The Silent Church: Human Rights and Adventist Social Ethics

The relationship between the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist church and society at large has always been ambiguous. One reason for this has been the church's inarticulated social ethics, and in particular, its attitude towards human rights. While the church upheld the concept of human dignity and, as a result, built up a medical empire with its health awareness program, at the same time it treated its women unfairly and unequally. Again, ironically, while promoting religious liberty and siding with the poor, nationalism and racism developed among its members. Zdravko Plantak confronts this ongoing problem head-on. He begins by looking at the church's history, theology and ethics in order to discover why its approach to human rights has failed. He then goes on to propose a more positive and practical approach to its social ethics. The discussion is focused on the three major issues of social ethics -- poverty, race relations and the role of women -- showing the pattern of Adventist social ethics in practice. Encouragingly a study of more recent Adventism identifies greater interest in social consciousness blossoming among the church's scholars in the second half of the twentieth century, and the whole trend of this "new theology" is singled out as the basis on which contemporary Adventism relates itself to social theology and the ethics of human rights, offering a new way forward for the church.