Prophetic Irrelevance: How Modern Adventism Forgot Its Social Justice Roots
Disclaimer: Not all Modern Adventism has forgotten its social justice roots. Many voices, particularly in (but not limited to) Black Adventism, have been calling these issues out for decades. Its time the rest of the church listened.
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I was having a chat with a friend yesterday about the purpose of prophecy and what makes it meaningful vs irrelevant in our modern world.
Here are the 3 points we touched on.
1. Biblical prophecy is an ancient Hebraic phenomenon. It's not American. It's not European. It's not western. It is Hebraic-Jewish in its makeup. Any prophetic discourse that ignores this, ignores the very heart of Biblical prophecy.
2. The heart of Jewish prophecy is a protest against institutional, systemic, and imperial systems of oppression and corruption. Both the major and minor prophets were social justice warriors driven by a vision of a just society in harmony with YHWHs heart.
3. The early Adventists who fought against the slave trade, ran underground railroads, and advocated for religious freedom knew this. Sadly, modern fundamentalist Adventism has continued to preach prophecy, but divorced it from its social protest dimensions. We have turned it into an irrelevant set of super nerdy discourses that are religio-centric and have very little relevance to most people, especially in our secular world.
Perhaps this neutering is why our institution complied with Jim Crow in America, supported the 3rd Reich in Germany, and stood by apartheid in south Africa all the while continuing to preach "prophecy" seminars.
In 2025 the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists wants to run 3000 evangelistic programs.
Those who choose to participate here is my invitation --- remember who we are.
As a prophetic movement we have a responsibility to resist injustice, cultivate healing, and protest corruption. Today, this includes protesting the Christian Nationalism that is growing in influence via the conservative, evangelical right.
We need to step into our true identity. Adventism isn't meant to be another conservative fundamentalist church. The world has had plenty of sectarian, narcissists religion.
We are instead meant to be an alternative community that lives out the rhythms of the kingdom of heaven - a new kind of world rooted in servanthood and not domination, whose king washes feet and touches lepers. Not a warrior with muscle. Not an emperor with coercive power. But a lamb who calls us to love.
