In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in America, some Christians in the South faced a dilemma. They believed they were obligated to obey Christ’s command to make disciples and baptize all nations and, therefore, to evangelize the enslaved. Yet they feared that sharing the gospel might lead the enslaved to seek not only spiritual freedom but physical freedom as well.
Many ministers therefore came up with creative ways to prevent such from taking place. Thus, for example, Anglican missionary Francis Le Jau, evangelizing in South Carolina, created a vow he required the enslaved to affirm when they were baptized: “You declare, in the presence of God and before this congregation, that you do not ask for the holy baptism out of any design to free yourself from the duty and obedience you owe to your master while you live, but merely for the good of your soul and to partake of the graces and blessings promised to the members of the church of Jesus Christ.”
As one historian explained, many Christian missionaries in the southern United States thus “preached a message that said Christianity could save one’s soul but not break one’s chains,” teaching “African Christians in America to be content with their spiritual liberation and to obey their earthly masters.”[1]
It’s particularly noteworthy that such an approach implicitly reflected a dualistic understanding of human nature, separating body and soul. One could therefore try to “save” an enslaved person’s “soul” without having to worry about trying to liberate his or her body. After all, according to this platonic dualism, what’s really important is what happens to a person’s soul—since the soul (or mind or spirit) is superior to the material body anyway.
Of course, Seventh-day Adventists have historically been extremely suspicious of any sort of body/soul dualism, believing it’s a greater reflection of Plato than Paul (or any of the other biblical writers). Such a suspicion has been the basis for our understanding of the “state of the dead,” insisting that a disembodied “soul” doesn’t go to heaven after a person dies, and our emphasis on healthy living. These are all good and important emphases, reflecting a biblical worldview.
It seems to me, however, that we as Seventh-day Adventists are also at risk of subtly buying into and promoting our own versions of this sort of platonic dualism.
Let me give you one example.
In the early 1960s a reader wrote to the Review, explaining that she had been at the March on Washington, which sought to promote civil rights for African Americans, and noted that she saw a lot of ministers from other denominations. Where, she wondered, were all the Adventist ministers?
In our emphasis on the spiritual and the eternal, we must also recognize Christ’s deep interest in healing and protecting people’s bodies.
The response was revealing. Editors shared that they “could not tell her where they all were,” but that they “knew where quite a few were.” They were “bravely preaching the gospel to men and women in far-off benighted lands, seeking to bring to them freedom in Christ.”[2] Reflecting on the incident a few years later, they further explained what the true Adventist mission was: “Preaching the ‘everlasting gospel’ is our great assignment from Heaven.” The “great assignment” for Adventists, they seemed to imply, wasn’t to focus on temporal liberation or equality but eternal salvation.[3]
Such sentiment was buttressed by the fact, also in the Review, that the Adventist Church should not involve itself in politics, as this would violate the Adventist commitment to the separation of church and state.[4] Yet around the same time such arguments were being made as to why the Adventist Church should avoid involving itself in the civil rights movement, pleas in the Review promoted legislative action regarding the tobacco industry.
Indeed, so passionate were Adventists about this issue that individual readers were to “write, visit, and urge your Congressman and Senators . . . to keep up the legislative emphasis against cigarettes,” and inviting Adventist congregations to prepare petitions “requesting your Congressman and Senators to support legislation to limit advertising aimed at women and youth, and to give to health and welfare agencies greater powers to police smoking hazards.”[5]
Thus, as Adventists, we have been willing to promote legislation that does address bodies—but only selectively.
What’s the point in all this? Is it to criticize our Adventist forefathers? Is it to point out our hypocrisy? Not at all. It’s simply a passionate and humble appeal to pursue our own theology—and our understanding of the wholistic nature of human beings—to its fullest extent.
To be clear, we definitely want to continue to emphasize eternal matters. There is an eternity to gain. We mustn’t lose sight of that. Neither should we reduce ourselves to being a community service organization or a political action group. That runs the risk of denying the wholistic nature of human beings as well—focusing only on the physical and not the spiritual.
But that’s the point: we need to treat the whole person—which entails more than just telling people the right foods to eat, by the way, or building another hospital (though these are certainly a part of it). In our emphasis on the spiritual and the eternal, we must also recognize Christ’s deep interest in healing and protecting people’s bodies.
This can take many different forms, of course—providing food for the hungry and clean water for the thirsty, extending hospitality and welcome to the stranger, protecting bodies from all types of violence from such entities as the state, church, media, and any other institution, and promoting justice for those who are oppressed (to name just a few examples). But it seems that if we’re going to submit ourselves to Christ to greater degrees, following His example, then we must truly be about His healing ministry.
Again, this doesn’t mean we abandon our eternal mission at all, subordinating everything to social activism or physical care.
It’s simply an appeal to recognize that when our brothers and sisters cry out for justice and healing, this is gospel work. And, as such, it is very much the work of Seventh-day Adventists.
[1] Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Reflective, 2019), p. 38.
[2] Francis D. Nichol, “The Ecumenical Tide Rises Higher,” Review and Herald, Dec. 19, 1963, p. 21.
[3] Francis D. Nichol, “Unity in the Faith,” Review and Herald, Apr. 29, 1965, p. 12.
[4] See, for example, Raymond F. Cottrell, “Church and State Again,” Review and Herald, Jan. 2, 1964, p. 14.
[5] Ernest H. J. Steed, “Crisis Year in the Smoking Controversy,” Review and Herald, June 12, 1969, p. 23. Thanks to my colleague Kevin Burton, Ph.D., director of the Center for Adventist Research, for pointing out this connection and contradiction.
