Report of Research Findings on the Adventist Laymen’s Foundation
Prepared by David W. Daily, Ph.D.
March 4, 2011

This report summarizes the results of my research regarding the Adventist Laymen’s Foundation (ALF), its central figure, William Grotheer (1920-2009), and its place in the larger Adventist movement. 

The report is based largely upon analysis of primary texts written by Grotheer and printed in the ALF’s monthly publication, Watchman, What of the Night?” (WWN) between 1967 and 2006.  Most of the last twenty-five years of the publication, along with other essays and materials, are available on two websites: [http://www.adventistalert.com/]  and http://adventistlaymen.com/ .  The total volume of written material runs into thousands of pages.   I used random sampling, as well as attention to frequently cross-referenced articles, to identify representative materials for closer analysis.  Also, I contacted three individuals for information about ALF and important texts in the WWN corpus.  The three individuals contacted were _________, _________, and ________.  Outside of ALF materials, I conducted research into the broader Adventist movement, using both primary and secondary materials to look for other institutions that may have a theological or organizational connection to ALF. 

ALF’s Relationship with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

The relationship between ALF and the Seventh Day Adventist Church (SDA) may be traced in part through a brief account of the life of William Grotheer.  Grotheer and his mother converted to the SDA Church when he was a child.   He started preaching when he was ten years old and as a young man was ordained an elder in the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA).  He studied at SDA institutions, including Union College in Nebraska and Andrews University in Michigan, and in the mid-sixties he took a leave of absence as a minister in good standing.  That leave of absence ended in the mid-eighties when the SDA  regional conference in Mississippi reportedly withdrew his ministerial credentials.

The story of Grotheer’s adult life is that of a growing estrangement from the SDA Church and an increasing theological isolation from other Adventist organizations.  In fact, he spent most of his adult life documenting the ways in which SDA Church leadership had compromised and ultimately abandoned what he saw as the central truths of Adventism.  Most of those compromises, from his point of view, glossed over distinctive Adventist teachings in order to make the SDA Church more in line with other Protestant sects.  Grotheer’s breech with the SDA Church was more or less complete in 1980, when the SDA General Conference approved a new statement of faith called “Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists.”  In his view, the 1980 statement of faith compromised historic Adventist theological traditions in several key areas.  Some of these areas are listed below, with brief explanations attached.  No attempt is made to provide the full theological and exegetical bases for these differences, although further explanation may be provided if the court desires.

1.  Doctrine of Christ. The SDA Church used the traditional language of conservative, evangelical Protestants to describe the doctrine of the incarnation, in which Christ assumed a sinless human body on earth.  This represented a shift away from earlier SDA teachings that the divine Word had assumed fallen, sinful, human flesh.

2.     Doctrine of the Godhead. The SDA Church moved toward historic creedal formulations of the doctrine of the Trinity, while Adventist teachings had previously tended toward tri-theism.  Here again, the trend was toward making the SDA movement more in line with evangelical groups like those associated with the National Association of Evangelicals. 

3.     Doctrine of the sanctuary. The SDA Church downplayed the significance of Adventist teachings about Christ’s post-ascension atoning work in the heavenly sanctuary, or temple, presenting the more evangelical view that the atonement was accomplished exclusively and completely through Christ’s crucifixion.

4.     Doctrine of scripture. The SDA Church increasingly emphasized the use of modern historical-critical methods in interpreting scripture, in contrast to viewing scripture as “self-attesting,” particularly by means of the proof-texting method.  Also, according to Grotheer, the SDA Church compromised the teaching of “sola scriptura” (scripture alone) by granting parallel authority to the writings of Ellen White (1827-1915), one of the founding figures in the history of the Adventist movement.

5.     Doctrine of sanctification and the “final generation.” The SDA Church, according to Grotheer, has largely rejected the earlier view that at the approach of Christ’s advent or return, a remnant of Christians would be given the grace to live a sinless life while still embodied in sinful flesh.  

6.     Attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning in 1977 some SDA Church leaders were involved in dialogues with the Vatican.  This development showed a obvious softening of earlier SDA teachings that identified the papacy with the Satanic beast in Revelation 13.

7.     Priority of doctrinal purity over church unity. The SDA Church has sought to use its statements of faith over the last thirty or forty years to allow for a wider diversity of belief within SDA institutions.  At the root of Grotheer’s objections to the SDA is its latitudinarian (or tolerant) approach to doctrine as a means to maintaining church unity.

This list of theological issues is not meant to be comprehensive.  Grotheer’s writings grew out of what appear to have been a tightly organized system of thought, so his differences with the SDA Church in any one doctrine would also have resulted in differences in others as well. 

That said, this list should be enough to demonstrate the range of theological differences between ALF’s founder and the SDA Church.  And the biographical account of Grotheer should also be sufficient to indicate the severity of theological differences, given Grotheer’s estranged relationship with the SDA Church.  Consequently, in my judgment, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests a significant institutional and theological breech between ALF and the SDA Church.  By the time of his death, Grotheer had long concluded that the SDA Church was an apostate church that had fallen away from the faith, in fulfillment of his understanding of biblical prophecy.  The SDA Church, likewise, has no apparent internal stake in the theological and institutional objectives of ALF, regarding it, in fact, as a hostile entity. 

ALF’s Relationship with Historic Adventism

If Grotheer had no constructive relationship with the SDA Church, then that raises the question of his possible relationship to other Adventist movements or organizations.   On that issue, I have found that Grotheer’s thought had at least some affinities with a movement called “Historic Adventism,” although he stood at a distance from that movement as well.

Historic Adventism may be defined as a reform movement within the SDA Church that seeks to steer the denomination back to what it sees as distinctive Adventist doctrines.   There are a wide range of groups that make up Historic Adventism, with the Hartland Institute and Hope International being the most prominent among them.  While Historic Adventists are diverse in their beliefs, they typically share an admiration for the thought of M. L. Andreasen (1876-1962), who sounded the alarm about a possible drift away from distinctive Adventist doctrines in the late 1950s.  The focal point of Andreasen’s dissent was the controversial book, Questions on Doctrine (1957), which was published with the support of SDA denominational officials.  It grew out of dialogues between prominent SDA leaders and two evangelical theologians named Donald Barnhouse and Walter Martin.  The dialogues were prompted by an incident in which Barnhouse, on a widely-heard radio program, described the SDA Church as an heretical cult.  SDA leaders sought to convince Barnhouse and other conservative Christians in America that the SDA Church was not heretical and that its core beliefs were consistent with historic Christian creeds. 

For Andreasen and other Historic Adventists, those dialogues—and the 1957 book that resulted from them—brought to light a dangerous trend toward integrating the SDA Church within the broader evangelical movement in America.  Grotheer shared that point of view.  In fact, in his interpretation of SDA Church history, the 1980 SDA statement of faith—which helped to seal Grotheer’s final break with the SDA—was the culmination of the trajectory that first became apparent in the publication of Questions on Doctrine twenty-three years earlier. It is clear, then, that Grotheer maintained a point of view in sympathy with a larger dissenting movement known as Historic Adventism.

Nevertheless, it must be stressed that Grotheer stood apart from the Historic Adventist movement in several important ways.  First, he did not grant Ellen White’s writing as much authority as Historic Adventists typically do.  By his own estimation, his sola scriptura standard separated him from 95% of the other “independent ministries” identified with Historic Adventism (http://adventistalert.com/aawwn/ninty/two-jm.htm).  Second, he believed that many Historic Adventists veered toward a wooden recapitulation of earlier doctrines, when the Adventist doctrine of “present truth” required instead that believers build and develop the earlier doctrines by interpreting the Bible in light of new developments in the world.  Third, he believed that many Historic Adventists interpreted Adventist thought in such a way that it supported a misguided “works-righteousness,” thereby compromising the teaching of salvation by faith alone.  At the heart of this issue, for Grotheer, was Herbert Douglass’ teaching of the “harvest principle,” which said that a final generation of believers will achieve a state of sinlessness.  Grotheer shares Douglass’ “last generation” theology, but regards their sinlessness as the result of a gift of grace rather than an act of their own sanctification.  Fourth, and most importantly, he went further than Historic Adventist groups in declaring the SDA denomination as an apostate church.  Most Historic Adventist groups seek to reform the SDA Church, while Grotheer’s energies were directed toward condemning the SDA denomination and urging its members to leave it for the sake of the truth.

My research suggests, then, that ALF has an historical connection to the SDA and is, broadly speaking, part of the same family of believers known as Adventism.  But for decades now, ALF has had no discernable organizational connection to the SDA Church, and its possible ties to any other dissenting group in the Historic Adventist movement are minimal.