One of the most puzzling aspects of the current political scene is the Evangelicals’ support for President Trump. They form his strongest and most enthusiastic base. Some have even likened Trump to King Cyrus, the Persian king who came to the aid of the Jews after they were taken captive to Babylon.
An excellent summary history.What troubles me is the pro active support of several€Adventist friends who are vocally strong supporters of Trump.
Back in March of 1970, Neal Wilson had this to say about Adventists and Abortion:
“Though we walk the fence, Adventists lean toward abortion rather than against it. Because we realize we are confronted by big problems of hunger and overpopulation, we do not oppose family planning and appropriate endeavors to control population.”
Religious News Service, Mar. 17, 1970, pp.
16, 17.
I’m not agreeing that Adventists tend to see abortion as an appropriate form of family planning to combat overpopulation, but this statement from Neal Wilson is part of our history and it is a far cry from an American Evangelical position.
Okay, I am genuinely disturbed by this piece. Johnsson describes one of the most unjust and cruel aspects of history when he quotes Yancey as follows:
“Especially telling was Yancey’s argument from Jesus. In Jesus’ time, unwanted babies were thrown out and left by the roadside to be devoured by wild animals or die of exposure. Among both Romans and Greeks, older men openly took young boys to be their sex slaves. Yet Jesus spoke not one word of condemnation of these vile practices, although He must have been aware of them. His message was all about grace.”
One would think that Johnsson would then say something about how the Adventist Church should stand for the children being separated from their parents at the border, combat modern slavery, rise up against hunger, stand for justice for the least among us, etc. One might not expect him to take a pro-life position, but there’s no argument that no Christian should stand idly by in the face of the abuses he describes.
But instead Johnsson takes the OPPOSITE approach and says, essentially, that because Jesus did nothing, we shouldn’t either other than apparently use that example to offer the sex traffickers and rapists and child separators “grace” and try to see things from their perspective.
I’d like to think that Johnsson is outside the mainstream of Adventist thought on this, but he’s not. While there are a few Adventists who care about social issues and making the world a better and safer place, most Adventists are sitting on their hands in sequestered pews doing nothing but offering “thoughts and prayers.”
It’s why I’m really thinking of leaving the church - even moreso than the church’s lack of tolerance toward women and the LGBTQI community. When it comes to most Adventists reflecting what God would do, the danger isn’t being overly active as Johnsson suggests. The danger is being a church full of inert duds.
Johnsson reported what Yancey had written, correctly noting that Jesus is not recorded as having made an issue of these things. But I don’t see the author suggesting that therefore we should abandon social justice.
It could also be noted that many SDAs no longer accept the traditional anti-LGBT+ position.
Johnsson uses the Yancey quotation to justify contemporary silence on abortion. Provonsha definitely did not speak for most Adventists.
It is indeed puzzling seeing any Christian supporting an individual like Trump. I only wonder what happened to the moral and ethical code that I was raised with within Adventism? Was it all “fake” at that time???
The reason many people voted for Trump, whether they were religious or not, is because the alternative was Hillary Clinton.
Any takers?
Over here we are not allowed to vote in your election. (Didn’t they have an investigation into that?) In fact we can’t even donate to the candidate of our choice.
Where is “over here”?
Not in the Untied State of America
This piece is dead on the mark. I don’t agree with Neal Wilson that Abortion should be used for population control. But it is easily provable that Abortion in the bible is not murder. This belief that it is killing a human being stems from the fact that 99% of Christianity believes in an immortal soul, which is easily disproved in the bible.
Read Numbers 5 and you will see that either the priest or God, chemically causes abortion…strictly on the basis that a husband suspects that his wife’s pregnancy may not be his. Look at Exodus 21:22-25. You will see that killing a fetus requires paying a fee to the father, but killing a child that is born deserves death. Genesis 2:7 shows that when we take our first breath we BECOME a living soul. Also Ezekiel 37:5 reconfirms that. The very definition of Soul in both Hebrew and Greek is a breathing being. The bible even says animals have a soul…something Evangelicals would go nuts over if you pointed that out.
Most Evangelicals believe that God has a whole warehouse of souls in heaven, since they must have always existed, just like God. Their belief is predicated on the belief that we are created in God’s image so we must be immortal, and have existed forever. They say that by aborting a fetus, we are thwarting God from putting one of those souls he is storing in heaven into that body. This is the crux of their belief against abortion. Although most lay people don’t know enough to argue this point.
Please spare me the text in Jerimiah 1 about knowing you when you’re in the womb. If you throw that out, then you’re going to look pretty foolish with the text in Ephesians 1 where it says that God knew you before the world was formed. If you’re still standing firm on that, then you must have had a very long gestation period.
I am opposed to using abortion as a means of population control, but the very people who are most adamantly against abortion also oppose birth control. How stupid is that? George W Bush halted the dissemination of birth control and contraception to African nations after he took office, and we saw a huge rise in AIDS on that continent. Then he sent our tax dollars to help those infected with AIDS, which I commend him for. But everyone would have been far better off is he simply had continued to send condoms to the African
Continent. I’m sure all the AID’s victims would have preferred that to being on the cocktail for the rest of their lives.
Abortion isn’t pretty, and almost no one is pro-abortion. But it is necessary in cases of rape, incest, young child pregnancies, and where there is danger to the life or health of the mother. And, unlike that idiot Senator from the Midwest. You do get pregnant if raped, just like if you were a consenting partner.
It amazes me just how much people’s opinions change if it is their daughter who is pregnant and unwed.
Hi Bill,
Thank you for your comments and expressing your concern as related to your present understanding of church state matters.
I notice you choose to use 4 questions and amplify your present understanding of them:
I suggest you also as Neal Wilson evaded the question in practice concerning EGW not in a declared principle but practice.
So these are the Evangelicals I am concerned with and how the SDA church has related historically to them. I am not concerned with the many groups who may now consider themselves evangelicals though out side the 4 parameters above. So thats my history and question to you. In practice if there is a disagreement on doctrine in the SDA church is it decided by sola scriptura or EGW?
How did they become Trump’s strongest supporters?
Ok, Lets start back with Liberty and Roland Hegsted. Was it FEAR that promoted that Sunday Laws and the violation of the 1st Amendment was going to take place. Continually under Hegsted and Steed the mantra was that the “moral stands” of Evangelicals were nothing more than the desire to build a Christian Nation. Their desire for morality for the good of the country was not supported by SDA’s in that context but the FEAR of a Christian Nation that would enforce Sunday laws.
So Bill, which Evangelicals do you want? The one’s who “then” supported morality in public office or the present ones? Or, are you and SDA’s ike the children in the market place who say we sang a dirge and you did not mourn and we played a flute and you did not dance?
Trump offers Christian Evangelicals the hope their 1st Amendment rights will not be ignored. You know those despicable, deplorable ones…including conservative Evangelicals! A “moral vote for Hillary?”
So, That’s how the vote for a “flawed leader” following earlier SDA thoughts that guarantees their, of all things religious rights!
Evangelicals’ dramatic change of attitude toward Adventists
As, I said modern terms of Evangelicals do not apply. Most who use the title no longer hold to all 4 of your above described that Walter Martin did.
I suggest to them the “question mark” still remains as raised by Martin!
Are Adventists Evangelicals?
So William, do SDA’s hold the Bible as the final authority? If their is a disagreement is it sola scriptura or EGW’s view that settles the question? The decisions against Des Ford solved the problem for many long term SDA’s because In practice they do not hold to Sola Scriptura.
So Bill, would Ted Wison stand up at the World Session and state and explain this SDA’s official position to all SDA’s present?
The official position can be found on p.13 of Seventh-day Adventist Believe …27." 1988 Ministerial association. Perhaps with the 28 it has changed? It states, “Finally, the Scriptures retain authority even over the gifts that come from the Holy Spirit, including guidance though the gifts of prophecy or speaking in tongues. The gifts of the Spirit do not supersede the Bible, indeed they must be tested by the Bible, and if not in accord with it they must be discarded as not genuine.”
I suggest to Walter Martin type Evangelicals and myself, the answer is appropriately still certainly not clear!
Enough of hypocrisy questioning the Evangelicals. Get you own house in order Ted & William!
Regards,
Pat
Another provocative, pertinent piece by a writer whom I greatly admire!—William G Johnson.
Johnsson did not allude to the Evangelicals overwhelming support of Israel. Trump confirms them in this, with his ardent support for Israel, as demonstrated by his moving the US embassy to Jerusalem— long promised by former presidents but never achieved.
Trump’s anti Iran actions and his other Middle East policies are in line with his support of Israel and Netanyahu — Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East and does deserve the support of our US administration . I am not sure why the Evangelicals are so pro Israel,
but I applaud their stance.
The Adventists seem to have neither a pro nor anti Israeli agenda.
Dr Johnson, you allude to the widespread practice, in Biblical times, of heterosexual Greek and Roman men having “ boy toys” adolescent / teenage male slaves for their sexual pleasure outside of the marital bed .
Many current Biblical scholars are in agreement that Paul’s homophobic comments were addressing this practice. What a shame that Paul was not more clear in delineating the activities he was condemning.- boy prostitutes and not loving same sex monogamous unions.
Because of Paul’s admonitions against male on male sex, the Evangelicals are vehemently, vociferously and venomously, homophobic — despite modern medical / psychological / psychiatric understandings that sexual orientation ( whether heterosexual or homosexual ) is an inborn attribute over which the individual has zero input.
As you state, despite this demographic of LGBT being undoubtedly present in Christ’s time, our Savior declines comment on it,
Given the demographic fact that 4-5 per cent of the population is LGBT — every extended family has at least one cousin / sibling / child / grandchild who is gay / lesbian, ——the Evangelicals response to the problem is troubling —. they prescribe life long celibacy for their LGBT offspring ( which equals life long LONELINESS )
While Adventists “ sit on the fence “ regarding the abortion issue, our current denominational hierarchy is actively anti gay
They threw our LGBT members under the bus when they recently opposed the congressional EQUALITY ACT. In many US states, gays / lesbians can be fired from their jobs, merely due to their sexual orientation —over which they have zero control.
Gays / lesbians can also be evicted by their landlords from housing , and can be denied low cost public housing, if they are gay — this without any legal recourse, in many states. The EQUALITY ACT was designed to eliminate this egregious inequity.
Since employment and accommodation are surely necessary to the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS ( as guaranteed to ALL in our constitution ) what were our SDA leaders thinking when they opposed the Equality Act??
Just as Evangelicals espouse coercive légal agendas to impose their beliefs on a wider non Evangelical, non Christian population, the Adventists do likewise. Even the Pacific Union Conference Religious Liberty Secretary ( who should have known better ) promoted proposition Eight, in California , which would have denied LGBT same sex marriage rights.
More recently, the SOUTH PACIFIC DIVISION was in active opposition to same sex marriage in Australia,
thus imposing their doctrinal views on Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, Atheist gays / lesbians as well as on other Christian Protestant gays whose denominations held a more liberal view of marriage.
As equal taxpayers, LGBT surely deserve all the tax / estate / financial advantages that legal marriage confers. . .
Finally, TW’s largest “compliance “ committee is committed to a witch hunt against our LGBT members.
The Evangelicals must surely be applauding all these homophobic actions by our SDA hierarchy!
Interesting article. @webEd Correct spelling is Eric Metaxas
Eric Metaxas is an American author known for three biographies,
Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery,
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, and
“Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World”
-# 1- And would do it again.
Has Donald Trump ever lifted a finger to help anyone in need beyond his own immediate circle? He has never fought to end poverty, or worked for the rights of the disabled, or helped to improve our schools and hospitals, or make sure veterans are well-supported, or that the elderly have access to affordable medicine. No record of public service to speak of. Isn’t Christianity, above all, about love? How can these hardy Evangelical Christians support a man who mainly sows hatred?
Wherever “here” is, at least you probably don’t have to be ashamed of having Trump as your President.
I know, some people are proud of him despite his fake morals, but this is one of those things I do not understand about human behavior. How can Christians support a depraved individual like that?
Oh,… they do that because they are “pro-life.” 
However, most of those are the same people who had no problem with, for instance, the Iraq war where we lost about 5,000 of our best troops, got tens of thousands of handicapped, and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. This is not “pro-life,” this is actually “pro-death!” And they are talking about abortion?..
Though that gang has been quiet. I never heard of any completed hunting mission so far. I wonder if TW realizes that if he hunts he loses the next so-called “election” for GC Presidency. He may be keeping the action for after the so-called election. Who knows?
Ditto!