In 1966, the late, great folk-singer Phil Ochs joined Allen Ginsberg in famously declaring the Vietnam War over. His pronouncement occurred nearly three years before Nixon got around to pulling out American troops and nine years before the actual end of the war. In explaining this seeming foolishness, Ochs said:
the General Conference is not dead. however, it plays no part in my belief system. I read widely and study prayerfully. in that reading and study I find no relevance in the unique stance of the Genersl conference. It’s voice carries neither authority or redemptive assurance. To retitle and abstract Great Conrtrovery was an overt display of the central mind set. the public answer was no sale., To hide ones agenda under piety is a deadly game. Christ is Lord-Amen tom Z
Exclusion, shunning, marginalizing, discriminating based upon passing judgement against another is sad and it has been carried out way to often in the name of God! It is time to acknowledge our mistakes as a denomination and make amends! It is time to be courageous and take a stand and be the voice for those who are unable or not allowed to speak.
Actually this is absurd, despite the denials.
The GC lives, and thrives.
But so can San Francisco church 1.0. If you are not part of the GC (it having been declared dead by you), which I believe owns the name Seventh-day Adventist, then you can form another church with another name. You are free to do that, as anyone is. Contact a lawyer or Legal Zoom, they can set up a corporation for you, etc.
It seems kind of silly to declare the GC dead, even in a moral sense. The vote was recognized as legitimate by all parties BEFORE the vote was taken, so to declare the majority “immoral” after you lost just shows a sort of sour grapes attitude. If you felt the vote was illegitimate, you should not have worked to make it go your way, but declared Church 1.O San Francisco before the vote. You are being inconsistent here.
And if you want practicing LBGQ folk to have membership, without abandoning wrong behavior, well, at least recognize that that is outside Biblical practice, and not in agreement with recognized Adventist teaching or the gospel, for that matter (Jesus said to take up crosses as I recall). There was no debate on that issue.
The GC is dead to me, although it is not dead to every Adventist. I do not consider myself under the GC, although I remain a member of a local congregation that is officially Seventh-day Adventist. I believe, though, that our congregation gains no benefit from the GC whatsoever.
I am prepared to have no church membership in any congregation of any denomination someday when we retire and [possibly] move where there would probably not be an Adventist-related congregation where we would feel we could belong. However, I will remain a Christian, which is most important to me.
Allen, have you “abandoned wrong behavior”? My guess is that you have not. Have you, then, given up the expectation of membership in the Adventist church?
Do you not know that to be LGBT is NOT sinful? Only some behaviors?
I have asked you before how you know an LGBT person is being sinful in their behavior? Shall I ask what the intimate relationship with your spouse is? If not, then you have absolutely no right to ask any perceived LGBT person about their intimate relationships or lack thereof! Get over it.
Sign me: Always a Christian! Currently a seventh-day adventist (all lower case)
Spectrum will give anybody who is against the church ink. As a gay person who is still holding out hope, I find this kind of nonsense to be completely counterproductive. When was the last time something like this worked to do anything progressive?
“The death caused by a refusal to see God in the other and a stubborn ambition to exclude could be our death as well. Whatever future we move towards, if it is one of the gospel, it must be most interested in the plight of those on the margins. It must reject oppression and must prioritize Christian service to all.”
It is dying…in NAD and across Europe. It is not difficult to see this but one can close their eyes and pretend that Adventism is a mighty movement.
“I mean that as a vessel of the life given through Christ, as an agent of moral authority to discuss the will of God, the General Conference has worked against the gospel’s call for reconciliation and is anti-Christian. Therefore, in a very real way, the GC and its moral authority are dead.”
Morally…yes. It is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet.
@ Sterling Spence. I would encourage you to revisit your argument. This is a persuasion piece and as such needs to be factual and logical and that is not the case, which muddles your point.
You say that the purpose of Christianity is to tear down oppressive systems and that on this theological foundation the GC is dead.
First, I would argue that this is not the purpose of Christianity, although that may be the result. Christianity is not a corporate or group event, it’s an individual one; myself as an individual becoming aware of my inadaquacy and sin and finding solution in Jesus Christ and His forgiveness of me. It is then my living in Christ and my changing into whom He wants me to be. That may result in tearing down oppressive systems, but the purpose is Jesus Christ and Him crucified for me and you.
Secondly, you argue that because the GC is not about tearing down oppressive systems, it is therefore theologically dead. I disagree here also. You and I may disagree with the recent votes at the GC. We may decry how the GC handles difficult issues, but that does not make them untheologically sound. What it does mean is that you and I have a significant difference of opinion in theology and Christianity in action than do many leaders in the GC and much of the Seventh-day Adventist church around the world.
Regarding women’s ordination, the reality is that a majority of the delegates voted against it. They did so for both cultural reasons and theological ones. They have scriptures that support their point of view which they believe trump arguments about inclusion and equalness. They have a reason for their beliefs. Do I agree with their reasons? NO. But that doesn’t mean I don’t accept that their reasons are valid to them and valid in the eyes of God as they see it. In regards to LGBTQ, they have scriptures that they believe support their viewpoint. If they took a different perspective - your perspective, that would be a theological error in their viewpoint, in fact it would be sin. To denounce people (because the “GC” is people - people like my mother-in-law, who loves Jesus with all her heart - from her conservative viewpoint) because they believe differently than you is no different than their denouncing of gays, or women pastors; another sign of intolerance, both on their part and yours.
I don’t know what will happen with Adventism. It may be that people of good will and authority will encourage us as a worldwide body of believers to focus on our faith and sameness rather than our differences. To lead with love and acceptance rather than with anger and divisiveness. Or maybe not. It’s also possible that Adventism will split between conservative and liberal churches, a very painful split that like the US Civil War will pit brother against brother, parent against child as each go their own way determined that they are right and have God’s favaor and the “other” is wrong and is practicing sin. And yet, maybe that is what God intends. The Tower of Babel was in the Bible for a reason, perhaps the reason is this.
What I do know is that I love my mother-in-law and we are both Seventh-day Adventists in spite of our significant disagreements on what that means. I do not declare her theologically dead because we differ over various issues.
I was and am still irritated by the reaction of many European members to the GC desaster this summer. They shrug their shoulders and say something like: “GC is far away…” But now I realize that this also is a sign for the death of the GC.
Well, I just do not understand the problems you see. “Adventist World” - local Austrian edition - I just yesterday had studied once again with some scrutiny tells me of vast maiorities, blessings, prayer meetings, very orderly conduct - - a great harmony like the cloud filling the temple ( Hes. 12 : 3., 4.) - that is the messagethat was was presented to the readers in general.
1 Corinthians 5:11 tells me something different. It says:
“But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.”
Other versions simply use the words “sexually immoral”. LGBTQ fall in the category of sexually immoral - Romans 1:26-27 says:
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature.
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense for their error which was meet.
As for women in leadership, the Bible explicitly excludes that as well. You have to interpret the Bible in a way that denies what it clearly says in order to bypass that one.
Please. pagophilus, may I remark that - it seems to me - you just read the Holy Texts just like some bylaws of you environment ?
My suggestiion : Just read some texts of contemporary writers out of other cultures with another understanding of words in their oral or written communications.
At fouteen I just had to chamge my understanding of ancient Greek , diving into this language by six clases the week (for alltogether four years). And in tutorig other students I was successful - this is just a matter of marketing - by introducing them into a deep understanding of the context, somehow far away from just looking it up in a a dictionary.
I demand more respect to written words far away of our literal understanding - I must add : owadays literal understanding, according to some abberviated dictionairies understanding. Dive into theit complex meaning ! - That is a matter I feel respectfully obliged to ! In deep respect towards the original text. God will forgive our limited understandig - but it is our task to humbly accept our deficiencies !
Sterling is a friend, and he’s well aware of the many critical questions and thoughts I have about the entire notion of declaring the death of the GC. I think two things are worth saying publicly.
First, Sterling should be commended for having the courage to identify himself with this, and to speak about it frankly. It is usually (and understandably) assumed that students of theology at Adventist universities will seek employment within the denomination; Sterling is probably indicative of a coming trend of people who have a stake in the Adventist church, but who are not employed by it. If this does in fact become a trend, then that is actually one way that the authority of the conferences is being compromised.
Second, the announcement that the GC is dead raises the very interesting question of church unity. It has generally been churches with an episcopal structure, like the RCC or the Orthodox Church or the Anglican Communion, that understand the institutional structure and clerical hierarchy as the guarantor of church unity. E.g., for the Roman Catholic Church, we can know that the church is one when people are in communion with the bishop of Rome; the unity of the church simply is being in fellowship with him. Christian traditions that came out of the Reformation have necessarily drifted away from this, and have attempted–despite Catholic warnings of infinite schisms–to ground unity in doctrine. By and large, as the Catholics warned, this doesn’t work. And what the workings of the GC expose is that institutional structures are needed if theological unity is to be upheld. But this only means that the institution is the guarantor of unity, and when it can’t convince people to agree theologically, then institutional divisions are on the horizon. Already there are conferences that are refusing to comply with the GC. This may not mean an institutional split today, but for those Adventists who are raised in that kind of a church, dividing up the global institution won’t seem like that big a deal (or change). All this to say: the fact that the proclamation of the GC’s death is even thinkable is probably indicative of the coming truth of the proclamation. To claim that the GC is dead is, minimally, to say, “We are not in communion with that institutional body.” But to break communion is to break church unity, plain and simple.
Whether or in what way the Adventist church should remain unified is not up to me, and certainly not my burden to bear. But it’s worth noting the actual implications of what Sterling has written here, and what he and his comrades represent.
The GC is alive, in some respects enfeebled and defective, but in most others, robust and strong. It will continue to be so. Those who know how it works, works with it and within it to achieve their goals and will continue to do so.
I will take you seriously about the hardcore exclusion of women from church spiritual leadership when the church deals just as harshly, holds massive business meetings and votes to excommunicate
–all the fornicators (will there be a survey or personal interviews?)
–all those who covet
–all those church members who have anything in their lives that comes before the Lord
–all those who “rail”
–all those who overload on drink, food, or any other thing ingested that lowers their sensitivity to spiritual things
–all those who hold others hostage with their words of extortion and execute them with words and betrayals
Yup. Pago, let me know when the church gets serious about disfellowshipping and dismissing these ugly (male) sinners and holds an all-day meeting of accountability at General Conference to deal with them. Oh, and obviously, a clear reading of scripture notes that these are men (“brother”), so let’s leave the women out of this.
“Viewpoint: A Time to Mourn - The Death of the General Conference” 28 September 2015 by Sterling Spence said “The funeral is a space to heal and mourn. Funerals offer rituals of closure that prepare us for life after the funeral. In that sense, this ritual is meant to liberate us all.”
As a Chaplain in a variety of settings I have had the opportunity to plan conduct and officiate at many funeral services. In applying more meaning for this funeral metaphor, there are some further lessons to be learned. When we experience the death of someone we love, a funeral service fills several important needs. A funeral can provides for the dignified and respectful care of the person and special tribute to their life. Among its purposes, it makes us acknowledge the death, remember the life and activate support during this naturally difficult time.
We also need to acknowledge the reality that we have attended funerals for those we hardly knew, understood, did not support, or cared about. Equally important, the funeral service is not a guarantee or magic ceremony bringing a solution to all the problems with the deceased. In a perfect world, a funeral can help survivors face the reality of death, which is the first big step toward taking grief from the inside and allowing us to express it on the outside through mourning.
In a few cases after a funeral service I’ve observed celebration by the survivors who are now anticipating life without the deceased. A funeral can give friends and relatives an opportunity to express the love and respect they feel for someone who was important to them. Often, just seeing how much others care can be a tremendous help to a family in adjusting to their loss.
Brother Spence, I wish you and your friends three things:
about 24 of the 28 are boilerplate Protestant. the remaining four or five are deadly. Yet it is on those few that the General Conference has developed a feeding frenzy. Here to for it has been the third rail for anyone to point this out. Now with an ego dominated leadership, it is the main body with is in a dying mode. Tom Z
If the GC is an oppressive entity, why mourn its loss? It would be a thing to be celebrated. It’s not as if the GC changed from treating women and LGBTQ as equals into an entity that found a new determination to treat them as inferiors. I suppose that would be a death, but that hasn’t happened.
If you yourself have changed into something that is no longer compatible with the GC, then that would be your birth rather than the GC’s death. And that would, again be a cause for celebration.
One has to bracket his or her biases in order to make a fair assessment of a hot topic like this. A fellow Adventist has spoken through writing. Concerns have been raised on exclusion and marginalization which most people do not entertain in any civilized group. This platforms is more tolerant on divergent views, perhaps the only place I know where issues like these are allowed, we need that to grow, to dialogue and through participatory and cross-fertilization of ideas to absorbe what is meaningful to us.
I see our church has many problems including Women Ordination issue which is not going to die in the next 50 years if Jesus has not returned. No matter how the church decides, backlash will follow. There is no neutral ground on this issue. My concern is we should not bring WO and LGBTQ under one umbrella to advance a cause, if possible, that will taint what WO is, some are of the view that they go together, they don’t. Even though we do not have any moral right or theological right to persecute anybody because of his or her sexual orientation. We should love everybody and treat everybody with respect, including those whom we suspect that they trample on our rights and exclude us from what we need to be included in. The leaders of our church are not divine, they are still humans, in their real or perceived errors we still need to pray for them, dialogue with them and take time to reflect on the views of others as well. Adventism is not dead, that is my belief, However I don’t think everything is well with us, we can deal with our problems, deny them or dodge them. I pray we deal with them, creating sub groups because of perceived problems in the bigger group will lead to further creation of groups because as we evolve new challenges may come. Let us look to Jesus not men. Let us love all including those who differ from us in color, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.
This is factually incorrect.
If they dont want to ordain anyone they dont have to. They are responsible to decide who to ordain but they do not have authority to determine the qualifications for ordination.
If their newer Pastors want to remain at credentialed status they certainly can.
Of course that is something all together different than every Pastor in those Unions burning their credentials and getting different ones. Or if they move to a different division where the ordained credential facilitates qualifying for large government tax breaks and perks as it does in the NAD.
As to the whole so and so is dead R.I.P. thing. Would it be just as socially acceptable to spectrum if the “winning side” had made a webpage declaring the other side dead, irrelevant and only interested in spiritual things where it suits their sensibilities?
I doubt you would say it was. But should it have happened I doubt your position or arguments would be the same.