A Short History of the Headship Doctrine in the Seventh-day Adventist Church

By Gerry Chudleigh

The Seventh-day Adventist Church, which was organized in mid-19th century America and has grown to nearly 20 million members worldwide, has always emphasized personal relationships with God and the importance of following one’s own conscientious understanding of the Bible.

This commitment to individual study and individual conviction has often placed church teachings and practices in tension with established churches and with the values of the wider culture. It has also resulted in Adventist members and leaders differing sharply from each other on a variety of topics, from the nature of Christ to the sequence of end time events.

But on major beliefs there has been broad agreement among members. Christians who didn’t see the necessity of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath did not join a church that worshiped on Saturday, and people who didn’t believe in the soon and literal return, or “advent,” of Jesus did not join an adventist church.

And there was another powerful filter. Many Christians in the 19th century, citing Paul’s counsels that women were to be silent in church and not teach men, did not become Seventh-day Adventists because the church accepted and valued the ministry of women in ways that were out of harmony with American culture and popular religion. This was especially evident in the preaching, teaching and general leadership role of Ellen White, co-founder of the church.

But over time the church’s openness to women in leadership positions waned. After Ellen White died in 1915, she came to be viewed by many as unique among Adventist women, rather than as a role model. In the first half of the 20th century most women leaders and evangelists were replaced by men. Then, in the late 20th century, many conservative Adventists adopted a new male “headship principle” doctrine that was gaining a foothold among some evangelicals. This new headship principle would have prevented many earlier Adventists from joining the Seventh-day Adventist Church, but was now seen by its advocates as essential to the correct interpretation of scripture.

This book provides a brief outline of who developed the headship principle among Calvinist churches, who imported it into the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and why it was quickly accepted by some Adventists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gerry Chudleigh
• Release date: Apr 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311957566

Book preview

A Short History of the Headship Doctrine In the Seventh-day Adventist Church

Copyright 2014 Gerry Chudleigh

Published by Gerry Chudleigh at Smashwords

Second Edition Revised and Enlarged

ISBN: 9781311957566

Smashwords Edition License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be distributed to others for commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to visit Smashwords.com or their favorite retailer and download their own copy. If you wish to print copies for group study, you may print copies of the pdf version. For more materials discussing the place of women in Seventh-day Adventist ministry visit http://session.adventistfaith.org.Thank you for your interest.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Questions

Chapter Two: What is the Headship Principle?

Chapter Three: Adventists Have Never Taught Headship Theology

Chapter Four: Calvinism and Headship Theology

Chapter Five: Bill Gothard's Chain of Command

Chapter Six: Samuele Bacchiocchi and Adventists Affirm

Chapter Seven: Changing Culture and Changing Attitudes

Chapter Eight: What's New in Modern Headship Theology?

Chapter Nine: Conclusions

Endnotes

About the Author

Chapter One: Questions

The headship principle, which was discussed extensively in the Seventh-day Adventist Church during the 2012-2014 General Conference (GC) Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC), may be new truth or it may be new heresy, but it is definitely new.

Though I was born into a conservative Adventist family in 1943, attended Adventist schools from first grade through seminary, and have been employed by the church as a minister for 46 years, I had never heard the headship principle taught in the Adventist church until 2012 when two areas (unions) of the United States called special business sessions to consider ordaining women to ministry. When several Adventist ministers began talking about the headship principle I started asking lifetime Adventist friends if they had ever heard of the headship principle before 2012. John Brunt, pastor of the Azure Hills church and a member of the GC TOSC, gave the same answer as nearly everyone I asked:

No. Never.

One person gave a different answer: a lifetime Adventist, now retired after many years teaching at Walla Walla University, told me he had heard male headship preached by a lay member in a small country church in the 1980s.

It is not just church employees or trained theologians who have never heard headship theology taught by Adventists. David Read, on the independent Adventist website, Advindicate, blames a conspiracy for the headship principle never being mentioned in Adventist churches:

I don't know about you, but whenever I read the Bible and come across one of those many statements on male headship in the home and the church, it seems like my private secret, a secret that I've stumbled upon despite the very best efforts of my church to hide it from me. I always think, Wow! I've never heard any Adventist pastor discuss this before."1

In this study we will see that the headship principle is, in fact, new to Seventh-day Adventists in all parts of the world. Today’s popular male headship theology was developed in North America by a few Calvinist Evangelical teachers and preachers in the 1970s and 1980s, imported into the Adventist church in the late 1980s by Andrews University professor Samuele Bacchiocchi (1938-2008), and championed among Adventists during the late 20th and early 21st