News

Dr Arthur Patrick
Honorary senior research fellow

Two lectures at Avondale College on November 15 invite Seventh-day Adventists to replace decades of controversy with effective understanding.

The lecturer, Dr Michael Campbell (pictured), ministers at three churches in Montrose, Colorado, USA. His lectures focused on the context, content and results of a conference held by Adventists in Washington, DC, USA, during 1919.

Three years of coursework helped Dr Campbell assemble the kit of scholarly tools he used during another three years to research and write "The 1919 Bible Conference and its significance for Seventh-day Adventist history and theology." He completed his 305-page PhD thesis in July for the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University (Berrien Spring, Michigan, USA), under a supervisory committee that included Drs Jerry Moon, Gary Land and George Knight.

The first printed copy of the dissertation, displayed and summarised at the November 15 lectures, reached Dr Campbell days before he flew with it to Australia. This report refers to both the lectures and the dissertation.

The 1919 Bible Conference was set in a watershed era as fundamentalism was rising and its prophetic conferences made an impact on North American Christianity and Adventism. The conference was epochal for Adventists, coming as it did soon after the end of church founder Ellen G White's 70-year ministry and the crises of World War I. Dr Campbell's third chapter summarises an important component of the conference.

Finally, several speakers, most notably W W Prescott, emphasised the importance of progressive revelation. Truth is progressive and Adventists needed a Bible conference to continue to mine the depths of God's Word, they argued. Adventist thinkers were feeling the pressure of a number of doctrinal conflicts that made it advantageous to discuss theological issues candidly yet behind closed doors. The 1919 Bible Conference was ultimately an opportunity for leading thinkers in the church to seek both theological unity and spiritual revival (page 101).

To read such a comment is to activate important questions. Who were the participants and what did they say? What were the "truth" issues, then and now? Did the conference achieve theological unity and revival? After almost 90 years, does the conference agenda still matter, anyway? Why has 1919 been so incendiary?

The first answer to the last question is simple: two stalwart believers who probably did participate in the conference (there is some ambiguity in the extant evidence!) soon waged a pamphlet war, claiming the conference compromised Adventism and led it toward the deadly "omega of apostasy." The second answer concerns the present. Similar charges are still being levelled by stentorian voices.

Dr Campbell's Appendix A (222-3) identifies 65 attendees, their job descriptions and ages at the time they met between July 1 and August 1, 1919. He helpfully separates the main conference, at which theoretically all 65 attendees participated, from the smaller group of about 18 administrators, Bible and history teachers who conferred after the close of the conference.

During the conference, the physical temperature was at times either "sizzling" or "stifling;" the human engagements were spirited, often frank but never malicious. Perhaps nine stenographers, including three women, attempted to record the proceedings. The stenographers could not always hear the remarks made from where they were sitting and some entire discussions (in one instance, a block of 60 pages) were deleted from the conference records at the direction of the chair (the president of the worldwide church). Dr Campbell laments on page 94: "It is regrettable that only a fraction of what could have been recorded has been preserved." But any historian is likely to be excited by the fact that more than 1300 pages of transcripts are available for study, as well as a consensus statement, articles and books written by participants, plus a growing number of historical reflections. A set of the existing transcripts is available, neatly bound in five volumes, on the shelves of the Ellen G White/SDA Research Centre at Avondale. Since similar copies are located on the Internet and in Adventist research entities around the world, Dr Campbell's oral and written reports can be read in the light of unusually rich primary documentation.

The dissertation is now added to the extensive resources in the Avondale College Library used by undergraduate and graduate (including PhD) students whose interest is in the discipline of Adventist Studies. The two lectures are available from the research centre (egwrc@avondale.edu.au) as a CD and offer a succinct introduction to fundamentalism and its impact on Adventism, as well as the 1919 Bible Conference and its outcomes. The dissertation is reviewed more fully on http://sdanet.org/atissue/white/patrick/campbell-review-1919.htm.