Former Adventist Survey done in 2011

[This is a guest post by Sandy Snelling Whetmore]

During the summer of 2011, a closed Facebook group of former Adventists began thinking about the idea of a survey. New technology had allowed us to find others who had experienced similar journeys out of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and we had lots of questions for each other. We carried on long online discussions about our shared experiences, memories, doctrinal beliefs, and questions. Some of those threads went on for several days with new-found friends asking for clarification or objecting to statements they found inaccurate. The group was a source of encouragement, discovery, and acceptance.

Several of us also participated in other similar groups where some of the same topics kept coming up. At one point, some of us landed on the idea of compiling specific questions that we thought would be helpful to explore in a formal survey. We saw this questionnaire as an opportunity to discover what we as a group might have in common and find ways to support others. We began to list possible questions and collaborate on the wording.

The budding project coincided with the beginnings of my doctoral research. Since I’d determined that I would be using Survey Monkey to collect data for that study and had access to the service, I thought that some practice using the technology would be helpful. So I volunteered to head the project: keeping track of ideas, formatting the questions and responses, entering the text into the template, collecting the data, and writing a summary of the results.

One question that nearly everyone in the group wanted to include was the most basic one: why did you leave the Adventist church? Time after time, as new friends joined our online group we heard the same story, “I’m not mad at anybody: they’re just wrong.” We kept hearing from the church leadership that former members left because they were angry. But that just didn’t seem to be true of any of us. Consequently, we designed that question in such a way that participants were asked to choose “the primary reason I left.” And none of us were surprised that 86% of the 270 participants chose, “Doctrinal differences: disagreement over what the church teaches.” (8% reported, “I just didn’t care anymore,” and 6% did choose, “Hurt feelings/anger with another person or group.”)

We posted the link November 6, 2011, in several former Adventist Facebook groups and asked those who chose to support the project to share it with others who might be interested. Our survey included three sections: questions about membership, demographics, and doctrines—where we asked participants to rate their level of agreement with each of the 28 fundamental beliefs and comment as they wished. Those details were enlightening. We shared the results in a .pdf file with those who asked to see the findings.

When the Eight-Day Freedom project came to my attention, I was curious about what questions this team had asked participants and whether their findings were similar to those of our 2011 responses. As I answered some familiar questions, I noted many insightful new ones. Yet the basic conclusions of both surveys seem to be consistent.

I found an email address for Tom Arcaro and attached the summary of our research with a short explanation. After an interesting conversation, he asked me to share some of that background here. We’ve speculated that there will be some differences over the intervening 12 years. Much has happened in the world and much has happened in Adventism. But members continue to leave the Seventh-day Adventist church and many of us are looking forward to discovering what motivates them to brave the challenge.

If there are questions or responses to the post, I’ve been able to resurrect the old email address as a contact for those interested.  (FormerAdventistSurvey@gmail.com)

Here is a pdf of the 256 page analysis and discussion of the data.

 

[Updated 4-30-23]

Comparing data from the survey: update on Portuguese version of the survey

Some numbers
Live now and being spread by our Brazilian colleagues for just over a week, the Portuguese version of our survey has 129 responses. Combined with the English language version (n=950) that makes a total of 1079¹ respondents to date. Although we expect many more respondents before we close the surveys on June 1st, the preliminary results are quite interesting.

What I’ll present below are just a few glimpses of the quantitative data thus far, comparing results from both versions of the survey. At this point we can begin to present the ‘what’ but can only offer conjecture as to the ‘why’ behind these numbers. Please allow me to share some beginning thoughts about these data, starting with the demographic makeup of the respondents, and then onto even more interesting numbers including the ‘cult’ question, psychological abuse, and, critically, sexual abuse.

Who is taking the survey and what do they look like?
In this first table (Question 1) we see a significant difference in responses between how the Portuguese and English speaking populations describe their current relationship to Seventh-Day Adventism.

English speakers selected “I consider myself a Seventh-day Adventist” only 3% of the time while in the Portuguese version that number is 13%.

By as considerable margin -77% compared to 52%- English speakers were more likely to choose “Ex-Adventist: I have left the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. I no longer pay tithe, no longer participate in governance or management. I do not follow Adventist rules in my personal life” 

While only 7% of the English speakers chose “Believing Ex-Adventist: I still follow the doctrines and teachings of the original founders, but I have left or in some way been separated from the formal structure and community” nearly four times as many -27%- Portuguese speaks chose this option.

 

Different demographic characteristics?
From the data below we begin to see that the Portuguese speaking respondents are more likely to be female (68% compared to 55%), somewhat better educated (21% PhD/Post-graduate diploma compared to 16%), significantly younger with a large majority being Millennials (72%!) as compared to only 37% in that same category for the English speaking respondents. Not surprisingly, the Portuguese version being circulated mostly in Brazil has a much higher percentage (39% compared to 24%) indicating ‘non-white’. [Please refer back to an earlier post discussing this variable.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fewer atheists in Brazil?
In Q13 we offered a forced choice question helping us to see how our respondents described themselves. More than twice as many Portuguese speakers (81% compared to 40%) chose “Christian, but not Adventist”. While the English version respondents were open to checking either the Agnostic or Atheist choices (56% total), the Portuguese speakers were far less likely at 15% to choose either of these descriptors.

Less angry toward Adventism in Brazil?
The numbers below seem to indicate some differences related to holding anger or resentment toward the Seventh-day Adventist Church. As we get deeper into our analyses perhaps we will be able to get a clearer sense of why these differences appear to exist and how they are correlated to other variables such as time spent in Adventist schools and universities, gender identification, race, and levels of both psychological and sexual abuse experienced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How does being an Adventist -or an ex-Adventist- impact various perspectives?
Question 34, “Have your political views changed since leaving Adventism?” is one that I personally will be keen to watch as we approach the next election cycle here in the United States. We are seeing a clear macro-level trend toward secularization across the globe and including most religions -Adventism being no exception. For more details and description of this trend read Dr. McClearn’s ‘s blog post on the decline in religion from a couple weeks ago.

Declining numbers of believers coupled with the trend that those leaving religion get more liberal makes these numbers a potential game changer in politics both globally and here in the US. And given that politic views are highly correlated with other social perspectives, these data are particularly important for me as an academic who has been studying and teaching about social justice issues my entire career.

So, at least at a first glance the numbers from Q34 are quite clear: most people who leave Adventism change their political views, becoming more liberal, though slightly less so in Brazil among Portuguese speakers.

 

 

 

Other views related to end-times teachings
As someone who studied and teaches about global social problems, I find the data below concerning. As you can see below, on Q35 most respondents in both the English (76%) and the Portuguese (61%) checked “End-times teachings perpetuate an indifference regarding the climate crisis and other environmental concerns.” Then on Q36 “How do you think Adventist teachings about end-times impact most believers’ opinions related to social justice issues like racism and women’s rights?” the same trend continues with the the English (64%) and the Portuguese (73%) respondents indicating “End-times teachings perpetuate an indifference related to social justice issues like racism and women’s rights.”

According to the Pew Research Center nearly 4 in 10 Americans believe “we are living in the end times.”  Our research indicates that those believing in end-times are dramatically indifferent about major issues facing humanity.

Not unrelated, our data show a sizable majority of the respondents using both versions believed their critical thinking skills e.g., awareness of scientific knowledge, were diminished while a member of the SDA. Combining “A great deal” and “A lot” the numbers are nearly identical for the the English (61%) and the Portuguese (60%). Astoundingly, only 14% on the English version and 9% on the Portuguese version indicated “Not at all.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mental health after leaving Adventism
One main goal of this survey was to explore impact of the journey departing the Adventist Church, hence the title for this blog, Eight-Day Freedom. One of our hypotheses going into collecting the data was this ‘freedom’ would be beneficial. Question 38 asks,“With regard to your overall mental health and quality of life, which below best describes how you feel?” and the responses from both versions are similar. Combining the first two responses, “My overall mental health is much better now that I am no longer an Adventist” and “My overall mental health is a little better now that I am no longer an Adventist” we see an overwhelming majority of the respondents -English (81%) and the Portuguese (74%)- feel their mental health is better after leaving Adventism. Here is what one respondent wrote in the comment box² we provided for this question:

“As an SDA, I experienced significant levels of peace, love, and compassion for others. As an unbeliever the levels of all three have increased. I am now happier, more kind to others, and experience a deeper sense of peace and love.”

Another added,

“I feel that I can be much more honest about my beliefs now. Much less cognitive dissonance.”

The ‘cult’ question, again
In an earlier blog post I presented data indicating most survey respondents viewed Adventism as a cult. The contrast between respondents on the two versions here is stark. Where 61% using the English version strongly agreed or agreed only 28% of the Portuguese respondents felt the same. Why there is such a difference may have to do with how the word ‘cult’ is translated and nuances of meaning and connotation associated with the concept.

 

 

More to come soon
I will be updating this post in the next 24 hours with some data on the questions related to psychological and sexual abuse within the Church.

In the meantime, please contact me at arcaro@elon.edu with comments or feedback.

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¹Dr. Brandner, the quantitative expert on our research team, assures us the numbers of responses we have even just to this point are large enough for fairly robust statistical analysis.

²Many of our questions provided space for respondents to elaborate on their answer. These qualitative data will be presented in more detail in future blog posts and in our final analyses.

Our survey is now live in Brazil, translated into Portuguese

 

Survey translated into Portuguese
Our research team is excited to announce that our survey has been cloned and translated into Portuguese. This major contribution to our research effort was made possible through the work of André Kanasiro, editor and founding member of Zelota magazine. Thanks are due to senior staff at Spectrum Magazine¹ for brokering this connection.

Here is part of the conversation I had with André as we worked on the translation:

Tom: Why you wanted to get the survey translated and live in Portuguese?

André: I saw the news on the survey as told by Spectrum Magazine, and then I just knew we had to bring it to Brazil. Adventism in Brazil has massive evasion numbers (approximately 1.5 million people left the church from 2011 to 2020, while 2.2 million joined), and has a highly centralized, hierarchical leadership who is increasingly occupying administrative positions in the General Conference.

Tom: How you will reach out to ex-SDA Brazilians -and other Portuguese speakers globally- who you think may be interested in completing the survey?

André: We will reach out to Brazilian and Portuguese speakers through Zelota magazine, an independent Adventist journal we founded two years ago. We will also contact other social media profiles that may be interested in sharing the survey with its public.

Tom: How you think the survey will be received Brazilians?

André: I think it may trigger passionate reactions from both sides: while many ex-Adventists and Adventists who do not agree with the church in everything are more than willing to speak up, many conservative members and leaders are deeply disturbed by new ways of bringing transparency and accountability to the church’s doorstep.

Here is the translation from the Instagram announcement:

If you are a former Adventist, believe in Adventist doctrines outside the institutional environment, or are part of the Adventist world without believing or practicing all Adventist beliefs, this survey was designed with the objective of getting to know more closely your profile and your life experience. It is part of a project led by a small teaching team at Elon University, in North Carolina, USA, which, in partnership with Zelota, intends to disseminate the questionnaire in Brazil and Latin America.

The goal is to discover, from former Seventh-day Adventists, what led people to leave the Adventist movement, what the experience of leaving was like, and what life has been like since they left. There is also an interest in capturing responses from those who no longer believe or practice but remain part of the Adventist system, whether within the formal structure or simply as part of the community of Adventist believers. The plan is to leave the survey open for about three months, in order to capture responses from as many former Adventists as possible.

The research will be available until June 1, 2023. Preliminary results will be published, over time, on the project blog (indicated on the research website), and later transformed into a set of scientific articles. Other analyzes and comments can be found in Zelota magazine and on the websites associated with the project.

Link is in Bio!

Responses are coming in now … from across the globe
As of this writing the Portuguese version of the survey has been live less than 24 hours and already has 70 responses. The 100% completion rate is exceptional, the same as the English version. Respondents are averaging less that 31 minutes engaged with the survey.

The English version currently has 858 responses from all over the world. Though mostly from the United States and Canada, we have respondents from all regions of the world. This blog is being accessed from all of the locations indicated by this map.

The survey in both versions will remain live until 1 June 2023. Please encourage those who have not yet taken the survey to share their voices. Here is the link for the English version and here for the Portuguese version.

Thank you
Thanks to the staff at Spectrum Magazine, André at Zelota Magazine, and to the now over 900 respondents who have shared their stories and opinions on the survey thus far. Our journey processing all these rich data has just begun. In the short term, we will continue posting ‘data teasers” and comment, but in the long term we plan at least 2-3 academic articles and several public scholarship essays discussing the results. Please bookmark our EighthDayFreedom blog for information and updates.

If you have any comments or questions I can be reached at arcaro@elon.edu.

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¹The Research Team was interviewed by Jeremy Gray at Spectrum Magazine. You can listen to the podcast here.

“Adventism only seems to reward certain people–affluent white cis men and those they deem worthy to be elevated.”

-Alyssa

Alyssa’s story

The phrase ‘qualitative research data’ sounds impersonal and void of humanity, but what we as researchers know and respect is that each word shared is coming from a real person with a voice, a face, and a heart. As I read through the copious and generous comments written by each respondent I am humbled by the openness, awed by the passion, and saddened by some of the heartbreaking comments.

After taking our survey one respondent felt a need to speak more about her experience with the Adventist church and sent us a direct email. Alyssa’s story is her’s to share and, with her permission and encouragement, we invite you to read her words, many of which -both in tone and content- are repeated by her fellow respondents. Please note that the words in bold are my emphasis, not hers.

Alyssa starts,

Hello! 

After taking the survey yesterday, a lot of memories resurfaced and I realized my survey responses weren’t very concrete, and the more I thought about it the more I realized I left out a lot! 
 
For some context, I was born into a multi-generation Adventist family but didn’t start going to an Adventist school until 4th grade. I think I’m extremely lucky because my parents were just going through the motions of being Adventist, and really carved out a life that pushed against the boundaries as much as they could while still in the system. But even having liberal, open-minded and supportive parents, the schooling system was strong enough to really cause some damage. 
 
I don’t want to dump this on you and your research team, but after reading the Eighth-Day Freedom blog and seeing some other people’s comments and experiences, I felt like I should share some specific examples of things that, in hindsight, are a form of abuse or just really disappointing experiences in general:

• • My parents chose to put us into an Adventist school because academically, it was the best school in the area. I found out in college that kids who’d gone to other Adventist schools really struggled with a number of subjects, which led me to believe that my school had been a bit of an outlier. That being said, the way religion was taught at this school was deeply problematic. 
  • In 1992, when I was 9 and in the 4th grade, my first year at an Adventist school, we were told that Adventists are a persecuted religion and at any moment we’d have to run and hide in the mountains from the government, taking only what we could carry like the Waldensians of Switzerland. This gave me nightmares for years. 
  • When I was in the 7th grade, our religion textbook said that we’d be rounded up in internment camps and just before we’d be gunned down by machine guns, Jesus would come. More psychological trauma and fear. Our teachers wouldn’t directly teach us this but we were assigned to read it any way. 
  • We  were also taught that if we were faithful to Adventism, we’d be saved from death (but not persecution) because we were the chosen people. Jews were not considered chosen any more because they’d broken their covenant with God (according to more than one teacher). 
  • In Jr High we were strongly influenced into signing abstinence pledges 
  • Even though Adventists don’t believe in the rapture, we had a high school religion teacher who was from the Philippines who quasi-believed in it and showed us the “Left Behind” movies at the end of the school year. 
  • Colleges require worship, either once a week or multiple times a week. If you don’t do it, you’re eventually expelled (you could only miss a certain amount). There was no trust at all about allowing people to be adults or grow their faith in their own way. College became a chance to grow intellectually in some areas but not in others. 
  • At one point in college, I was told that yoga is bad because it’s a religious practice that invites the devil in. I remember realizing at that point that Adventists from all over the world are wildly different and while I grew up in a pretty ‘liberal’ area (we went out to eat on Sabbath and few people thought that was bad), there are a lot of Adventists that sequester themselves into highly controlled communities and cast a lot of judgement on others. College was definitely an eye opener on just how diverse Adventism is and between these experiences and how my home church behaved toward my family, just how toxic it really was for me. 
  • The Adventist church changed a lot in my teens and twenties, so much so that my grandparents commented on it before their deaths in the late aughts. The pivot toward evangelical services and less “old-school” community-based church services was pretty noticeable, and now it seems deeply right-wing in ways I don’t think my grandparents would recognize.
  • The overt and covert sexism in Adventist culture is something I try to forget. It was constant and relentless, and between that and seeing how sexist secular culture was like in the aughts, there was just no way to win as a young woman growing up. The older I got the more evident it was that my value as a woman was tied to whether or not men found me desirable enough to date or marry, and being single well into my 20s, it was very clear that I’d never find an Adventist guy worth being with, nor would I want to be with one. My friends and I talk a lot about how generations of girls and women have been so damaged by being linked to a conservative religious group. It’s heartbreaking.
  • Adventism only seems to reward certain people–affluent white cis men and those they deem worthy to be elevated. They’re the ones that matter the most to the structure of Adventism, the church, and to the community. It’s very clear that everyone else matters less and less the further away you get from those qualifications.  If you don’t fit whatever desirable mold is in place in that moment, then it can’t be much of a surprise when people drift away.
  • Nothing about the Adventist education system prepares a person for life outside of Adventism. I mentioned this in the survey in the last question that professionally, it was a huge challenge to not be within the Adventist system, but it was a challenge socially as well. I remember feeling almost stunted when I left college because so many people I met at my first couple of jobs just had way more life experience than I’d had–not just sex and drinking, but they read different books, felt at ease with various people of different backgrounds, and engaged with the world so easily. I eventually caught up but it took time and it was a pretty isolating experience. 
  • With the exception of some academic pockets, it felt like there was almost a systemic lack of curiosity about the world and the rest of society. I commented in the survey about political apathy and apolitical stances, but it was alarming how many American Adventists did not care about the world around them–about wars being fought in their name, about political decisions made on their behalf, or about America’s place in the world in general. This was frustrating for my family since so many people we socialized with just cared about the Adventist community around them and Adventist politics. Because we didn’t really feel the same way, I know people thought we were smug. This wasn’t as true for the European Adventists I’d met, but my experience going to an Adventist college in the UK was seeing how much less of a bubble Western European Adventists live in. 
  • None of my immediate family is Adventist and hasn’t been for ~20 years. We’re all a lot happier, though we carry our own scars. 
  • I think being an older millennial meant that I missed a lot of potential validation online, because social media didn’t really exist until I was in college, and it seems like a lot of dissatisfied people eventually found support in online spaces, which is really commendable.

I still have friends I made in college, and my best friend since the 7th grade. None of us are Adventist any more. One still goes to church from time to time but she married an atheist. . We all feel like we missed out on something, or that at the bare minimum we had a really steep learning curve in our 20s, figuring out how the world outside Adventism works. My few friends who are still Adventist have become “Christmas card friends”. 
 
My husband is atheist and grew up Episcopal. His church experience was limited to Sundays and was mostly enjoyable but he never felt that God was real. He jokes that I grew up in a cult and is always amazed by the “super weird and totally bonkers” Adventist beliefs that aren’t found in mainline Christianity. I went to an Episcopal church for a while, and even a United Church of Christ to see what it was like–both of which had women as their spiritual leaders! It was a peaceful experience, but it ended up making me feel a little sad because they seemed so normal. Ultimately, I think I’d burned out a part of myself on religion. Those other services were enjoyable but I was afraid to get involved or in too deep because of what I experienced within an all encompassing Adventist religion that was so corrosive. 
 
Lastly, the sheer fact that when Adventists speak about other people they say “non-Adventists” is a huge red flag! It’s Adventists, and non-Adventists. I’ve met a lot of people who were just

ifiably very salty about this–that Adventists lump other Christians or monotheistic faiths in with other religions and atheists. The vocabulary of Adventism is designed to separate its people from the world, just as its institutions are designed to self-sustain a community under the pretense that it’s above everything and everyone else. 

 

I think one memory from college helps back up this feeling of Adventism not being a good fit: In early 2006 I worked for the school paper at one of the colleges I attended, and I interviewed a couple administrators on the future of Adventism. I remember there had been a lot of discussion around that time about The Church numbers and millennial church attendance, but one administrator I spoke with wasn’t concerned. He explained that there was always a drop in attendance after young people graduate college, but then they would start having kids and they always came back. This talking point has stayed with me because it felt like there was asense of inevitability that The Church doesn’t really have to change or evolve because once we start having children, we’ll want to replicate the lives we had growing up (there was no addressing people who don’t have children), and Adventism offers consistency in a changing and uncertain world. I imagine for some people that sounds wonderful, but for people hurt by the actions of those within the church, or by The Church doctrine and structure itself, it’s hard to justify staying when it all feels increasingly at odds with how people really live and interact with the world. 

I think this is why I don’t really let myself think about Adventism too much–it deprived me of a lot of peace, joy, and opportunity and reflecting on it doesn’t lead to anything productive–at least it didn’t before taking this survey.

If you feel that using any of this information would be helpful, please do so. I apologize for dumping this on you and appreciate you taking the time to read it all! lease let me know if there is anything else I can do to help with your efforts. 
 
Best Regards,
Alyssa 

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Thank you and an invitation
What Alyssa shared is a deeply personal story and I thank her for her generosity and candor. What I know from her and others is that taking the survey can spur many memories which can be both painful and difficult to wrestle with. Sharing these memories can be cathartic even if (or especially if?) just sharing them anonymously on a survey.

I opened this post with a statement from Alyssa which particularly struck me, “Adventism only seems to reward certain people–affluent white cis men and those they deem worthy to be elevated.” I have devoted much of my time in the last few years developing and talking about the concept of critical Hydra theory (CHT)¹, and what Alyssa points out in her statement affirms the basic premise of this model, namely that all of the privileging forces emanate from one source -toxic othering. Although this specific comment from Alyssa only references class, race, and hetero/cis normativity, the other heads of the Hydra can also be inferred. I invite you to learn about CHT and how religion has been used ever since the rise of mono and poly theisms a few thousand years ago to normalize the marginalization of ‘others’ including women, the poor, and POC, among other ascribed statuses. If you care to jump down the CHT rabbit hole click here.

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¹Critical Hydra theory is inspired by and in many ways based on Critical Race Theory (CRT).

“As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life.”
-sociologist C. Wright Mills

Respondent 666

The Mark of the Beast
As we neared 600 respondents I joked with my collaborators that I wanted to feature the six hundred and sixty-sixth person who chose to complete our survey. This person of course would have no way of knowing they were the 666th respondent and there is absolutely no scientific significance to this number. That said, there are many layers of cultural richness around the Mark of the Beast and the interpretation of ‘666’, to be sure, and my thought was perhaps we could explore one of those layers as part of our exploration of the data.

As sociologist C. Wright Mills told us long ago, a good social scientist must “wallow around in the data” and so I have been spending a good deal of time reading through all the comments generously offered by our respondents.

Until today I had forgotten about the idea of a ‘666’ post but when I happened upon this respondent I was struck by a coincidence.

Q28 asked, “To what extent do you hold anger or resentment toward the Seventh-day Adventist Church?”

Of the close-ended response options they¹ chose “Very angry and resentful.” In the comment box they wrote,

“I’ve seen so much BS and injustice working for the church. It is just toxic at all levels. I’ve seen such unChristian behavior towards pastors. The lawyers run things more than theology. Historians know prophetic interpretation (such as 666) is totally bogus, but the same old evangelistic series are preached, using the same old texts. Adventism is schizo.”

The next question, Q29 asks “Do you or have you struggled with any of the following, whether as an Adventist or ex-Adventist? (Check all that apply.)” This respondent selected the following from the options:

Acting out sexually: promiscuity, sexual infidelity, high-risk sexual encounters, excessive consumption of pornography, etc.
Depression, anxiety
PTSD, C-PTSD, religious trauma

Yes, you read that right. Quite randomly our 666th respondent mentions the teaching of the mark of the beast, ‘666’ and then indicates struggling with “PTSD, C-PTSD, religious trauma.”

Digging deeper
Q33 asks “To what extent did your experience as an Adventist impact your political views?” Number 666 chose “A great deal” and in the comment box argues that Adventism has drifted to the right, dramatically so.

“The Adventism I learned from “the pioneers” was very progressive and social-justice oriented. But white           Adventism today has swallowed evangelicalism and rightwing political views. Trumpism as a disease has infected white Adventism.”

Digging deeper into in response to Q34 “Have your political views changed since leaving Adventism?” our respondent chose, “Yes, I have become a great deal more liberal” and explains,

         “This started while within, because of the social justice witness of early Adventism and the Black church.”

In the next question, Q35, we asked “How do you think Adventist teachings about end-times impact most believers’ opinions related to the climate crisis and other environmental concerns?” Number 666 chose “End-times teachings generate greater concern regarding the climate crisis and other environmental concerns.” However they qualified their response noting that,

“The official statements of the church express concern about climate change and the environment. But Trumpist Adventism doesn’t care.”

We see the same theme continue in response to Q36 (“How do you think Adventist teachings about end-times impact most believers’ opinions related to social justice issues like racism and women’s rights?”) where this respondent agrees that “End-times teachings generate greater concern related to social justice issues like racism and women’s rights.” They argue that,

“Again, this is true for SDA pioneers and Black Adventists and some institutional Adventists. But white Adventist churches or state conferences are thoroughly Trumpist.”

Having read countless other responses from our survey I can confidently observe the above responses and comments are by no means outliers; they seem in line with the majority perspective represented by our now 700+ sample.

Given the above responses from this individual, their choice of “strongly agree” on Q40 “In my opinion, the Seventh-day Adventist church is cult” was no surprise. Then went on to comment,

“The institution itself is increasingly cultic, and the right wing fringes have long been there.”

For further discussion of the ‘cult’ question you can read this previously published post.

Still learning from Mills
That more fundamentalist religions in recent years have embraced a more conservative political stance is well documented by many researches. This most recent rapid drift has many sources. ‘The Beast,’ as anyone educated in Adventist schools should know, is the institution of the Papacy. But looking at the responses from respondent number 666, it is tempting to find an analogue in the rise in modern Christian white nationalism and Trumpism specifically. Of course the Church does not does not officially endorse Trumpism. But according to at least one former Seventh-Day Adventist, the movement is already ‘infected.’

The quote from Mills above was written seventy years ago and seems to have anticipated the shape of the religious right today in the United Sates. “It [religion] does not denounce; it adapts” he wrote. For moments in the last century what was called ‘liberation theology’ seemed to contradict Mills’ prophecy, but in the US cooptation of religion as a political force has borne out his words. Mills teaches us always to be critical and to never shy from speaking truth to power. Many of our respondents have asked that we use the results of our survey do just that, advocating for a reversal of a perhaps seemingly toxic drift within Adventism in the last decade or so. Or, as respondent 666 observed, “Adventism is schizo.”

Please contact me if you have any thoughts, comments, or questions. Know any ex-SDA who have not taken the survey yet? Here’s the link.

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¹In order to maintain utmost confidentiality I have used the pronoun ‘they’ throughout.

‘Social believers’ among our survey respondents

Social believers
While researching and writing about atheists a decade ago, I began using the term ‘social believer.’  Those people in the pew next to you who don’t believe in god but come to church only conform to family and community expectations? Those are social believers. In the vernacular of ex-Adventists, these individuals are commonly referred to as PIMO or ‘physically in, mentally out.’

It was sociologist Judith Butler that popularized the idea that gender is performative. I will posit that perhaps, for example, sexuality is as well. There are many social heterosexuals among us who live a heterosexual lifestyle, getting married and even having children, all while doing so only for social reasons, in their authentic self being attracted to those of the same sex. Sexuality is performative.

So, is religiosity performative and if so to what extent? Here are the current results to the first question on our survey, “What is your current relationship to Seventh-day Adventism?”

As you can see from our data above, nearly 12% of our respondents could be described as PIMO or social believers. Though the wording our response options is not precise, I will argue that we are not far off the mark in helping to capture an important phenomena. I feel confident in saying that the number of Seventh-day believers is far less than the number of people in the pew and those on the official records. How far less is impossible to say given the  impossibility of looking into people’s hearts and minds.

Mark 9:24
How many of any religion in their hearts actually believe in the teachings of their religion or in their god … or any god? Famously in Mark 9:24 we read, “I believe; help my unbelief.”  Social science researchers -and pastors, spouses, and friends- can ask questions about belief, but can they ever be confident the response offered is true? It is easy and convenient to answer the question, “Do you believe in the teachings of the church/god?” in the affirmative, but how often is it a lie? Further complicating the issue we must also raise the question as to whether a person can lie even to themselves. I know I have.

So, social believers are many, to be sure, but how many and to what degree are open questions. If religiosity can at times be performative, how can we ever know the extent to which social believers are in our temples, churches, mosques, and other houses of worship? Our data only provide an invitation to consider these questions more deeply.

Please contact me if you have any thoughts, comments, or questions. Know any ex-SDA who have not taken the survey yet? Here’s the link.

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Afterword
Take a minute and Google “fake Christian memes”.  I’ll wait.

How many “Christian nationalists” seem so … un-Christian? What about those in the public eye, particularly politicians, who claim to be Christian -holding up a Bible in a photo op- who act in a way which would be abhorrent to Christ?

How many of these ‘fake Christians’ can we also define as social believers (or vice versa)? Methinks the lofty rhetoric of religion is too easily coopted and abused by those who seek to abuse it.