What would you like to share about your beginnings as a person on our planet? Family of origin? Siblings? Place? Time? Best childhood memories?
My deceased father and mother were both Swedish and Irish and therefore so am I and so were my two deceased siblings. Although we were all genetically pretty much alike, temperamentally we weren’t. My father and younger brother were stereotypically Swedish. My mother was and I am stereotypically Irish. My sister, who was younger than both me and my brother, was the best blend of the two.
My mother grew up in Ketchikan, Alaska with two sisters and a brother where her German adoptive father was a salmon fisherman and her mother was a cook in a hospital. My father grew up in Tillamook County, Oregon with four brothers and four sisters. Almost all of his closet relatives were either loggers or dairy farmers or both. She earned her B.A. at Walla Walla University and her M.A. at Andrews University in English Literature and he earned his B. A. at La Sierra University, his M.A.[or M.Div.] at Andrews in theology and his DMin at Andover-Newton Theological School.
I was born in Reno, Nevada in 1946 where my father was pastoring the Elko SDA church one year after graduating from La Sierra. Three weeks after my birth we moved to Hawaii where my father did pastoral and evangelistic work for thirteen or so years. He served at Kapaa, Kauai, Hilo on the “Big Island” and Oahu where he was the pastor of the Honolulu Central Church and then a fulltime public evangelist for all the islands for two years while we lived in Kailua and on the windward side of the island.
When we left Hawaii, my father did fulltime evangelism in Northern California, Washington and New Jersey. He also pastored the Glendale SDA Church in Arizona and the Campus Hill Church in Loma Linda, California. He taught at Atlantic Union College and Philippine Union College as well. My mother taught English Literature and did a number of other things along the way including authoring and editing books and articles.
My sister was a historian and administrator at what is now Burman University at Lacombe, Alberta, Canada. My brother lived in New York City. He began there by washing dishes in a Hawaiian restaurant. He eventually bought portions of tall buildings, turned them into residential “lofts” and resold them.
My best childhood memories are associated with the church and this is probably why I decided to become a minister. As even my childhood friends who are no longer Christians agree, being an SDA youngster in Hawaii in the 1950s was much fun. The peoples of Hawaii are festive and this is as true of those who are Adventists as anyone else.
We especially relished Sabbaths during our Honolulu years. They began each week with Friday afternoon at the beach and ice cream cones on the way home. After showering off the salt water and enjoying a light meal in our apartment on the campus of Hawaiian Mission Academy, we headed to its chapel for vespers which usually involved much singing and watching the movie versions of the “Faith for Today” television program. On Saturday, it was Sabbath School, Church, potluck, sometimes listening on the radio to “Uncle Dan and Aunt Sue” and sometimes listening to young SDAs in the U.S. military who were stationed in Hawaii tell us stories about other parts of the world. Then it was to Missionary Volunteer meeting and, after sundown, back to the campus for outdoor games after which we fell into bed in our apartments totally exhausted.
I experienced my first and last theological meltdown in that apartment on the campus of Hawaiian Mission Academy when I was about ten years old. It was triggered by me sitting on the floor in the hall well past my bed time and listening to my father and some of his ministerial colleagues quietly and respectfully discussing their different views about the Battle of Armageddon. As I listened, the blood in my veins and arteries turned into ice water as I slowly learned for the first time that not everyone believed what my father did on this and perhaps other issues.
I returned to the top mattress of the bunk bed which my brother and I shared and stared at the close ceiling as my entire theological cosmos and confidence disintegrated. It was a terrifying experience and I fell asleep not knowing what I was going to do. But when I awoke the next morning and went outside, the flowers were still blooming, the trade winds were still gently blowing, the grass was still green and the sky was still blue and, although I couldn’t see them, the waves were still landing on rocky and sandy beaches all around the island. “Nothing’s changed,” I said to myself. "Everything is still beautiful!" Although I have often shed ideas for better ones, I never experienced another theological crisis.
You told me that you could never live very far from the Pacific Ocean. How did you put that? And why is it true?
Like many Irish people, I am sentimental about my childhood homes and, except for the two years when I was a student at Andrews, I have always lived in either Hawaii or California.
Your father was a prominent theological voice in our Adventist church. How, if at all, did that affect your decision to become a minister and theologian?
My father became theologically radicalized on behalf of “historic Adventism” when he was the Pastor of the Campus Hill Church. This was primarily because an Associate Pastor, who was there before he arrived, and other “Evangelical SDAs” constantly needled him. They believed that they alone were teaching the true Gospel and that he and all others were teaching false ones. He came to believe that the opposite was true and he dedicated the rest of his life to making this case as powerfully as he good.
I had decided to become a minister long before then and I and had been teaching at Loma Linda for a number of years before he came to Campus Hill. The direction of my professional life and my theological orientation had been well established for years before he became a “prominent theological voice.” But I wasn’t interested in the hotly debated issues within Adventism at the time and he was.
My father was a conservative Wesleyan and I am a liberal Wesleyan and therein lies some important differences. Yet we had more in common theologically than did either of us with Wesley’s rivals in recent Adventism. The same was true of Paul Heubach, Herbert Douglass, Graham Maxwell, Jack Provonsha, Dalton Baldwin and many others.
For instance, we all believed that the book Questions on Doctrines made too many concessions to Fundamentalism and massaged the Adventist historical and theological heritage to make this possible. George Knight, a leading philosopher of education and historian who had become an SDA at nineteen years of age in evangelistic meetings my father held in Northern California, eventually published an annotated edition of QOD which precisely pinpoints in footnotes the several places where its authors did not accurately portray the evidence. He was honest about this even though I am certain he found no joy being so.
[Knight did not get the idea of becoming a Pharisee, or the most perfect person since Jesus Christ, from my father. I know what my father thought about such thinking and it is too scatological to repeat here.]
Discussions of the human nature of Jesus are also illustrative of my theological similarities and differences with my father. We both rejected the standard Fundamentalist position that it was like the human nature of Adam before the Fall even though many SDAs have come to accept this. He rejected it because he found it contrary to Scripture and the writings of Ellen White. I agree; however, I also reject it because I find it scientifically implausible and philosophically untenable. This is why most theologians who are not Fundamentalists reject this position too. This includes people who are otherwise as different as Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg.
Who were the most influential teachers or mentors in your education and subsequent career?
I had the good fortune of studying at Hawaiian Mission Academy Elementary School on Oahu, first in Honolulu and then at Kailua, Home Study Institute which became Griggs University, Wal-Mar Junior Academy which is now Pleasant Hill Adventist Academy, Rio Lindo Academy, Pacific Union College Preparatory School, Pacific Union College, Andrews University, Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University. All of my teachers served me well, so much so that I am reluctant to identify some but not others. I am both humbled and grateful for how much they gave me and my classmates. Their sacrifices for us were incredible!
I did have one teacher who fell short. I thought then and I think now he was not well psychologically. This possibility occurred to me in the darkness of a broom closet in which he had sequestered me for being too rambunctious. I hope that in subsequent years he enjoyed a healthier and happier life.
Roy Branson at Andrews University had the most direct impact on my career as he did for many others. His classes were small because he required so much; however, he inspired many of us to continue our studies in various fields. In the course of time, he became my Associate Dean in the LLU School of Religion. He was a good friend to me as he was to many others and I mourn his unexpected death.
What theologians, philosophers, or other authors have most affected your own thought?
In SDA thought, I learned most from Leroy Edwin Froom and Jean Zurcher. Beyond that, I have been most deeply influenced by Paul Tillich and Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr, on the one hand, and Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorn, John B. Cobb, Jr. and David Ray Griffon, on the other. The first three were theological existentialists, more or less. The last four were process thinkers.
In addition to your M.Div., I understand that you earned two doctoral degrees. What were the primary reasons for such extensive education?
I never earned a MDiv. After completing eight of the nine quarters of that program at Andrews, I transferred all my credits to the School of Theology at Claremont, did a couple more years of study and graduated with a straight-through DMin.
In other words, I upgraded my basic seminary education from the MDiv to the DMin, planning from the first to get a PhD if I could. My DMin project was “Christ and Culture in Paradox: The Attitudes of Seventh-day Adventist Ministers in North America toward Participation in War.” It was based on my historical and quantitative research.
Claremont offered the first straight-through RelD. It became a straight-through DMin which was to parallel the straight-through JD, MD, DDS and so forth. I thought with some justification that it was the best preparation for pastoral ministry at the time. I was the Youth Pastor at Azure Hills for three years and the Pastor of the Lake Elsinore and Lake Perris Churches for one year and I anticipated a life in pastoral ministry even though I planned to earn a PhD if I could for my own benefit.
I never decided to become a theologian or an ethicist or an academic of any sort. As long as I can remember I have had an interest in the history of ideas just as others collect stamps, build model airplanes or do excellent photography. I thought I would be a pastor who would do some work in the history of ideas on the side and perhaps do some contract teaching.
Reading the Great Controversy as a youngster sparked my interest in the history of ideas. Another step was inching my way through Froom’s Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers. This is a good place for a beginner to start because Froom covered the early Greek philosophers as well as the subsequent theological history. Another “passage” was a summer I spent with the rest of my family at Andrews University while my parents were both studying there, probably between my last year of high school and my first year of college.
I followed a routine that summer which benefited me for the rest of my life. I spent my mornings reading whatever interested me in the James White Library. I did house-to-house work as a literature evangelist in the nearby towns in the afternoon and followed up on appointments in the evenings. Then it was back to the library the next morning to read whatever I wanted for several hours. Doing this Mondays through Thursdays throughout the summer enabled me to get a good education as well as earn some money for going back to school.
Once you said something to the effect that there is nothing more practical than a good idea. If you recall, what is the correct quote? And if you believe this, would you tell me why?
I believe and often say that there is nothing more practical than a good theory. Whether they are deductive, inductive or interactive, theories identify relevant similarities and dissimilarities and articulate formula which integrate them in ways that illuminate many others. E=MC2 is the most abstract of all theories and the most practical. Theoretical differences are often like adjacent points on a campus. Which of them one chooses makes little difference in the short run. The opposite is the case on the long run.
The more purely practical an education is the less valuable it is. The best educations interact the theoretical and the practical and it matters not where one begins; however, if one has to choose between them, one should select the theoretical.
What’s the story about your coming to teach at LLU? When was that? What influenced you to become a university prof?
Although I was pastoring in the Southeastern California Conference of SDAs, I was not wholly unknown to those in the Adventist theological community at the time because some of its members had known me longer than I can remember. Also, I had taught almost fulltime in the undergraduate Religion Department my second year as a student at the Seminary because one of its professors had unexpectedly resigned. In addition, I started attending the weekly faculty lunches of what was then the LLU School of Religion in 1970, because at that time it invited the pastors of the LLU, Campus Hill and Azure Hills church to participate. Most didn’t attend but I did. In addition, contrary to the explicit decision of the Pacific Union Conference Executive Committee, my SECC conference president, Melvin Lukens, who had once pastored in Hawaii, allowed—mandated, actually—me to continue my studies at Claremont. Yet I was a pastor and anticipated always being one, albeit one with an interest in the history of ideas.
After I had been the Youth Pastor at Azure Hills from 1970 – 1973, and pastor of the Lake Elsinore and Lake Perris churches for the better part of the 1973—1974 school year, Jack Provonsha telephoned me that a position had become available because Fred Osborn was leaving the Division of Religion to start at LLU a graduate program in Marriage and Family Therapy. When he asked if was interested, I said that I would be honored to be among those who would be considered. He said that this was my best answer because I probably would not hear from LLU again. Because I believed him, I was surprised some time later when Graham Maxwell telephoned and boomed, “Welcome to Loma Linda!” He added that he had asked Wilber Alexander to work out the details with me because he was going to be away for a bit. This was fine with me because we had known each other for a while.
Although I don’t remember it, Alexander said we first met in Hawaii when my greatest ambition for life was to be a beach boy on the Prince Kuhio stretch of Waikiki. I did know him enough to invite him to speak at my class’ graduation from PUC in 1968. We met in the LLU cafeteria, worked things out and that was that. One of our agreements was that LLU would pay the tuition and related costs for the PhD program at Claremont which I had already started. Our agreement was that LLU would give me some time off if it could. It took me eight years to finish the degree because I taught full-time except for one quarter. My dissertation was on "The Bioethical Availability of Whitehead's Philosophy."
What have been some of the best highlights of your teaching career at LLU?
One of my greatest satisfactions is that I kept a promise to Jack Provonsha. “Don’t come to Loma Linda unless you are willing to give it your life,” he said. Although he didn’t spell it out, I knew he meant two things: (a) stay as long as possible and (b) give it all you have as long as you are here. I believe that I have done both.
A second is the privilege of having 12,000 and probably more students take at least one course from me. A third was the opportunity to help establish and lead the Center for Christian Bioethics and the M. A. programs in Biomedical and Clinical Ethics and Religion and Society. A fourth was the conferences we held on abortion (1988) and homosexuality (2006) which resulted in books which contributed to the discussions of these issues throughout the denomination. A fifth was the video Interviews we did of Paul Heubach, Graham Maxwell and Jack Provonsha and publishing a selection of Provonsha’s papers and presentations. A sixth was writing a number of chapters, reviews and articles, most of which “Spectrum” published or posted on the Internet. One of my current goals is to try to locate and gather these. A seventh is my current project of trying to help the Roy Branson Legacy Sabbath School have a positive influence well beyond Loma Linda. We have had weekly Zoom sessions since March 28 as have many other groups.
More than any of these, even more than all of them combined, is the honor I have had of working with the finest persons and professionals for fully 40% of LLUH’s history. At least 30 times a year for forty-six years, making a total of at least 1,380 times, I met with my School of Religion colleagues for weekly lunches and conversations. Most of these exchanges were happy but some weren’t. Either way they were all meaningful, important and a high honor.
For nearly two decades, you were the Director of the Center for Christian Bioethics, an entity that you were greatly responsible for starting. Why did you think LLU should have such a Center? What have you found most satisfying about the Center’s work?
The purpose of any center is to bring together human, financial and other resources on behalf of projects and publications which would have otherwise been impossible. This Center has done this and it has done it well.
The first task of a center is to survive the departures or deaths of its founders. Thanks to the leadership of Mark Carr, Roy Branson, James Walters and Gerald Winslow, in the School of Religion, and Robert Orr, Debbie Craig, Gina Mohr and Grace Oei at the Medical Center, it Center has accomplished this. Keeping the more academic and the more clinical sides of bioethics together is a major challenge for centers on campuses like Loma Linda's. This one has passed this test as well and it has done so with the support of an able Administrative Committee and generous financial contributors.
In addition to developing an excellent library and publishing an effective newsletter, every Center ought to do something every week, month, quarter and year. Despite set- backs such as the recession, this one has come remarkably close to accomplishing this goal with its Clinical Case Conferences, Bioethics Grand Rounds, Provonsha and other lectures and annual conferences which are now sponsored by the Adventist Bioethics Consortium with the Center’s support.
Those who were most active in the Center’s early years---Jack Provonsha, James Walters and myself—could not have hoped for more. None of this would have happened as well as it did at the outset apart from Gwen Utt and Genie Sample who were my administrative colleagues.
When the La Sierra and Loma Linda campuses of Loma Linda University became separate institutions, those in what became members of the Faculty of Religion at LLU had a pretty clear vision of what they hoped would take place. This was the organization of its courses into Foundational [which became Theological], Ethical and Relational Areas, with a supporting Center and M.A. Program for each upon which an excellent PhD with these three “tracks” would be built. This vision was clear, simple and doable.
The process of making this dream come true has been less smooth and swift as was once anticipated. The three-fold organization of the curriculum took hold and has served well, at least until now. Although the Center for Christian Bioethics emerged first, the Center for Spiritual Life and Wholeness second and the Center for the Understanding of World Religions only very recently, all three are now in place. Thriving M.A.s in all three Areas is still a thing of the future and the organization of a strong PhD program is even more so. Opportunities abound!
What are your fondest hopes now? For your church? For your society? For the planet?
I have one and the same hope for the university, denomination, society and international community. It is that all make an “ecological turn” and make the health of the planet and its human and non-human citizens the our first moral priority.
Contemporary medicine has devoted itself for the last several decades to the development of increasingly complex and expensive interventions which benefit decreasing numbers of people and the bioethics community has thrived in large measure by exploring its conundrums. The time has come to reverse this trend in favor of simple and inexpensive interventions which benefit many. This will require much larger investments in basic scientific research and the development of much stronger schools of nursing, allied health professions, behavioral health and public health and the like.
Those who wonder about the futures of huge medical centers that offer services which many people cannot afford and many people do not want to frequent, preferring instead the neighborhood “urgent cares,” which are now sufficiently staffed and equipped, might benefit from visiting a number of once gleaming and crowded shopping malls around the world which are now empty and crumbling eyesores. This could be the future of contemporary medicine unless it changes and changes quickly.
There many good reasons for making an "ecological turn." Believing that "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof" is one of them. It is more than enough!