March 19, 2024
Loren Siebold, Editor of Adventist Today, explored this question at length, with his characteristic style and substance, in this magazine’s 2024 Winter issue. The title of his essay is “The Shrinking of My Fundamental Beliefs.” It is well worth reading and pondering. Some practical observations of my own follow. Although he might not agree with what I say, I intend my remarks not to challenge but to supplement what he wrote.
Here is a precise and concise answer: We must believe as many of the “Twenty-eight Fundamentals” as the local congregation to which we belong or hope to belong expects. Nothing more and nothing less, this is it
Local congregations in our denomination have the sole and whole authority of determining who is a member in good and regular standing. Although other individuals or groups may pressure them and often do, the final authority is theirs and theirs alone. Local congregations should take this authority seriously and exercise it responsibly.
The administrative structure of our denomination is honeycombed with many checks and balances that prevent any person or group from having too much power. They work well when everyone does what his or her position requires. They don’t work well if people don’t do what their positions require or if they do what other positions require. These boundary violations are equally frequent and destructive.
Believing all of the “Twenty-eight Fundamentals” does not guarantee that local congregations will accept us. Not believing all of them does not guarantee that they will reject us. Local congregations consider other factors as well and they should.
Like most other Christians, we SDAs are rightly more patient with heretics than we are with schismatics. It is one thing to disagree and another thing to destroy. We should tolerate the first as much as we can and the second as little.
In the actual lives of many local congregations, “belonging” often depends more on “behaving” than on “believing.” By “behaving” I do not mean our personal lifestyle choices, important though they are for other reasons. I mean being positive participants in the congregation’s life. This includes everything from supporting it financially to happily chatting while cleaning up after potlucks. In appropriate times and places, it also means explaining our personal beliefs as persuasively as we can without attacking other beliefs and those who hold them. Discussions are good because in them everyone can win. Debates are bad because they require losers.
Being denied church membership does not mean forfeiting denominational employment. These are different questions that must be decided by different persons or groups. SDA institutions in North America employ thousands of people who have never been SDAs and never will be. There is no justification for treating former SDAs worse than we treat them.
We are talking about SDA church membership and not eternal salvation. Many will enjoy both; however, not all SDA church members will be saved and not all those who are saved will be SDA church members. Matthew 25 could not be clearer about this.
Many SDAs around the world do not understand all “Twenty-eight Fundamentals,” let alone believe them. I don’t know how many of the several hundred members of the global governing Seventh-day Adventist Executive Committee could write a 1,000-word essay on the 2300 Days Prophecy on a moment’s notice with no preparation.
A Statement of Beliefs is a creed when it is brief enough for people easily to remember, when congregations regularly recite it in worship services and when in its present wording it is used normatively about what members must believe rather than descriptively about what the vast majority of members actually do believe. The “Twenty-eight Fundamentals” are none of these.
One does not become the member of a Seventh-day Adventist congregation in order to experience eternal salvation. One does this because one wants to associate with people with similar views and values and because one wants to cooperate with them in combating destructive doctrines and practices.
John Calvin famously wrote in the first sentences of his 1559 AD Institutes of the Christian Religion that all of our [theological] knowledge is about God and about ourselves and that we cannot speak about one without speaking about the other because they are unbreakably linked. We SDAs share with other Christians some distinctive views about God and some distinctive views about human nature that we officially link in distinctive ways. For example, we connect our denial of the inherent immortality of the human soul with our emphasis on God’s love rather than on God’s sovereign power in our adamant rejection of the idea of hell as endless conscious suffering.
When we speak of John Calvin, we know that his theological descendants will never forget Michael Servetus, a physician who first detailed human pulmonary circulation, whom he had burned alive because of his disagreements about the Trinity and baptism. When we think of Martin Luther, we know that his theological descendants will never forget his hateful essay Against the Jews which is widely credited for being one of the factors that contributed to the European Anti-Judaism that resulted in the Holocaust. When we think of Roman Catholics, we know that they will never forget the Inquisition which arrested about 150,000 people and killed at least 3,000 of them for “wrong” beliefs or practices of one sort or another. When we think of ourselves, we know that we will never forget Ellen White not telling the whole truth about the help she received and the sources she used. We are not responsible for what she did; however, we are responsible for what we do with what she did. We have yet to do enough.
Pay no attention to those who compose short or long lists of minimal denominational requirements and tell us either to comply or leave. As one organizational psychologist observed to me, they have decided to threaten us until our morale improves. It isn’t working so far and there is no reason to think that it ever will. Our SDA church membership is between us, God and our local congregations. We should admit no one else into this sacred triad.
If your local congregation is giving you a difficult time and is not likely to stop, transfer your membership to another congregation where the “fit”: between you and it is better. If your congregation will not cooperate with you in transferring your membership, withdraw it and join another congregation by “Profession of Faith.” If you have difficulty accomplishing this, please email me at [email protected] and I will put you in touch with a helpful pastor.
Some want to quit SDAism; however, rather than deciding to leave and accepting responsibility for what they decide. they want to be pushed out as a victims or martyrs who can complain about it for the rest of their lives. Don’t do this. Be an adult. Move on. Do so cheerfully. Never forget that God’s steadfast love endures forever!