Leaving The Garden: On Being An Ex-Adventist
I was born a 4th generation Seventh-day Adventist on both sides of my family.
My maternal great-grandparents sold their farm to help start what is now
Mt. Pisgah Academy in North Carolina. My mother's parents spent their
lives "in the work." On my father's side, my great-grandfather served
time on a chain gang in Tennessee for plowing his field on Sunday in defiance
of blue laws.
I was immersed in Adventism and "the conflict of the ages."
Due primarily to my mother's influence, my family was stricter than most other
Adventists of my acquaintance. We never ate meat (I am still a vegetarian),
went to movies, or watched much TV. I cherished Uncle Arthur's Bedtime
Stories and the multi-volume Bible Story rendition of the Adventist
interpretation of the Bible for children. Ellen G. White's books filled
our bookshelves, and I had read most of them by the time I was twelve.
I knew few non-SDA's. I was suspicious of "worldly" neighbors,
most of whom I avoided. I do remember being disappointed when my attempts
to read The Great Controversy to a couple of playmates failed to produce
any interest let alone converts.
I attended Adventist schools from 1st grade through my junior year in college.
It's hard to remember much that was positive about my SDA education. Being
supported by a relatively poor local church and conference ,the Missouri church
school and academy that I attended seemed to get teachers who were either just
out of college or had been rejected by better SDA schools. Almost all
my teachers were bad, and some were in no shape to be doing anything, much less
trying to teach. As is true of most people who have been through the Adventist
educational system, I learned next to nothing of literature, art, non-SDA religions,
philosophy, or modern thought. Everything, including the Bible, was carefully
filtered through Adventist preconceptions. We even had special Adventist
editions of the Dick and Jane readers (I'm still curious as to what was in the
regular edition that we had to be protected from). I took it all very
seriously, never questioning "THE TRUTH" that had been given to us
alone of all the people on the earth.
I was also utterly miserable, especially as an adolescent tortured by "impure
thoughts" that no amount of prayer would take away. For a period
of several years I was terrified by the idea that Satan or one of "his
angels" would appear to me as I knew from stories I had read in Adventist
literature and heard in church youth groups sometimes happened to people who
were not right with the Lord. At times I was certain that I caught glimpses
of demons out of the corner of my eye. I had repeated nightmares in which
I encountered demonic figures or discovered that I had been left behind on judgment
day. Looking back, I realize that I was seriously depressed and more than
a little disturbed, but no one, including myself, seemed to recognize that anything
was wrong.
While in academy, I came across some of Mark Twain's anti-Christian writings
that had somehow found their way into the Sunnydale school library. I
was at first shocked, then set to wondering by the questions he raised about
the justice of a God who ordered the slaughter of people just because they didn't
worship him. Other than that, I can remember no conscious doubts about
what I had been taught to regard as ultimate truth until I got to college.
I began what was then Southern Missionary College as a premed chemistry major
in the fall of 1967, long before the controversies that have since rocked Adventism
came out into the open. As my parents, who had for years struggled to
keep four children in church school and academy, were unable to help me with
tuition I went to work making Little Debbies (now there's a fine product for
people with a "health message" to be sending out into the world!)
at the McKee Baking Co. At the bakery, for the first time in my life,
I was in regular contact with a lot of non-Adventists and was taken aback by
the discovery that they were not actively evil!
At SMC I was exposed to a little more sophisticated view of the world than
I had encountered in academy, and had some teachers who actually knew something
about the subjects they taught. One day my world history professor made
a passing remark about Mrs. White's writings on history being based on a 19th
century perspective that was no longer accepted as valid by modern historians.
Having always been told that her writings were divinely inspired, this threw
me for a loop. My "Daniel and Revelation" teacher, an ordained
minister who managed to get in trouble with the college administration by coming
back from summer vacation wearing a beard, began the class by saying that no
one knew for sure what the various symbols in those books meant. Having
read through Uriah Smith several times, attended I don't know how many revival
meetings featuring the prophetic beasts, and memorized the 2300 day prophecy
with all its various ramifications, I didn't know what to do with this bit of
knowledge. An avid reader of SDA journals, I one day came across an article
in The Review saying that the famous 18th century "Dark Day"
that I had grow up believing was a miraculous sign of the end, had been in fact
produced by prairie fires blackening New England skies. By the end of
my sophomore year, my faith had been seriously shaken, but not knowing what
else to do, I continued going through the motions.
In the summer before my junior year, I took a class in "The Spirit of
Prophecy" from a man who was reputed to be a great theologian, and a very
tough professor. I almost immediately realized that his reputation was
based upon very shaky sand. He seemed to me to be desperately trying to
keep his own doubt at bay with a convoluted pseudo-intellectual apologetic that
had little to do with the question at hand. Most of his students were
apparently so dumbfounded by this as to mistake it for profound truth beyond
human understanding while desperately struggling to get a passing grade. Having
figured out his formula, I made the highest grade in the class almost without
trying amid my growing doubts. That fall, the college Week of Prayer featured
a speaker whose mission it was to point out the failings of modern philosophy.
It was the first time I had heard of existentialism, situational ethics, and
other such topics that were hot at the time. His descriptions of these
new (to me) ways of thinking aroused my interest while his attempts to invalidate
them seemed less than persuasive. There was no one to whom I could
turn with my increasing confusion. Even those people I knew who, unlike
me, were cheerfully engaging in every form of prohibited behavior they could
think of, didn't seem interested in questioning basic Adventist beliefs.
I changed majors two or three times in my junior year. My grades took
a nosedive, and it became apparent that Loma Linda was no longer a likely option
for me. I made a few feeble attempts to talk with faculty and administration
members about my fading academic career, but no one expressed much concern or
even seemed to recognize that I was in trouble. At the end of the year
I dropped out, sure of nothing beyond the fact that I no longer believed in
what had been the very foundation of my life. I continued going to church
off and on, mostly out of habit but perhaps also in hopes of finding some way
out of my confusion. But it only got worse. I felt increasingly
ill at ease and isolated there. My last Adventist church experience was
a Christmas service with the sermon on why women shouldn't wear pants in public!
I don't remember if I stayed to the end, but I do know that I left determined
never to return.
Having been conditioned to regard Adventism as the only true expression of
Christianity, it never occurred to me to try other churches. I began to
avidly read everything I could find on eastern religion, and decided that I
was a Buddhist. I suppose this was fairly safe, actual Buddhists being
few and far between in Collegedale, Tennessee!
The decade of my twenties was spent in a more or less wandering quest for
something that I could believe in. Being as it was the 1970's, it was
an interesting time for such a quest. It definitely had its ups and downs.
One summer I spent six weeks in a state hospital obsessedwith suicide.
While I can't say that the treatment I received was very helpful, the experience
was definitely an interesting one!
Shortly after my hospital stay, as an indirect result of it, I met a (non-Adventist)
woman whom I married a few months later. I have been blessed in having
her at my side through all the various twists, turns and dead ends my life has
taken in the more than a quarter century we have been together. We became
involved in the Unitarian-Universalist Church, where I found an open form of
spirituality that I never could have imagined when I was an Adventist.
After moving (fleeing?) to California, I went into psychotherapy with a therapist
who recognized the spiritual dimension of my dis-ease. I also became acquainted
with the work of the Swiss psychiatrist, C. G. Jung. In his writings I
found a connection between psychology and spirituality, as well for the first
time a meaningful way of understanding my experience.
In my late twenties, after a few aborted attempts to do something "practical,"
I entered the University of California, Santa Barbara to finally finish college
by getting a degree in religious studies. Ironically, after years of education
in small Adventist schools, for the first time in my life, on a campus of 15,000
plus students, I encountered teachers who seemed to be allies rather than enemies.
Having dismissed Christianity along with Adventism, I planned to focus on eastern
religions. But then I took a course in western mysticism, and was astonished
to discover a completely new facet of Christianity. I ended up concentrating
my studies on early Christianity, discovering that it wasn't at all as represented
by Adventists. For the first time since my disillusionment with Adventism,
I was able to see Christianity as a valid expression of spirituality
After my BA, I went to graduate school to become a psychotherapist with a
special interest in the interplay of spiritual and psychological issues.
One of my areas of specialization is former members of fundamentalist-type religions
(which by my broad definition includes SDA). I have published a few professional
papers on the psychological issues such a background tends to produce.
(Link to an article
on this)
My Adventist experience has made me wary of organized religion. Over
the years I have been involved off and on with Unitarian-Universalist churches.
The radical insistence on individual freedom of belief that is the core of Unitarian-Universalism
greatly appeals to me. But even there I find it hard to make a lasting
committment. My continuing spiritual journey has taken me to a lot of
different places, many of which I would never have regarded as spiritual when
I was an Adventist.
I don't consider myself a Christian in the sense of accepting Christ as my
savior or elevating the Bible to a position higher than other scriptures.
I don't believe in a personal God who watches over the world from some place
on high. But I do know that Christianity is still a very strong force
in my psyche. Christian symbols resonate within my being like nothing
else. Encountering as I did a few years ago the great cathedrals of England
and France, with their representation of the Christian story in glass and stone,
was an overwhelming experience of Something so much greater than myself that
I don't have adequate words for it. It is a Something that I also encounter
at the seashore, playing with my cat, making love, walking on a city street
or wilderness trail, in encounters with destruction and death, and in those
fleeting moments when I simply aware that I am. The God I knew as an Adventist
is much too small to encompass all this. Rather than "God,"
I prefer to call it Mystery, the Ultimate, or, borrowing from the great Christian
mystic, Meister Eckhart, the Godhead Beyond God. In my better moments,
when I am open to it, life with all its beauty and horror is an ongoing revelation
of the Divine.
I find a lot of psychological truth in the Gnostic interpretation of the
Fall. According to these early opponents of what became the Catholic Church,
the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge really did bring awareness that was lacking
in Eden. Far from being the disaster presented by the orthodox reading
of the story, for the Gnostics eating from the Tree was the beginning of insight
into the true nature of things. The gaining of knowledge is often disorienting
in its challenge to assumptions about what is true and what false. I certainly
experienced a fall into despair with my discovery that things were not as I
had been told. But I don't think it would be going too far to say that
it was also the beginning of a degree of enlightenment for me. While I
could not have said so at the time, I'm more than glad that I followed, and
still continue along, the unknown path towards which my doubts directed me.
I don't entirely regret my Adventist upbringing. Without it, I probably
would not have the appreciation I do for spirituality. In learning about
the Bible as I did, I acquired a wonderful source of age old wisdom about the
human experience that many of my contemporaries don't have any knowledge of.
I do regret that my indoctrination made it so difficult to find a way that was
my own, and that it continues to come between my family, who have no understanding
of what my life is, and myself.
I revisit my Adventist heritage now and then via the internet, and am distressed
by what I find. While I suppose I might take joy in seeing my decision
to leave the church confirmed by what has happened in the past couple of decades,
it is still upsetting. Even after my realization that I no longer believed
in the divine inspiration of her writings, I continued to regard Ellen White
as at worst self-deluded. The revelation of her plagiarism came as a shock.
While David Koresh's theology and life clearly deviated from mainstream Adventism,
the Branch Davidians' self-fulfilling expectation of persecution by the enemies
of truth hardly differed in substance from what I had grown up believing I would
one day experience. More recently, I have found it extremely disturbing
to see the names of men I once knew and respected linked to financial scandals
in the church.
How much tithe money goes for lawyer's fees these days? The remnant
church I once knew seems to have, on one hand, mushroomed into a multinational
corporation more concerned with self perpetuation than spreading the gospel
while splintering into a multitude of quarreling factions on the other.
Of course this is nothing new in the history of religion, Christianity, or Adventism.
But it is distressing nonetheless.
©1999 James Moyers
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