I grew up in a devout Adventist family in Australia. My father was a newspaper editor and manager of a printing works who, at the end of a difficult 16-week printers’ strike, during which he and the apprentices had had to produce everything, decided to do what he had always wanted to do: he became…… Continue reading My Political Evolution as an Adventist Christian
Examining Trends (Especially Decline) in Religious Groups
On August 8 2013, the Pew Research Center hosted a round-table on “Religion Trends in the US,” featuring sociologists Claude Fischer of the University of California at Berkeley and Michael Hout of New York University; Gallup’s Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport; and the Pew Research Center’s Greg Smith, the Director of US Religion Surveys for the Religion & Public Life…… Continue reading Examining Trends (Especially Decline) in Religious Groups
The GC/NAD and the Supreme Court’s LGBT+ Decision
On June 15, 2020, the US Supreme Court ruled that gay and transgender workers were protected from discrimination in their workplaces. Justice Gorsuch wrote in the opinion: “An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.” The court arguments focused on the Title VII protections written into the 1964…… Continue reading The GC/NAD and the Supreme Court’s LGBT+ Decision
Reassessing the Size of Mormons, Adventists and Witnesses: Using Census Data to Test the Reliability of Membership Data and Accounting for the Disparate Patterns Found
This article compares the growth of three religious groups, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Seventh-day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. All originated in America during the nineteenth century and have since globalized. It begins by using their official membership data to contrast their aggregate growth over time. It then questions the reliability of…… Continue reading Reassessing the Size of Mormons, Adventists and Witnesses: Using Census Data to Test the Reliability of Membership Data and Accounting for the Disparate Patterns Found
The Seventh-Day Adventist Church as a Global Organization
The Scope of Seventh-day Adventism Unlike most Protestant denominations, which focused their missions in certain countries and later spun off independent national churches there, Seventh-day Adventists felt impelled to take their particular message to the whole world and to build a unified global church. A paper read at the meeting of the Religious Research Association,…… Continue reading The Seventh-Day Adventist Church as a Global Organization
