Ted Levterov

Alden Thompson/Ruth Alden Doan

EW and Society—Douglas MorganRonald Lawson/Shawn Peters

Theologian—Woodrow WhiddenGeorge Knight/Grant Wacker

Eschatology—Jeff CrocombeJon Paulien/Paul Boyer

Institution Builder—Jerry MoonBert Haloviak/Randall Stephens

Author—Arthur PatrickSusan Gardner

Public Speaker—Terrie AamodtMarilynn Loveless/Joan Hedrick

Women’s Roles—Laura VanceLisa Diller/Bernadette McCauley

Education—Floyd GreenleafW. G. Nelson/William Trollinger

From the Outside—Michael CampbellCiro Sepulveda/J. Spencer Fluhman

Sunday, October 25

Legacy—Paul McGrawJud Lake/William Peterson

Panel: Looking ForwardGrant WackerGeorge KnightTerrie AamodtJulius NamRonald NumbersVern CarnerGary Land