Seventh-day Adventists have been involved in a number of landmark court cases bearing on both the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and on statutory law. The main issues have included security of employment for Sabbath observers, the right of persons dismissed from their jobs for reasons of…… Continue reading Seventh-day Adventists and the U.S. Courts: Road Signs Along the Route of a Denominationalizing Sect
Month: February 2019
To what extent has Adventist sectarianism resulted in its being a prophetic minority, with a witness for peace, justice, and humility?
Clarification of question: A sect is defined by Stark and Bainbridge as having high tension with society, marked by separation/exclusivity, difference, and mutual antagonism. Answer to the question posed by Gerald Winslow in preparation for his Metro New York Adventist Forum meetings, 4-10-10.Click here for a PDF version of this paper: Adventist Sectarianism and Prophetic…… Continue reading To what extent has Adventist sectarianism resulted in its being a prophetic minority, with a witness for peace, justice, and humility?
Uni-Directional or Bi-Directional?: Sect-Denomination Theory and the Case of Seventh-day Adventism
Those who developed what we call Church-Sect theory (Troeltsch, Niebuhr, Yinger, Johnson, Wilson, and Stark and Bainbridge) thought of it as laying out a uni-directional trajectory from sect towards (in the USA) denomination for groups that survive and prosper. However, in 1994, in his The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation, Armand…… Continue reading Uni-Directional or Bi-Directional?: Sect-Denomination Theory and the Case of Seventh-day Adventism
From Sect Towards Denomination: Tracing the Trajectory of Seventh-day Adventism in the USA over Time
Seventh-day Adventism emerged from the Millerite Movement, which had preached throughout the American Northeast that Christ would return in 1844, after the parent movement fragmented following the “Great Disappointment”. The new group was marked by considerable tension with its surrounding culture during its early decades, and was therefore, in terms of the definition promulgated by…… Continue reading From Sect Towards Denomination: Tracing the Trajectory of Seventh-day Adventism in the USA over Time
Ronald L. Lawson Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Queens College, CUNY 