American Religion: The Seventh-day Adventist Church

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the National Museum of American Religion, which is dedicated to telling the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion.

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Season 3, Episode 24: American Religion: The Seventh-day Adventist Church

Guest Bio

Dr. David Trim is the Director of the Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research for the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, based in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. Born to missionary parents in Bombay, India, David was raised in Sydney, Australia, and educated in the United Kingdom. He has a BA from Newbold College and a PhD from King’s College London, University of London. For ten years he taught undergraduate courses in history and graduate courses in missiology at his alma mater, Newbold College, in England, and then for two years held the Walter C. Utt Chair of History at Pacific Union College in California. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 18 books, and has additionally published eighty scholarly articles and book chapters. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and is an adjunct professor of church history at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary.

Background

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is one of the few religions founded in the United States, coming into existence during the 19th century’s Second Great Awakening. Today it has approximately a million members-plus in the United States and upwards of 21 million members outside the U.S. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is one of the fastest growing Christian denominations in the world. On today’s episode we will explore the history of this home-grown American church, what its beliefs are, what roles it has played in the unfolding of the American project, and what roles it plays today on America’s dynamic religious landscape.