AT INTERVIEW: Michael W. Campbell on Adventists and Fundamentalism

Michael Campbell’s books, 1919 and 1922, trace our racism, sexism and biblical literalism to a flirtation with Fundamentalism in the 1920’s. The early twentieth century was a transformative time within American religion and culture. World War I contributed to a heightened sense of militancy; as did the 1918-19 influenza pandemic that only further reminded people of their own mortality. American Christianity experienced a bifurcation between the theological modernist movement and their fundamentalist counterparts. And around this same time, the Seventh-day Adventist Church found itself no longer having a living prophet. --------------------- The early twentieth century was a transformative time within American religion and culture. World War I contributed to a heightened sense of militancy; as did the 1918-19 influenza pandemic that only further reminded people of their own mortality. American Christianity experienced a bifurcation between the theological modernist movement and their fundamentalist counterparts. And around this same time, the Seventh-day Adventist Church found itself no longer having a living prophet. Adventists shared some of these same concerns with the wider fundamentalist movement, but found themselves initially hesitant to embrace the movement, in no small part due to R. A. Torrey, one of the editors of The Fundamentals, who had earlier written a tract against Adventism. During the war, however, Adventists began to attend a series of prophetic conferences that became a model for an Adventist prophetic conference, widely known as the 1919 Bible Conference. Fundamentalist ideas began to permeate Adventism during the late 1910s and early 1920s, creating an Adventist version of fundamentalism that profoundly changed Adventism. Some of the ways it is possible to see these changes are in terms of gender and race. This presentation will focus largely on the latter topic, specifically, how some of the leading advocates of Adventist fundamentalism began to espouse a racist theology. Some even began to argue for a segregated black and white heaven. And in a similar way, just as some fundamentalists such as J. Frank Norris drew deeply from the well of white Protestant Christian nationalism, some Adventists during this time began to associate with the Klan. This presentation examines some of those interactions, both positive and negative, in which Adventists participated. Some even embraced the second wave of the Klan. While this may seem deeply troubling to some today, at the time and in historical context, some of these interactions need to be seen as part of a larger cultural framework. Teacher: Bio: Michael W. Campbell, Ph.D., is professor of religion at Southwestern Adventist University. He was recently appointed as director of the North American Division department of Archives, Statistics, and Research. He is also co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Seventh-day Adventism and under contract with Eerdmans to write a forthcoming textbook about Adventist history. He recently organized academic paper sessions at the American Society of Church History and the Conference on Faith and History. He has contributed over one thousand articles in popular, peer-reviewed, and reference works. Some of his research interests include a history and theology of the Lord’s Supper, the Taiping movement, and the history of missions. He is the author of twelve books including 1922: The Rise of Fundamentalism (Pacific Press, 2022). He and Buster Swoopes contribute a weekly podcast, “Sabbath School Rescue” and a monthly podcast with Greg Howell, “Adventist Pilgrimage.” He enjoys bird watching, racquetball, and Pathfinders. He and his wife, Heidi, who is a Ph.D. candidate at Baylor University in Early Modern History, have two teenage children, Emma and David.