By Mark Johnson
In the early morning hours of February 18, 1902, a “cleansing sword of fire” struck the heart of Adventist health care and destroyed the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
It was a proud and overconfident heart.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the chief medical officer of the Sanitarium, had been battling Ellen G. White and the leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference over both the mission and the management of the health care institution. It is not hard to sympathize with Kellogg. He had taken the struggling Western Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek and had turned it into a world-famous destination health resort for many affluent celebrities. Control of the sanitarium, and the significant finances that went with it, had become a growing source of contention between Dr. Kellogg and the Church. The schism that soon came with the disfellowshipping of Kellogg completely overturned both the power structure of the Adventist Church and the foundations of our medical ministry.
The problems Dr. Kellogg had with the leadership of the Adventist Church had nothing to do with his medical practices. They were based on what was viewed as his “secularized theology” and on fears regarding who would ultimately control the Church. Albert Dittes writes: Kellogg defended “the harmony of science and the Bible” throughout his career, but he was active at a transitional time, when both science and medicine were becoming increasingly secularized. (Ellen G.) White and others in the Adventist ministry worried that Kellogg’s students and staff were in danger of losing their religious beliefs, while Kellogg felt that many ministers failed to recognize his expertise and the importance of his medical work. There were ongoing tensions between his authority as a doctor, and their authority as ministers.
On June 6, 1863, as a young member of the newly organized Seventh-day Adventist Church, Ellen G. White had her first “health vision.” The essence of this 45-minute vision was that the new church was to attend to the health of its members, speak out against all types of intemperance, and point folks to “God’s great medicine: water, pure soft water, for diseases, for health, for cleanliness, for luxury.”2
In subsequent visions, this item was included on an expanded list to embrace, “pure air, sunlight, abstemiousness, rest, exercise, proper diet, the use of water, trust in divine power – these are the true remedies.” 3
This list of remedies became the bedrock of Kellogg’s medical practice at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Many of them he carried to what some would call excess. He used water, at different temperatures, as a sedative, a tonic, an emetic, an astringent, a pain reliever, a blood vessel constrictor and enemas. Lots and lots of enemas.
He actively practiced and advocated for the other remedies as well. He changed America’s breakfast habits by inventing such things as granola and corn flakes. He was at least one of many who were involved in the invention of peanut butter. He made the first of many vegetable-based meat substitutes. He made various foods out of nuts, grains and soy, and patented the first acidophilus soy milk. He led out in exercise sessions with his patients. He encouraged activities in the fresh air and bright sunshine. He railed against coffee, tea, alcohol and tobacco and he preached abstemiousness to the point of personal celibacy.
I mention Dr. Kellogg and the Battle Creek Sanitarium because it is impossible to understand Adventist health care today without knowing a bit of that history.
I believe there are at least three reasons why this history is pertinent to a dialogue regarding the future of Adventist health care: 1) many Adventists, at least in the United States, still feel more comfortable with Kellogg’s high touch, low tech “remedies from God” than with the high tech, low touch world of science in today’s hospitals; 2) there are lingering suspicions, among both clergy and physicians, in regard to the control of Adventist health care and the massive finances involved, and; 3) the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential of once again completely overturning both our Church’s power structure and the foundations of our current health care system.
These three issues underlie a major cause of real and potential division between the medical and clerical arms of our Church—a lack of empathy and appreciation. We do not know each other. We do not recognize, nor do we take the time to truly understand, the slings and arrows that others face in their daily work. I have heard members of the Church staff grumble about the salary differences between them and health care providers. I have heard them state that physicians have too much power in the local church. I have heard health care providers belittle Church staff because of their “banker’s hours” and complain that pastors ask for too much of them as volunteers and as donors.
The crisis we are now facing with the COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to bring Adventist health care work and clerical ministries together in a very practical way. Hospitals and hospital systems have seen huge financial declines in revenue. Tithes and offerings have been reduced. While this could be catastrophic, it may also provide some opportunities we have missed or ignored in the past. It might help us to refocus our efforts.
In many places, our Church and its institutions have been siloed and insular in their response to the needs of the community. While most of our health care systems donate millions of dollars in community benefit every year, and our churches have wonderful outreach programs of their own, we now have new and significant opportunities for the Church and the healing arm of the ministry to join together and unite with non-denominational organizations to help provide or lower the cost of health care for those in need at this critical time.
The current pandemic has caused major disruption to our societal norms and provides great opportunities for those who have services to offer, especially if they don’t care who receives the credit. Unemployment is at record levels. Businesses are on the brink of bankruptcy and dissolution. People are hurting. They are anxious and fearful, and many have no place to turn. The ministry of the Church, in its spoken and its medical aspects, has answers to share and tender hearts that care.
Health care, already moving rapidly toward outpatient services, is now rapidly moving services online. Telehealth is a burgeoning technology, and both providers and patients love its convenience (as long as the visits are covered by insurance). Health care providers are having to pin pictures of themselves on their personal protective gowns, so their patients can “see” the faces of those who are caring for them. People avoid emergency departments, even when needed, due to fear of exposure to the infection. Surgeries are delayed, and elective procedures are canceled.
The normal functions and ceremonies of our Church have also been disturbed. Streamed worship services and Bible classes now “bring us together.” Pastoral visits are done by phone, online or with no-touch drop-offs on church members’ porches. Offerings and tithes are collected by electronic transfers, and Vacation Bible Schools are planned for children who will remain at home throughout.
If ever there was a time to bring the two arms of our ministry together in a new and powerful way, this is it. We must look past our historical distrust of one another. We must recognize each other’s expertise and value the importance of the gifts that each member has to share. We must learn to love as Christ loves.
As with all political, social and health care crises, we will either find that we are truly living in the last days and Christ is coming soon, or we will once again muddle through and learn to live in the world that remains. Whatever that “new” world looks like, we will continue to have a Christian duty to fulfill the gospel mandate, and as Adventists, that mandate is made up of the gospel as revealed in the medical ministry and the gospel as made known through the ministry of the spoken word. Will our vaunted institutions still be in place to provide us the necessary resources to move forward, or will we have to construct new methods of meeting our mission? Will leadership still come from Silver Spring, or will leaders need to rise up at the local level?
We are a people of prophecy, and prophecy tells us that things will not always be smooth and easy. It is basic human nature to believe that things will continue as they have been in the past, even in the face of countless examples that dis- prove it. Prophecy also tells us that in the last days, children will be preaching sermons and prayers will be healing diseases. If we really believe our prophets, why would we even dream that our large hospital systems will survive until the end, or that our denominational structure will be in place to greet Jesus when he arrives? Perhaps this is the time, or perhaps things will continue as they always have.
Either way, we have a God who has clearly demonstrated His infinite love and who has promised both to be with us to the end and to ensure we have His great medicine: water, pure soft water, for diseases, for health, for cleanliness, for luxury.
Mark B. Johnson, MD, has directed Jefferson County Public Health for the past 30 years. He has taught a course on the history of medicine and public health at the Colorado School of Public Health for 10 years. He is a member of the Boulder Adventist Church and may be contacted at: [email protected]
Notes
1 Dittes, A. (2013). Three Adventist titans: The significance of heeding or rejecting the counsel of Ellen White.
2 White, E. G. (1863). Letter 4. Washington, D.C.: Ellen G. White Estate. 3 White, E. G. (1905). The Ministry of Healing. Nampa: Pacific Press, p. 127.