By Colleen Tinker
Adventist schools exist to make Adventists
Increasingly, Adventist elementary, secondary, and even tertiary schools have been seen as excellent options to public schools, both in North America and in other continents. Parents concerned about their children becoming indoctrinated with unbiblical ideas such as evolution and agnostic worldviews have often seen the local Adventist schools as excellent private school alternatives.
Because Adventism markets itself as a Protestant, Christian denomination, may unsuspecting people assume that their children will be immersed in a Christian environment where they will be taught biblical principles and values.
What parents often fail to realize, however, is that Adventist textbooks specifically teach Adventism as Adventist beliefs are subtly woven into the texts teaching all subjects.
A news article published by Adventist News Network on February 16, 2017, explains this reality as it introduces its new Adventist Spanish language textbooks for use in the Inter-American Division (IAD) of Seventh-day Adventists. This new Spanish text will be used in the first grade of the 422 Adventist schools in the Spanish-speaking countries of the IAD.
These 422 schools, however, do not represent all the Adventist elementary schools in the IAD. In addition to the 422 schools in Spanish territories, there are 83 in English territories, and 149 in French territories representing a total of 82,000 students who attend Adventist schools every year.
The development of this new series of Spanish textbooks, however, is only the first step of the IAD’s textbook projects. The division also has long-range plans to develop Adventist textbooks in both English and French for use in their division.
The Adventist organization has developed this new Spanish language text because they want to avoid the “fictional stories that have to do with Spiritism, evolution and other subject matter contrary to biblical teachings” that are in the many other good Spanish textbooks already available. On the surface this reasoning sounds good, but Gamaliel Florez, the director of education for the IAD, explains the real reason the Adventists have produced these books: “Our textbooks need to reflect our Adventist philosophy, so that we can teach children about the love of Jesus and how they can serve Him.”
Faye Patterson, the associate director of education for both primary and secondary schools in the IAD, chaired the committee that produced these books. She said, “The integration of faith in every part of the new textbooks has been a priority.”
Lest some assume these statements to be simply assertions of commitment to Christian principles, Florez further articulates their real motivation:
“‘Our interest is to teach biblical principles, and, yes, we teach respect toward different thinking, but our schools are there to form children and young people in the Adventist faith,’ said Florez, who also emphasized that more than 60 percent of students in the 654 primary schools [of the IAD] are not of the Adventist faith.”
In fact, the IAD already has plans underway to develop Spanish math and science textbooks which intertwine the subject matter with “faith concepts”. Concurrently, the North American Division already has Adventist textbooks in all the major subject areas for use in Adventist schools.
Clearly, the Adventist motivation is to make strong Adventists out of all of their students—the majority of whom are not even from Adventist families.
West Congo provides pastor-training
Meanwhile, the Adventist organization in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) recently inaugurated the first Adventist university in the region. Until now, if a person from West Congo wished to become an Adventist pastor, he or she had to travel to East Congo, Rwanda, or Nigeria for his or her education.
The inaccessibility of Adventist pastoral training has resulted in a “notorious lack of trained pastors”. Now, this new Adventist university “gives the opportunity to train those pastors who are significantly lacking in the Church.”
The inaugural ceremonies “included Blasious Ruguri, the president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the East-Central Africa region, and the DRC Minister of Higher Education and Universities.”
The opening of this new university specifically designed to provide trained Adventist pastors in the DRC demonstrates again that the Adventist school system is not primarily about providing a Christian environment and biblical teaching in an increasingly secular world. Rather, Adventist education is specifically and intentionally designed to replicate Adventism among Adventist children, to proselytize non-Adventist children to become Adventists, and to cement these young people into Adventist beliefs and an Adventist worldview.
References
Adventist New Network: West Congo Adventist University
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