Note to Readers: This is a paraphrase for Adventists of the first part of a superb article by public figure and homesteader Dr. Robert Malone in his engaging Substack (“Malone News”) titled, “Saving Democracy From Democracy.” Credit to Malone
Something very strange has happened to Adventism. I do not mean that SDA theologians, academics, communicators and administrators suddenly have political opinions. They always have, although official church organs were generally devoid of them. What changed is more fundamental.
A large part of the Adventist elite no longer seems to believe that its primary responsibility is to teach and preach prophetically and pastorally, leaving politics aside, allowing members to reach their own conclusions. Increasingly, Adventist leaders have assigned themselves a different job. They aren’t merely in the business of redeeming souls. They are helping the political left in America move toward what it believes America and the Church ought to become.
“Protecting religious liberty” is the polite phrase usually attached to this mission, particularly since Donald Trump’s election. But it goes considerably deeper than protecting liberty of conscience or free speech. Modern Adventist advocacy has increasingly attached itself to a collection of explicitly or implicitly political causes: environmental activism, functional pacifism, racial equity (not to say equality), expansive immigration, hostility toward traditional religious morality, suspicion of patriotism, and enthusiasm for international institutions and the welfare state.
These positions differ from Adventist institution to Adventist institution, and certainly not every church academic or religious liberty leader subscribes to all of them. But taken together, they form an increasingly consistent worldview.
The problem isn’t that many Adventist elites hold these beliefs. They are entitled to them. The problem is that so many have ceased to recognize them as political beliefs at all. They have been elevated into moral truths. Climate policy isn’t a political dispute; one side is “denying science” and “despoiling God’s creation.” Appreciation for Western values over other cultural systems is “white supremacy,” “racism” and “xenophobia.” Mass uncontrolled immigration isn’t a legitimate disagreement over national interest, culture and sovereignty; opposition becomes “anti-immigrant,” “uncompassionate,” and egregiously unchristian. Patriotism is seen as bigoted nativism. Belief in a bordered national sovereignty becomes “nationalism.” Traditional Christianity isn’t simply the old, outdated moral framework; it becomes a feared “Christian nationalism.” Most everything on the right becomes a “threat to democracy.”
Once you have classified your own political preferences as morally correct and biblically prophetic rather than politically contestable, objectivity becomes almost impossible. A passive kind of censorship—that of refusing or neglecting to give alternate voices a place in the most prominent venues—ensues. Why would you give equal consideration to people who are wrong? Worse, why give a platform to people whose ideas you believe cause harm?
There is an arrogance buried inside elite Adventist advocacy that rarely gets discussed. It assumes that the Adventist institutional leaders are not merely better informed than the member in the pew, but morally better equipped to determine which political views and outcomes are biblically acceptable. The congregant becomes less a member to be spiritually shepherded than a subject to be politically indoctrinated.
That is not religion.
It is autocratic leftism in theological garb.
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Janine Colburn is a retired RN and freelance writer who lives with her husband, Keith, in Loma Linda, California. She is editor of The C. S. Lewis Index, La Sierra Univ. Press (1995), Crossway Books (1998).
