BERRIEN SPRINGS—Conference officials, college presidents, and other church officials unanimously condemned Southern Adventist University this week, after fresh reports emerged that the university has been openly teaching a normative six-day-literal creation in contrast to current church fundamental beliefs.
The reports were leaked by whistleblower students at Southern who taped literal-creation espousing lectures and speeches of their religion and biology professors. In one tape, Dr. Nolan Stevens, a biology professor, can be heard making a passionate argument for the scientific accuracy of the Bible, before explaining how evolutionary theory has too many gaps for him to believe it true. In another tape, Dr. Helen Ncube, a professor of theology, plainly states that God meant what he said when He inspired Moses to write Genesis 1 and 2.
These reports have stirred outrage among church leaders, many of whom are joining a growing chorus of voices clamoring for the blood of all professors and pastors with creationist leanings.
“Our educational institutions exist to produce open-minded, questioning, scientifically grounded individuals who understand the Bible to contain emotional truths!” said David Slalom, president of the Southeastern California conference. “Narrowminded, ignorant, uneducated Bible interpreting views like those held at Southern have no place in our church, and should be eliminated!”
Affirmations of the church's current belief in theistic evolution are pouring in from universities and conferences. Many conferences are cutting subsidies for students who wish to attend Southern. The furor is growing online through websites encouraging church members to hold their leaders accountable to the mythical narrative biblical truths that the church espouses, especially given the vote of this year's GC session to strengthen the wording of the fundamental belief on Evolution. Vigorous campaigns have sprouted to fire pastors and teachers identified as "conservative."
The conservative Adventist minority is loudly decrying what they see as a witch hunt by liberals to purge the church of any opposing viewpoints, and the church's slip toward following ever-tightening creed in an inflexible, authoritarian leadership structure.
Moderate Adventists express disgust on the latest turn of affairs.
“Liberal, conservative extremists, they're all the same,” said James Bunyan, a dentist and layperson who tries to understand opposing views, communicate respectfully, hold the Bible to a high standard, and follow the commandments of God. “They talk in the same way, yell in the same way, use the same form of arguments. One decade it's the conservatives in power, one decade it's the liberals. And in the meantime our church grows weaker and weaker while everybody outside laughs.”
