By Colleen Tinker
Last Saturday, January 28, Loma Linda University Health (LLUH) hosted the inaugural event for its new Center for Understanding World Religions. The online News for LLUH explains the vision and purpose of this new Center:
“Religious hostility too often sits at the core of conflict and violence. Honest dialogue and mutual respect are part of the solution, and hence one reason Loma Linda University Health has created the William Johnsson Center for Understanding World Religions.”
The Center’s namesake, William Johnsson, retired to Loma Linda in 2014 where he teaches classes at the LLU School of Religion after a career highlighted by editing the Adventist Review, the official publication of the Seventh-day Adventist organization. Prior to retiring, Johnsson “served as interfaith relations [assistant] for former General Conference President Jan Paulsen for a number of years.”
In his position as assistant to the president for interfaith relations, Johnsson wrote an article in the February, 2010 issue of Adventist World, a monthly free magazine published with news shaped for each world division of the Adventist organization. The article, entitled “Adventists and Muslims: Five Convictions”, recounts Johnsson’s experience visiting a sheikh who was “a spiritual leader of many thousands of Muslims in several countries” who stated that God had given him three visions about Adventists.
Johnsson met with him and concluded that Adventists and Muslims have several areas of similar understanding: the Sabbath (the Koran mentions Sabbath and never the first day of the week), cosmic conflict, creation, health and healthful living (including abstinence from pork and alcohol), and relationship to Israel. Significantly, Johnsson says, “In meeting Muslim leaders, I emphasize from the outset that I prefer to be known as an Adventist rather than as a Christian. For Muslims the name ‘Christian’ carries such negative associations—associations that do not belong with Seventh-day Adventists—that I would rather avoid the term. And ‘Adventist’ captures well the driving pulse of who we are—our hope in Jesus’ return and sense of divine calling to tell it to the world.”
It is not surprising, therefore, that the inaugural event for the new William Johnsson Center for Understanding World Religions featured Islam.
The dean of the LLU School of Religion, Jon Paulien, is the new Center’s director. He explains that a university is a place of “the exchange and understanding of diverse ideas—such as different religious beliefs. Working or studying at Loma Linda University Health is a calling, not a job. If God calls non-Christians to Loma Linda, then that is a spiritual gift to us. They can benefit us by testifying to what God has done in their lives. Furthermore, the surest way to people’s hearts is through their faith,” he continues. “We need to understand the hearts of our students and employees of other belief systems so that we can serve them appropriately.”
Paulien, in fact, maintains that the eschatological remnant people of Revelation will be comprised of the three monotheistic faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. “The remnant of Revelation becomes the meeting point of all followers of the one true God,” he says. Each of the three, he says, bring three doctrines to the Remnant of Revelation. Christianity will bring the gospel, grace, and Jesus; Judaism will bring law, obedience, and Sabbath, and Islam will bring submission, judgment, and eschatology. He presented this idea in a talk in 2008 which he delivered in Ohio at the 150th anniversary celebration of Ellen White’s Great Controversy Vision, and it is online as well.
“Jew, Muslim, Christian and more will find common cause in the teachings of the remnant as foretold in the Book of Revelation”, Paulien says.
Islam: The Inaugural Program
The opening program of the new Center occurred on Saturday, January 28, at 3:00 PM. The presenters were almost all Muslim students and faculty from LLUH with a guest speaker, Jihad Turk, from the Claremont School of Theology. He is the president of Bayan Claremont, a Muslim Seminary, and his talk was entitled “Why I Am A Muslim”. LLU School of Medicine associate professor Nahidh Hasaniya recited a passage from the Quran, and medical professor Shamel And-Allah translated it. Gerald Winslow, director of the LLU Center for Christian Bioethics, spoke about Adventism and Islam, and the program ended with a panel discussion among the program presenters.
The online LLUH News reported, “The choice of Islam as the first program’s focus reflects part of the impetus to start such a center at Loma Linda University Health.” The Center for Understanding World Religions plans to host two programs each year featuring different religions.
Observations
Interestingly, Adventists have been increasingly reaching out to and connecting with Muslims over the past years. While they are not giving up their distinctive beliefs, they nevertheless see themselves as holding key beliefs in common with them. Even while they proselytize Muslims, they nevertheless believe that Muslims can believe in Jesus and remain Muslim if they so desire.
In fact, William Johnsson’s admission that he would rather call himself an Adventist than a Christian when talking to Muslims demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of Christianity. While Johnsson claimed that Muslims associate Christianity with the immoral West, his holding onto the “Adventist” title reveals that he he sees no problem with appearing to disavow Christianity when conversing with a Muslim. He sees himself as something “other” than Christian.
This admission, in fact, is the way Adventists see themselves. They claim Christianity, but they are not “merely” Christian. They are Seventh-day Adventist Christians, and the “Christian” identity can be jettisoned if “Adventist” is more advantageous.
The opening program of this new Center for Understanding World Religions featuring Islam reveals Adventism’s persistent and growing identification with Islam over evangelical Christianity. As Adventism positions itself and even calls itself a “world church”, its efforts are more and more directed at a politically correct collegiality.
Paulien expresses his commitment to this goal as he describes the programs at the new Center: “These programs will not be purely theoretical but will also include practitioners of that faith who are employees or students of Loma Linda University Health, sharing what it means to them, with an Adventist then responding about how Adventism at its best encourages Loma Linda to offer an environment where individuals of different faiths peacefully learn and practice alongside each other.”
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For commentary written by former Adventists addressing the weekly Sabbath School lessons, visit Bible Studies for Adventists
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