The North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (NAD) sponsored a counternarrative writing conference on January 9 and 10, 2023, during the NAD’s Adventist Ministries Convention. Writers were encouraged to share narratives from the perspective of historically marginalized groups to counter traditional views, according to Christelle Agboka in a report for the NAD.
So, the “dominant narrative” is said to be that “America stands for freedom and equality”; and the counter-narrative must be that America is not a country of freedom and equality. And yet, it is only in a country that stands for freedom and equality that a counter-narrative can be allowed to be voiced. That sounds oxymoronic, or, counter-intuitive, or something that makes no sense…
So does this mean the GC will welcome the counter narrative against church doctrine? Or perhaps they will include a counter narrative in the SS quarterly?
The GC is a private organization that is without “free speech”.
Perhaps the question prevailing here would be is this a country or the only country allowing freedom of speech? How is that illustrated in actual fact when we have educators being silenced, counter-narratives to the traditional sanitizing of history being banned in our schools? How is it demonstrated when demonstrations with a counter-narrative peacefully held are more reviled than those without evidentiary foundations or fact turn violent but are winked at and whisked away? You’re citing “freedom of speech” as a narrative tradition, something assumed to be as American as baseball and apple pie, so we shove it out as an established truth. But until we can sit with the discomfort of allowing our children to sit through and history educations that includes the facts of what happened, we can’t entirely claim free speech as the given that you’re claiming here.
“Facts” according to who? Current culture has a serious problem with age appropriateness. We can’t have our culture duels in front of school children and expect them not to have identity problems. That applies to gender appropriation as well.
In a country that has free speech, adults are free to question anything. Most of us grew up with a history that society deemed true. If that history was contrived, adults have to duke it out before a narrative gets presented to our kids who are not mature enough to make any value judgments.
What makes no sense is to state the “dominant narrative” to be that “America stands for freedom and equality” and then write a counter narrative that states the opposite - the salient point being that a counter-narrative could not be written in a country that is not free and equal.
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