This week on the Adventist Voices podcast, historian Michael W. Campbell talks about his new book, 1922: The Rise of Adventist Fundamentalism. We discuss General Conference leadership, Ellen White, creationism, and the continuing problems around hermeneutics.
Adventism began as a fringe apocalyptic movement that grew out of the Millerite movement, itself an apocalyptic outgrowth of American Christian conservative Protestantism. Adventism could never be termed progressive or liberal in the truest sense of the word from its outset. Maybe not as fundamentalist in its ethos as later on. But, the seeds were already there to respond to the wider movement in the 20th c. Iow, Adventist fundamentalism didn’t just pop up out of nothing in 1922. The conditions, however pronounced or latent, were already there within the denomination.
Frank
Michael Campbell talks early on about Des and gets him completely wrong. He didn’t come from a perfectionist Adventist background. He published on righteousness by faith in 1952, and he fought Bob’s old position, something the church was grateful for at the time. Bob wrote an article called Who’s Following Who? about this, and noted that it was the Review in the 1970s that followed his perfectionist views of the 1960s and not Des. The gospel of justification by faith is not an extreme position except when described by those who misrepresent it. Bob changed his direction around 1970 after talking to a Catholic priest and realising Adventists were Tridentine and semi-Pelagian on R by F. By the 1980s Bob was moving away from that too. I point this out because Michael is a historian and like others in the church he ought to get his facts straight. I concede that it’s only a minor point in his article.
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