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“Signs of the Times are Everywhere”

“Signs of the Times are Everywhere”

Non-comment about Palestine from SDA leadership
Some of the more progressive still-Adventists in my life have expressed dismay at the milquetoast stand taken by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists on Palestine. Here’s the statement, issued on October 7, 2023. So far as I can find through casual web searching, there’s been no update in the six or so weeks since then.

The inability of a church that would have once identified as a social justice movement to now articulate anything other than a ‘thoughts and prayers for both sides’ kind of statement in the face of one of the most consequential international events of recent memory may come as a shock, but should not come as a surprise.

Relevant survey data
Questions 35 and 36 ask respondents to draw the connection between Seventh-day Adventist eschatology (belief that the world will end) and Adventist views on issues like climate and the environment (Q. 35), and then on issues including social justice, racism, women’s rights, etc. (Q. 36).

For Q35, 75.6% of respondents selected, “End-times teachings perpetuate an indifference regarding the climate crisis and other environmental concerns,” while 63.39% selected, “End-times teachings perpetuate an indifference related to social justice issues like racism and women’s rights,” for Q 36.

As one respondent commented under Q36: “The Adventists want to bring about the end of time. They don’t care about saving the planet or women’s rights etc.”

Or another, also under Q36: “I think a greater impact because as issues become more volatile they see it as prophecy being fulfilled. I don’t think they care more about the issues, just that the volatility shows the “Sunday law” is imminent. Shows we are in end times.”

And finally, this respondent under Q35: “Conservative SDAs preach that the climate crisis will be used to bring the world under one new world order which will ultimately lead to enforced Sunday Worship.”

As I read the narrative comments under questions 35 and 36, it is clear that respondents see a link between climate and social justice issues and indications that the world is about to end.

My truth
These ring true for me. An enduring memory that I have of growing up Seventh-day Adventist, from early adolescence right on through to the end of my teen years, is feeling a sense of anxiety and dread about the “last days.”

I remember as an 11 year-old in the junior tent at Adventist Campmeeting in Michigan, listening to the pastor tell us about the persecution of Christians in communist Latin America (I can’t remember specifically which country). They were lurid, awful, detailed stories that I now understand were completely inappropriate for an 11 year-old audience. Stories of Christians being tortured and killed for their faith. The pastor closed that session by telling us that before Jesus came, we would all be similarly persecuted for our faith, assuming we remained faithful. And I can remember that for months after, I prayed to Jesus that I would not be persecuted that way.

In the Adventist community that I was part of, nearly every global or national event was seen further proof that Satan was running rampant on earth, and literally any day now the Sunday Laws would be passed and the persecution of the “144,000” (us, obviously) would begin. And although my own parents were never so much the wide-eyed looney-bin type, away from home and in the belly of what passed for mainstream Adventism in that time and place, the crazy was constant.

The symbols on the US one dollar bill, the gays in San Francisco, the Challenger exploding in mid-air, race riots, Islam, Communism (or what was left of it in the waning years of the Cold War), 80s metal, HIV/AIDS… all pointed to a sinful world, collapsing under the weight of its own iniquity. Sign that the Second Coming – The Advent – was practically on us. Whether in SDA church school, at church, or in the religious material that I consumed in between, connections between whatever was happening in the world that week and WE ARE IN THE LAST DAYS, were constant. I think it is fair to say that for more or less my first 20 years of life, I was in some way told daily that The Time of Trouble was coming, and that almost everything around me pointed to it.

 

Non-response to Palestine is not a surprise
For as much as Seventh-day Adventists want to believe that their movement is relevant and impactful in today’s world, they are constrained by their own beliefs about the last days. “Jesus is coming again, and it will be soon,” is the “A” is “SDA.” Jesus is coming, but before He does it’s gonna be bad and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. Lots of emotional energy is spent unpacking all the signs and digging into how this or that event proves that the Advent is close. This is the lifeblood of every Revelation seminar or revival. On the other hand, what it all means for those living an Adventist life day-to-day is pretty straightforward: The world is literally ending and there’s nothing we can do except wait for it to be over. Batten down the hatches, keep your head down, be prepared to ride out the coming storm.

The responses to Qs 35 and 36 highlight this. Why bother to engage in activism here on earth when, as one respondent put it, “Most people see that any harm will be made right “in Heaven.”

In this light the statement from the General Conference on Palestine is not only predictable, but very much on-brand.

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Coming to terms with Anger

There is anger and resentment
Question 28 reads, “To what extent do you hold anger or resentment toward the Seventh-day Adventist Church?” The response options are “Very,” “Moderately,” “Somewhat,” Not at all,” and “I just don’t think about this.”

One of the reasons for including this question in the survey was to test what I recall (and still do perceive) as a general sentiment among still-Adventists that ex-Adventists are angry. Angry at God, angry at The Church, angry in general.

And, well, the data so far indicate that the still-Adventists might be right. The two highest rates of response are for “Somewhat angry and resentful” (33.9%), and “Moderately angry and resentful” (21.76%). If we include the 15.17% of respondents who selected “Very angry…”, 70% of respondents to the survey so far say they harbored some anger or resentment toward the SDA structure at the time they took the survey.

Females are more angry
When we overlay responses to Q28 by gender (Q54) it seems that females are angrier than male respondents. Having grown up Adventist, I feel like this makes sense. Adventism is essentially a patriarchal system, and quite a number of (presumably) female respondents commented that they were angry at Adventist “purity culture” or “the way women are treated” inside the system. The analysis gets more complicated when we also overlay those who report being “non-binary” to Q54. In any case, a whopping 76% of females reported being angry to some extent, compared to males at 61%. All these data cry out for deeper analysis and exploration, and that will come in future posts.

These are interesting sets of numbers. There is much to ponder and make about the fact that of our sample of ex-Adventists so far, around 70% are angry and/or resentful at the Adventist system. However, the really interesting part (at least for me) comes in the comments. Many respondents have commented to the effect that they were once angry, but no longer are:

“I’m less angry these days, however it comes in waves. I mostly feel sad for the wasted years and the people who still remain.”

 

“It’s been years and I’m a rational person. I’ve moved past most of my direct anger.”

 

“A LOT less angry than I used to be.”

 

However, the most commonly expressed emotion in the comments was sadness, sometimes as grief or mourning:

“I don’t think I feel angry but more sadness for them and the burden they are placed under.”

 

“I had to let go of anger, resentment but mostly heartbreak over the loss of involvement in an institution that had really been my whole life.”

 

“I don’t consider myself angry. I am very sad.”

 

“I have a lot of grief.”

 

Anger shifts to sadness
It feels telling that even in the context of 70% of respondents reporting anger, many of the comments equivocate on anger and shift to sadness. My memories of adolescence and young adulthood inside the Adventist system are that emotions were generally muted. There was a lot of talk of being “happy,” and happiness and joy were tolerated up to a point, so long as those expressions were not too extreme. Sadness, grief, disappointment were similarly acceptable emotions, provided the expressions of those emotions were not too dramatic.

“I mourn the wasted years of complete indoctrination. Negative emotions are destructive so I try to focus on the intellectual and spiritual freedom of the present.”

The white, North American Adventism that I grew up in seemed endlessly focused on the appearance of “happiness.” Catchy sayings, a lot of verbal affirmation for people who always acted “happy,” innumerable songs about being cheerful were all de rigueur.  But anger always seemed like an off-limits emotion. Angry people got shut down, shushed, eventually excluded, “cancelled,” in today’s parlance.

It took me years to be able to name the anger in my own emotional repertoire. To this day I instinctively want to downplay, or hide anger in almost any setting. Perhaps, like so many aspects of being Adventist, anger is one of those things that some of us who have left the movement take some time to make peace with. Like bacon or alcohol* or jewelry, disallowed emotions are acquired tastes.

“I have a hard time with anger partly because of how I was raised- anger feels unsafe now & so many feelings were repressed. I’m still working on that now.”

What do you think? Let us know in the comments. Email us: exsda@proton.me, arcaro@elon.edu

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*Specifically bacon and alcohol come up constantly in the comments to many of the questions in the ex-Adventist survey.

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Adventist Food

For the past few days I’ve been reading some of the comments in The Survey (take the ex-Adventist survey). Particularly those under Question 32:

Are there any Seventh-day Adventist cultural practices that you continue, even though you no longer believe? (Check all that apply.)

You can see the spread after 227 responses to the question:

51%, or over half of respondents to this question said they continued the food tradition of Adventism in some way (almost 15% higher than the next most commonly selected option: “I don’t continue any practices” at 35.2%).

This rings true for me on several levels. Some of my earliest food memories are of specifically Adventist things like Nuteena and Tuno. Beyond the actual food itself, memories of my formative years growing up Adventist involve settings where food would have been consumed with other Adventists: potlucks, social events at or related to the church, the cafeteria at Andrews University.

As anyone who has spent years inside the Adventist bubble knows, there is almost no escape from the nearly constant calculations around food. I remember food, and specifically the question of whether there would be Adventist-appropriate food as being very much top of mind in any setting where I was outside the bubble. It was impossible to meet a non-Adventist acquaintance for lunch without needing to make a food calculation, impossible to visit a non-Adventist home for a meal without clarifying food issues in advance. Adventist food rules colored every camp out or beach picnic, every vacation, every birthday party, every occasion that involved food. And whether you choose to follow the Adventist food rules or not the calculation was always there: Is this food “clean”?

The type of food that you prepare and the type of food you eat says a lot about you, in Adventist circles. For many Seventh-day Adventists, following food rules is a way of showing how devout and how pious they are, a way to show how dedicated they are to the cause. As an employee of the church system, based in another country, I can remember earnest conversations with visitors about food. Was this food “clean”? Throughout my years inside the Adventist community I was regularly tested for my level of alignment with Adventist orthodoxy and food itself was the test.

Conspicuously breaking food rules was also a way to demonstrate or earn status as a rebel. In SDA grade school, the kid who drank Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper was always the “bad kid.” When I was a student missionary in a country famous for its’ street food, social circles within our group coalesced almost instantly based on how comfortable we were breaking Adventist food rules. (I was a “bad kid” in that setting, and there were few things more irritating than going out to eat with finnicky Seventh-day Adventist eaters.) It didn’t take us long to learn with whom we could explore the cuisine of that place without a lot of pearl-clutching about SDA food rules.

During my years of slowly quiet quitting Adventism, the sense of a world of food that was mine to explore was intensely exhilarating and also intimidating. I ate some truly weird and exotic stuff in those early years. During those same years, when I first sort of came out to my parents as no longer a believer, my (and my family’s) food decisions and practices were among the most difficult for them to take. Dinners out could end in awkward silence or tears if my kids ordered shrimp or a ham sandwich. We’re mostly past the silence and tears now, but the powerful statement made by the food I chose to eat – that I was no longer part of that community of faith – was, I am certain, very difficult and painful for the devout Adventists who loved (and still love) me.

 

Having been away from the Church for years, now, I have mostly stopped thinking about the food rules, but in odd ways they are always there. I check the sugar content of things and very rarely drink carbonated soft drinks. Although I grew up having “clean” meat from time to time, I still do not like the taste of pork. More recently I have re-started cooking some Adventist dishes: tater-tot & mushroom soup casserole with Veja-links, and sometimes Special-K loaf (full disclosure: at my house we never stopped the tradition of “haystacks”). I know that Loma Linda brand meat substitutes are not particularly healthy, but I’ve eaten so much weird stuff around the world that I don’t think the occasional Prime Stake is going to hurt too much.

And perhaps having now made the sometimes painful transition out, I feel freer to look back with nostalgia on some of the food that I used to like. FriChik is no longer a statement about my belief system, but is rather a way to reconnect with where I am from, on my terms, as I choose. From the safety of outside and beyond the reach of the Adventist system some of those dishes are even comforting.

Now I know, from reading the answers to Q32, that I am not alone.

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Outside the Fold

It’s been nearly 20 years since I began the slow, slide away from Adventism. My departure was a quiet, gradual disentangling. I can no longer remember exactly when I stopped going to church, stopped paying tithe, stopped pretending to care about the dramas and intrigues of the Adventist community. But at some point in the early aughts I could simply no longer take the cognitive dissonance, and set myself free from any Seventh-day Adventist-specific diet or lifestyle injunctions.

Since then I have gone on to live what seems to me a “normal life.” A life of school plays, going to work, grilling in the backyard on nice days, and being part of a suburban community. Despite being taught in Adventist schools that true happiness comes only from Jesus and that I’d be lonely and miserable outside the fold, I have found meaning and contentment and fulfilling relationships. My journey away has been largely undramatic.

And yet, 2 decades later, I am still making sense of the experience of being raised Seventh-day Adventist, an experience that as of this writing was more than half of my life. Like the prophet Jonah, I find – frustratingly – that there are aspects of that  system I cannot seem to completely escape; some parts of it all I cannot fully leave behind. To this day I harbor strong opinions about Fri-Chik versus Prime Stakes, or The Wedgewood Trio versus Take Three. Whenever someone of another Christian denomination speaks about or interprets the Bible in my presence, my instinctive reaction is to mentally check their theology and wonder why they haven’t found “The Truth.” When I meet someone with jewelry or tattoos, one of the first thoughts in my head is that “this person is not Adventist.” And to be clear, I also have tattoos and wear jewelry.

Thirty-something years of upbringing and indoctrination are not easy to forget or undo (not that it all has to be forgotten or undone). And I have found that there very few people I can really talk to about this. Many people in my life have left religious movements, and we certainly share many things. But there are aspects of being “ex-Adventist” that only another ex-Adventist can really understand.

What does it mean now, even as I no longer believe? 20 years ago I might have asked myself what it meant to be an ex-Adventist in a secular world. Now I want to know if there are others like me, and if so, how their experience resembles mine.

That is where this project begins for me.

 

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