The Bible and Seventh-Day Adventists

The Seventh-day Adventist Church, a biblically conservative, Arminian, evangelical, Protestant denomination with roots in the Second Great Awakening of early nineteenth-century America, illustrates the shifting positions within American evangelicalism toward conservative readings of the Bible, and the impact of those readings on social engagement. Adventist leaders began with a moderate, thought-inspiration view of scripture and held to socially progressive views on race and gender. In the 1920s, the church shifted toward a more fundamentalist, verbal inerrancy approach to scripture, and they also shifted to conservative positions on issues of race and women’s involvement in ministry and leadership. Toward the end of the century, the influence of overseas missions began to temper the left‒right divide in the Western church, as conservative, but not fundamentalist, views from overseas became more influential, and social outlooks also became more progressive.