07.09.10
The God Debate & Other Musings
As I write this the quite heated (and, to my mind, unfortunate) controversy, involving La Sierra University and the purported teaching of evolution by some of its biology professor(s)–in ‘contravention’ to Adventist belief in creation–that has been going on for some time, continues. The Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists have taken it upon themselves to declare the La Sierra University community as apostates from Adventism and as such no longer a member of that community in good standing. Consequently, the children of employees of the Michigan Conference who now choose to attend the La Sierra will no longer be eligible for a tuition subsidy from that conference. La Sierra has since responded.
Concurrently, the so-called “God debate” continues in the wider public sphere. One of Terry Eagleton‘s contributions to the debate is his new book, Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, which is sympathetically reviewed in Spectrum by Kettering College of Medical Arts’ Daryll Ward. A video of Eagleton’s lecture on the God Debate at Edinburgh University’s Gifford Lectures is available on the university’s Web site.
The controversy surrounding La Sierra University taken together with the recent elevation of Ted Wilson to the presidency of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have many of us old enough to remember the dislocation and fallout from the doctrinal controversies of the 1980′s wondering what the next few years in the life of the SDA church might bring. I for one don’t know what to make of Wilson’s criticisms of emerging church theology, call for literal readings of scripture, and rejection of contemplative prayer, among the other matters of relatively minor moment on which he remarked disapprovingly. His sermon on the closing Sabbath of the recently concluded General Conference leaves me puzzled as to the meaning of “present truth” as invoked by our early church fathers and mother. I’d always understood it to imply a certain openness to new understandings of scripture, such “new light” modifying and enriching previously held understandings. Such an interpretation would seem to contemplate the possibility of us learning from other faith communities within the Christian tradition. It’s not entirely clear to me that our new leadership embraces this interpretation. I’m now in the position of trying to figure out if folks like me will be able to fit in the new developing community Wilson envisages.
