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Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

olive hemmings

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Humility required

Love never ends… When the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.” –1 Corinthians 13

We are always changing because our understanding is always incomplete.” –Dr. Olive Hemmings

One of the most important functions of heterogeneous teams is to expand the individual’s incomplete perception and understanding. And one of the most important functions of heterogenous societies is to expand single groups’ incomplete perceptions and understandings.

If none of us in isolation is all-perceiving and all-comprehending, and if even our groups fail to grasp all there is to know, the only reasonable postures for life are curiosity and humility.

I grew up in an ethnic culture that was still unlearning slavery- and colonial-era disincentives for asking questions and questioning authority. I also grew up in a religious subculture that battles the drive to declare itself the One True Church and all other denominations, apostate. In the first culture, where questions meant an attack on authority, curiosity is not always welcome. And in the second culture, some view religious humility as a cowardly cop-out.

But we get to choose tools that help us transcend our biases, notions, and points of view. In the documentary, Enough Room at the Table, the group that convened in the Napa Valley did just that.

Expanding each other’s worlds. Adding to groups’ perspectives. Filling in our gaps. That’s community at its best.

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Inspired by Adventist Scholarship

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A few weeks ago I shared information about Washington Adventist University’s Keough Lectureship—a biannual series hosted by the university’s Department of Religion. This year’s lectures focused on women’s ordination and biblical interpretation and featured WAU’s Dr. Olive Hemmings and Loma Linda University’s Dr. Richard Rice.

I had a blast!

Adventist Today’s Monte Sahlin has compiled detailed reports based on the 11 typed pages of notes I took that weekend:

Spectrum Magazine also posted a shorter summary from me. All weekend, I was impressed by the quality of thought and feedback from lecturers and attendees; I was also pleased to see a mix of students, professionals, men, and women clearly engaged with the material and asking quality questions at the end of each session.

We covered a lot of ground during the three lectures, but it was one of Rice’s closing thoughts that made me write a long counter-comment in my notes. Rice spoke about inerrancy, Adventist church unity, and two of the biblical interpretation modes that are most our community. Rice exudes commitment to the Adventist community and the study of scripture. He also struck me as something of a peacemaker—not one who makes peace by finding the median position, but one who seeks peace through identifying common foundations and studying with others over time.

“Nothing divides so bitterly as common convictions held with a difference.” —Gerald R. Cragg

Stating that the Bible’s central claims were “reliable” even if its pre-scientific descriptions weren’t sound, Rice concluded that “All Adventists agree that the Bible is the Word of God, the product of divine inspiration, and as such the ultimate authority in matters of faith.”

“Actually,” I scribbled furiously, “all Adventists do not agree that the Bible is the Word of God.” Some Adventists instead believe that John and Paul define Christ as “The Word of God,” not the collection of writings that were yet unwritten or the restricted canon we now call Bible. Some Adventists, in other words, do not share that initial inerrantist premise. Yet they still agree with Rice and the rest of the church that “divine revelation takes expression in the Bible through human words and thought.” They share inerrantist Adventists’ love and respect for biblical study and reflection, and they also respect the contemporary canon as the primary source on early Christians’ beliefs, community debates, and ritual practices.

They aren’t otherwise inerrantists or even necessarily text-centered Adventists in the sense Rice described. But they’re still Adventists, and the conversation about interpretation shouldn’t leave them out.

Perhaps Rice took too much for granted in his generous account of Adventist interpretative diversity. I was unable to ask the panel for their thoughts on this point because I wanted to ensure we pulled the Q&A back around to women’s ordination specifically. However, it often seems as if we frame our narratives around only two categories at a time: two kinds of inerrancy, but no non-inerrancy; heterosexuals and homosexuals, but no bisexuals, and an inaccurate gender construct to boot. But when we do this, we’re often purchasing a truncated analysis and an incomplete understanding of our community and what its constituents have to offer the others seated at the common table.

Ultimately I think most Adventists agree on quite a lot about the Bible: our differences are significant and lead individuals in varying directions, but they’re not cause for alarm and there’s no need to take an extermination mentality to those differences. For instance, I’d expect a similar percent of Adventists to agree that the Bible has a “dual nature,” that Creation is both made and an image of the Divine, and that Christ was both God and man. We could build amazingly rich relationships through these confessions.

But the internecine conflicts that we have now and have always had are rooted in disagreeing on what these confessions mean and whether there should be consequences for disagreeing about their meaning.

Today, consequences for holding an unapproved opinion or conviction about these things can range from accusations of disloyalty or deception to being disfellowshipped outright (the Adventist equivalent of excommunication). I argue that such consequences are antithetical to a healthy learning space and they undermine our capacity to listen and grow. I agree with Rice that our diversity is not in itself a problem, and that how we discuss our diversity and the stakes we’ve applied to variance are a problem. I’d characterize this problem as treatable but still quite dangerous, and worth our thoughtful attention.

Hop over to AToday or Spectrum for more of my reports on this series, and support the Keough Lectures with your presence if you’ll be near Takoma Park, MD, later this year.

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Olive Hemmings, Richard Rice on Ordination & Interpretation

Black women have always comprised anywhere between 65 and 90 percent of membership in black [US] churches — institutions where they are largely excluded from the religious polity…

Religion that began in slave communities is the only ancestral tie American-born blacks have to something like a family tree. But black churches, like many of their white counterparts, perpetuate the notion that women should stand by and support their men as those men exploit their labor and ignore their aspirations to serve as leaders in the religious polity. —Joshunda Sanders

The Keough Lectures are being organized this year by WAU professor Zdravko Plantak.
The Keough Lectures are organized this year by WAU’s Religion Chair, Dr. Zdravko Plantak. If you’re local, join us!

This Friday and Saturday I’ll be at Washington Adventist University for the 34th Keough Lectureship on women’s ordination and the politics of interpretation. Featured speakers are WAU professor Dr. Olive Hemmings (formerly of West Indies College) and LLU professor Dr. Richard Rice. (Read more about the event.)

Olive Hemmings (left) and Richard Rice (right).
Olive Hemmings (left) and Richard Rice (right)

Hemmings taught at West Indies College (Northern Caribbean University) until the year I entered as a freshman. I will have to ask her whether her departing the year I arrived was God’s way of ensuring minimal disturbance to the Force!

Rice also touched my Adventist education: his book The Reign of God was a textbook in one of my first required religious studies classes. Outside of Adventism he may be best known for his work in open theism.

I’m excited about listening to both of these professors live; join me this Friday and Saturday in Takoma Park if you’re in town.