Seventh-day Adventist Church

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a Christian denomination that arose in the United States in the mid-19th century; the vast majority of its membership today is outside the U.S. It observes Saturday, not Sunday, as the Sabbath; believes that the Second Coming of Christ will occur soon; and is deeply involved in medical education and missionary work.

History

The church's roots were in the Millerite movement, led by Baptist lay preacher William Miller, who predicted that the Second Coming of Christ would occur on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement (October 22), 1844. When the date passed without incident, some of Miller’s followers re-interpreted his prediction as meaning that Christ had, on that date, entered “the Most Holy of the heavenly sanctuary” where he would begin the mystical process that would eventually result in the Second Coming. This group, which also observed Saturday (the seventh day of the week) instead of Sunday as the Sabbath, became more formally organized during the years 1859-1863, choosing the name “Seventh-day Adventist Church” (which is now a registered trademark).

One of the most prominent leaders was Ellen Gould White (née Harmon; 1827-1915), whom the church recognized as having a “gift of prophecy” that confirmed the church’s status as the “remnant” of believers – the term comes from Revelation 12:17 – that is, the few who truly keep God’s commandments in the world’s end times. Her prophecies also led the church to take up worldwide proselytization, medical education missionary work, and vegetarianism. White’s prophetic role, however, along with other differences, made some other Christians wary of Adventists, with some of them regarding the church as a “cult” rather than as a fellow Christian denomination.

Another early Adventist leader, though he broke with the church later, was John Harvey Kellogg. The brother of breakfast-cereal manufacturer W. K. Kellogg, he helped establish an Adventist sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1866, where the church also established a medical missionary college in 1895. But John Kellogg, a spiritual seeker who disagreed with much Adventist orthodoxy including White’s prophetic role, was “disfellowshipped” by the church in 1906.

Kellogg retained legal control over what had been the church’s medical and educational institutions in Battle Creek and elsewhere, so in 1909 the church founded a new medical school under its own control in Southern California, which has grown into the present-day Loma Linda University. The Loma Linda brand of food products such as vegetarian “sausage” and “bacon” also traces its ancestry to this period of the church’s history (although after several changes of ownership over the years, the brand is, coincidentally, now owned by the Kellogg company).

Structure

The Seventh-day Adventist denomination has a hierarchical structure based on geographical location. Officers are elected representatives chosen by delegates of their constituency; hence, authority in the church comes from the collective membership of local churches.

The local church is comprised of individual believers. Each local church is governed by a church board, which includes the pastoral staff, selected volunteer church members, and ex officio persons (whether or not their membership is with the local church) such as the principal of an affiliated school. Each local church holds a business meeting at least once a year, wherein every church member is permitted a vote on the church budget and other timely issues. Each church has at least one pastor; some large congregations have several pastors, while several small churches in a geographical area may share a single pastor.

A local conference consists of local churches within a designated geographical area. The local conference appoints pastors to churches in its territory, and those pastors are paid from the tithes collected in that local conference. If a local church board wishes to have pastoral staffing in addition to those appointed by the local conference, they may hire out of the local church budget.

A union conference consists of several local conferences in a geographical area. The union conference issues licensure for clergy appointed within its territory, with reciprocity in all other union conferences.

The General Conference, governed by a president and executive committee, coordinates and advises activities all over the world. Headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, the General Conference has 13 designated geographical regions each governed by a president and executive committee. The General Conference publishes a Church Manual, which local churches are encouraged (but not obligated) to follow.

Each of the four levels may include auxiliary organizations, such as schools, hospitals, publishing houses, and mission agencies. Church infrastructure may be owned by the union conference, the local conference, or the local church. Some auxiliary organizational infrastructure is owned by the General Conference; however, as a coordinating body, the General Conference does not directly operate any local church or own any local church infrastructure.

Every five years, delegates from all four levels of church governance gather to elect General Conference officers and to consider issues facing the denomination. Between the quinquennial sessions, urgent issues may be addressed by the Executive Committee in Annual Council, held every October.

This complex structure is intended to provide denominational cohesion of beliefs and practices while still allowing for local variances.

Services

Seventh-day Adventists observe Sabbath from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday. Typically, but not always, formal worship services take place on Saturday morning. Services usually consist of music (including both as individual performance and with congregational participation), prayers by designated persons, the collection of voluntary offerings, and a sermon.

Sabbath School takes place either before or after the regular church service. Sabbath School groups are divided by age range from infancy to teenage; adult Sabbath Schools are divided into small groups as the local church sees fit. Unlike the formal church service, Sabbath Schools are often led by laypersons, and attendees are encouraged to participate in discussion. The General Conference publishes a quarterly study guide, for optional use in Sabbath School discussions. However, many Sabbath School leaders choose alternate curricula.

Each local church celebrates the Lord's Supper (or Communion) four times per year. Participation is voluntary, and open to all believers; however, some local congregations still restrict participation to baptized members of the church. This celebration consists of the ordinance of humility, in which participants ceremonially wash one another's feet as demonstrated by Jesus in John 13:1-17. This is followed by the emblems of unleavened bread and "wine" (for which unfermented grape juice is employed, as Seventh-day Adventists shun alcoholic beverages). Typically, a piece of unleavened bread and a small cup of grape juice is handed to each participant; the participants remain seated while an ordained or commissioned pastor or ordained elder leads the congregation in prayer. Then, at the leader's prompt, all participants consume the unleavened bread at the same time. This sequence is then repeated for the wine.

Membership

Local churches set their own requirements for membership. In general, a person must be baptized by full immersion, after they have demonstrated an understanding of church teachings and affirmed agreeance. Some local churches admit to membership by profession of faith a person who has previously been baptized into another denomination. A person is considered a member of a local church; if that person chooses to affiliate with a different local church, they may request a transfer of their membership, which is granted upon approval of both congregations.

If a local church board finds a member to be irretrievably in violation of Seventh-day Adventist principles, they can vote to disfellowship that member. In general, this prevents the person from serving in any capacity at any level of the denominational hierarchy. Although there are specific reasons why a church board may consider disciplinary measures, there are no fixed standards for which a person must be disfellowshipped; the choice to disfellowship a member remains at the discretion of the local church board and is a rare occurrence.

Current beliefs

Beginning in the 1960s, some Adventist scholars had begun to point out what they said were historical and scientific inaccuracies, as well as possible plagiarism, in White’s prophecies, leading to a downplaying of some of the differences and a lessening of tensions between Adventism and other evangelical Protestant denominations.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the church has also moved closer to other evangelistic denominations by de-emphasizing strict, legalistic obedience to biblical commandments as the way to salvation in favor of justification by faith. It still, however, observes Saturday as the Sabbath, advocates avoidance of foods classified as unclean in the Bible (so that even non-vegetarian Adventists still refrain from, e.g., pork and shrimp), and teaches that there is no soul independent of the body and no Hell, but rather, that the dead are in a state of unconsciousness from which they will be reanimated either at the Second Coming (in the case of the “righteous”) or at the end of the world a thousand years later (in the case of the unrighteous, after which they will be permanently annihilated). It has also reaffirmed, in 2004, its official belief in a literal six-day creation and a rejection of evolutionary explanations of life.