Donald Drumpf, Presbyterian elder of the Church of Scotland, has called out Ben Carson's religion of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Now, I have some insight into this particular sect of Protestant Christianity. In full disclosure, I converted to the Episcopal Church after marrying my British wife. My mother's family was Seventh-day Adventists. They converted from Roman Catholicism a couple of generations back. Some view Adventists much like they do the more well known Jehovah's Witnesses. This is my insiders view:
They take the Bible literately and are creationists. They follow Old Testament laws such as worshiping on Saturday, the Sabbath. They do not work on the Sabbath, cannot eat pork or shellfish (some are even vegetarians or vegans), do not drink, do not smoke, have no tattoos and do not wear jewelry. Some are pacifists and will not serve in the military. They are very pro-Israel because they believe that we are currently in the End Times.
From my personal experiences growing up, I felt as though they put way to much of their life decisions and actions in their faith. Life revolves around the church and everything else is there to support the church.
Most of the congregations that I knew were African American and Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. Most were socially very conservative but fiscally liberal believing in public social programs to alleviate poverty.
A very odd thing I remember about them from my youth was that some were very suspicious of other Christian churches and some would refuse to even enter another Christian church even for weddings or funerals.
4:29 PM PT: Wikipedia article on Seventh Day Adventists, https://en.wikipedia.org/...
5:20 PM PT: Almost forgot, the religious movement was the result of a weird episode in American history called the "Great Disappointment".
https://en.wikipedia.org/...
6:44 PM PT: Another factoid: Malcolm X was a Seventh Day Adventist before converting to the Nation of Islam in prison.
http://blacksdahistory.org/...
Tue Oct 27, 2015 at 2:10 PM PT: From the comments:
* [new] It's been a while since you've been inside (1+ / 0-)
I, like Ben Carson, am a Seventh-day Adventist... we are both ordained elders in the church. Other than our both being black that is the extent of what we have in common.
There are persons in the church, primarily Caribbeans and Africans who learned their dogma from white missionaries with all of the humorless rigidity that goes with that. But there are some corrections that need to be noted:
They take the Bible literately and are creationists.
There is a contingent that is trying to make it official church doctrine that we believe in a literal 6 day creation of recent origin; the majority of the church has shot it down the last two General Conference sessions.
They follow Old Testament laws such as worshiping on Saturday, the Sabbath.
I do observe the Sabbath from sundown friday to sundown Saturday...because I choose to do so. Plenty of denominations are coming back around to the idea that putting the world on pause for one day out of seven is something beneficial; under the NT paradigm I can choose any day as that one... and for me it is the Sabbath. OMMV.
They do not work on the Sabbath, cannot eat pork or shellfish (some are even vegetarians or vegans), do not drink, do not smoke, have no tattoos and do not wear jewelry.
It is the policy of the Seventh-day Adventist church to promote a vegetarian lifestyle; many try to do that and many do not....and, as quiet as it is kept, there are Adventists who smoke, who drink, who eat shellfish, have tattoos and wear jewelry. It's a guideline, not a mandate and it makes no soteriological difference one way or the other. Let every one be convinced in his own mind, as the Apostle Paul put it.
Some are pacifists and will not serve in the military.
Some are; many are not and have served like me or are currently serving like my daughter who just made Petty Officer First Class in the Navy. Senate Chaplain Barry Black is a lifelong Seventh-day Adventist who prior job was Rear Admiral, USN and he was the Navy Chief of Chaplains.
They are very pro-Israel because they believe that we are currently in the End Times.
Not quite. The Seventh-day Adventist church's eschatology is not dependent on Israel and does not embrace the dispensational model. There were some who freaked out when the Pope showed up a couple of weeks ago, though. That said, there is a large contingent of Adventists, primarily of european-american extraction that desperately longs to be evangelicals and they have a tendency to take evangelical positions on things and vote republican. That contingent has held sway over the church since 1921 and because of them the church has come down on the wrong side of pretty much every civil rights issue of the last 80+ years including forcing the segregation of Adventist congregations universally in the early 20th century and creating a separate and unequal system of church governance that placed black churches in their own conference so they would not have black church administrators having to rule over white folk not unlike what was seen in the Methodist, Baptist and Pentecostal denominations...and now they are down to 2 remaining bastions of prejudice... women's ordination and gay marriage...two things that much of african-american Adventists support and embrace.
In a nutshell, Seventh-day Adventists are like every other denomination; it has it's progressives and it conservatives and those who wait with anticipation future progress, in this world and in the world to come and those whose chicken little act is generations out of date...in short it's Barry Blacks and it's Ben Carsons... like every other Christian denomination.
Fear doesn't just breed incomprehension. It also breeds a spiteful, resentful hate of anyone and everyone who is in any way different from you.
by awesumtenor on Tue Oct 27, 2015 at 12:34:17 PM EDT
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