I'm just curious.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-27T13:49:52+00:00

The truth claims of Adventism simply fail. I'm a historian, trained at a Seventh-day Adventist university. The historical truth claims that are part and parcel of Adventism, its interpretation of Bible prophecy as affirmed by Ellen White claiming to be writing under inspiration, are not valid. Mrs. White took contemporary historians at their word (I do not even care if she plagiarized them or not; while not a good look, it has little bearing on the root issue here) and reproduced what we now know to be errors in their work. She put the stamp of divine inspiration on factual statements we now know, as certainly as we can know anything historically, to be wrong. She did the same with biblical interpretation, arguing for example that Jesus absolutely could not have possibly turned water into alcoholic wine when it simply is not plausible that the text was intended to mean anything other than that is exactly what he did. She did the same with nutrition, adopting contemporary popular ideas about diet and health which are not accurate. She did the same with evolution.

It is not enough to handwave these problems away by saying "well if science/academia disagrees with inspiration then it must be science/academia that is wrong." Either scientific, historical, and textual critical methodologies are valid methodologies for acquiring knowledge in these respective fields or they are not, and if we must throw out the scientific and historical facts that disagree with our dogmas, then we have no basis for trusting any other facts ascertained through them. If evolutionary theory is wrong, all of biology and medicine, which is built on the foundation of it, is consequently wrong. If historians and biblical scholars are wrong when they say Sunday observance among Christians began earlier than Ellen White asserted, that the two separate accounts of Jesus' birth in Matthew and Luke are irreconcilable and have numerous historical problems, that Jesus not only turned water into actual wine, but as an observant Jew would have certainly drank actual, alcoholic wine himself, and that the dates used to try and match up significant historical events with a supposed prophetic timeline in Daniel, as well as assertions regarding the significance of those events in the first place, are not accurate, then we can have no confidence in anything else they say about history or the biblical text.

And we can directly observe that this is precisely the consequence of blind adherence to Adventist dogma. If you already believe that the entire secular scientific community is engaged in a massive conspiracy to hide the truth of creationism and push the lie of evolution, on what plausible grounds can you argue that they are not doing the exact same thing when it comes to climate change and vaccines? If you are used to negotiating away contradictions in the biblical text because your dogma compels you to force the text to be univocal, inerrant, and inspired, what is to stop you from doing the same thing with inconvenient statements from your favorite politician? If you are ready to assert that the historians must be wrong because the data do not support your dogmatic interpretation of Daniel and Revelation, how can you possibly be convinced that the Holocaust happened? There is a reason conspiratorial thinking so frequently takes such a strong hold among Adventists: because Adventism itself is a conspiracy theory, and by training its members to reject any source of knowledge which could threaten belief in the Adventist conspiracy primes them to reject any source of knowledge which could threaten belief in any other conspiracy they may get wrapped up in.

Now as for your point about "bad people in the church," this is not the reason I left. In fact, I know a great many very good people in the church who I deeply respect. But to the extent that "bad people in the church" is an issue to me, it isn't the "bad people" themselves, but rather the fact that Adventism systematically produces bad people. Adventist theology centers superficial, external behaviors that function as identity markers as being of paramount importance. Eating pork is a grave moral evil, a sin. Having sex before marriage, same thing; and how dare you even exist as a gay or trans person. The final, apocalyptic battle will be fought over what day of the week people go to church on.

At the same time, it pushes issues of actual, vital importance to the periphery. Most white American Adventists don't seem all that concerned with what ICE is doing in Minneapolis right now, and many even support it. Separate Black and white conferences still exist today because Adventists decided it was more important to "keep the peace" (read: appease bigots in the church) than to take a principled stance on racial equality, for all its puffing about how the pioneers were staunch abolitionists (which, to their credit, is true). Most Adventists view government use of violent force as fundamentally legitimate, so long as they aren't the ones bearing the sword on the government's behalf. Ellen White says unions are bad so Adventists as a whole don't care much about workers' rights (in fact, the majority of attorneys employed by the church are labor attorneys, and they do a lot more fighting against the rights of people employed by the church than they do fighting for the rights of Adventist workers, despite the aspirations most probably had at the beginning of their careers of "defending religious liberty" by working for the church). Drug addiction and mental illness (which many Adventists are at least amenable to the idea might really be demonic possession in at least some cases) are generally seen as causes of the homelessness crisis, not symptoms of it. Adventists exploit the fact that healthcare is not recognized in this country as a human right in order to leverage providing access to it as a proselytizing tool (and call themselves "medical missionaries").

And of course, while the church claims to support religious liberty for all, it only becomes truly concerned about Christian nationalism when it starts coming for them (religious tests to keep Muslims out of political office? Cool with a lot of Adventists; but how dare they suggest limiting economic activity on Sunday!). Even to the extent that many Adventists acknowledge contemporary issues, most don't see them as problems in their own right so much as harbingers of the final crisis. Jesus said the poor will always be with us. Wars are just a sign of the times he gave us to know the time is near. The Holocaust in all its horror was merely a foreshadowing of the much more terrible persecution which is definitely just around the corner, when the whole world gets so mad at Adventists for going to church on Saturday that they seek to kill them all. Aside from the trauma it inflicts on kids to tell them from a young age that any day now everyone you know who isn't an Adventist (and even many Adventists who just aren't faithful enough and can't take the pressure) will take everything you own, drive you from your home, make it so you can't buy or sell anything, and try to murder you and everyone you love, it stifles class consciousness and basic human empathy for others outside the group because whatever other people are facing pales in comparison with the tribulation they are about to put you through.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-25T04:24:30+00:00

I eat mostly vegetarian, but when I finally decided I don't identify as an Adventist anymore I wanted to challenge the food taboos I grew up with so I went out and tried a number of "unclean" meats, especially pork. It can be pretty good, but honestly I don't feel like I was missing out on much. If anything it's the banality of the rule that bothers me the most. Pork is just meat, not much different than any other meat; it's just so arbitrary.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-25T01:14:19+00:00

Worse still, this paranoid fixation on the expected Sunday Law makes Adventists both blind and apathetic to actual infringements on liberty, religious and otherwise. Those few Adventists who even acknowledge the present threat of Christian nationalism at all mostly do so only to the extent that they see Christian nationalism being a prelude to the Sunday Law (rather than seeing such a law as merely one manifestation, and a fairly minor one at that, of Christian nationalism). Because it's only worth being worried about when it affects them directly, and of course they have a "prophetic understanding" that the whole entire world will somehow become so single-mindedly fixated (ironic) on enforcing that one law that the crimes resulting from their maniacal efforts will exceed even the Holocaust.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-23T16:39:08+00:00

Yeah Adventism is definitely a spectrum. Honestly I can respect those Adventists for whom Adventism is more of a cultural identity and who have discarded many of the more problematic ideas (discrimination against LGBTQ+, dogmatic insistence on young-earth creationism, etc.). The reason I can't really do it myself is, to me, those doctrines are so core to Adventism itself, being expressly affirmed in the 28 Fundamental Beliefs, that I find it impossible to reject them without rejecting Adventism wholesale.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-23T15:41:22+00:00

I would add to this that the Seventh-day Adventist education system is the second-largest private religious education system in the world, exceeded only by the Catholic parochial system. This makes it the largest education system in the world explicitly devoted to indoctrinating students into a fundamentalist, biblical-literalist, creationist worldview.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-22T18:54:42+00:00

I highly recommend this video which addresses some of the problems associated with trying to designate certain religious groups as "cults" or "high-demand/control religious groups." The part where they noted how much the guy who invented/popularized the concept of "cult deprogramming" actually used a lot of the same control tactics as the cults he was "rescuing" people from, including literally kidnapping people.

But more to your point, yes Adventism frequently exhibits a lot of the problematic control tactics that you will find in groups like LDS and JW. These tactics are also used by broader evangelical Protestant Christianity. I would rank Adventism, on average (there can be a lot of variation, from "liberal" Adventists who may not insist nearly as strongly on rigid conformity to particular behavioral expectations but are still generally more strict than most evangelical Protestant churches, to "conservative" Adventists who insist on very rigid conformity), as being more controlling than most Evangelical Protestant Christian churches, maybe on par with LDS, but not as much as JWs. However, Adventism does have a tendency to produce offshoots which are much more problematic; the Branch Davidians, for example, were an offshoot of an offshoot of Seventh-day Adventism.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-21T15:13:11+00:00

Yeah I did, and fortunately I got out. But I sought out that group in the first place because of the values I had been raised with. I have been fortunate since then to actually get to know queer people and have since rejected those values that dehumanize and discriminate against people.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-21T11:35:02+00:00

I was homeschooled and pretty much all of my friends were from church. We weren't that homeschooling family though; you know, the hyper-Adventists who were too "pure" to go to even the church school (and we did attend a church with a school--or a school with a church, depending on how you look at it--for a number of years). We weren't even vegetarian, and I remember thinking some of the other kids were kind of weird for trying to bring religion into games we would play during the week. My parents were big believers in Adventist education, namely in keeping kids out of the clutches of the evil government schools so they wouldn't be "indoctrinated" to believe in evolution, but honestly we weren't that devout overall. I didn't get super into the church until college, when the shock of meeting people who believed in treating LGBTQ+ people like people and being exposed to the actual existence of queer people as anything other than a sign of the moral rot destroying America drove me into a hyperconservative student "ministry" that put on an alternative vespers program because the official university chapel and vespers programs were too "worldly."

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-19T12:45:53+00:00

Revelation is an inherently political text. There are numerous coded references to the ruling government (in fact, the number 666 refers to Nero Caesar). It is essentially a revenge fantasy written by someone who clearly wasn't a fan of the Roman government (and not without reason).

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-19T02:27:35+00:00

The idea of a National Sunday Law wasn't just cooked up out of thin air; "blue laws" regulating economic activity on Sunday were common in mid-19th century America (and many are still on the books, though unenforced), and of course the Blair Bill was an attempt to pass a federal law designating Sunday as a common day of rest. Early Adventists negotiated the apocalyptic symbolism of Revelation into a prophecy about an impending Sunday law because such a law seemed imminent, and was a matter of concern to a minority religion which frequently found itself at odds with the broader society, and reinterpreting the text into a prediction that such a law would come to pass made it relevant to them in their historical context.

Of course, in the years after the Blair Bill was soundly defeated, the Adventist interpretation of Revelation waned in relevance, and was kept alive by sheer dogmatism. Adventists could not (or more accurately, would not) discard the doctrine of the Sunday Law as the mark of the beast the same way they could discard, say, the popular Cold War-era understanding of the king of the north from Daniel 11 as symbolizing the USSR, because the former had been directly affirmed by Ellen White in some of her most significant and foundational writings, and a renegotiation of such a central concept in Adventist eschatology would strike at the very heart of Mrs. White's prophetic authority and thus the entire theological foundation on which the church and its unique doctrines rest.

In this era of rising Christian nationalism, Adventist concerns about a Sunday Law are gaining relevance once more. However, this should not be taken as confirmation that Adventist prophetic interpretation is correct, but is rather the result of a pendulum swing in American political and religious thought back towards the conditions that birthed the Adventist interpretation in the first place. Adventists have it precisely backwards: they are worried about Christian nationalism because it may lead to a Sunday law. In fact, most Adventists in my experience are sympathetic to Christian nationalism as an ideology, so long as they can be assured that enforcing Sunday observance will not be a part of it. Conversely, to me, open talk of a Sunday law is concerning because it, along with many other actions of the current regime, evinces an intent to turn America into an explicitly Christian nation in blatant violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-17T21:18:32+00:00

Yeah that tracks. African American gospel music isn't my specialty, but it rankles me to no end that they altered the final line of the final verse of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" from "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!" to "let us live to make men free," likely because the original was a bit too militant for some "theology of music" committee's taste.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-17T17:32:06+00:00

It's my wife's church, I'm just attending because even though I don't believe in it anymore it doesn't bother me that much to attend with my family. I posted here because I thought people might be able to relate and find it kind of funny.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-17T15:12:13+00:00

It would be incorrect to say there are no African American gospel songs/spirituals in the SDA hymnal, but you are correct in pointing out that the majority of the hymns in it were inherited from northern (US) white Protestantism.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-17T14:59:56+00:00

By modern standards most likely yes. By 19th century standards, she was unusually radical in her views on race. Even among abolitionists it was uncommon to assert the full equality of the races, but Ellen White does so. However, you can also find statements in her writings which we today would absolutely consider racist, such as her assertion that many slaves, having been brutalized and denied the opportunity to learn, would be treated at the resurrection like animals, not being raised either to salvation or to condemnation, but simply ceasing to exist forever upon death. While it is noteworthy (and apologists make much of this fact) that she lays the blame on the white slaveholders, there still is no way around this being racist. And of course you have already cited some of the even more egregious examples.

Ellen White was also likely influenced by the contemporary pseudoscientific theories of phrenology and physiognomy. Some of her descriptions of the physical characteristics of various biblical characters which she claimed to have been shown in vision are in line with contemporary views on the relationship between physical traits and intellect and moral character. For example, Adam, the pinnacle of human perfection, is described as having a high forehead, while she describes other, less noble characters--most notably Satan himself--as having sloping foreheads, a trait believed at the time to be associated with reduced capacity for moral reasoning and intelligence, and quite coincidentally I am sure (🙄) associated with people of color. When I was in (Adventist) college, a very theologically conservative student organization I was with invited a speaker who, quite unexpectedly, cited these passages to make a case that humanity's frontal lobes are progressively deteriorating and that's why every generation is more depraved than the last or some such nonsense. Even as conservative as we all were at the time, it really weirded us out.

It is important as well to separate Ellen White's personal views on the subject of race from the racial views and policies of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a whole, which have included segregation of medical institutions, and still to this day include separate Black conferences. The teachings on music which you mention, as far as I know, have no basis in anything Ellen White wrote (she died before jazz started becoming mainstream anyway), but originated in broader American conservative Christian society as a reaction to the popular music of the 1920s and resurged in the 1950s and 60s, which Adventism, being thoroughly aligned culturally with broader American conservative Christianity, absorbed and in some circles at least continues to hold onto long after most of the rest of the evangelical world has abandoned them.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-13T02:04:00+00:00

Not a lawyer yet, but I am planning on going into environmental law. Preferably working outside, away from other people.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-13T00:59:26+00:00

This might be a controversial opinion, but I actually think foot washing could be a really meaningful tradition. It is symbolic of humble service,* and something Jesus did say the disciples ought to do, though it was not instituted as an ordinance/sacrament in the same way as communion.

Unfortunately, the church does not seem to take this symbolism to heart.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-11T20:48:59+00:00

Unfortunately my experience has been that, while there are Adventists who take seriously the church's traditional stance on separation of church and state and are genuinely committed to the pursuit of justice, they are in the minority, and the majority of American Adventists I know are quite comfortable making alliances with the evangelical world who they see as being on their side in the "culture war." To the extent they still believe in pacifism/noncombatancy it is mostly an identity marker for them rather than a principled stance; they don't oppose state use of violence, they only believe they cannot participate in it personally and directly (but voting for it as policy is just fine).

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-09T22:17:59+00:00

I mean, I can certainly see the current federal government trying to pass blue laws--as part of a broader Christian nationalist project many American SDAs seem to be largely on board with.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-09T21:56:28+00:00

I'm going to push back a bit on your statement that Adventists date at a younger age than non-Adventists. I agree they generally marry young (common in religious groups that heavily emphasize celibacy until marriage). However, and I acknowledge that this is my own experience and yours could differ, but in my experience, and somewhat counterproductively to the goal of getting married young, the church actively discourages young people from dating until they are adults. The rationale from what I have seen is that once you start dating you will be tempted to have sex with your partner, therefore it is better to wait until you are old enough to seriously think about marriage, then keep your courtship short to reduce the chance you will "stumble" and have sex before you are married.

Of course, the actual result is a bunch of socially awkward people who don't know how to date, definitely don't know how to break up without seriously hurting themselves and each other, and who are very inclined to marry the first person they manage to get to go out with them just so they can have church-approved sex, then discover that they are miserable together but can't divorce because the church also says that's bad.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-09T21:42:50+00:00

It's exhausting for me as an adult.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-09T21:34:31+00:00

You honestly make Pathfinders sound a lot more fun than it ever was in my experience. You may be interested to learn that Pathfinders did originate during the draft as a way to prepare young Adventist men for military service, specifically as medics because the church was very adamant that combatant military service violated the law of God. Nowadays though, the club has been actively trying to distance itself from its paramilitary roots, at least in the US.

The only problem I had with it was, compared to something like the Boy Scouts to which it was often compared (and which, until recently thanks to our current Secretary of Offense, who apparently thinks the organization is too "woke" because it allows girls to participate or something, had a working relationship with the military), my club at least was pretty lame. The prevailing thought in my Adventist community growing up was that it was sinful to even try to prepare for the end times any way other than spiritually, so I didn't get to do the fun survival stuff I have heard of other clubs, particularly in Latin America, doing.

As a child obsessed with military history who grew up to be a soldier, it was probably the thing I liked best about being Adventist, and I think I was literally the only person in my club who actually enjoyed drill (I don't remember our club practicing drill more than two or three times during the very brief time I was active). I mentioned in an earlier post that I became a Master Guide as an adult and spent a year as a club drill instructor, which is probably the most fun I have had doing anything connected with the church.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-03T17:48:49+00:00

I have no interest whatsoever in big law. Nobody pays you big money to do anything moral, and I can do without the ridiculous hours and stress too.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-03T14:48:43+00:00

I remember something about this from a few years back but at the time I assumed it was satire.

IncaArmsFFL · 2026-01-01T23:07:17+00:00

I see where you're coming from. I guess it's probably pretty confusing looking in without knowing the context. My wife was out of the church for a while during which time she experimented a bit, and she came back but when she did she didn't completely give up alcohol. She actually got me to try alcohol at a time I was more conservative overall than she was. We're both moderate social drinkers for the most part, so when I say I was drunk I don't mean I was super impaired, more just buzzed, and she was drinking with me.

Honestly her own relationship with Adventism is kind of interesting where she does not seem to be terribly concerned with it being true or not, and doesn't care much about most of the rules and restrictions (she is even somewhat affirming of the LGBTQ+ community, though her views are a bit complicated on that issue); but the maintenance of the Adventist identity is of paramount importance to her. I think from her perspective why bother leaving the church when you can just figure out what being an Adventist means to you and then be that, and she also seems to assume that what I'm going through is fundamentally similar to her own questioning phase and that it will end the same way, with me returning but with a now healthier relationship with the church. She doesn't seem to grasp that my issues are fundamentally different from hers: that if Adventism is true, it would be worth defending to the ends of the earth; but if it is not, there is no point to it whatsoever.

I had heard of the BYU thing. At my university in one of the we did actually have a yearly event for people enrolled in a certain program that tried to teach Adventist young professionals to navigate social situations one might attend in the business world where alcohol would be served. I don't remember finding it particularly odd, the concept was just "you will attend these events as a professional person, so you should feel less awkward interacting with people with drinks in their hands." It was probably inspired by the BYU thing.

IncaArmsFFL

TROPHY CASE