Chris Blake is the author of Searching for a God to Love. The topic of the presentation is “The Polarization of Adventism.” Since 1993 Blake has been on the faculty of Union College and currently is Associate Profession of English. He has an MA degree in English from Pacific Union College.

In his talk, Chris discusses the relationship between tradition and present truth as well as “proof test and context” in understanding Biblical teachings. He also focuses on the impact of “fear and love” in one’s personal Christian experience.

Swimming against the Current is a sequel to Searching for a God to Love, which has been translated into at least five languages. Chris has won national writing awards for feature, humor, and editorial accomplishments.

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Dr. Ervin Taylor, one of the founders of the journal Adventist Today and professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), was the speaker at the meeting of the Pacific Northwest Adventist Forum (PNAF) at3:00 PM on May 14 at the Green Lake Church. The title is “Science/Bible Interface: Conflict Within Adventism - Why?”

Dr. Taylor received his PhD from UCLA in anthropology in 1970 with an emphasis in archaeology. His dissertation research was in the UCLA Isotope Laboratory of Nobel Laureate Willard F. Libby. He then held a NSF postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA in the Department of Chemistry. His research has focused on the application of physical science techniques in archaeological research (archaeometry). He has over 150 publications including five books as author or editor and research articles in Science, Nature, Analytical Chemistry, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, and Radiocarbon.

Dr. Taylor has been actively involved in the advancement of liberal and progressive theological and cultural values in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He has written a number of articles dealing with the critical need for an independent press in Adventism, open elections of conference officials, and the value of academic freedom for faculty at Adventist colleges and universities. He was one of the founders of the journal Adventist Today serving in several capacities including Executive Editor and Executive Publisher. He recently retired as Executive Publisher, but continues to blog on the Adventist Today website and serves on the Adventist Today Foundation Board.

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Jon Dybdahl PhD is the Professor of World Missions at Andrews University.  The presentation focuses on the centrality of the spiritual life of the church and “the tragedy of the worship wars” involving to the kinds of music used for worship in Adventist churches. The speaker “suggests ways to begin to make worship central to our spiritual lives in the way the Bible makes it.”
Presented February 26th, 2011 at the Everett Forest Park SDA church, Everett, WA.

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I have written a book called The Promise of Peace: Dare to LIVE the Adventist Hope. Although the book bears a resemblance to the somewhat meager (as I would say) Adventism of the 1920s-1950s, it also departs from it, favoring the spirit of the nineteenth-century pioneers. I take pains not to be quarrelsome, but champion something different, I think, from what most people today expect Adventism to be. The claim implicit throughout is that the direction I’ve set for Adventist life, teaching and witness is the only direction that is at once faithful and relevant.

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As I teach and do research in geology, I am continually confronted with questions of how to be honest with the science, yet faithful to the Seventh-day Adventist church. What do I say to my students and science colleagues that fairly represents the geology data, while being supportive of the Bible and an encouragement to faith? This lecture will present some anecdotal experiences and ideas that have been developing, rather than a final answer. It will suggest: (1) teaching the standard scientific paradigm along with the merits and problems of various alternatives, all within the bigger perspective of the philosophical issues; (2) developing an attitude that values modern science while recognizing its limits, rather than an attitude that attacks modern science and sets up some parallel scientific paradigm; (3) some areas of Scriptural certainty, along with many areas that may be beyond finite human understanding.

Ben Clausen received an MS in geology from Loma Linda University and a PhD in physics from the University of Colorado. His nuclear physics research at several different particle accelerators and during 2 years at the University of Virginia resulted in several dozen publications.
Currently, he is doing geochemistry research on the granitic rocks of southern California to understand their major and trace element signatures and their isotope ratios in the context of plate tectonics.

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The issue of how a good and all-powerful God allows so much cruelty and suffering in the world was discussed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his 1880 publication of The Brothers Karamazov. Osborn uses this study as a reference point in his presentation because, “Dostoyevsky provides one of the literary world’s more well-known and compelling word-pictures of this problem.”

Ron Osborn graduated in 1999 from Union College with majors in history and English. After he earned a Master’s degree in liberal arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis MD, Ron studied in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London where in 2005 he earned a Master of Science degree in Violence, Conflict, and Development. In addition to his studies Ron worked in Kosovo helping create psychosocial programs for war-affected youth. He also has worked on conflict resolution between rioting students and state officials in Guinea. This includes personally dealing with human rights abuses and torture. He also has taught at the Adventist Mission College in Thailand. More recently he has been a teaching assistant at the University of Southern California where he anticipates receiving a doctoral degree in 2011.

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Appeals for strictness in doctrine or behavioral standards on the grounds that they will attract and hold members and make the church grow are wrongheaded because strictness is not the factor that accounts for conservative church growth. Conventional wisdom has taught the opposite.
Both Bull and Lockhart in their book Seeking A Sanctuary and George Knight in The Apocalyptic Vision and the Neutering of Adventism buy into this mistaken conventional wisdom.

Here are some questions for you to ponder:

1. Are people’s religious choices like their choices for cars, clothes, or other consumer goods—determined by “price” and “quality”—or are there better analogies to help us understand these decisions?

2. Is the quest for higher rates of church growth a good reason for deciding to retain and defend “conservative” SDA doctrines?

3. If evangelism is not the real reason why ‘evangelical’ churches are growing, why do they cling so hard to evangelism?

Gregory Schneider, Ph.D., professor of religion and social science, specializes in the conflicts and compatibilities of religion with psychology and the other social sciences. He also studies the history of American Wesleyan and Holiness traditions in America. He has been active in the American Academy of Religion, serving on the steering committees of two program units: the Wesleyan Studies Group and the Person, Culture, and Religion group, a unit dedicated to the interface between psychology and religion. He won a year-long Fellowship for College Teachers from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1985 and served on several review panels for that agency in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Did Paul have a coherent view of sin?  Why do people have different beliefs about overcoming sin based on Paul’s teachings?  Dr. Choi notes that many think of sin as transgression of God’s law—“a conscious and voluntary act committed against God and fellow humans.”  In this presentation the speaker will use the teachings of Paul to present a much broader concept of sin “that affects communities, history, creation as well as one’s own body.”  He hopes that comprehending the multidimensional nature of sin will enable one to develop a broader, more balanced understanding of atonement.”

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The focus of Dr. Cosaert’s studies is New Testament Manuscripts. While working on his doctorate at the University of North Carolina, he worked and studied closely with Dr. Bart Ehrman, a well recognized scholar and author who also focuses on Biblical manuscripts.  Dr. Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus, stimulated interest in this topic for Forum members and led to the scheduling of Dr. Cosaert for this presentation.

Dr. Cosaert taught New Testament courses both at the University of North Carolina and Duke University. He joined the Walla Walla School of Theology faculty in July of 2005.  His undergraduate studies were at Union College and he also graduated from Andrews University.

The biographical data about Carl Cosaert on the WWU website says: “His passion for understanding the Bible made him and avid reader and even prompted him to get a second Master’s degree from the Nazarene Theological Seminary while serving as an Adventist pastor in the Kansas City Metro area.”

Carl’s wife Carol teaches at the Rogers Adventist School in Walla Walla.  Carl and Carol have three surviving children who attend Walla Walla Valley Academy.

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Dr. Rice wrote a book entitled “The Openness of God” almost 30 years ago.  Fifteen years later, another book with the same title was published by IVP.  A great deal has surrounded this work and many articles and books have been written in response.  Dr. Rice talks about the central ideas of “open theism”, the controversy it has stimulated, the concerns of both sides, pro and con, and where things seem to stand at present.

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