I am genuinely perplexed. There are folks who are a part of the church who don't believe the doctrine?
I read that PA's (some) deny Creation method, the Investigative Judgement, and the Sabbath?
How can you do this and still be an SDA? Why would you want to?

Is this a popular movement?

I am asking in sincerity. Is anyone here a PA? Why do you stay in the church?

Also,I recently read (the things I write here about beliefs might be wrong) that PAs are liberals.-so it has a political tie in? Can't you be a liberal politically, and yet be a conservative Adventist?

Our pioneers came from many different churches. Many were kicked out of their churches for believing ideas beyond their narrow creeds. They came together and formed a church that only had a handful of "Landmark" or "Pillars" and as long as they were not fanatical they had the freedom to study and follow the dictates of their conscience.

To clarify some we would from time to time have a list of beliefs, but they differed from creeds by a creed being a definition of what was believed. Our list of beliefs were more of a generalized neighborhood where most of us basically hung around. And traditionally the list of beliefs would be written in fairly vague language to include as many as possible.

As we were approaching 1888 we had a conservative publishing house (The Review and Herald) and a more progressive publishing house (the Pacific Press). This upset many members and many wanted the Review to take over the Pacific Press and to bring it into an orthodox line. Mrs. White stopped this and said that we need both views and listed the landmarks and said that the complaint of the progressives removing the landmarks is not true.

In the late 1800s Fundamentalism became popular in Christian churches. Our church has struggled with this. (See books such as Knight's "The Afterlife of Ellen G. White" the biographies on W. W. Prescott and A. G. Daniels, the two books by Campbell on the 1919 Bible Conference and on the 1922 General Conference.)

Now, much of what was originally called Progressive Adventism was the post 1888 writings of Mrs. White, as well as the approach to Adventism as held by people like Willie, Prescott and Daniels. On the other hand people like Elder Holmes, Washburn and Wilkinson felt that these others have gone too far. When I was at Andrews I read many, many letters between those of the school represented by Holmes and Washburn and Mrs. White and/or Willie. Now, while I did not read this accusation in the letters they wrote to Mrs. White, I did find some handbills from their followers. These handbills accused Mrs. White of apostacy in her saying that her writings were not infallible, in teaching the trinity, and in being critical of these "faithful" pastors. They recommended only reading her through those pastors, especially her post 1888 writings, since these pastors knew what she wrote that came from God and what came from her apostasy. Some suggested that a Jesuit had worked his way into her inner circle and was controlling her. One even suggested that she had become a Jesuit and her assignment was to destroy the church where she used to be a true prophet of God to lead the church into following her apostasy.

Elder Andresen developed a way of taking the views of people like Washburn but adding the trinity to it, and his view became popular.

After Mrs. White died, and later with the deaths of Willie, Daniels and Prescott, they somehow changed from being the enemy bringing a progressive view of Adventism to cause apostacy in the church, to making them saints and blaming the ideas they did not like on others.

Now, people such as Holmes and Washburn etc. were faithful Adventists. These were all vialed and useful voices in Adventism, but different threads in the tapestry of Adventism. At the better points in our history our different threads respected each other and learned how to work together. At our lower points we have one subgroup or another decide that they are the ONLY true version of Adventism and that the rest of us are nominal Adventists.

In the 1950s there was a book written. I wish that it wasn't. It is not a very good book, but not a horrible book either. The book was "Questions on Doctrine". But some of our members, especially those of the Washburn and Andresen thread of Adventism, have filtered their beliefs through that book and removed anything that sounds like that book. There was a spirit of "Questions on Doctrine said it, I don't believe it, and that settles it for me."

Justification and Sanctification are two sides of the same coin. Justification is our moment by moment trust in Jesus, and it results in Sanctification. Now, some on the more so called "conservative" side ended up focusing more on Sanctification and this became popular in Adventism in the time between 1922 and the 1940s.

Now, in the 1970s we had the issues of Desmond Ford's who went to the other extreme and had a Justification being the big thing and sanctification only being secondary. Now the one group made things such as the investigative judgment sound very scary, and the needing to do this and that and the other thing. Ford gave peace to those who were struggling with the stress of trying to do just what is right. The truth has pretty much been ripped in about half, but with very, very gagged edges, but between the two schools of Washburn/Andresen on the one side and Ford on the other. They both tend to use their approximately half the truth against the other half. Unfortunately those who are on the Washburn/Andresen side does not respect that there is a strong tapestry of Adventism. They want to picture everything as faithful them (with a Fundamentalist view of their favorite Ellen White quotes, which she and Willie were very unhappy with) and that if you are not fully on their side then the only other option is the Fordites.

It's late and I need to go, but this is a start. You can see more of the history in those books I recommended. Oh, also, there are things that have been discovered in better understanding of the Hebrew, Greek and historical context that show more in the Bible, but which does not always hold on to traditions. Today's decedents of the Washburn/Andresen school (I pick these two names since they are the same idea but Washburn was very anti-trinitarian, while Andresen found a way to include the trinity in this generalized school of thought). want to hold on to church history and not look at what we have learned in the languages and culture, which I do not believe that Washburn or Andresen would pass off so quickly. So there is a mixture of both Adventism and wanting to hold on to all the traditions of conservative Christianity.

A couple of other resources. This may be difficult to find but in the 1980s a couple from Union College Ralph and Betrice Neal (or Neil?) would travel and give a wonderful presentation on how the two sides have divided Bible truth in half and how to unify the truth. Also, the books by A. LeRoy Moore such as "Theology in Crisis" or "The Theology Crisis" and he had two other books, one on "Questions on Doctrine" gives a good history and balance. And if you can get a hold of the original printing of the book "Sanctuary and the Atonement" by the Biblical Resource Committee of the General Conference, sadly not in the reprints (although you can find much of the same information in the book on where Mrs. White's critics are wrong) but the three chapters "The Mighty Opposites: The Atonement in the writings of Ellen G. White" parts 1 and 2, and "We Must All Appear: The Investigative Judgement in the writings of Ellen G. White".

We are trying to be fair to our understanding of what the Bible teaches, and how we understand Mrs. White to wish her writings to be used. Any and all of these views can be considered progressive adventism, and not just be limited to the extremes of Fordism. I'll try to come back to write more.

Thank you. there is alot of history here.
I found a couple of the books online.
https://documents.adventistarchives.org/default.aspx Questions on doctrine This is pdf. Just google Questions on doctrine, and go down till you see this resource. It is there. 703 pgs

https://documents.adventistarchives.org/default.aspx The Moore book is in here. Google attaches a PDF to the link, which I was unable to add.

https://www.scribd.com/document/516982679/Ellen-White-s-Afterlife-George-R-Knight 14 day free trial to read.

I still am curious why someone would want to be an SDA if they didn't believe in a 6 day creation, the Investigative Judgement, etc. I am not knocking anyone. I wouldn't belong to a church which had BIG beliefs that i disagreed with. 7th Day is right up there in the name.

Progressive Adventism is a redefining of beliefs related to the doctrines of Seventh-day Adventism.
The doctrines specially targeted are:
1. The investigative judgment
2. The prophetic gift of Ellen White
3. The role of Adventism as a church with a special message and mission for the endtime, as in a "remnant church".
4. The role of the Seventh-day Sabbath as any kind of "test" or "seal" or of Sunday as at some point being the "mark of the beast".
5. Creation, while not totally denied is often modified to fit with evolution in some way.
6. The whole controversy theme is fragmented into acceptable and non-acceptable parts.

Basically, as I see it, it is a movement to progress closer to mainstream, ecumenically acceptable unity in Christendom.
In many ways its a "regression" away from Adventism back into more "mainline" interpretations.

To be "progressive" means to progress --- to increase some kind of understanding
But what is the aim to which one is progressing?
Does our progressing knowledge deepen our understanding of the Biblical truths including those upon which Adventism was built? Or does it move away from what made Adventists, Adventist, into accepting more commonly accepted interpretations.

Maybe it's because they want to change the Adventist church --

According to a high ranking Catholic, Malachi Martin, in "Keys of this Blood" here is what the pope has thought of Adventists and other groups that adhered to prophetic understandings, especially ones the see that Revelation pictured an apostate Catholic church.

So we see Rome's advice to churches either to progress out of confining beliefs and adapt to more powerful groups, or face loss of identity in "a new world order".

Now if one understands the great controversy, these kinds of statements only show how true the Great Controversy's warnings are.

Dedication gave a pretty good answer. Basically we have two sets of "traditional Christianity Fundamentalists" While both sides would strongly deny my next comment, and insist that they believe that Jesus is both our example and substitute, one side does more of a focus on Jesus is our example and the other side has more of a focus on Jesus is our substitute. The more" Jesus is our Substitute" side wants to show that we are typical evangelical Christian churches. The other side is more focused on maintaining traditions and enforcing traditions, and as my college professors used to say "For some reason Adventists have a neurotic need to prove to the world that we are good Baptists". Both have their favorite quotes that they use as the proof of their beliefs.

A big problem I have with both is that they don't want to admit the existence of the rest of the tapestry of Adventism. I consider myself "progressive" however, I am not a Fordite (the side that is more focused on Jesus is our substitute and trying to be more evangelical).

1. I am a strong believer in the Investigative Judgment.

2. I believe that Mrs. White is a prophet, but that she does not fit the fundamentalist picture of a prophet. I try to follow the advice she tried to give to people such as Stephen Haskell and the more militant fundamentalists as to how she saw her inspiration and how to study her works that the church rejected in 1922, and why some people printed flyers in the first decade of the 20th century accusing her of apostasy.

3. I believe that we are the remnant church, and that the

4. Sabbath/Sunday issue plays a role in the last days, but we have built traditions that fill in the gaps of Mrs. White's writings. Mrs. White also writes about the last day events on two levels, a specific application in the Sabbath/Sunday issue, but also a larger principle on liberty of conscience. We Adventists tend to have an "auto-correct" between our eyes and ears to our brain where we automatically correct the larger principle to the specific Sabbath/Sunday application.

5. I believe in the special 7 twenty four hour day creation week. But many who accept this also believe that the 6,000 years is equally as important. I am a firm believer in the creation week, but I am not a stickler on the 6,000 years. (The text is first of all so old and updated over the centuries that they are hard to translate. The different possibilities get us from 6,000 years to 10,000 years. In Jesus' day the popular reading had the idea that the 7000th year was to start in what we call 31 AD. Genealogies where it was strict father-son, every generation included was started in classical Greece. Ancient genealogies, first, but probably not important to us, did not always mean a genetic relationship, but any sort of relationship such as holding the same office. But two important to us is that they tend to include the more important people in the line and skip some generations. And often in different cultures we have the tradition of naming the first born son after the paternal grandfather. Thus there are two names that keep repeating themselves for generations, but in ancient genealogies the names appear once. Also, like what some rabbis were doing when they thought that the 7000th year was about to come around and compared the thousand years with the days of creation. I'm sorry, but Leviticus 23 and 25 and places in Deuteronomy tell the comparable cycles, and day-thousand year is not one of the options that these texts give us. The verses that is used for this has a different context and need to be taken out of context to be used that way. God is not twiddling his thumbs waiting for 7,000 years to end. He has a oneness of freedom of choice, yet seeing the end from the beginning sees the best time to come. He has given different generations possibilities on how they could have spread the gospel to the world in their day. A bit part of Bible study is to first ask what it meant for the original audience, including how the Kingdom could have been set up in or soon after their day. Then we can ask what it means for us in our day and how to apply the text for us. But if we get stuck in things like thinking God's waiting for a set time to pass we miss this step in Bible study.

6. I don't know what Dedication means by fragmenting the great controversy into acceptable and non-acceptable parts. So I don't know how to address this.

I consider myself progressive because I try not to be a fundamentalist, I don't want to blindly cling to tradition, and I like to study what archaeologists and linguists discover about the text. I like to know the historical, geographical and cultural background to the text.

The two traditional groups we find I understand to be, as mentioned earlier, people who both cling to approximately half the truth that they use against the rest of the truth.

Satan is today working on rounding us up into camps. He has a camp for the more conservative and for the more liberal. Whether it is politics, or religion or other groupings, he is leading us into two camps where he will use both to deceive us.

They had to separate the Adventist into two groups after much fighting, in one of the other forums between the 'Progressive' and 'Traditional' Adventist, and it was a horrible thing to say the least, and it accomplished little in the long term.

Thank you Rick!

Here is an article and a book that should be useful here:

https://issuu.com/pacificunionrecorder/docs/0622recorder/s/15918746

https://www.amazon.com/Ostriches-Canaries-Coping-Adventism-1966-1979/dp/B09SNSNQW1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=AFWKX6U2X2C0&keywords=Ostriches+%26+Canaries&qid=1655834757&sprefix=ostriches+%26+canaries%2Caps%2C177&sr=8-1

We cannot just give one label for "Progressive Adventism" Some of these groups have questions about some of our beliefs such as 1844, but others (such as myself) are strong defenders of 1844 and of Mrs. White's inspiration, but using methods that the more conservative members (or even so called "liberal" members who want to be more evangelical) would not be comfortable with as they both try to be as traditional as possible.

That's why I don't like labelling. Labels tend to have connotations.
When it comes to conservative vs liberals, there are radical conservatives and radical liberals, BUT there is also every gradient between. If a church divides and forms a liberal church and a conservative church you will soon see the tension continuing, for in the liberal church, the more conservative people who thought they were liberal, now find themselves on the conservative edge. While in the conservative church the more liberal people who thought they were conservative, now find themselves on the liberal edge.

And what about terms like:
Fundamentalism?
Progressive?

Fundamentalism basically means strongly believing in fundamental (foundational) beliefs. That means they are "settled into truth" as in being sure of foundational truths like -- the 7th day of the week is the Sabbath, as fact. That the dead are really dead is a fact. etc.
But some think of fundamentalism as "traditionalism" and think it means being bull headedly believing something just because that's what was taught.
No, we shouldn't believe and defend something that isn't truth just because it was taught, as in -- there is an eternal hell (which we don't believe is truth).

Progressive:
Progressive basically means to progress --- to increase some kind of understanding
But what is the aim to which one is progressing?
The Label Progressive Adventism basically has the connotation of getting rid of basic fundamental truths.
Yes we need to GROW in our understanding of truth, but if we accept the connotations that has attached itself to that label that means getting rid of truth, then it's not progressing, it is regressing.