The Difference
Why do we have Adventist education? Why is it different?
Nearly everyone who has attended a Seventh-day Adventist school can praise God for the "difference" that makes Adventist education worth the extra cost. It is helpful to review how this difference came about; for it came very near not coming about.
An Inauspicious Beginning
All eyes turned toward Sidney Brownsberger.
The first Seventh-day Adventist institution of higher learning, Battle Creek College, was in the process of birth. Its classroom building was under way. Its first principal, Sidney Brownsberger, had been selected. And the board of trustees was meeting to develop its plans further and to hear the word from the Lord.
Ellen G. White, recently back with her husband from California after starting the Signs of the Times in June, 1874, had just finished reading them an extensive testimony she had written, revealing God's ideals for Adventist education.
"Well, Brother Brownsberger," one of the board members inquired when Ellen White was through, "what can we do about this instruction Sister White has just given us?"
Everyone waited expectantly for his response. What they heard was candidly honest: "I do not know anything about the conducting of such a school."
It was not an auspicious way to begin.
Early Efforts
This was not, however, the very beginning of Adventist education. As early as 1853 some Adventists began setting up little elementary schools in their homes. These and later efforts, even at Battle Creek, soon collapsed under the "advantages" of public elementary education. Teenagers simply quit school and went to work.
In 1868 Edson White and some other teenagers working for the Review and Herald asked Goodloe Bell, a reform-minded teacher trained at Oberlin College who was being treated at the Western Health Reform Institute, if he would teach them at night. No sooner said than done; Bell immediately began conducting a "select school" for boys.
The twelve boys that first term included James White's sons, Willie and Edson, and two of J. P. Kellogg's sons, John, the future world-famous physician, and Will K., the future cornflake king. It was a prodigious student body.
And Professor Bell was a fine teacher. The school went so well that by 1872 the General Conference Committee voted to sponsor his select school as the first official Seventh-day Adventist school.
The Nicest Work
The year 1872 is notable not only for this adoption of Professor Bell's baby, but also for the birth of Ellen White's testimonies on the nature of true education, in which we find the key to "the difference" in Adventist education. The first of her many hundreds of pages on the subject appeared that year in Testimony No. 22¹, which begins with this sentence:
The "nicest" work—nicest in a nineteenth-century usage of the word: "requiring meticulous choice, tactful handling, careful consideration, or precise and scrupulous conduct."
For Ellen White education is not a pastime for untrained teachers and unqualified parents, but is a lofty career demanding thorough preparation and intense dedication.
The second sentence in the testimony makes this clear: "The greatest care should be taken in the education of youth to so vary the manner of instruction as to call forth the high and noble powers of the mind."
How? The answer follows. The sincere Christian teacher is to be equally interested "in the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual education of his scholars." Teaching is the "nicest" work because it must deal in a balanced way with the "whole" of each student while at the same time taking into account the different temperament that marks each individual. It must pay discriminating attention (1) to the salvation of students, (2) to their health, (3) to the practical knowledge they should acquire in order to be successful at farming, business, household duties, or whatever other career they may take up, (4) to the development of their ability to reason soundly, and (5) to whatever else will lead them into dedicated service for others.
This kind of essential education cannot be confined to a classroom. Parents should make the salvation of their children their "first and highest consideration," and the children's health their "first and constant care." In view of their responsibilities, mothers should regard their home duties as "sacred," and as far more important than the work of a stenographer ("copyist") or musician. Indeed there is "no employment more important" than homemaking.
A well-organized school is definitely required to provide "agricultural and manufacturing establishments" where students devote "a portion of the time each day" to active labor. And it's not enough for students merely to put in time at their jobs. They must be given "a thorough education" in the different kinds of work, so they can turn out quality products. They should be "taught labor as well as the sciences."
Bible study, of course, should occupy the most prominent position, yet not to the exclusion of the sciences.
And what is the purpose of this balanced, all-embracing education? "The great object of education is to enable us to use the powers which God has given us in such a manner as will best represent the religion of the Bible and promote the glory of God."
Here, in this Testimony No. 22, is the basis for the "difference" in Seventh-day Adventist education.
True Education
True education is not ordinary education; neither is it something separate from the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The church is to be made up of men and women who understand, believe, and live God's special last-day message and who unite to fulfill their mission of telling that message to the world. At its best, Seventh-day Adventist education has come to be the church's primary means of achieving this end. It seeks not only to make ministers, doctors, nurses, and teachers, but also to prepare every student to be an intelligent soul winner, whatever his calling.
Some years after this testimony appeared, Ellen White summarized and enlarged her philosophy in words that have become famous, and which should still be our philosophy:
"One great object of our schools is the training of youth to engage in service in institutions and in different lines of gospel work." All Adventist children should have the benefit of a Christian education, whether they are to become denominational employees or not, so they can fill "places of responsibility in both private and public life." "True education is missionary training. Every son and daughter of God is called to be a missionary."³
Launching B.C.C.
Not long after the General Conference adopted Bell's select school, it formed an educational society and set about laying plans for a combination college and secondary school.
"Let there be land enough for manufacturing and agriculture," Ellen White counseled, as the Lord's mouthpiece. She favored moving to a lakeside tract a few miles outside Battle Creek.
The county fairgrounds (fifty acres) nearer town was also on the market. She would settle for this piece of land. The Whites caught the train for California to start the Signs of the Times (this was early in 1874) and left the brethren to make the deal.
"If only the fairgrounds were closer to the Health Reform Institute," the timid board members worried, "then it would be easier for the students to get jobs there." (Actually the distance involved was only a few blocks!) "If we locate the school so far out, we'll likely have to move the Institute. Think of the expense!"
And Battle Creek itself seemed rural enough. The streets were unpaved, and the sidewalks were boardwalks. In the fall, turkeys could be heard gobbling in the adjacent woods. Like Lot when he was commanded to flee from city life (Gen 19:20-22), the brethren looked to Battle Creek as a kind of Zoar and pleaded with their consciences, "Is it not a little town?"
Suddenly Erastus Hussey offered to sell his twelve acres right across the street from the Health Institute! The Board pounced upon them—then sold off five acres, leaving seven, and congratulated themselves on how much of the Lord's money they had saved.
Ellen White reflected on how much of the Lord's will they had rejected. But, hiding her sorrow, she returned from California and appeared at their board meeting in the autumn (of 1874) and outlined God's plans for His school. It was on this occasion that everyone heard Professor Brownsberger say he knew nothing about running such an institution.
Unlike Professor Brownsberger, Professor Bell was in harmony with the new principles; but his talents seemed to lie more in teaching than in administration. Besides, it seemed important to the board to choose a principal with a university degree. Brownsberger had an M.A. from the University of Michigan; he was appointed principal, with James White for a while acting nominally as president.
Brownsberger, though dedicated, soon proved that he truly did not know how to do the job God wanted done. His education was in Greek and Latin classics. Not only did he ignore industries and farming, he scarcely even offered a Bible class, arranging for chapel services to teach Bible lessons. Most students took the "normal" course, leading to public elementary teaching. Other students, preparing to be ministers or to fill other jobs in the conferences, accepted a call as soon as one came along, even in the middle of a term.
God blessed Battle Creek College. He did the best He could with the school His people had launched. From time to time, by His grace, thrilling revivals swept the student body. And in the fellowship of students, a new sense of denominational unity was engendered.
Problems
In 1881, however, mounting problems embarrassed young Brownsberger. Regarding himself a failure, he quietly resigned and slipped northward in Michigan to take up public-school teaching and do some logging. But in 1882 the California Conference called him to head its new Healdsburg Academy and College. He accepted, laid plans at once for industries and Bible courses, and quickly proved that in a few years he had learned a great deal about running God's kind of school.
In selecting its next president, Battle Creek again bypassed Professor Bell, this time in favor of an amiable talker with the likely name of Alexander McLearn. No matter that he was not a Seventh-day Adventist! McLearn attended the Tabernacle on Sabbath, and he had a doctor's degree—indeed—in theology.
McLearn lasted one year. He departed to link up with the Seventh Day Baptists, after splitting the school in two. One angry student, a partisan of McLearn's, is said to have kicked Professor Bell down the stairs.
But McLearn couldn't have done so much harm if trouble hadn't already been brewing. The families of long-time Adventists in Battle Creek had grown careless, reported the Review, and their second-generation children, irreligious and skeptical, had exerted a baleful influence on students who had come from a distance with high ideals.
The school that had been founded for "usefulness in the cause of God" was undermined by "worldly influences and a desire to pattern after the popular schools around us," said General Conference President George I. Butler. The influence of the more spiritual teachers was destroyed by young teachers who sought popularity with the students.
In light of the serious problems it faced, Battle Creek College closed its doors at the end of the term and took a year out (1882-1883) to think things through!
A Second Start
The crisis that climaxed in the closing of Battle Creek College was productive of much good. Board, faculty, community, and student body rethought their regard for truly Adventist educational principles. Their attitudes changed. When classes resumed in the fall of 1883, enrollment was greatly reduced (in a few years it was higher than ever), but an entirely different spirit prevailed in the halls.
The new college president was W. H. Littlejohn, a blind pastor whom G. I. Butler, the General Conference president, asked to serve until he found his permanent choice. His permanent choice turned out, in due course, to be William Warren Prescott.
Professor Prescott had a master's degree. He also had a way of inspiring young people to seek personal dignity and self-control. He was a good Adventist. And he deeply desired to follow Ellen White's inspired ideals.
Prescott made the Bible increasingly prominent and participated in a number of wonderful revivals. He also inaugurated a number of small industries.
But Prescott was unable to effect a complete transition. In 1889 his faculty voted to have no more industries! Soon Ellen White was warning against dangers in the entertainments and the competitive sports that were filling the place that manual labor should have occupied.⁴
In 1891 Union College opened in Nebraska and, in 1892 Walla Walla College opened in Washington. For a while, Prescott served as president of all three at the same time.
In 1891 Prescott also helped Ellen White and others conduct in Petoskey, Michigan, the first nationwide Seventh-day Adventist teachers' institute. About a hundred believers teaching in scattered Adventist schools and in public schools came together to camp in tents and to discuss "Christian education" for the first time. It was a landmark.
In 1894 Prescott was sent by the General Conference to travel around the world, and Professor G. W. Caviness was asked to succeed him at Battle Creek College. Probably Caviness, too, wanted to be a reformer; but, if so, like his predecessors, he didn't fully know how. He did require everyone to take at least one Bible class. But Ellen White wrote from Australia (on March 21, 1895) that the shorter the time the students spent at Battle Creek under the present circumstances, the better.
A month later (on April 22) she wrote again. If God and the Bible were given the central place in education they were supposed to occupy, then students might pursue their studies as far as they wished.
The "Difference" Discovered
Now there were a few men in the church who not only wanted to reform Seventh-day Adventist education but who had good ideas about how to do it and the energy with which to make them work. Dr. J. H. Kellogg was one of these. Percy Magan, in his late twenties and a member of the college staff, was another.
Ed Sutherland, also young, was a third. While teaching history at Battle Creek College in 1892, Sutherland had roused the students to get meat removed from the college menus. That was an innovation! Now he was president at Walla Walla, founding industries, encouraging religious fervor, and fostering in his students a sincere dedication to the service of God.
Down in Australia, Ellen White was demonstrating what her testimonies meant. At Avondale she was carving an exemplar college out of poverty and eucalyptus.
At the 1897 General Conference, Ed Sutherland was voted in as new president of Battle Creek College, with Percy T. Magan as his dean. Kellogg was jubilant.
Changes were made! Classics were out. Degrees were out. Mission-oriented courses were in. The Bible became the textbook above all others; it was used even in certain math classes. In a symbolic gesture, with Sutherland holding the handles of a plow, Magan guiding the team, and 220-pound Professor Lamson sitting on the beam, the new administration plowed up the playing field and prepared it for a food crop.
Students enrolled in ministerial and canvassing courses and in other curricula leading toward missionary nursing and missionary medicine, as well as missionary farming, missionary merchandising, and so on. "Missionary," as Dr. E. K. Vande Vere has observed, meant selfless dedication, the willingness and the ability to be self-supporting, and perpetual activity in soul-winning. Many students also enrolled in the one-year normal course—but no longer with an eye to teaching in public school.
In 1901 the college constituency and the General Conference voted to close the college in Battle Creek and move it out into the country. Sutherland and Magan found a promising location in Mr. E. F. Garland's property at the resort town of Berrien Springs, Michigan. Soon Emmanuel Missionary College (E.M.C.—now part of Andrews University) was rising there on 272 acres.
Evening classes were conducted that first year in the abandoned Berrien County jail and courthouse, as side by side, students and teachers spent their days working on the farm or constructing wooden buildings together. Ellen White insisted that such cooperation between faculty and students was so essentially a part of Christian education that it was "in no case" to be neglected.⁵
The initial Berrien Springs experiment went too far, offering no degrees, only two meals a day, and buildings unheated during the winter (to accustom students to the rigors of mission life). Yet Ellen White had never spoken against degrees as such; and when the College of Medical Evangelists began at Loma Linda around 1910, she specifically counseled that its graduates should be prepared to meet every reasonable academic qualification.⁶ She recommended two meals a day, but she cheerfully allowed the students at Avondale to eat three meals, and she made a third meal available to her own staff.
But at E.M.C. Sutherland and Magan manifested incredible courage, faith, and energy. They founded a college in the country. They began agriculture and industries in connection with it. They set faculty and students at manual labor together. They arranged weekly student-faculty conferences for the making and interpreting of rules. They erected necessary buildings economically. They put Scripture and selfless service into lofty prominence. They gave real content to the words "Emmanuel" and "Missionary." All in all, they achieved a first-rate breakthrough.
The presidents and faculties that followed Sutherland and Magan at E.M.C. completed the process. Under President Frederick Griggs (1918-1925) blueprint balance was rather largely accomplished. Agriculture and industries provided income, exercise, character building, and student-faculty fellowship. The religion department flourished. Curricula led sensibly to degrees, and at the same time every activity was openly directed toward the salvation of souls. Students were enthusiastic; and they departed, well educated, with a desire to serve the Lord wherever He called.
Other Schools
E.M.C. was not the only Seventh-day Adventist college seeking to follow God's inspired counsels. Oakwood College, founded in 1896 near Huntsville, Alabama as Oakwood Industrial School, provided opportunities for practical as well as academic experience right from the start.
Graysville (Tennessee) Academy began in 1892, and in 1916 moved to Collegedale. The academy soon outgrew junior college status to become another four-year educational institution under the name of Southern Missionary College.
In the meantime many other Adventist colleges were being founded in Canada, in various European countries, in Africa, South America, India, and elsewhere. In the United States, Healdsburg College was reestablished as Pacific Union College in the crater-like depression atop Howell Mountain. Washington Missionary College was designated the official school for preparing overseas workers. In the orange groves of southern California the College of Medical Evangelists (now part of Loma Linda University) arose.
In the 1920s some Adventist colleges in North America, in order to undergird Loma Linda's standing with the American Medical Association, secured junior-college accreditation for their premedical programs. For this purpose, they sent a few faculty members, mature and experienced, to universities to earn doctor's degrees. In the 1930s, after much soul-searching, several colleges earned senior-college accreditation. Also in the 1930s, Pacific Union College saw the emergence of a General Conference institution on its campus that later developed into the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary.
In the 1940s, after World War II, great changes occurred in Adventist colleges in America with the influx of GIs—mature, married, and driving cars. The 1950s were notable for the large number of faculty members sent off to earn doctorates. In the early 1960s Emmanuel Missionary College was enlarged into Andrews University; and the College of Medical Evangelists was merged with La Sierra College and with schools of nursing, dentistry, and others to become Loma Linda University.
The Largest Protestant System
No other denomination does so much for its young people as does the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Since 1852 it has provided youth publications now numbering scores around the world. Its Sabbath Schools, and its Youth and Education structures exist largely or entirely for youth. And today it provides the largest Protestant system of elementary and secondary education in the world. In the 1980s Seventh-day Adventists operate 5000 schools and employ 33,000 teachers serving 650,000 students.
Today the Seventh-day Adventist denomination continues to pour millions of dollars into its youth programs, convinced that its young people are the hope of the future, and that men and women must understand and tell God's special truth for this time.
Many still look for that distinctive character in our schools. Sometimes they come away disappointed. If the "difference" isn't always present as it ought to be, a review of God's "leading and teaching in our past history," with an intense restudy of the Ellen G. White writings, can help us, by God's grace, to restore it.