Nothing New Under This Sun:

Why Do Seventh Day Adventist Leave Their Church

 

 

Exit Interviews: Why Do People Leave the Church?

29 April 2021  

https://atoday.org/atss-5-1-21/

There have been a number of projects dedicated to looking at attrition in Seventh-day Adventism, at who leaves the denomination and why. One of the most recent is this presentation by Dr. David Trim, the church’s Director of Archives, Statistics and Research, presented in 2016. (Dr. Trim has also been interviewed on the topic.)

While some studies have been conducted that did interview former Adventists to ask about their reasons for leaving the church (and Dr. Trim’s work does draw on those studies), many such presentations simply assume the reasons. The most common explanations given by current Adventists for why former Adventists have left are: (1) having been “hurt” in some way by the actions of church members or (2) wishing to “enjoy a life of sin” without the constraints on behavior of religious belief.

I thought there’d be value in simply asking some former members about their reasons for leaving, to try to develop a more nuanced understanding of what is going on for people. I should note that, although I do social science research in my day job, and have even published books on research methodology, this is by no means a formal study, and the results are only indicative. It’s an informal conversation with friends. From an ethics perspective, I won’t use any names, and I have the consent of all participants to share their reasons and stories.

It’s worth thinking about the “destinations” where former believers find themselves… or at least, the current waypoints on their life journey. By no means all end up “enjoying that life of sin”—in fact, very few do.

Quite a few join some other Christian denomination, or consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.”

Others become, if not “agnostic,” perhaps “apatheist”: apathetic toward God and religion. They are not anti-religious, particularly; they just consider that religious belief has no meaning or relevance in their lives. They find meaning in their relationships and secular (non-religious) activities.

And, of course, some also become atheists who consider that religious belief in general is a delusion. Even within the atheist group, some are more strongly anti-theistic while others are closer to the apathetic position.

I think this is important, because it takes us a little beyond the binary of “Adventist = saved, non-Adventist = lost.” If we genuinely accept that believers in other Christian denominations can be saved, then attrition from Adventism is not seen as necessarily attrition from faith or salvation. A more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of where people find themselves “after Adventism” is simply more accurate, and therefore more useful, than a simplistic binary.

I’ve asked a number of people in an online group I’m part of, and here are some of the answers. I try to group them a little, without presenting them in rank order or order of frequency of responses—the body of data is too small for that kind of analysis.

1. Being “defined out” – people who feel that Adventism has been defined (including in changes to the Fundamental Beliefs) in ways that define them as being “outside,” and choose to accept that
2. Studying their way out – people who have been convinced by very extensive and careful study of scripture and theology that various claims of Seventh-day Adventism are not supported by the best available evidence
3. Recent creationism – people who find the very strong insistence on a literal 6-day creation week less than 10,000 years ago impossible to reconcile with their understanding of science. This is sometimes associated with anti-science perspectives on other issues such as the health effects of coffee or masturbation.
4. Hierarchy – people who believe the denomination should be more congregational and local rather than global, so that local cultural differences can be accepted, rather than requiring uniformity
5. Institutional protection of sexual predators – people who have been horrified by the treatment of survivors of sexual abuse (including themselves or people close to them) and their abusers, including cover-ups and “moving along”
6. Women’s ordination – people who believe that some women are called to pastoral ministry and should be in all ways equal with men in that calling
7. Morality of God – people who find the God who killed almost everyone on Earth in a Flood and commanded genocide of women and children after the Exodus morally unacceptable
8. Sexuality – people who are gay, bi or trans and were told their very existence was wrong and excluded by both doctrine and practice
9. Fluidity of belief – people who are not rigid in their belief structures, and who “flowed in” and later “flowed out” of belief
10. Never believed – people who never really believed in supernatural things, in many cases despite being brought up in the church, and left once they were socially free to do so
11. Claimed inerrancy of Scripture and Ellen G White – people who have identified errors in the Bible or the writings of Ellen White, when both are (sometimes) claimed to be inerrant (noting that inerrancy is not mainstream Adventist doctrine in either case)
12. Inconsistencies within Scripture or between doctrine and Scripture – people who have identified inconsistencies within the Bible, within the writings of Ellen White, between EGW and the Bible or between the Bible and Adventist doctrinal positions
13. Desmond Ford, his treatment at Glacier View and the Investigative Judgement – people (usually old enough to have been around at the time) who accept Dr. Ford’s critique of the Investigative Judgement doctrine, and/or who believe that his treatment by the denomination at the time and later was unfair
14. Exclusive truth claims – people who find it impossible, in a very large and very diverse world of almost 7.9 billion people that a small group of 22 million Adventists (about 0.3% of the global population) has the One True Way and the other 99.7% of all human beings are just wrong

Herbert Armstrong: Satan Is Going To Use Interracial Marriage To Attack The Church

When you read this you can quickly see what a condescending prick HWA was at times.

 

Satan's Next Attack: 

 Today I want to speak on what may possibly be the very next attack that Satan will use against this church. I was studying at lunch before the meeting last Sabbath, with our minister there and he said "I think that very likely, the next attack of Satan" — now there was the attack of the State of California against us. There's been another attack that most of you don't even know anything about. It only hit a few of us at the top. But there has been trouble and don't you think there hasn't. Satan is on the job. But Christ is on the job and Christ is winning. And always will win! It's like my executive assistant, Bob Fahey said, he's looked at the book to see how it comes out in the end, and he says we win. Yes we do. That's the way it's going to turn out. At least Christ is going to win and we'll only win if we're on Christ's side. We don't need to worry about getting Christ over on our side. But he said, the thing that's going to hit this church next, that Satan's going to use, is interracial marriage. 

Oh the pity. People can sometimes get their feelings all stirred up to a red hot pitch on something of that kind. Their prejudices, their emotions, their feelings. God almighty created us all. He put us here for a purpose. And we don't have much longer. And we need to look into this. Now that was in New York City last Sabbath. On the plane, coming back, Mr. Fahey showed me a letter that had been handed to him from a member. I believe this member is in, yes, just across in New Jersey, just across from New York but had attended the service. And she had been talking to another member who lives in Philadelphia. And there'd been quite a heated conversation on the telephone. And I want to read you just one slight little bit of what was in that message and what is coming up in the church now. And you're going to have to — IF GOD BE GOD GET ON HIS SIDE. AND IF YOU WANT TO GO WITH THIS WORLD AND THE WAY IT'S GOING, GET OVER ON THAT SIDE, and go into the lake of fire with it. That's all I have to say.

I just want to read a few, this is about a 3 or 4 page letter, so, I'll just read a part of it. She says,

"During the conversation, [that's the telephone conversation, that's the telephone conversation she had with this woman in Philadelphia] it was stated that the blacks in God's church are dissatisfied with such doctrines that are not keeping with the current social trend in the world, which they feel are in keeping with the premises of international relationships that are a part of this nation's background" 

So we should go along with our nation and the social trends of the world. And this letter also says that they are trying to line up a group of blacks, TO GIVE ME AN ULTIMATUM! THAT I GET ON THE SIDE OF THE TRENDS, THE SOCIAL TREND OF THIS WORLD. OR ELSE! I'll tell you what I'll give them. I'll give them OR ELSE. I won't compromise one millionth of an inch. And if you will, you can go into the lake of fire if you want to. Now, I've never started a fight in my life but let me tell you, I've won every fight I've ever been in. But someone else always started it. I don't want to start a fight. I'm the servant of the Most High God. And I'm as much a servant of blacks or of yellows or of any other color, pinks, polka dots, anything you want to mention - and the like. But I know what God has said. And that's what I'm teaching you and that's the way this church is going to go. We're getting this church back on God's track. That's where it's going to be and that's where it's going to stay.

LCG Warns Us About False Teachers

 

Those wild and crazy boys in Charlotte do not take too kindly to false teachers in the Church of God movement.  It is interesting below how they showcase how much grace disturbs their legalistic mentality. To justify their stance they now call it "permissive grace". That fact alone tells us all we need to know about how ignorant they are about the subject of grace in Christianity. It just frosts their butts that people are not tied to the law as a requirement for salvation. The law brings death. Grace brings life. 

Social justice is one of their pet peeves too. Apparently caring for the homeless and the disadvantaged is not something a truly converted Christian would do. Why worry about them when God's going to fix it all later on. Suffering is just part of life. Boo Hoo. Besides, the church needs your money more than they do because the poor have always been with us.

We must always remember that the only truly converted Christians on this earth are Living Church of God members. Even Bob Thiel's little rag-tag group of church-hopping money-embezzling Africans are not truly converted.

For many decades now, various Church of God leaders have preached "another gospel " cleverly disguising their words as truth when all they were doing was leading people astray.

Beware of False Teachers: Jesus warned repeatedly about false teachers, saying, “Many will come in My name… and will deceive many” (Matthew 24:4–5). While they may claim to be “Christian,” their teachings and actions will be contrary to the Scriptures. To avoid being deceived, it is important to study the word of God so you can recognize if a teacher’s message agrees with the Scriptures or not (see Isaiah 8:20). Today we hear many different “gospels”—the gospel of wealth, the gospel of permissive grace, of social justice, and apocryphal gospels. However, the Apostle Paul labeled false teachers who promote a different gospel than Jesus and the Apostles preached, as “ministers” of Satan (2 Corinthians 11:1–15). To avoid being deceived by clever arguments and emotionally laced messages, we must diligently study the Scriptures as the Bereans did (Acts 17:10–11) and prove from the Scriptures what is true or false (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
Have a profitable Sabbath,
Douglas S. Winnail

 How Church of God groups imagine themselves today.