Loading...
Larger font
Smaller font
Copy
Print
Contents
  • Results
  • Related
  • Featured
No results found for: "".
  • Weighted Relevancy
  • Content Sequence
  • Relevancy
  • Earliest First
  • Latest First
    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents

    Conclusions

    It has been reliably reported that in 1958 a white Seventh-day Adventist church in California took action by which a young physician was refused membership because he was a Negro. This local church action referred to a “long standing policy of the denomination, following the counsel of the Spirit of Prophecy, to maintain separate churches for the colored and the white members wherever possible.” 1W. S. Lee, “Integration and the Regional Department,” General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Regional Department, mimeographed, p. 4 This church actually felt that it was following the counsel of God in excluding the black physician from membership.EGWCRR 115.1

    The action went on to quote a statement from volume 9, page 215:EGWCRR 115.2

    If you see that by doing certain things which you have a perfect right to do, you hinder the advancement of God’s work, refrain from doing those things. Do nothing that will close the minds of others against the truth. There is a world to save, and we shall gain nothing by cutting loose from those we are trying to help. All things may be lawful, but all things are not expedient.

    It is hoped that this book makes clear that such action involves misunderstandings of the writings of Ellen G. White. First of all, even in volume 9, Ellen White does not say that separate churches are to be the plan “where possible.” This would imply that she favored separate churches unless they were impossible. Rather she said that separate churches were to be maintained “where demanded by custom or where greater efficiency is to be gained.” 2Testimonies for the Church 9:208 This would imply quite the opposite—that she favored separate facilities only where it was impossible to have integrated churches. But aside from this, the statement quoted in the above action was first offered in the report of the interview at Armsdale campground in Australia which, as has been pointed out before, dealt primarily with the question of whether Negroes should be instructed to labor on Sunday in the South. 3For the statement quoted in the action, see The Southern Work, 70, 71, and Testimonies for the Church 9:215. It was embodied in 1908 by Mrs. White as part of materials she was preparing for volume 9.EGWCRR 116.1

    Probably the most important conclusion is that “those we are trying to help,” of whom Ellen White speaks in The Southern Work, and also in volume 9, were black people. Although she did speak of the necessity of caution in order that the work among white people might not be hindered, an equally important reason for her statements regarding the separation of the races, the color line, and “social equality,” was to protect Adventist work among Negroes. These statements were given at a time when agitation over the color line would have been met by violence and bloodshed in many places in the South, and where such action would have closed up Adventist work among Negroes, because of the prejudice of whites.EGWCRR 116.2

    When this historical background is forgotten, only the statements concerning the effects of integrated facilities on the effort to reach white people are noticed, but this was not the only, or even the most important, reason for Ellen White’s counsel concerning separate facilities.EGWCRR 117.1

    Ellen White believed, basically, in the essential equality of the Negro and the Caucasian. Her counsels regarding separate church services were given, not on the basis of any belief in a “natural law” forbidding such contact or on the basis of a belief in the supposed inherent inferiority of the Negro, but because of conditions in a country mired in the depths of its deepest pit of racism.EGWCRR 117.2

    The apparent inconsistency between her early statements, that white people had no license to exclude Negroes from their places of worship, and her 1908 statements that separate provisions be made can be explained then only by the rise of racial tensions and segregation during the intervening years, and by Ellen White’s conviction that extreme caution must be exercised in order to prevent the closing of the Negro work entirely in the South. She hoped that it would be only a matter of time until the Lord “shows us a better way.”EGWCRR 117.3

    The beauty of her position is that even though she observed the country moving more and more toward segregation and subordination of the Negro, she still refused to lay down a definite line to be followed in every place for all time, and made clear that her counsel concerning separate facilities was a temporary expedient. That expedience was necessitated by the force of law and the threat of violence, loss of life among Ngroes, and the abrogation of the opportunity to work among all classes of mankind for whom Christ, the Prince of heaven, gave His life.EGWCRR 117.4

    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents