Recently our small church received a box addressed to the Personal Ministries leader. Inside the box were some posters, order forms, and information about the 2025 Devotional Books from the North American Division.
Included in the box were also copies of two of the books. One of them was the hardcover for adults titled Do Not Be Afraid. Then the name of the author of the adult daily devotional caught my eye. His name is Nathan Brown.
This was a name I had not thought of in about ten years. The context, at that time, was Nathan Brown’s association with The One Project and its ties to what was then labeled as The Emerging (Emergent) Church. In fact, Nathan Brown wrote the definitive book about The One Project (edited by Alex Bryan and Japhet De Olveira) titled For the One.
His “Wiki” bio can be found here.
Most of the controversy was in the context of a doctrinal discussion within the church. This evolved, more or less naturally, along party lines, which is to say liberal and conservative. I will add that within those parameters there is room for unity and communion. However, a number of us were concerned.
What was being promoted was called new and innovative, such as music, worship style, casual dress and youthful enthusiasm. However, while labeled as “authentic Adventism” with a focus on Jesus, it appeared to support a departure from our foundational pillars. This was evidenced in part by sarcastic comments about evangelistic handbills with pictures of prophetic beasts, various character assassinations of the pioneers of our church and eye rolling references to standards and the importance of doctrinal consistency.
Through the next couple of years, our concerns proved to be well founded. Authors quoted and books promoted at the “gatherings” included every radical rock star (Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Leonard Sweet, Doug Pagit, Dallas Willard – to name a few) of modern ecumenical thought. Monks and ministers, modernists and mystics, all found common ground in critical re-interpretation of the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. To be fair, the monks and mystics were mostly represented in the recommended reading, yet the emphasis was on a Jesus that could be known only experientially and apart from the Bible.
We wanted to find out who these folks were. Where did they come from? What had they written about prior to The One Project? Here are samples of what I found while researching the literary history of Nathan Brown.
Along with his book on The One Project, mentioned above, he wrote some posts for a BlogSpot named, Reinventing the Adventist Wheel. Here is the link.
When you scroll through the offerings listed, you will discover an article with references to the Irish Rockstar Bono and Catholic author Brennan Manning in a treatise on humility. He reviews the book by Samir Selmanovic, It’s All About God. Samir was once Seventh-day Adventist but now calls himself a, Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian. Another article featuring shock rapper Eminem with advice on pronunciation of cryptic expressions. This article ostensibly covers ways that Christians interact with popular culture. Again, the emphasis on popular culture overshadows the Christian part.
Harry Potter
You will also discover that Mr. Brown writes, and is an avid reader of fiction. Below find part of a review of the Harry Potter series of books for young people. It seems Nathan Brown has read them all and is a fan.
SATURDAY, JULY 28, 2007
Thoughts from a Harry Potter Agnostic
by Nathan Brown
“While enjoying the stories as just that—stories—with each installment, I have been aware of their questionable literary merit and frustrated, with the increasing size of the successive volumes, about the seeming absence of a hard-nosed editor from J K Rowling’s literary life. Even about the 400-page mark of The Deathly Hallows, it was more determination to see how it would end than my engagement in the story that kept me reading.
“But the greater cause of my Potter agnosticism was the continuing ambiguity about the nature of the story and characters themselves. Having read opinions on the Harry Potter series from across the spectrum, I was unable to settle the question in my mind. Of course, there were the hardline, angry Christian perspectives, who were askance at any mention of wizards and magic in anything less than a completely negative way and—ignoring the use such motifs as literary devices—were ready to declare Harry the illegitimate son of the antichrist himself.
“On the other hand have been those educators and parents just happy to see kids put down the PlayStation controller for a moment and pick up a book, like we did in the “good, old days.” And of course there were also Harry Potter’s grown-up fans, drawn in by a remarkably readable story.
“And then there was one more school of thought of which I had read a little—those Christian voices who were keen to point out the goodness embedded in the Potter stories. Some even went so far as to suggest Rowling—who has always been reticent in taking about issues of faith—was a Christian, using her writing to get “past watchful dragons” (as C S Lewis put it) in a post-Christian society, particularly in her native England.
“So my anticipation of the seventh and concluding book of the series was heightened more by this underlying ideological tension than by my mere curiosity as to how the story was to end, whether Harry was going to make it out alive and how neatly Rowling was going to wrap up the loose ends. Without denying my enjoyment of a rollicking narrative, it was more as an observer of a cultural phenomenon that I made the pilgrimage to a suburban bookstore on the Saturday evening of its release and purchased one of the record 12 million copies sold on the day.
“So am I a believer? As I have mentioned, two-thirds of the way through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was still to be convinced. And, in our cynical age, it is remarkably difficult to write an ending that is both credible and satisfying.
“But J K Rowling pulled it off—and in ways that few of the many speculators were able to predict. As a modern-day fairy tale, the series works, while still giving the literary purists things to grumble about...”
*OK, that was some time ago. Perhaps things have changed. The One Project was disbanded (2018) then re-launched (2020) as a non-denominational 501(c)(3) ministry, and still has some influence in mostly Seventh-day Adventist culture. A look at the book was necessary to determine if this was an uplifting Biblical offering by the NAD as their Daily Devotional / Book of the Year.
Much of the book, Do Not Be Afraid, is uplifting good advice based on Biblical quotes and principles. That said, the tone is so definitely leaning to the “left”. By that is meant the unavoidable mentions of or allusions to: social justice, feminism, socialism (victim / oppressor philosophy, environmentalism, and last but not least, assurance. Again, these are not in themselves all bad. Yet the recent manifestations of these terms are why you must say “left” instead of “liberal”.
This is nowhere more evident than in the citations of authors, some of whom (Brennan Manning: The Ragamuffin Gospel) were quoted as experts on spirituality during the Emerging Church period. To be fair, SDA authors are mentioned and quoted. Ellen G. White is annotated about 10 times. Abraham J. Heschel, an excellent writer, is quoted on the Sabbath and the Prophets. Yet Heschel is professor of Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
And so the mixed bag of footnotes continues with contemporary authorities on spirituality. A Baptist writes on Christ and Pop Culture for his website of the same name – lots of movie reviews and book reviews. His quote is a good one about the responsibility of our witness, “…wanted or not”. But, the quality of the quote is not the point. The reader might assume the inclusion of the citation as an endorsement of the source and consequently the spiritual credentials of the quoted writer.
The next step may be that some readers will curiously look for other material by the quoted “authority”. The potential for harm is real.
This is why I am purposely not giving more names and samples of writing from these folks. Minimal research found that another Pastor, quoted in the devotional, is “famous” for the fact that he “hates” the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.
Several footnoted authors trained at Jesuit Universities and at least two were trained at Union Theological Seminary where they have been denying miracles recorded in the Bible since 1891.
It might be a stretch to say that for the past few years the writings of Nathan Brown have been blurring the line between the sacred and the profane. However, is it safer to educate the saints by mixing the sacred and the common? Or is it worse?
More Leftism
Here is an example of how leaning left affects Bible interpretation: in the entry for January 11 (page 21) the author renders the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar as a social justice narrative.
Hagar is labeled by the author as a “foreigner” who was “simultaneously abused” by Abraham and Sarah. That unbiblical statement (at no time in the Bible does it say or imply that Abraham and Sarah were abusive to Hagar) was followed by this:
“When she became pregnant, Hagar was then the subject of Sarah’s further jealous mistreatment.”
This does not match the Bible’s description of Hagar’s attitude towards Sarah in Genesis 16:4-5 where it is clear that Hagar initiated the conflict with her proud behavior. When Sarah complained to Abraham about being “despised” by Hagar, Abraham gave her permission to treat her handmaid as she thought best. As far as Hagar being the foreigner is concerned, they were all foreigners in Canaan. So now, Hagar is the hero?
Do we now need to alter our understanding of Galations 4:30? Abraham and Sarah, commended in both Old and New Testaments, as examples of faith and faithfulness are now oppressors? Does the wealth bestowed by God make them capitalist colonizers? Should we reinterpret the Bible through the lens of culture or should we rather assess the culture through the lens of the Bible?
In summary, the standard for our denominational books should be quite high. This is a well-written book. However, when reading this devotional put out by the NAD, a note of caution must be recommended to the constituency of the NAD.
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Greg Lundquist is a Registered Nurse from California.