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Record Live is a conversation about life, spirituality and following Jesus in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
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We're back with record live for another week and it's great to be joining you. I've got Zanita, my lovely co-host. hello. And we're here with Dr. Michael Campbell. Michael, thank you so much for joining us this week. It's a real, blessing to have you on. I've been reading your book.
I have heard you on a few different podcasts around the traps with our friends at the Adventist History Project, but if you could just start by introducing yourself to our audience a little bit. Perhaps they haven't,, come across your work before or aren't familiar with you here in the s p d.
What's your role and, what's your interest?
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. Uh, Jared and Zita, my background in training is as a pastor, as a historian, and so I currently serve as the director of Archive Statistics and Research for the North American Division of Seventh Day Adventist.
And my responsibility is for helping to promote how we understand our Adventist past. And, , if you ask my kids, they'd say, well, it's a kind of a boring title, but. My dad's a storyteller, so I, I enjoy finding the stories that help to bring the past to life, and that's, that's what I'm about.
Do a couple different podcasts in addition to writing and research., Sabbath School, rescue Weekly Sabbath School podcast, and then Adventist pilgrimage with my cohost Greg Howell, who is just finishing up his PhD and then, We team up with Matthew Lucio and we've been having a lot of fun with the Adventist History podcast network.
So, I love to research write, that's my background, my PhD in American religious history and,, yeah, so, here I am. I've also spent quite a number of years, as a pastor and also we spent time in a cross-cultural context, almost six years, where we were, serving as. As missionaries teaching at the seminary AAIS,, in the Philippines.
Hmm.
Awesome. I love,, that they've renamed you the storyteller. It's only as exciting and judging by your wealth of books, I'm sure you know, a lot. You, you've written this book called 1922, the Rise of Adventist fundamentalism. Um mm-hmm. Can you tell us a little bit what inspired your
book?
Yeah. Thanks Zanita. You know, part of that is,, trying to understand how we, we've had a lot of work on early Adventism, how it developed in the earliest beginnings with William Miller and Ellen White, and, and those stories are important, but kind of what happened next. And so I began with some of my. Dissertation research, that I worked on some 15 or more years ago. And on the 1919 Bible conference, which was largely about how do we interpret inspired writings. And I started out by talking about this Adventist, I, I call it a flirtation with fundamentalism, the historical fundamentalist movement, which.
At least in a North American context. I know in different countries and different parts of the world it, it may have looked a little bit different, but in that kind of specific historical milieu, did impact, Adventism, at least in North America in a very significant kind of way. And, part of what I'm I doing with 1922 is I'm following what happened next.
So, I, described this Bible conference and it's really significant. I, I argue first time you have, you know, debates, not only over inspired writings and Ellen White's writings, but this polarization between liberals and conservatives and everything else. So I'd written on that. I, I'd published and done quite a bit of work on that and, and over, , covid I guess you might say, what happens when you lock up an Adventist historian for two years?
I, I wanted to kind of start reading what happens next? How did Adventism change, what, what happened in the aftermath of the 1919 Bible conference? And so I, I really point to 1922 as the key seminal turning point, that general conference session. It's a bit tumultuous., and I, I argue that not only is there.
This sort of flirtation with fundamentalism that you see in 1919. But by 1922, Adventism had thoroughly imbibed, almost like a tidal wave. , it just kind of, Flooded, Adventism and Adventist theology. And so, that, that's what 1922 is, is what's the next part of the story. And, and so I argue that Adventist kind of created their own.
They adapted and, and they saw a significant, um the fundamentalist movement and, and kind of made it their own, right? So there's this sort of owning of fundamentalism and that's what 1922 is. That's why I say it's the rise of Adventist fundamentalism because pretty much in the 1920s, if you talk to any church leader of any substance and you ask them, are Adventist fundamentalists, They would've said, absolutely, yes, we are.
And my favorite phrases are along the rhetoric of the lines of we are the fundamentalists of the fundamentalists, we are the truth fundamentalists. So that's kind of how it got started.
And it is a natural follow on because you wrote, I guess, out of that dissertation research you've written 1919 another book.
Um, you seem to like titles that are just dates, the 1922. Was actually released, was it late last year, so a hundred years. As well. Um, so a lot of questions come about, which I think we'll get into today about why our history is important to understand our present. But first of all, there's some loaded terms here.
Fundamentalist, conservative, progressive, liberal. I think the best, place to start, perhaps today's conversation is to define, some of those terms for those of our viewers who may not. know. How to use those labels appropriately or have only overheard them in a weaponized context. And what are we talking about when we say the rise of fundamentalism?
What is fundamentalism in this context
yeah, absolutely. I was hoping you'd ask that question because I think really, the key term here is fundamentalist, cuz you say liberal and conservative. What does that mean? You know, one liberal may or may not be conservative to someone else and vice versa, so it just doesn't, some of these are very, uh, relative terms in very fluid but probably the most important term is this term fundamentalist and.
And I don't mean it in a pejorative sense in in any way. I'm, I'm a historian, so we're describing, we're being descriptive of an actual historical movement, so, In the late 19th, early 20th century that, really about the time of World War, I began to really take off. And, and you have different permutations of it around the world.
I know some people have written about fundamentalism in Canada, my family's Canadian. Some have written about fundamentalism in Australia and New Zealand, for example, but. But I'm largely focused on this American fundamentalism cause that's where our church was and that was the kind of the center of adventism, at that particular moment.
Fundamentalism is sort of conservative Christianity. Sometimes they like to use the term evangelical and again, please don't read too much into that. Cuz that's a classic, just another term for Protestant and, and in a historical sense here. Okay. And so , these Protestants or evangelicals who are worried about the church becoming corrupted, so they're worried about modernism and liberalism.
Mm-hmm. The teaching of evolution, people that are questioning the validity of miracles and the atonement of Christ and these kinds of things that was becoming, uh, more commonplace in some of the more quote unquote liberal forms of Protestant Christianity. And so they they saw themselves as embattled.
And you have to also understand World War i's going on. And so part of it is a militarization of Christianity to militantly defend the faith. It's not just saying, These other things like evolution's wrong, but we need to fight back. And my favorite phrase was, a doctoral seminar I took from, , George Marsden.
And I heard him say one time that the best way to describe a fundamentalist is an evangelical who's mad about something. So, So that's what's going on is this historical fundamentalist movement. By the way, they also publish a bunch of little booklets that are distributed by the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of copies called the Fundamentals, defending the Faith.
And that's actually where the term fundamentalist comes from, is those little booklets. And, so yeah, there's a lot of history here. , and Adventists love this because they said, well, we're not liberals. We're not gonna teach, all of these other things. We're not questioning the validity of the Bible, for example, we believe in the atonement of Christ.
We believe it's efficacious. And there's, uh, miracles did happen in the Bible. And so clearly we must be fundamentalists cuz we're defending and, and part of it this modernist dichotomy that there's only two sides, you know, there's the bad, evil versus good kind of thing. Mm-hmm. And so, um, all the literature, you see this binary thinking.
It's very characteristic of, modernist kind of worldview that, shapes a lot of these kinds of
discussions. And so that's also, that worldview is shaping the. The Adventist context. And so Adventists see themselves as thoroughly fundamentalist. Now, here's the kicker, is that within fundamentalism, within Adventist fundamentalism, it's like a scale sliding scale, , and so.
Within Adventism, there weren't like modernists, there weren't liberals in the classic sense of the term. Okay. But within Adventist fundamentalism, there's still some fluidity. It's like there was a graduated scale and you have some that are more conservative and a little bit more less. And so you have these two.
sides and you clearly see that the 1919 Bible conference, and through the 1920s, you see Adventism leaning increasingly towards a more strident kind of fundamentalism. Teaching inerrancy becomes much, much more prevalent, through the 1920s, especially by 1922. And that's. Part of what I'm trying to unpack is how did that shape Adventist Theology and Adventist ethos and and good and maybe some not so good ways.
And that's part of what I'm trying to describe in the book.
Yeah. Thank you for unpacking that. I, I looked up before this interview, I looked up on YouTube, , fundamentalism, just to see what the world is kind of saying about the word. And some things were like, you know, it came up with fundamentalism, why I left the cult, or Jordan Peterson's Radical Christian Fundamental, like all these crazy things.
And in your book it says, Fundamentalism is a good thing. And I guess I'd love to get in your mind a little bit more, like what do you think of when you hear that word?
Well, again, like anything, terms are how you define them, right? Mm-hmm. And so just like evangelical and American context right now, that's a loaded term because it has very strong political.
Overtones. And so especially when I'm talking to an American audience, I have to be very careful to use the word evangelical cuz immediately, as soon as I say that, they're thinking of current politics in America. Mm-hmm. And, um, so, so then same thing's true with fundamentalists. Um, yeah. Often associated with, maybe, Islamic, extremism , a suicide bomber or something like that, I don't know, you know, and you hear, ah, that's, they're a fundamentalist, uh, or whatever.
Mm-hmm. , and that's why I, I try to be very careful to couch these terms cuz they, they can be, just like anything, they can be thrown out there. And I wouldn't say it's a good thing. As a historian, you try to. No historians. Completely neutral. But you do try to be dispassionate, and descriptive and analyzing the things.
And, and when I'm trying to write this history here, , I would not say that fundamentalism is a good or a bad thing. It just happened. It happened. It's complex. And so we look at how it shaped our story, our history. In both good and challenging ways, ways that we should perhaps learn from. Maybe one of the more positive sides is it, it challenged Adventist to better define their identity and to come up with a statement , of fundamental beliefs.
I argue basically in my book that really the development. Of the notion of needing to have a statement of fundamental beliefs comes out of Adventist, interacting with missions and with other fundamentalist groups. So trying to that this, you know, what do we believe versus what other churches believe?
Um, I'm not sure that that's a bad thing as long as it's descriptive and explaining our beliefs. If you get to the point where you start having mean to be C Credal, you get to the concerns of the early pioneers that were fiercely anti creedal. But, but it did change Adventism, we started doing a better job, I would say, at defining our beliefs.
Now, where it was challenging I would argue, is that we begin to see the church changing and struggling in terms of race and gender. And one of my. Thesis is in the 1922 book, is how do, how do we go from a church that's largely abolitionist, very socially progressive activist to a church in the early 20th century that's largely segregated, at least in an American context, right?
And, struggling with, with, uh, issues of racism, right? Mm-hmm. So it's, it's like a reversal, right? Same thing with women. Engender, right? You have a church where there's many women that were involved in leadership and pastoral ministry, evangelism. So many different things. Um, one estimate,
I wanna share this, this sentence.
Yeah. Yeah. This is possibly where you're going, um, Michael, but it really stood out to me. It struck me as I was reading through Yeah. In 1910. Mm-hmm. , now 1910, Ellen White was still alive. Towards the end of her life. Um, she was towards the end of her life, but there were an estimated 1000 women working as pastors, editors, or church leaders within the denomination.
But by 1930 they had largely disappeared, as in there were hardly any, is the way I
read. Right. So this is the second reversal, right? So, so how do you explain that, Jared,
what happened and, and I guess part of the thesis of your book is that during that, Early 1920s period. Mm-hmm. We jumped on the bandwagon with some of the things the other fundamentalists were believing, and that was one key thing.
Literal interpretation of scripture, women won't speak, aren't permitted to speak. Yeah, that's
right. You're not allowed to to speak and suddenly you go from a church. Founded by a woman or co-founded by a woman and many other women, , to the early 20th century where women are, , largely ellipsed and,, disappear.
So it's, it's a reversal. It's a reversal in terms of race and gender and, and I would argue this is a fundamental, challenge that fundamentalism brings with it. What we believe matters and how we interpret inspired writings matters. Matters a great deal. And so this shows you, you know, when you start, accepting these inherent and these very rigid and militant ways of interpreting inspired writings, it's a polarization process.
Sometimes you can push yourself farther in the opposite direction than you realize. And, and I don't think people in the twenties realize, um, to what extent it really did change, but it did. In fact, it changed Adventism. And as a historian, that's what I try to go back and look at and do. , I didn't put this in the book, but.
Probably the most startling thing I did. I did a paper on this for the American Society of Church History, uh, uh, academic group of scholars outside of Adventism. And, I wrote a paper on Adventist in the Ku Klux Klan, cuz you actually have church leaders in those in, in Australia. I don't know. In the SPD if you know, KU Klux Klan is, is sort of, uh, this very racist kind of group that arose in the reconstruction.
Late post-Civil War period of American history, and it was meant to suppress blacks. And they used, largely religious themes and you actually have, I found historical evidence. Um, again, some of the people that were, some of the most militant. Most forceful inerrancy also tended to be some of the, not always, but tended to be.
Some good examples of this, um, frankly tended to be, racist and sexist. And so, what you believe matters. Not saying all people are, but. Again, I'm strictly speaking historically in the 1920s here. Okay. Um,, this was problematic and, it changed Adventism and so I think we have to understand and grapple with our history, grapple with our past.
And what are the ways the Adventism has changed over time? 1922. At least those were two significant ways that our church, began. You can definitely see the church is, is changing and, and struggling in, in terms of these two areas, and I think that's very, profoundly relevant for a church today is we're more global church around the world.
How do we have discussions about race and gender and do so in a constructive kind of way, right? So, We need to look at our theology, we need to look at our history and try to better understand these things that I think are, very relevant, and useful for, creating, constructive conversations.
You know, the the church isn't perfect. I'm not perfect, but, but when we see an incredible heritage, we have, um, we see in history as historians, we don't describe all the, you know, it's not always, not everything's perfect and leads sometimes. And that's one of the evidences of the inspiration of the Bible Ellen White says, is that you see that, where sometimes God's people fall short.
And as a historian of religion and historian of Adventism, we celebrate the good things, but then we also look back and say, oh, we have to pause and say that that wasn't so good. We, we, maybe we could learn from that. Hmm.
We've got a comment come through. Michael, 1922 is not only an interesting read about our church history, but it helps give meaning to what it means to be an Adventist. We would do well to learn from the mistakes of our past, and I think that's what we're, we're talking about. History seems to repeat itself.
We're we're contextualizing, you know, we're, we're going back and looking at events. A hundred years ago, but in some ways, some of those events explain the state of the church today, how things have progressed, , polarization in the church, the different camps. They're not that dissimilar. To what we, see in the pages of history that some people might say, , the, the polarization or the, the wings of the church, the elements are still there.
We're still having the same debates about the inerrancy of scripture, for example. That's a really, Key theme in your book, there's a chapter called Weaponizing Elm White, and then Canonizing Elm White. So, mm-hmm. Can you explain a little bit why that particular doctrine, first of all, in a nutshell, why was it so important to the fundamentalists, why they saw it as as very important, and then, , how that conversation developed, because officially it's not exactly our church doctrine now.
Mm-hmm. But there are elements in which we practice that doctrine. You know, uh, we, we seem to have pockets within the church that the way they live, the way they practice, the way they interpret. Is in that sense of the inherency of scripture rather than our more official church doctrines on that.
So can you just unpack that a little bit for us?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean this was the heart of the 1919 debate was how do you properly interpret Ellen White? So they're having all these different debates going on. A lot of them are debates that we would probably fall asleep. If we were to get, like, really, they were debating over that, you know, they were, they were.
And, and the same thing continues on through the 1920s. They're, they're debating these things and appealing to the authority of Ellen and White. And, and one way to do that is , um, with compilations, you start developing, that's, that's when the red books really start becoming a thing, you know? And I kind of point that out and.
One of my chapters there that you just, alluded to. And so this does become a problem because how you, reference, I mean, Ellen White wrote so much that if you, you know take a little bit here and it a little bit there, sometimes you can kind of make her lean towards your particular viewpoint and, that's the challenge, right, is then who's in control.
So, Of those inspired writings. And so you have compilations that leads to new debates, , within the church, and new challenges, right? So compilations there's still, and, you know, there are aspects of compilations that are good in that, you know, there's the aspect of convenience, but there's also the aspect of , how are they going about creating these compilations, who's making them, all of that?
And, This comes back to issues of inspiration. Now, Claude Holmes and Jess Washburn are two of the, stars of muck raking in the church in the 1920s. Mm-hmm. Church leaders like Daniels are just no good cuz they don't believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of Ellen White. And they believe Ellen White's writings are far above the Bible and that the only way to interpret the Bible was through Ellen White.
In fact, they, they talk about how the. Ellen White's writings, they are scripture to me. Someone said, you're making the Ellen White's writings into a pope. And literally was like, no, I, her writings are far beyond and above any Pope, you know, so, I mean, you just get this idea of this putting her on a pedestal hierarchy and, and these kinds of things.
When if you go back to Ellen White herself, she was always saying, my writings are a lesser light to the greater light. So it's completely the opposite. But clearly you have that kind of thing and, , again, there's some fluidity there, but there's definitely, , where Adventism tilts, you might say, towards, uh, an Adventist fundamentalism in the twenties, where that becomes the prevalent, uh, view within the church.
And that view will wax and wane through the 20th century., that's discussion for later books. Some people are asking. Well, you know, 1919, 1922. What's next? Well,, I think I will do one more number book at some point. I'm gonna get to 1925 and, mm-hmm. That the scopes trial, I found quite a bit of, uh, material about how Adventists encounter and engage with the whole evolution debate in the twenties.
Um, and then the book I'm working on right now, I'm actually gonna detour from the whole dates thing. Mm-hmm. Um, I'm really not planning on doing lots of books on dates. I just finished an Oxford handbook and I just, uh, worked on a, on a textbook on Adventist history for, for Manns. Uh, but the book I'm actually actively producing right now is a history of last generation theology, and I see a clear connection with the development of, some of these ideas of perfectionism and stuff like that with inspired writings and how they use Ellen White in the 1920s.
So that's kind of in production at the moment, um, with the. What was they called was the victorious life movement. That was a branch of sort of the holiness and fundamentalist intersect where they believed you had to have a special experience of the Holy Spirit and special sanctification in order to be perfect for the end times, especially in an Adventist context, to to live without a mediator.
And you start proof texting certain quotes by Ellen White. And the 1920s is the heyday of this particular. Notion, this idea becomes very, very prevalent. And others later will, will develop those ideas in new directions like ML Andresen, and build on that. But,, the twenties is a really rich time period and frankly, I'm having a lot of fun cuz no one's really done much, in terms of Adventist, history and theology in the twenties.
And there's just so much, rich material to mine to try to better understand. And so, uh, 22 is just kinda. A step in that process and I'm continuing to explore that.
You talk a lot about, fundamentalists and modernists in your book. And we see that each side has firm convictions, and believes very strongly about that, which we still see in the church and in broader society today.
Mm-hmm. And I guess I'm wondering, like, as you researched this, as you've thought about this, have you, as you've pondered this, do you have any ideas or any advice as to how we can become better at having these, differing opinions, uh, without getting so angsty? Because it seems like it becomes very personal all the time and, people are like, how can they think that they're crazy on either side?
Do you have any ideas about that? Like what have your thoughts been?
Oh, that's, that's where my pastor's heart kind of kicks in, right? Mm-hmm. So I, I spent a number of years in as a pastor and can still consider myself a pastor. And even though I'm in a more administrative role, and, and, uh, you know, I can think of, uh, many, uh, examples of.
Of church members. And you can think of the proverbial Sabbath school class where people have their Ellen White quotes back and forth, kind of like, I call them Ellen White grenades, you know, kind of lobbying back and forth. , and the challenge is, is that you have what I call polarization. And sometimes the people that are closest to us, we tend to push each other the farthest away from each other.
Mm-hmm. And, you know, the startling thing, In 1919 and in 1922, as both sides were far closer than either side, would've liked to have admitted. But as a, a dear friend of mine, , says that there should be an 11th commandment that thou shalt not do theology against thy neighbor. Because, you know, when we do that, we, we actually aren't listening to one another.
So my pastor's heart says that, part of what we can take away from 1919 and 1922 is the need to listen to those. Who we disagree with, especially to those we disagree with, and try to understand where they're coming from because they may have some kind of legitimate point. Um, I don't see modernism and liberalism and fundamentalism, all of this.
It's, it's not a good bad, it's not a black and white. There were two sides and one side was bad and one side was good. In history. I, I think that's, that's a oversimplification. It's not a helpful way of looking at history. I see it rather as messy and complex. It's history the way it was. And you know, there were some points the fundamentalists were concerned about, you know, they wanted to make sure that.
There was a sense of certainty in a world that was falling apart in a world conflict and everything else. So it made sense why fundamentalism appealed to them, why they needed to make sure there was a surety in scripture, right. But you can also understand why other people found that problematic, cuz as they pushed along towards inerrancy , and some people went, kept going farther, farther than any of the pioneers had and their understanding of inspired writings that it would be especially problematic for how we understand Ellen White, because Ellen White was much more flexible and revised her writing.
She didn't believe in inerrancy by any stretch. And uh, you can see why. People that pushed in that direction, pushed maybe a little too hard or too far, and why that would create, theological challenges in the church, and not just in race and gender, but in, in other aspects as well, in terms of, that kind of dynamics.
So for me, the big takeaway from this is listen to those you disagree with., especially to those you disagree, agree with, um, as I already mentioned, because, maybe we can learn from each other if we listen more and, and talk and pontificate less. Hmm.
I think that's some really good advice, Michael, and often in these conversations we like to land in that practical space.
So I'd say, to our viewers, those who are listening along today, go forth and do likewise, you know, listen to each other.
It's easier said than done. I'm preaching to myself here too, right? Know? I know. I think we all,
we all need , that reminder , from time to time. Now, Michael, , we wanna respect your time because it's very late where you are, and we really appreciate you jumping on with us.
There's a lot more we could cover, but I think at this point it would just be good to remind people to pick up your book. Um, 1922, the Rise of Adventist Fundamentalism.
And yeah, I'm sure that, , if you're interested in these topics and the history and the development, I've found it very interesting, , it's accessible history.
You've given us some good background and, so, , it's worth picking up., if you can, and I just wanna end by thanking you again for your time, Dr. Michael Campbell. Mm.
Yeah. Thank you. It's been awesome.
All right. It's been a pleasure.
I appreciate the time and opportunity.
We will catch you all next week on Record Live. 📍 God bless and have a good week.