ADVENTIST CHURCHES

ADVENTIST CHURCHES. The Seventh-day Adventist Church traces its roots to the early-nineteenth-century endeavors of William Miller (1782–1849). A captain in the War of 1812, Miller farmed in Low Hampton, New York. An ardent Jeffersonian democrat and a deist, Miller was converted to the evangelical Christian faith in a Baptist revival. Driven by gnawing concern about what happened after death, Miller devoted his spare time to careful study of a Bible annotated with Anglican Archbishop James Ussher's famous chronology. Like Ussher, Miller was fascinated by dates. His close reading of the Old Testament book of Daniel, enhanced by other biblical passages, prompted Miller to plot a calendar for the "end times." By 1818, his reading and Ussher's dates convinced Miller that Christ would return in 1843. He kept the news to himself for the next thirteen years, but his conviction about the inexorable approach of the end ultimately drove him to tell others.

Miller began preaching in 1831 and received a Baptist preaching license in 1833. He published his lectures about Christ's second advent in 1835. His unusually specific interpretations of biblical prophecies regarding Christ's second coming and his diligence in disseminating his view, won him a local following. He plodded on throughout the northeast, preaching in more than 800 venues before 1840. In 1840 his fortunes changed, thanks to a noted Boston publicist, Joshua V. Himes. The pastor of Boston's Chardon Street Chapel, Himes thrived amid causes and crowds. He promoted Miller and envisioned a national crusade. Soon two millennialist papers, a hymnal called The Millennial Harp, and a lecture tour that brought Miller to hundreds of audiences in an ever-expanding circle whipped up considerable millennial fervor. Some 200 preachers of the end as well as hundreds of public lecturers eventually enlisted perhaps 50,000 Americans to await with certainty Christ's imminent return.

These Millerites encouraged one another and recruited skeptics in revival and camp meetings, where they used charts and illustrations to hammer home their message. Some were profoundly impressed and used words like "terror" and "conviction" to describe the public response to the proclamation of the end of the world, set rather vaguely by Miller for sometime between 21 March 1843 and 21 March 1844. Others proved more willing to identify precise likely dates. As each passed quietly by, desertions depleted the ranks of the faithful. Miller revisited his calculations but professed still to expect Christ's return. Doctrinal conflict with local congregations intensified as the Millerite furor grew. After 22 October 1844

(a date advanced by the Millerite preacher Samuel Snow) passed uneventfully, the movement disbanded. The passage of time dimmed millennial hopes. Christ's failure to materialize became known as the Great Disappointment, and the mass movement Himes had skillfully manipulated collapsed. Miller retreated to Vermont, where he lived out his days as the leader of a small Adventist church.

The few Adventists who clung to the hope of an imminent end of time, meanwhile, disagreed among themselves about how to proceed. Some advocated observing the Seventh Day rather than the "popish" Sunday. They argued, too, about Satan, the millennium, the atonement, and the state of the dead. The disunity provided the stage on which the Adventist Prophetess, Ellen Harmon White, emerged. Just seventeen years old in 1844, Ellen Harmon had a vision that reassured her that the date, 22 October 1844, had been correct, but the faithful had awaited the wrong event. This remarkable rationale was followed by a series of visions that helped negotiate some of the differences among Adventist factions. Prone to visions and other forms of religious enthusiasm, White (Ellen Harmon married the Adventist elder James White in 1846) addressed all aspects of Adventism in a steady stream of prophetic utterances that quickly found their way into print. All Adventists did not immediately fall under her spell, but White professed a divine commission as God's messenger to the scattered Millerites, and she pursued this calling. An expanding core of Adventists accepted her spiritual teaching and her particular views on health. White urged Adventists to shun liquor and tobacco and to take care in what they ate. In 1863, she became an enthusiastic (and lifelong) advocate of hydropathy.

Ellen and James White moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1855, and they made the town an Adventist hub. In 1860, the group assumed the name Seventh-day Adventists and incorporated a publishing house. In 1863, Adventists convened their first general conference. Ellen White's nine-volume Testimonies now provided direction and inspiration to a stable and growing religious community. Her protégé, John Kellogg, a vegetarian, contributed to the dietary focus that came to characterize Adventist health causes and gave Battle Creek a reputation as a cereal capital. Adventism's global outreach promoted hospitals and health services wherever missionaries traveled.

In 1903, again following Ellen White, the offices of the church moved to the outskirts of Washington, D.C. She died in 1915. The church grew steadily—but apart from the mainstream of American Protestantism—throughout the twentieth century. During the 1980s and 1990s, influential Adventists showed an inclination to identify more closely with evangelical Protestants. This caused considerable turmoil and some separations, and it initiated a period of historical reflection on Adventist distinctives. Especially difficult was the issue of the special authority that the denomination has historically conceded to the writings of Ellen White. Also troubling to evangelicals was the Adventist doctrine of "soul sleep," which maintained that those who died did not immediately enter heaven or hell. Adventists also held strongly to specific interpretations of prophecies about heaven that differed from the generally accepted range of eschatologies that animated American Protestantism. Adventist churches expect their members to tithe, and—following Miller's early Baptist sympathies—they baptize by immersion.

Active in more than 200 countries, in 2000 the Seventh-day Adventist Church counted well over 900,000 members in the United States and more than 11 million worldwide. Adventist Churches have fared especially well in Mexico and Latin America and in Southern Asia. Nearly 400 clinics and dispensaries extend the medical care offered in more than 170 hospitals. In North America, the tiny, scattered, ridiculed band that persisted after the Great Disappointment of 1844 observes its Sabbath in more than 4,800 churches, and it counts nearly 49,600 more meeting places worldwide. Around the world, Adventist Sabbath schools enroll some 14,500,000 students, and 56 publishing houses support their global endeavors. The headquarters boasts that there is one Seventh-day Adventist for every 510 people. It also acknowledges some concern that, at the turn of the century, more than 20 people left for every 100 who joined an Adventist church.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gaustad, Edwin S., ed. The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.

Numbers, Ronald L. Prophetess of Health: Ellen G. White and the Origins of Seventh-day Adventist Health Reform. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992.

Edith L.Blumhofer

See alsoReligion and Religious Affiliation .