Change is hard. As human beings, we are notoriously resistant to change and the discomfort that comes with it. Change as simple as switching brands of laundry detergent or coffee creamer can be difficult for some people, while for others, it can take a larger, life altering decision to faze them. The fact remains, however, that we, as humans, prefer to be comfortable. Indeed, we humans typically spend much of our lives working to make our personal situations more comfortable physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, and socially.
My husband and I left Adventism in 2004. It seems like yesterday, though in reality, we are approaching 15 years out of the organization. When we initially left the Adventism, we were fortunate to do so following a change of jobs, which included a long-distance move to a small community where there was no local Adventist Church. While we did the hard work of studying through false doctrines of the Adventist Church, and learning Biblical truth, we were able to walk into a very welcoming local Christian church family. Due to our new location, we were also fortunate not to lose any of our Adventist friendships over our decision to leave the church, though many of our Adventist friendships faded because of the relocation and the natural distancing that happens when one moves away. While I was always able to sympathize with other former Adventists who had lost their families as well as their church communities when they left the organization, I really felt fortunate not to have experienced that level of loneliness myself. Over the last two years, circumstances have lead us away from that church family we joined in 2004, and it is only now, many years after leaving Adventism, that we personally feel the pain and loss of walking away from community.
A few weeks ago, my family and I were driving to the city nearest our home, and we passed through a small community that we know has a relatively active, though also small, Adventist Church. We went to university with several individuals from the area and knew from social media that most all of them had married and returned to their church and community, starting families, continuing to be very involved in the local Adventist community. Maybe in part because of my newfound empathy for those who have given up so much in order to follow truth, I began to wonder about these people, as well as other Adventist classmates with whom I’ve lost touch. I wondered what might make it difficult for each of them to walk away from Adventism at this point in their lives, and, with the age of technology and the internet, with information readily available, what would keep them from questioning or even looking at “outside opinions” out of curiosity.
At the Former Adventist Fellowship Conference earlier this year, Paul Carden spoke about the concept of “pillarization.’ Pillarization is essentially where groups seek to establish a level of independence within themselves. Carden said in his talk that “Each pillar may have their own social institutions and social organizations. These may include their own newspapers, broadcasting organizations, political parties, trade unions and farmers associations, banks, schools, hospitals, universities, scouting organizations, sports clubs and other organizations. Such segregation means that many people have little or no personal contact with people from another pillar.” He also described it as a particular societal structure with organizational complexes that strive toward self-sufficiency, stating that these could be active on a religious or ideological basis. As Mr. Carden also pointed out in his talk, pillarization describes Adventism quite accurately.
As Adventists, nearly every need was, or could easily be, addressed on some level within the organization. Of course, the availability of familiar support likely depended on how near to an Adventist college or university one was located. There was no need to look outside of the organization for friends, as there were people at church who could be one’s friends. As Sabbath-keepers, Adventists were usually seen as more trustworthy, understanding us more than anyone we met at work—unless, of course, one worked for an Adventist institution in which case one would be surrounded by people of like mind.
In many places around the world, if one needs a doctor, one can easily find oneself an Adventist doctor, or an Adventist hospital. Many future church members are born in Adventist hospitals. Fellow Adventists also provide other medical services. I remember that when I was growing up, it was common for church members to drive distances in order to be the patient of an Adventist optometrist, or an Adventist dentist, rather than visit one of the local practitioners.
There are Adventist grade schools for one’s children to, and as they grow up, they can move to day or boarding academies and eventually Adventist universities that go all the way to postgraduate studies. Once one has graduated from an Adventist college or university, there seem to be plenty of jobs within the system to go around. I went to a small Adventist university, so I was able to mentally scroll through the list of people I remember in my classes. Even though I probably shouldn’t have been, I was legitimately surprised to realize how few of my former classmates have careers outside of the Adventist system. The ones that do are often those that became doctors or dentists and work for themselves and have employees rather than being an employee of someone else, or else they are those who run some sort of other business of their own, including farming and agriculture.
While Adventist medical facilities are not common where I am from, I know that it is possible to pass one’s later years in an Adventist retirement home, and then, once one passes away, it is also possible, if not common, that one’s funeral arrangements be made through a funeral home run by fellow Adventists.
All of this insulated life is encompassed in a life of foods provided by the Adventist Book Centers or other church-linked manufacturers. There are Adventist books from the same ABC, Adventist magazines and Sabbath School lesson study guides, and Adventist media outlets as well as Pathfinders, church campouts, campmeetings, graduations, weddings, and funerals all attended primarily by fellow Adventists.
Function of Adventist Pillarization
So, how does this “pillarization effect“ affect how Adventism functions? How does pillarization affect how Adventism retains its members for generations, or how it woos back those who wandered away in their youth, but returned once they have children of their own? How does it affect those who may join the church later in life, whether through friendship evangelism, or through prophecy seminars and other official evangelism methods? How does pillarization make leaving an organization such as Adventism harder than simply leaving a job, a club, or social organization?
Pillarization helps Adventism retain members from generational families because, for potentially decades, multiple generations have grown up knowing nothing BUT Adventism. As I demonstrated above, it is entirely possible for one to go through their entire life, from birth to old age/death, having never lived or worked outside of Adventism, never having had a friendly relationship with anyone outside of the organization, and never having considered a perspective outside of the one into which they were indoctrinated well before their earliest memory. Because Adventism supplies their every felt need, it is easy for people to become comfortable, and change seems unfathomable, if not completely unnecessary. It is true that a semi-closed society creates an often-comfortable and pleasant existence. Many of us have very fond memories of church socials, church school programs and concerts, church campouts, Sabbath lunches that bled into popcorn and fruit for supper, followed by after-sundown rounds of Uno, Pit, or Skip-Bo (and, where I’m from, Hockey Night in Canada). I have fantastic memories of spending Sabbath afternoons with my cousins, then spending Saturday night playing all of these games I mentioned, racing around the house, playing tag, watching a rented VHS movie, and possibly falling asleep on the floor somewhere, because the adults were still playing Skip-Bo. Pillarization creates community and a reliance on one another. People become comfortable and complacent, seeing no need to look beyond their secure circle for anything different or better.
I recognize that there are plenty of opportunities where this isolation can and has gone badly, even leading to unrecognized and unreported abuse, but that fact only serves to reinforce the idea that pillarization keeps people in the system, because it is all they have ever known. People who grow up in a generational family of Adventists have an even more entrenched sense of familiarity inside the group and greater discomfort with anything outside of the system they know. It’s easy to see how, even if they do find themselves in a scary or uncertain situation within the church, it is still somehow LESS scary and uncertain than going outside of the boundaries they have had created for them—all without being fully aware of the seriousness of the issues.
The “pillarization effect” also enables the Adventist church to draw in those who were raised in the organization, but “backslid” once they reached adulthood. Young people raised in the Adventist church sometimes find themselves adrift for a time after finishing academy, even if they are attending an Adventist University. I’ve seen many instances in which the observance of Adventism takes a back seat for those in their early 20’s, but it seems that once these individuals marry and settle down to raise a family, they often feel drawn back to the organization, wishing to raise their children with the same “truth” and values with which they were raised. After all, particularly if they are from a generationally Adventist family, it has always been well-cemented in their minds that Adventism is THE truth, and anyone who does not keep the Sabbath cannot be saved in the end.
These young families are offered friendship, mentorship of older members and family members (who are elated to see their “lost sheep” return to the fold), and membership in a support system that offers them the all-encompassing experience I laid out earlier. A single 20-something is not typically worried about health care and dental services, or “wholesome” programming on television and an ideally healthy diet, but once one has children, he or she feels the responsibility for those children’s lives and souls. Adventism offers to fill all of these needs in one tidy little box.
The mystery of the disappearing member
As an Adventist, one phenomenon I could never seem to explain was how people would be drawn in to the Adventist church through a prophecy seminar, or other church outreach, be baptized (joining the church), and then seemingly disappear within a few months to a year. I could never figure out how these people, having accepted “the truth,” could so easily and quickly walk away. One could reasonably argue that the fact that Adventist evangelism is void of the gospel and does not result in New Birth could be at the core of this “phenomenon,” but I would also argue that pillarization is at play in these situations.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been “the new person” in an established, close knit situation before, perhaps you have. When a new person enters a closed, largely self-sufficient system, such as Adventism, it stands to reason that the people already existing in the system are quite, as I’ve stated before, comfortable. They have everything they need. They have friends, they have support, they have food, media, spiritual guidance, medical care from a safe and familiar source, and usually, they have family. When a completely new person enters this system, they often find that the others are unable to conceptualize this sense of “newness.” Everything feels comfortable and familiar to them, and it is unfathomable that it would be new and strange and uncomfortable for the newcomer. I’m sure there is a motivation to work hard, to try to fit in, depending on one’s commitment to the new “truth” they have accepted, but when there is little to no reciprocation, is it any wonder that they give up and “disappear?”
Perhaps I speak from experience, having been one of the existing members of Adventism. I remember, as a child, several instances where new families would “join the church” after a prophecy seminar, but from my perspective, they never seemed to fit in. And they never stayed long. Since leaving Adventism over a decade ago, and since having found myself as the “new” person in a relatively closed community (non-religious), my eyes have been opened to understand this phenomenon better, and now be able to explain, if only to myself up to this point, why those who joined Adventism later in life seemed never to stay for long (with rare exception).
If pillarization makes a self-sufficient group or organization easy to stay in and hard to join, it makes it even harder to leave, especially when one is raised in it from birth or from a generational family. I think it is human nature to want to find the system or the plan that “works” the best, or with the least resistance, and then repeat or copy it in hopes of maintaining an existence with the least amount of discomfort possible (though I know there are likely some thrill-seekers reading this who have NO idea what I am talking about!).
That being said, human nature is also to keep developing new and better ways of doing things, but in a closed, pillarized system such as Adventism, there is only so far one can push before one start slipping off of the pillar altogether. When raised in a system such as this, one is often taught it IS the best and the smoothest of all systems. With no other options readily available for exploration, with all of one’s needs provided, it’s easy to see why one generation after another would simply follow what came before, obviously with their own twists and minor adaptations, but generally, all things must remain within “the pillar.”
When it comes down to it, any mostly self-sufficient pillar, such as Adventism, is really just a series of interdependent systems, each relying on the proper functioning of the other, to keep itself going. In my opinion, this is why, despite the best efforts of many, including myself at one point, to change Adventism from within, to convince “the powers that be” that the answer is “more grace and love, less judgement,” or to minimize the role of Ellen White in current church practice, Adventism can never change without crumbling. It all works together to create the all-encompassing system that allows people to settle in and get comfortable. When a person who is part of the system, even a small part, starts to question, starts to change, it begins to make everyone around them uncomfortable. In my experience, there are few people in this world more unhappy than a previously comfortable person who has been made to feel uncomfortable.
Have you ever tried to wake a small child who is deep in sleep, warm and cozy in their bed in the middle of the night? Trust me, it is nearly impossible. IF you can get them to react to your coaxings, their immediate response is to reach for their blankets, pull them as tightly over their heads as they possibly can, and return to their comfortable, restful state. If you persist in your efforts to rouse them, you may be met with some wails of protest, and in their warm, drowsy state, a normally docile child might even give you a push in an effort to get you to go away! I would propose that this is not unlike those who have a loved one or a close contact in Adventism who is questioning, or beginning the process of leaving the organization. While it is wildly uncomfortable for the person who is having the questions, it is uncomfortable and uncontrollable for those around him or her, who are having their warm, cozy and predictable reality disturbed, possibly for the first time. I think often, when someone is realizing the truth of the Gospel and the deception of Adventism for the first time, they are often surprised at the push back they receive from their Adventist friends and family. After all, they suppose, Adventism is all about “the Truth,” and anyone interested in “truth” will surely be excited to hear what they have found. Unfortunately, because it causes discomfort, their efforts are often rebuffed, not unlike a sleepy child in a warm, cozy bed.
This uncomfortable resistance, coupled with the discomfort and pain that comes with realizing the falsehood and deception of the “pillar,” the church and the community, that you loved and trusted, or even the potential for these discomforts, is likely what keeps many people in the organization today. Access to information is no longer a barrier, and the real story of the roots of Adventism and the way it twists and contorts the Gospel is readily available. But the truth is, leaving is painful. It is never easy to step out of everything one have ever known into an unknown, uncomfortable, and often terrifying reality, thanks in part to the lies we were told about true Christianity.
So many formers today have access, through the internet and social media, to other former Adventists, to current Adventists and to questioning Adventists. In times past, many who had left the church or were questioning the teachings thought they were the only ones, but today we have the ability to encourage and support each other. Thinking about pillarization and how it affects those currently in Adventism and on those on their way out has given me a bigger perspective on reaching current and questioning Adventists with the Gospel.
Leaving the church is not easy. Not only are these people walking away from everything they ever knew, they are experiencing resistance and even rejection from the ones they have loved and trusted the most. By noticing and recognizing these obstacles, I think we can all better serve and love both current and questioning Adventists, demonstrating that there is hope, love and LIFE on the other side, if they will have the courage to take the leap. Let’s be there to reassure them with the hope of our new life in Christ as they bravely question what they have loved and follow Jesus out of a compelling deception. †
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