English translation of an interview in Zelota magazine, Brazil, published April 2021. Interview with Dr. Ronald Lawson, an Adventist sociologist scholar, about the relations between the Adventist church and politics around the world Dr. Ronald Lawson is an Australian Adventist sociologist, now living in the US, who spent two decades interviewing around 5,700 Adventists all…… Continue reading Embracing Authoritarians: Seventh-day Adventism and Dictatorships
Category: Church and State
My Political Evolution as an Adventist Christian
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
Adventists and Governments: A Preference for Dictators?
During November I will be sharing a series of video presentations, rather than papers. (Please note: the video link does not show up in the preview image on the main page.) This one was presented on 26 October 2019 at the Roy Branson Legacy Sabbath School class in Loma Linda, California.
Reflections on Adventism in Europe, 2014
Intro: I was invited to speak at a symposium in May 2014 at Friedensau University on the impact of World War I on Adventism. Since it was some years since I had done systematic interviews in Europe, I took this as an opportunity to update my data, and completed close to 100 interviews in eight…… Continue reading Reflections on Adventism in Europe, 2014
In the Wake of the State: Seventh-day Adventism and Apartheid in South Africa
During the Apartheid period in South Africa, the Seventh-day Adventist Church not only failed to critique the discriminatory system, but it formalized the establishment of internal apartheid within the Church, with two (and for some time three) separate race-based organizational structures that had very little contact with one another, and segregated congregations, schools, and welfare…… Continue reading In the Wake of the State: Seventh-day Adventism and Apartheid in South Africa
Ronald L. Lawson Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Queens College, CUNY 