Book Includes Contributions by 20 Authors
In early July Oxford University Press announced
that it would publish a new biography of Ellen Gould Harmon White (1827-1915),
cofounder of the Seventh-day Adventist church. In 18 chapters prepared by 20
authors Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet examines her
ideas and the impact she has made on the Seventh-day Adventist church and
American religion generally.
The new book will introduce the Adventist prophet
to general readers as well as to history students and teachers. “Scholars have
identified Ellen White with Anne Hutchinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Baker
Eddy, and Aimee Semple McPherson as one of the most prominent women in American
religious history,” said co-editor Terrie Dopp Aamodt, professor of history at
Walla Walla University, “yet she is one of the least studied and understood.”
The volume began to take shape at an October 2009
conference in Portland, Maine, the site of Ellen Harmon’s early
upbringing. Chapter authors and respondents sought to examine the breadth
of Ellen White’s 70-year public career while avoiding extremes of iconoclasm or
hagiography. Two scholars, one familiar with Adventist studies and the other a
specialist in an area of the chapter’s historical context, reviewed each
chapter in detail. All of the 67 conference participants also read the chapters
and applied a rubric to identify gaps and potential biases in the material. “Collaborative
research, writing, and editing shaped the book,” said co-editor Gary Land,
professor of history emeritus at Andrews University. “This project’s scholarly
exchange between Ellen White specialists and students of her broader contexts
would take decades to achieve in occasional meetings at professional
conferences.”
The Seventh-day Adventist church is the largest
of four innovative denominations founded in the United States in the nineteenth
century, along with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; the Church
of Christ, Scientist; and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Scholars have extensively
examined the Mormon and Christian Science faiths,” said Ronald L. Numbers,
Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine Emeritus at the University
of Wisconsin, “but the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Adventists are not as well
understood. Wider scholarly discussions on Ellen White are long overdue.”
Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet invites
further conversation about White’s place in history. “Taken together, these
chapters show how White was both a product and a producer of her age,” said
Grant Wacker, professor of Christian history at Duke University, in the book’s
foreword. “They also show that however one judges the role of supernatural
inspiration, White ranked as one of the most gifted and influential religious
leaders in American history, male or female. Ellen Harmon White:
American Prophet tells her story in a new and remarkably informative
way.”
Published July 25, 2013.
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