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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Seventh Day Adventists: what do you make of them?
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Yeah, I always heard them referred to as annihilationalist. Just like Roger Forster of Ichthus to name but one prominent evo ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
[ 20. January 2014, 19:01: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
Well, MadGeo, that's definitely in Adventist teaching, but I obviously haven't heard it emphasized as much as you did. Clearly, somebody was really working hard to scare the shit out of you. I know some Adventists who seem to kind of regret that they DON'T believe in hell as they'd like to consign people to it, but technically we believe in eternal death for the wicked, not torture.
I'd never heard the term "annihilationist" in Adventist circles but I guess it is accurate -- I think the big problem with a lot of the language used to describe our beliefs by outsiders ("soul sleep" is another one I hear used to describe SDA beliefs, but never used by SDAs themselves in my experience) is that they come from a starting point of assuming humans have an immortal soul, and then coming up with terms to explain what happens to that soul. Whereas Adventists don't believe in the soul as a separate entity from the body at all, so to say that it sleeps, or is annihilated, makes very little sense to us, although it can be a good way of explaining it to other people.
Further to MadGeo's point -- I wouldn't want to suggest that there is no fearmongering in Adventism, but in my experience (which is obviously just one person's experience) it tends to be attached not so much to the fate of the wicked at the judgement, as to the fate of the righteous before the Second Coming. Several generations of Adventist kids have been pretty badly scarred, I think, by tales about the "time of trouble" and the need to prepare for horrendous persecution and "will your faith be able to stand in the final testing??" This wasn't my experience personally as my very moderate and skeptical parents managed to innoculate me very thoroughly against the more extreme things I heard in church, but I do know of many SDAs who were raised in the same place and time as I was, who had horrifying nightmares about the "end times" and were afraid they couldn't possibly be ready enough, or good enough, to withstand persecution. But I think Adventists may share that in common with some other Christian groups that place a heavy emphasis on the Second Coming and "the end times."
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
[In Korea, I would say that blacks, whether from the USA or Africa, are statistically over-represented among the foreign SDAs one meets.
Very interesting - the SDAs I know back in the states are all of Korean origin, or white. Is SDA quite a large organization in Korea?
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
Trudy,
My wife didn't hear the hell(not hell)-talk either as she was growing up in the SDA church, but I sure as hell (LOL) did. Which is surprising, as I do not think of the churches I went to (all in CA) as being particularly conservative, but the schools must have been. Or I was listening very closely, or something. It has always been in the Fundamental Beliefs, to my knowledge.
The fearmongering was intense throughout my whole Adventist experience. Probably because I had the crap scared out of me at a really young age. I remember reading a tract at that time, "Now" I think was the title, that was WAY to early for me to be reading in hindsight. It was like a horror story to me.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
I think what we "hear" in church (or anywhere, I guess) is always a potent mixture of what's actually being said, what we're getting from other sources, and what's already hard-wired into our heads -- mostly from home, but maybe just by nature. Some people are a lot more susceptible to fear-messages: I'm one of the people for whom any kind of attempt to motivate me by fear (or by promised reward, actually) just slides right off me because I have very little innate orientation towards the future. So talk of either heaven or hell doesn't make a very deep emotional impact.
I once had a friend who had grown up going to the exact same church and church school as I did -- same youth group, same Sabbath School teachers, same pastor, same Bible teachers -- say as a young adult, "I never heard righteousness by faith preached in the Adventist church." Whereas my impression, based on those same years of going to church together as teens, was that they were CONSTANTLY going on about righteousness by faith. There's a lot more to what we hear than just what we hear.
I remember "Now!" If it's the same thing I'm thinking of, it was written by Merikay McLeod Silver when she was a high school student -- the same Merikay Silver who later sued a church publishing house for its discriminatory practices in paying women less than men for the same job. She's a hero of mine, though not necessarily for writing "Now!" (But again, she was something like 16 or 17 at the time she wrote it, so...)
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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the Pookah
Shipmate
# 9186
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Posted
Wow, haven't been to the Ship in ages, but seeing MadGeo & the topic, had to comment. I grew up in NYC and as a little kid would eat at their vegan restaurant Living Springs, which was in midtown Manhattan. The place was cafeteria style with a nature slide of a soothing waterfall & had a rack of pamphlets which showed harrowing end times pics. I thought they were super, I also loved the food.
30 years forward, my entire family are vegans thanks to the Adventists and their cookbooks, I was just in Budapest and ate in one of their restaurants, which was excellent and cheap and they do wonderful work with smoking cessation workshops and healthy eating, even my sceptical Italian friend loved the place. I have a fondness for the SDA due to this, Ellen White (the feminist in me loves Ellen White) my Jewish background & their Sabbatarianism. There are a bunch in my area, the American South is quite religious white and black alike and the Pentecostal, Baptist, Adventists denoms are keen to be racially mixed. I really should check them out.
Posts: 926 | From: the Northern colonies | Registered: Mar 2005
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
As for the feminist in you loving Ellen White, it's a shame that a denomination one of whose main founders was a female prophet/preacher still, 150 years later, can't get its act together about ordaining women to the ministry...but I realize to comment further on that would be to stray into Dead Horse territory.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Fearmongering is, unfortunately, to be found just about everywhere. Folks believe it is an effective form of social control. In just about every congo across a wide spectrum that I've ever had experience of, there are plenty of good, kindly, people who wrestle with that when they see it. Even imperfect love can be directed to casting out fear, rather than bringing it in. It's better when it is.
[And, peace Trudy, I also find a mixture of conservative and liberal approaches to women in many congos as well, regardless of the local "line". The conservative views are dying out in most places I know, at varying paces. But any more, as Trudy says, even from me, is worth a trip to Dead Horses.]
[ 23. January 2014, 10:16: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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the Pookah
Shipmate
# 9186
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Posted
Trudy, if it makes you feel any better sexism in religion knows no barriers, the Thai buddhist establishment refuses to ordain nuns, (the order died out and who would wash the monks clothes otherwise?). There is no women head of a traditional Buddhist sect either. It's all about power, as Katharine Schori said.
Posts: 926 | From: the Northern colonies | Registered: Mar 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
[In Korea, I would say that blacks, whether from the USA or Africa, are statistically over-represented among the foreign SDAs one meets.
Very interesting - the SDAs I know back in the states are all of Korean origin, or white. Is SDA quite a large organization in Korea?
According to this, there were 182, 070 SDAs in the ROK in 2004. That's out of a population of about 50 million(more or less the same as when the survey was taken).
So, no, not very large when compared to the overall population, or even just Christians in general(who are estimated at around 30%). But they probably punch slightly above their weight in terms of public profile, because of their schools and restaurants. They apparently have at least one university, with an affiliated medical school as well.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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que sais-je
Shipmate
# 17185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by the Pookah:
... the Thai buddhist establishment refuses to ordain nuns ...
The Buddha said his teaching would last 1000 years but only 500 if women joined the sangha. Still he did let them join, and since there are lots of Buddhists 2500 years later they obviously made a very positive contribution.
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
Posts: 794 | From: here or there | Registered: Jun 2012
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