Chapter 59. Rocks in my Hand

In 1987, the Association of Adventist Forums (AAF) advertised a three-week geology field trip through the classic geology landscapes of the West. The red-rock country of Utah, the Green River Basin in Wyoming, Yellowstone National Park, Colorado. I wanted to go. But, of course, it was impossible. It would cost a lot of money. It would be selfish to take a three week vacation and leave Karin home with the kids.

 

The people leading the field trip included the scientists whose work I had read in Spectrum, an independent journal published by Adventist intellectuals. These scientists were infamous for their questioning of the church’s belief in a recent creation. Looking at the rocks under their tutelage was not calculated to increase my confidence in a short chronology. But I was already in too deep. I needed to continue exploring geology. I had to examine more evidence. Rocks were a siren beckoning irresistibly. I was lashed to the mast of Adventist orthodoxy by my unshakeable conviction that I had been called into the ministry by God. But the siren call of the rocks was a soul-bending lure. Besides, a trip to the Intermountain West was a tantalizing draw. I loved the West as much as I loved the City. I finally mentioned my interest to Karin.

 

“Do you really want to go?” She asked.

“Yeah. I would.”

“Then I think you should go.”

Her encouragement surprised me. “Well, I don’t know. It costs a lot. And what would you do with the kids?”

“We’ll figure something out. I’ll see if Mama can come up and stay with me while you are gone.”

 

Mama and Papa agreed to come, so I registered for the trip. A few weeks later, one of the trip organizers called and asked if I would consider car-pooling with a Japanese family. Mark was a physicist. He would be bringing his wife and eight-year-old son. They would be flying in from Tokyo and couldn’t afford the additional cost of renting a car for three weeks. It sounded like a great idea. I imagined engaging conversations as we drove.

 

I picked up Mark and Keiko Abe and their eight-year-old son at JFK, and we headed west, driving non-stop, trading off driving. Our conversations were slow and halting. Mark’s English was good enough for reading scientific journals in his field but barely adequate for conversation. His wife’s English was less. My Japanese was, of course, zero. We joined the AAF group in Green River, Utah, for the launch of the tour.

 

Days were spent examining evidence in the field. Evenings occasionally included lectures. The presenters included the stars of liberal Adventist thinking on earth history–Richard Ritland, Ed Hare, Ed Lugenbeal–laughingly referred as the GRI alumni.

 

The Geological Research Institute (GRI), is a church-funded office devoted to cataloging and disseminating scientific evidence in support of the Church’s views on earth history. Ritland, Hare and Lugenbeal were some of the first scientists hired. According to others on the trip, the original mission of GRI included a mandate to help the Church honestly examine the scientific evidence. Their research increasingly compelled these men to question a recent creation. There was a change in the presidency of the Church. The new president wanted support for the official teachings of the Church not questions. Ritland, Hare and Lugenbeal were forced out. Hare became a leading researcher in amino acid racemization dating. He had begun his research thinking this dating method would provide evidence of a recent creation. It didn’t. Lugenbeal moved into college administration where his views on earth history could be hidden. Ritland retired. They remained the darlings of Adventist intellectuals.

 

None of the then-current scientists at GRI was on the trip. According to the organizers, they had been invited, but had been pressured by their superiors not to lend legitimacy to the trip by their presence.

 

The GRI alumni and others lectured on the evidence that was inconsistent with a recent creation. There were conglomerates that included fossils in shale cobbles within the conglomerate. This meant that erosion had to lay down a layer of silt. Then animals or plants had to die and get buried in the silt. Then the silt had to turn into stone (shale beds). Then the shale beds had to be uplifted so they could be eroded into small round stones. These small round stones then had to be gathered into a basin and cemented together into conglomerate.

 

The dominant view among Recent Creationists was that all significant geologic activity–the formation of the great fossiliferous sedimentary layers–happened during the one year of Noah’s flood. How could we fit the processes required to form fossils inside cobbles inside layers of conglomerate into a single year?

 

On the other side of coin were fossil fish. Nowhere in the world do we observe fish becoming fossils. When a fish dies, scavengers and bacteria reduce it to a disarticulated skeleton within a matter of days. But in the Green River Formation there are tens of thousands, maybe millions of beautifully-preserved fossil fish. How could these fish have been preserved if they were buried in the normal process of siltation in a lake. Long before they were buried–much less indurated–their flesh would have been scavenged and their bones scattered.

 

We visited an outcrop of the Green River Formation where we were guided by Paul Bucheim, an Adventist graduate student doing research in the formation. The fish in the Green River Formation are cited by Creationists as evidence against long ages. There is no contemporary example of fish turning into fossils. Turning millions of fish into fossils was evidence that something unusual happened. Maybe that something was Noah’s Flood.

 

One reason Green River fish fossils are so famous is the ease of finding them. The fish are found in rock composed of thin layers of fine-grained sandstone, marlstone and shale. When the rock is split along these layers, often you find fish perfectly displayed on the plane that separates two layers. Standard geology interpreted these layers as varves–annual layers of sediment deposited in a lake by the ebb and flow of the seasons.

 

Creationists argue these layers were deposited by the Flood. Bucheim and his colleagues had identified over one thousand layers. Many of these layers displayed not only fossils of dead fish, but also bird tracks and other distinctive marks left by birds feeding in the mud. There was even fossilized bird poop. How could there have been time during the flood to deposit a layer carbonate-rich mud, have birds come and walk around and feed and poop, then wash in another layer of mud and repeat the whole process–a thousand times over? Even if each layer did not represent a full year, even if a new layer was deposited every day, it just didn't make sense in the context of Noah's flood.

 

The Green River Formation covers an area of more than 25,000 square miles and averages about 2000 feet in thickness. The massive scale of the formation lends itself to pictures of a world-wide flood sweeping the continent. But the fossilized bird tracks, bird poop and eggshell fragments are far better explained by less catastrophic models. Then there was the fact that beneath the Green River Formation was another 25,000 feet of sedimentary rock, all of which would have had to be deposited during Noah’s flood before the Green River fish could begin their process of turning into fossils.

 

We faced similar arguments in connection with the “fossil forest” of Yellowstone National Park. In Yellowstone, petrified trees are preserved in layers of volcanic ash. Conventional geological interpretation saw each layer as a life surface. An ash layer would be deposited. Over time the surface of this layer would be populated by trees. Eventually, another ash layer would be deposited. This would kill the trees growing on the layer below and the process would begin all over again. You could calculate the total age of the formation by adding together the age of the oldest trees in each layer. And some of the trees were huge and old. Using this dendrochronology, the formation was determined to be about 40,000 years old. It seemed like a straight-forward approach to dating. Clearly it did not fit into a six-thousand-year earth history.

 

However, before the trip I had read an article by Harold Coffin. He argued the layers did not represent growth horizons, but instead had been transported into place by water. Unlike many Creationists, he had done actual research, spending a couple of seasons in the field. His article included photographs of very large trees rising through several ash layers. If, in fact, the layers were growth horizons, this would mean these tree had remained alive for thousands of years through catastrophic volcanic eruptions. They continued to grow even after their trunks had been engulfed in many feet of superheated volcanic ash. No tree that we know of today could live in such circumstances. Coffin examined root structure on the fossil trees and the putative soil horizons surrounding them. He studied patterns of breakage, orientation of the long axes of trees that weren’t round, the plant detritus preserved around the trees. He even conducted lab tests on trees to see if uprooted trees would float vertically or horizontally if they spent weeks or months floating in flood waters.

 

Coffin made a strong case against the conventional interpretation. These trees had not grown here over a 40,000-year period. Rather they had been transported by mudflows or floods.

 

On our trip, Ritland poked fun at Coffin because on a field trip sponsored by GRI, Coffin had dragged participants great distances to show them two or three trees that penetrated multiple layers of rock. Most visible trees were contained in a single layer, Ritland said. Why traipse all over creation to find the few anomalous cases. But I couldn’t help thinking that science was advanced precisely by observing exceptional cases that did not fit current orthodoxy. Keen observation of anomalies forced the reexamination of theories. Why mock a scientist who highlighted data that did not fit the current explanatory model?

 

It seemed to me Ritland was doing exactly what Creationists accused most scientists of doing: ignoring the data that did not fit his model. I was reminded of a conversation I had had with a former student of Ritland. She described the interaction between Ritland and a younger scientist in a seminar on origins. Ritland had talked in broad, general terms about the weight of evidence against a recent creation. The other scientist cited specific articles and particular data that countered Ritland’s broad assertions. Sure there was evidence for a long history of life. But there was counter evidence as well. It seemed to her the younger geologist was more honestly confronting the data.

 

If Ritland, and other scientists on the tour were overwhelmingly biased, then perhaps I could take their assertions with a grain of salt. Maybe I could hold on to what the Bible said about six thousand years – maybe stretch it to perhaps 7,000 or 8,000 or even 10,000. But certainly I didn’t have to believe life had existed on earth for hundreds of millions of years.

 

One incontrovertible fact was the geographic distribution of animals. Most of the marsupials (animals with pouches) in the world today live in Australia–kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, wombats, koalas. If all animals in the world descended from ancestors that rode Noah’s Ark, why did almost all the marsupials head straight to Australia? If there was only one pair of marsupials on the Ark, how could those two have possibly ramified into all the species extant in Australia today in less than 4000 years?

 

It seemed far easier to explain the geographic distribution of living animals and fossils on the basis of conventional paleontology than by the story of all animals coming off a single boat 4000 years ago. (Which reminds me of a conversation I had once with a GRI scientist about this issue. I asked if GRI had considered the notion that perhaps there were other “Arks.” Noah's just happened to be the only one mentioned in Genesis. He got excited and dragged me into another office to repeat my suggestion to someone with more knowledge of the biblical/theological side of the debate. I was flattered to be taken seriously. I also thought his reaction was a measure of how challenging biogeography is to young earth creationism.)

As we were hammered with more and more evidence of problems in the standard Creationist model of origins, Mark became increasingly agitated. When he had joined “an obscure Protestant sect” as a teenager, his parents were deeply offended. In the face of their objections he had resolutely followed the teachings of the Bible, especially regarding the Sabbath. All the way through college and graduate school he had maintained his confidence in the literal historicity of Genesis. Now he was listening to Adventist scientists and even Adventist theologians question the very bed rock of his faith. I talked about it to Dr. Ritland. Why had they encouraged people like Mark to come? It was disturbing enough for people like me, but at least I had been reading Spectrum for years. I knew Adventist scientists had questions. I knew what I was going to hear on this trip. But Mark had come expecting to hear the standard Adventist defense of a recent creation. Instead he was losing his faith.

 

Dr. Ritland told me Mark had insisted on coming. They had cautioned him he would hear controversial content. Still he insisted. He said he was a scientist. He needed to examine the evidence for himself.

We visited a moraine in southern Colorado. It was easy to imagine its history. We could see the mountain valley the glacier had descended. When the climate had been colder or wetter (or both) a glacier had pushed down out of the mountains and left a perfectly shaped crescent terminal moraine. We hiked over to where a stream cut through the moraine and Dr. Ritland described what we were seeing. Instead of a single moraine, we could see two very distinct layers. Dr. Ritland explained that these layers represented two different advances of the glacier. And he pointed out that there was enough time between the deposition of these two depositions that the granite cobbles in them had weathered very differently. In the top layer, the cobbles were smooth and hard. You could see their round shapes protruding from the opposite bank where the stream had eroded away the softer matrix surrounding them.

 

The lower layer was dramatically different. While some large rocks stuck out from the stream-cut bank, many other rocks, six to twelve inches in diameter looked like they had been cut off flush with the bank. Dr. Ritland said this difference in appearance was because the granite cobbles in the lower level were rotten. They were so soft that when stream cut down through the moraine, it cut through the small boulders instead of cutting around them. That sounded crazy to me. Granite rotting? From where we were standing, it did look like some of the granite cobbles had been cut, but others were clearly sticking out from the bank. I climbed down into the stream bed, hopped across the creek and poked at rocks. The stream had carved a vertical twenty-foot tall bank. The line between the two morainal deposits was distinct. And to my amazement many of the granite cobbles in the lower deposit were so soft I could crumble them with my fingers. All of the cobbles in the upper bank were round and hard.

 

My head spun. How long did it take granite to rot? How much time must have passed between the deposition of these two layers so that in one the granite cobbles were smooth and hard and in the other they were gritty and crumbly? Manhattan was full of granite. Granite facades on buildings. Granite steps on the front of grand buildings, granite paving stones on cobble stone streets. I thought of the steps of the post office on Eight Avenue. The edges on the steps were worn in places, but there was no hint of rot. In places in New York granite treads had been in place for maybe two hundred years. The millions of footsteps had worn it, eroded it, in two hundred years there was not a hint of rot!

 

I had heard Creationist theories that allowed for a short ice age immediately following Noah’s flood–maybe a couple hundred years at the most. But this did not make sense as I stood there crumbling rotten granite with my fingers. The difference between solid and rotten granite was not complicated like radiometric dating. It did not require me to trust anyone else's word about where it had been found or how old it was. I had pulled it from its matrix myself. I had observed its stratigraphic situation with my own eyes. This granite breaking into sharp, angular fragments in my own hands screamed more time, more time.

Our tour ended in Yellowstone National Park with a weekend of worship and lectures in the village of West Yellowstone. Friday afternoon I went out to eat with a young biologist. He ordered a hamburger, I ordered an avocado and sprouts sandwich. When the food came, he grabbed his hamburger and began to wolf it down. I paused, offered a silent prayer then attacked my sandwich with similar vigor. After we had eaten a few bites, I looked at him and said, “Bill you forgot the human part of eating your sandwich.”

 

“What do you mean, the ‘human part’ of eating. God made cows for people to eat.”

 

I laughed. “I’m not talking about what you’re eating. I’m talking about how you’re eating. There’s no difference between your approach to that sandwich and my dog’s approach.”

 

He did not understand what I was getting at, but since I was laughing, he was not yet offended. “The human part of eating is stopping to say grace. That’s what turns food, metabolic input, into a meal, into communion, even.”

 

He grunted through another bite, and nodded, grudgingly conceding my point.

The worship Friday night and Sabbath morning felt thin and dry to me. It seemed to me Adventist liberals had a diminished capacity for wonder and delight. They were so cerebral, so polemical they appeared incapable of rich spiritual experience. Articles by Stephen J. Gould, the Harvard evolutionary biologist, often evinced a warmer, more human engagement with the magic of nature than did the writing of these Adventist academics. Whatever the actual age of the fossils, full-orbed human life required gifts and capacities not very evident at this conference. There was some music but it was all rather cool classical music. There was no fire. No temptation to dance.

 

Then came Sabbath afternoon. Richard Hammill, a retired president of Andrews University, spoke. He talked of his doctoral studies at the University of Chicago. He had noted at the time, the similarity between the order of creation in Genesis One and the language of Psalm 104. He knew–because he was an Adventist–that Genesis One had been written by Moses about 1450 B.C. and that the Psalms were written later. But in the years since he had retired he had had opportunity to go back and study further. And he had come to the conclusion that the similarities between these two passages was best explained by the view that Psalm 104 was written first. Whoever wrote Genesis One (and it certainly was not Moses) had obviously been influenced by Psalm 104. Genesis One, far from being a rational, scientific history was a poetic, worshipful celebration of the God of creation. Using Genesis One as textbook of geology was missing the pint entirely.

 

As he reached the climax of his presentation he choked up. The atmosphere in the room was electric. The audience was astonished by his confession. They admired his courage in publicly breaking with the official church position. But there was anger as well. Many in the room had either lost jobs or had friends who lost jobs in purges of the University faculty while Hammill had been president. They could understand Hammill not publicly voicing his skepticism about Genesis One as geology. But as president, he could have worked to shield his faculty from the zeal of the reactionary church president. Instead, he had given every appearance of full cooperation.

 

It was the one time in the entire conference when genuine emotion showed itself. I was not overly impressed with Hammill’s arguments regarding the dating of Genesis. It was back to the “assured results of scholarship” which in textual criticism usually means venerated scholarly conjecture. Textual criticism is often a brilliant, logical superstructure erected on the tiniest shreds of evidence. The fact is we don’t have any documentary evidence for the Hebrew scripture before the Babylonian captivity. There are elaborate theories about how the Bible text must have developed over time. But they are like theories of pre-biotic evolution–strong assertions in the absence of physical evidence. These assertions are supported by appeals to authority not data. Believe it because we [the community of experts] have told you so. This scholarly hubris is safe because no data is available to challenge it. Even in the face of a deeply emotional confession by a notable church scholar and administrator, I was not willing to resist ecclesiastical authority merely to yield compliantly to the academy.

The conference continued on Sunday, but I had had enough. I wanted to get home. We left Saturday night and drove straight through to New York.

 

The long hours driving were filled with bewilderment. The scientific evidence was compelling. The rocks spoke of much more time than could be accommodated by any appeal to ancient textual variants. Sure, there were all sorts of problems in conventional geology. And maybe some day someone investigating those problems would find a new scientific explanation of the cosmos that was congruent with a literal reading of the Bible. But right now, the evidence for long ages seemed irrefutable. The only way to believe in a young earth was to consciously disregard the preponderance of evidence.

 

How could I continue as an Adventist preacher when I no longer truly believed the teachings of my church. Oh, to be sure, if I were interrogated about my beliefs, I could honestly say I did not believe life was hundreds of millions of years old. That is I wasn’t absolutely certain life was old–not in the way that as a fifteen year old I had been certain life was only six thousand years old. I still hoped somewhere, some time evidence would be found that would overturn the entire edifice of conventional geology. But I strongly suspected the only reason I did not believe standard geochronology was because I was a leader in a community where that idea was unbelievable.

In one respect, the trip had been very disappointing. I had hoped for time to visit the scientists whose articles I had read in Spectrum magazine. I envisioned sitting around at meals talking about my questions and my bewilderment with people who would understand. But the group did not eat meals together. Most of the people on the trip were old friends. I was younger by ten years than most and a stranger. I found connecting socially very difficult.

 

I did manage to get an hour in a van with Peter Hare while Mark drove my car. Dr. Hare was a leading authority on one method of dating rocks with fossils in them (amino acid racemization). His research documented millions of years of fossil history. But he was also the head elder of his local congregation. When I heard him pray publicly, it did not sound like an act or mere, empty formality. He was genuinely devout, even though he was hopelessly heterodox when it came to geochronology. I was eager to talk with him about my perplexity.

 

It didn’t work. There were others in the car. I was an intruder. Dr. Hare and I talked briefly, superficially, in the small spaces between other conversations. At the next stop I transferred back to my car. Disappointed.

 

But I took with me a vivid picture of a man in whom faith and science lived quite happily together–even though he was fully persuaded life was hundreds of millions of years old and his church taught six thousand years. If he could be happily at home in the church, perhaps there was room for me, too.

Chapter 58. Geology in the Library

[Note that chapter 57 was published out of order. It should have immediately preceded this post.]

I usually commuted into Manhattan on the bus, then walked from the Port Authority Bus Terminal on the West Side over to Lexington Ave. to catch the subway up to 87^th. The midtown branch of the New York Public Library was only a block off my route and sometimes I stopped in. This branch was across the street from the grand, classic building with the lions out front. Because of this proximity and the fame of the New York City Public library I envisioned floors and floors of thousands of books. It turned out the library was just the fourth floor of the building, but their magazine collection included a couple of scientific journals published by the Geological Society of America. 

 

Among Adventists who respected science, conventional wisdom had it that radiometric dating was the greatest challenge to the church’s traditional understanding of earth history. We could work with stratigraphy and paleontology. Biology was on our side. But radiometric dating posed utterly unanswerable questions. Even Robert Brown, a physicist and the Adventist expert on radiometric dating, essentially said there were no plausible young earth creationist explanations of the available evidence from radioisotopes. He was sure that some day we would find a way to harmonize the scientific data with the Bible’s story of a six-day creation six thousand years ago. But so far, he had not found it and did not know where to look for it. But his skepticism was exceptional. Generally, Adventists who addressed the issue assured us that the scientific consensus regarding radiometric dating was largely a result of academic group-think, anti-God bias and circular reasoning. Scientists needed “deep time” to accommodate evolution. Fossil assemblages were used to assign putative ages to formations. Then those ages were used to correlate radiometric data with ages in years. Then radiometric data was used to assign putative ages to other rocks and fossils. There were huge questions about when and how radiometric “clocks” were set to zero. And contamination of samples was a constant problem. So really, we who believed in a recent creation had no need to be intimidated by the apparently scientific certainty of radiometric dating.

At first, my reading in geology journals confirmed the Adventist cavils about radiometric dating. Making sense of the scientific jargon, math and charts in articles on radiometric dating was a challenge, but one thing was perfectly clear: The authors of these scientific articles strongly disagreed with each other. They derived widely varying ages for the same formation. Different teams of geologists disputed the conclusions of other teams and questioned their sampling techniques. They argued that divergent dates were the result of contamination of samples or erroneous assumptions about when the atomic clocks were reset. There were long discussions of how the initial data was “corrected” to yield a plausible date.

It was all just as I had read in Creationist literature. Given the enormous amount of manipulation required to convert initial data into a “date,” I could easily imagine how systematic philosophical bias could affect the outcomes. The complicated, convoluted processes of deriving putative dates from radioactive decay in the rocks stood in stark contrast to the simple, elegant work of Gentry. (See Chapter 38.) Still, the longer I read, the more a nagging question intruded. Were all these scientists really just be playing a game in support of a pre-established dating system? Were they dishonestly committed to a system that distorted earth history? Was their belief in the great antiquity of the fossil record merely a device to shield themselves from moral constraint and a sense of accountability to God? Were they all deluded? Did their work actually tell them nothing about earth history?

One striking difference between scientific and creationist literature jumped out at me: In creationist literature, all the problems were on “the other side.” Creationists had tidy, coherent explanations. They presented their conclusions as “no-brainer” deductions from unambiguous evidence. Creationists constantly cited the disagreement among scientists as evidence of the weakness of the conventional scientific conclusions.

In scientific literature, however, the scientist themselves pointed out problems within their field. Geologists argued with each other. They disputed the dates published by competing research teams, questioned methods of data collection and analysis. Given the constant ferment among scientists, I didn’t see how they could maintain an illusory system forever, especially a system that required collusion across all kinds of fields of study.

Sure, scientists worked within a system. Everything interlocked—stratigraphic relationships and radiometric dates, protein racemization and dendrochronology, ice cores and varves. At first glance, the arguments among scientists resembled the arguments of theologians. But there were two huge differences: The scientists did not threaten each other with damnation. Vastly more significant, their arguments were constantly influenced by new data. They were not doing eternal meta-analysis on the same data set. The scientific consensus actually moved forward. It changed linearly across time (over against the endless cycles of theological invention and reinvention on the themes of divine and human nature, grace and obedience, form and Spirit).

While browsing the library’s limited collection of books on geology I came across a small book titled, The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record. In it Derek Ager, a professor of geology at University College in Swansea, U.K., ridiculed the notion that Noah’s flood could have produced the geologic column, then proceeded to demolish with equal glee the bedrock principle of classic geology–uniformitarianism.

Every science textbook I had ever read–if it mentioned geology at all–honored the work of James Hutton and Charles Lyell. Their research in the middle 1800s in Great Britain led them to conclude that we best understand the history of landforms by studying the rates and forces operative in our world today. “The present is the key to the past.” How long did it take for the Mississippi delta to form? Go measure current rate of deposition at the mouth of the river and extrapolate backward (taking into account, of course, the effect of farming and other human factors).

Creationists constantly attacked uniformitarianism. They cited multiple examples of catastrophe in the geologic record. Catastrophism and creationism were synonymous. But here was a professor of geology at a secular institution arguing against uniformitarianism. And the instances he cited were incontrovertible. They were not obscure relics found by preachers and amateur geologists. The great Red Wall formation in Grand Canyon is 400 to 500 feet of massive limestone. There is no modern exemplar for the formation of massive limestone, but the Red Wall is incontrovertible evidence that once upon a time it did form. In India, the Deccan Plateau is formed by two-thousand-foot-thick lava flows covering more than 500,000 square kilometers. While we observe contemporary volcanoes and lava flows, nowhere is there anything like this kind of magnitude. What obviously happened is no longer happening. The present is not the key to the past, at least not in a straight-line fashion. Professor Ager went on to cite other examples–the formation of coal, sandstone and fossils. In each case, there is no modern correlate for what we see in the geologic record.

Like the journal articles about radiometric dating, Ager’s book confirmed the assertions of Creationists–there are problems in conventional geology. He even invoked the ultimate Creationist term, catastrophe. Instead of a long, gradual, steady evolution of landscape, the geologic history of the earth is like the life of a soldier–long periods of boredom interrupted by brief moments of terror.

Ager acknowledged Creationists would cite his work in support of Noah’s flood and other elements of their young earth theories. But, he argued, this was no excuse for geologists to ignore the strong evidence of their own discipline. Classic uniformitarianism could not withstand close scrutiny. It was time to let it go and move on.

At first I was greatly heartened by Ager’s book. The examples he cited were major, observable geological features. There was nothing obscure about the Grand Canyon Red Wall or the lavas of the Deccan Plateau. And these rocks supported the Creationist argument that the past was radically different from the present. We can not deduce the age of upstream erosional features by studying the present sediment load of the Mississippi River.

But like the journal articles on radiometric dating, Ager’s book ended up eroding one of the bedrock assumptions of Creationism–that scientists hide contrary evidence. Reading his book, I was reminded of something I had noted before: Creationists did not discover problems with conventional geology, they simply presented in popular form problems scientists themselves freely acknowledged. Far from ignoring these problems, scientists–at least some of them–embraced anomalies, discordance between theory and data, as the loci of their research. The Creationist position appeared increasingly tenuous.

About this time, I attended a minister’s meeting at Camp Berkshire. It was held in the same building where Robert Gentry had presented his lecture on pleochroic haloes. The featured speaker at the meeting was H.M.S. Richards, Jr. the speaker/director of The Voice of Prophecy. The Voice of Prophecy was a national radio program with great prestige among Adventists.

At one point in his presentation he issued a strong challenge: if we as ministers could not wholeheartedly, unreservedly affirm the traditional Adventist teaching about the age of the earth, we should have the integrity to resign. We had no business taking a pay check from a church we disagreed with.

I was devastated. I was not ready to believe life on earth was five hundred million years old. But neither could I still affirm without qualification that all of life originated six thousand years ago. I wondered if our conference president agreed with Elder Richards. I imagined walking into Elder Kretschmar’s office and offering him my resignation. I hoped he would disavow what Elder Richards had said. I hoped he would explain that Elder Richards spoke for himself, not the entire church. I needed someone to know about my questions and say it was okay. I needed someone to tell me it was okay to be an Adventist and a geochronological agnostic. I wanted to remain a Seventh-day Adventist pastor. But the cognitive dissonance was becoming unbearable.

Chapter 56. Mink Coats and Aberrant Theophany

This being Manhattan, a number of those coming were homosexual. The most flamboyant was Robert, a tall, striking Chinese man. No Adventist background. I can’t remember how it was he started attending Advent Hope. He always came late. He would waltz down the left center aisle to the second row and petulantly shrug his way of his ankle-length mink coat before stepping into the row. 

Others were deep in the closet. I listened to an old man from the Caribbean pour out a heart-breaking tale of alienation from church and family back home. This was compounded by a pattern of egregious racial discrimination against his nieces and nephews by a suburban pastor a decade or so before I knew him. Through months of conversation he slowly came to forgive the minister who had so damaged his family. His face changed. I was thrilled to see the transformation. However, parts of his story made sense only after his friends came to trust me enough to make oblique references to the real nature of his friendship with another non-Adventist Christian man from the Caribbean.

Then there was Andy. He was in his forties, had never been involved with anyone sexually or even romantically, but when he was a student in an Adventist college, a dean accused him of being involved with another student. They were just friends, Andy told me. Truly, there was nothing going on. He didn’t even know if the other student was a homosexual. But they were both musicians and that was enough. He was hounded from the school by terrified administrators.

Someone suggested I invite Colin Cook to come and talk about recovery from homosexuality. I thought it was a great idea. I knew people in our congregation were struggling with this issue. He was running a ministry in Reading, Pennsylvania, to help homosexuals become fully functioning heterosexuals. His own marriage was the greatest advertisement for his ministry. I thought he might bring valuable help to members in my church and others in the New York area. At some point before I invited him, someone offered a very oblique caution about having Colin come. They suggested I talk with a mutual friend who lived in New York, Ginger Thomas. I knew she had lived with a friend from many years and suspected she might be plugged into the network that would know if Colin’s coming would create more difficulties than it solved. In her characteristically deliberate, thoughtful voice she said, no, she didn’t think it would be inappropriate to invite him to make his presentations in our church.

Colin brought two of his counselees with him for the weekend of lectures. At that time, he was working to develop a national network of homosexual recovery groups called Homosexuals Anonymous. Because of Colin’s connections, a number of people came to the lectures who had no previous contact with the church. Colin gave his standard presentation. Homosexual desire is misplaced hunger for father love and resentment of maternal smothering. The key to new life, to transformation of sexual desire, is to see ourselves as we really are in Christ–whole, complete, beloved, valued, treasured. The church can play a role in this by offering healthy, non-sexual friendships. Colin was a compelling speaker–or perhaps I should say he was a confident and competent speaker. For those open to his ideas he was compelling. But I had already heard too many stories, including his own, of years and decades of desperate searching to discover this “new man” he preached about. His words were hopeful, but I was doubtful.

One outcome of his lectures was the formation of a local Homosexuals Anonymous group in Manhattan. The other outcome was several new people in regular attendance at our church. Half of the HA group attended my church so they invited me to their meeting. Eight or ten people gathered in a dingy third floor room down in the Village. The place was filled with beds rather than chairs. We sat awkwardly on the beds with our backs against the walls. The conversation was cryptic. I guessed my presence unsettled the group.

My heart ached for these young people. Most of them had conservative Christian backgrounds. They knew that homosexual relationships were wrong. They wanted to change, and Colin assured them it was possible. If they would just work the program, they could become ex-homosexuals just like alcoholics could become ex-drunks. But even in this group gathered to “work the program” I could feel the sexual chemistry. And the guys were not looking at the women.

Several in the group continued to attend church. Lydia was a singer with a wonderful voice. She began hanging out with one of the guys. His life story moved from drama to excitement to miracle to drama. He never worked anywhere very long. He was constantly being provided for by Christians who were amazed at his stories of God’s intervention in his life and by wealthy men drawn by other charms. I listened to his tales with dumbstruck fascination.

Lydia’s and Kenny’s friendship was real, but the promised change of sexual orientation was a mirage. I lost track of Kenny in the murky world of clubs and bars. Lydia moved away from New York, still pursuing her dream of a career in music.

The stories swirl in my head. An orthodox Jewish young man who found our congregation welcoming. Visiting with others who had attended Colin’s seminar, he found the courage to talk out loud about his lack of desire for women. He had come to the seminar because of his dream–no his divine calling–to be a husband and father and carry forward the faith of his people. But how do you marry if women awaken no desire?

Then there was John. He first began attending our church because of a vegetarian cooking class. The other young adults liked him. He was bright and funny, easy to be around. Like several others he enjoyed the freedom at Advent Hope to express his spiritual nature without having to take on the full religious baggage of his Catholic upbringing. He read Scripture and offered prayers in worship services. He helped organize work parties. After a couple of years of involvement, I invited him to formally join our congregation. He declined. He explained that joining a church would require him to align his life with his convictions.

I was puzzled at first, but he kept talking. After he began attending church he broke up with his boyfriend. Told him they couldn’t have sex any more. His boyfriend was crushed. He begged and pleaded, but John was adamant. What they were doing was wrong. They could still be friends, but they couldn’t keep sleeping together.

John felt like a jerk, a heel. But at the same time, it was the right thing to do. He was going to give himself wholly to God. But then he’d run into his boyfriend on the street. And always Fred begged him to reconsider. Finally, after months of chastity he had given in. They spent a Saturday night together. And Sunday. But Sunday afternoon john’s conscience asserted itself. He asked Fred to leave. Fred got angry. John started sobbing. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you but our love is wrong. God did not make us for each other.”

“What do you mean ‘our love is wrong.’? I don’t see anything wrong with it. And you didn’t either last night or this morning. This is why I don’t get involved with that God stuff any more. I had enough of the nuns when I was a kid. But I’m not a kid anymore.” Fred was shouting.

John collapsed in a chair and covered his face. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. Just go. Leave. Go.” John’s conscience was merciless. His love for Fred was unquenchable. The conflict between duty and love was unending agony.

So John didn’t join the church. And he didn’t leave. He continued to attend church, to brighten up parties, to help with projects. He was always cheerful, quick to notice others. I doubted anyone else in the church suspected his secret life–either his sexual orientation or his deep religious struggles. We talked occasionally. He’d go for a month or two or three, then succumb to Fred’s allure. Then, when John’s conscience finally reasserted itself, they’d have another nasty parting.

“Have you read any books or talked to anyone who thinks that monogamous relationships are okay?” I asked him one day.

“Yeah, but I can’t believe that. God didn’t mean two men to be together. No, that doesn’t work. At least not that and being a Christian. I don’t see how I can go to church and live with Fred. It just doesn’t work.”

John paused. “You know sometimes when I’m lying in Fred’s arms it goes way beyond sex or lust or whatever you want to call it. Sometimes it’s like God is there. Sometimes in the dark, in bed, God is so close. . . . It’s like Fred and the room and everything disappears, and God is there. When that happens, God is more real, God is closer . . . I know it must sound crazy . . .”

What could I say? It did sound crazy, at least in the context of classic Christian teaching about sex and lust and worship and theophany. Theologians contrasted the high moral tone of the Hebrew prophets with the sexualization of worship among the Philistines and Amorites. Sexual desire was seen as one of the greatest hindrances to spiritual enlightenment–not the path to it. That was the dominant message. But there were other stories. Like Judah and Tamar. And God chose the second-born son of the illicit union as the carrier of the Messianic line. And Hosea who is sent by God to a prostitute. And contemporary stories.

I told John, “Yeah, it does sound crazy. But I’ve heard other stories of God showing up in wild and crazy romances.” I did not know what to say. I knew what I was supposed to say. But I could find no words that put together my understanding of the Bible’s take on sexuality with what I heard in John’s story. I wasn’t ready to dump the Bible. Neither could I bring myself to dismiss John’s story as fiction.

I think I may be creating the wrong impression with these stories. There was no sense when you visited on Sabbath morning that ours was a “gay church.” Remember, this was the German New York Seventh-day Adventist Church. The old Germans were completely unaware that anyone in their church was homosexual. My sense was that the vast majority, even of the young people, were unaware. With the exception of Robert and his mink coat it would have required special sensitivity to detect the slightest hint of departure from gender norms. But I heard the stories. Over and over again.

We were not a democracy. The church was run by a small core of people, old and young, who were life-long Seventh-day Adventists. But this core understood we were not running the church for ourselves. We were creating a sanctuary, “a house of prayer for all nations.” We welcomed everybody and his dog. And they came.

Chapter 55. Dinner at Edith's

Edith was a fashion designer, her elegance and sophistication contrasting with the working class culture of most of the other Germans. Like all of the other Germans except Elder Roehn she warmly welcomed Karin and me.

She grew up in Germany in a severe, stern Adventist home. As soon as she and her sister were able to escape the prison of home, they severed all ties with the church. She married a man with a dark secret. Their marriage ended about the time her son was born. Life was bitterly hard. She endured the misery of WWII and its aftermath before escaping to New York City. There she eventually found a measure of peace and prosperity in the fashion industry. After she retired, she experienced a spiritual rebirth and reconnected with the Adventist Church, in spite of Elder Roehn, she said.

She did not often talk about her past. The pain of childhood and marriage were still visibly intense when she allowed herself to remember. Her son lived in Alaska. Life was hard for him because of disabilities that were a heritage of his father. I listened to Edith wrestle with the roiling emotions of a mother's love for her son, a mother's outrage at the man who had damaged him, an ex-wife's anger at betrayal and deceit, frustration that she could not fix her son, could not make it better, guilt that she wasn't doing more. I heard her pleasure in his small successes. He joined the Adventist Church. He got a job and kept it.

Within weeks of our arrival she invited Karin and me and our daughter for Sabbath lunch along with the Pauliens and Sister Erlecke. She lived in Apartment 3E on East 85^th between First and York. The doorman announced our arrival and Edith said to send us up.

The table was set just so. The china elegant. Edith offered us some fruit juice as an appetizer. Gertrude helped her in the tiny kitchen. Sitting on her couch I read the spines of the books in her bookcase. Geothe and Schiller. Music theory. Art history and art theory. German literature. A few devotional works. The furniture was spare, the opposite of massive or heavy. It looked antique.

Edith called us to the table and assigned us our places. She asked me to say grace.

She led the conversation, making sure everyone was included, making sure we learned enough of one another's histories. She especially honored Sister Erlecke. Elder Erlecke had served for short time as pastor of the church before Elder Roehn came. Everyone in the church had loved and respected him. Sister Erlecke herself was the incarnation of sweet goodness. She was universally appreciated in the church. She blushed and protested Edith's encomium but Gertrude seconded Edith's words.

A month or two later, I was invited again, this time, the table was surrounded by Edith's friends and neighbors. She was introducing them to her pastor. Some of them were interested in spiritual conversation, though they were hardly ready to sign up for “Bible studies.” A few months later I was again at dinner in Edith's apartment meeting friends from the fashion world and neighbors. I couldn't miss the parallel with the story in the gospels of tax-collector-turned-disciple, Matthew, hosting a dinner to introduce his friends to Jesus. Sitting at Edith's table I felt the honor of her confidence and the weight. She was presenting me to her friends as the face of her church, maybe as the face of her God. It was an honor. It was terrifying.

As young adults began arriving, Edith quietly and effectively gathered the young women into her circle. She was their confidant and adviser. Her sophistication and professional accomplishments awed them. Her genuine care was irresistible. They did not always follow her advice, but they always warmed to her attentions.

The contrast in culture between the arriving young adult Americans and the long time Germans was stark. Even with the best of intentions there were bound to be misunderstandings. Occasionally, Edith would inform me of some offense I had given to the older Germans. Almost always I was completely oblivious. Without Edith's counsel I would have gone blithely forward, never having the slightest idea that I had offended the saints who were the foundation and backbone of the church. As far as I know, no one ever knew Edith was alerting me to these faux pas. She spoke only to me, so when I apologized to the old Germans for blunders and offenses, they magnanimously credited me with an awakened conscience.

Whatever “success” I have been credited with as pastor at Church of the Advent Hope, certainly a large share of that credit belongs to Edith. I became the son she dreamed of having. She was a model mother, offering powerful affirmation of my work as a pastor, cleverly finding ways to give advice that made me wiser without making me feel foolish, honoring me before her friends and neighbors. The congregation at Advent Hope was an extraordinary community of grace. Edith's gracious tact makes her in my memory, truly primus inter pares.

Herb Roehn, provided an almost comic counterpart of Edith's role in helping with the transition from an old German to an American young adult congregation. I began my work as his associate. Six months later, on schedule, he retired. He remained in the congregation and on the church board. For at least another six months I deliberately did everything I could to make him feel valued and useful. I did nothing without consulting him and did hardly anything without gaining his prior approval. Then I decided it was time to move on, time to focus on doing ministry to reach my target audience—young adult Anglos.

Herb became increasingly hostile. In board meetings he would harangue me. On Sabbath mornings he sometimes would loudly castigate me in the lobby or aisles of the church. I have a vivid memory of visitors sliding past as Herb stood in the middle of the aisle his finger in my chest reaming me out over some peccadillo.

Then I committed my greatest blunder. A traveling group of Christian actors asked to do a performance for our church service. I had them come to the church on a Wednesday night and audition. They did two or three short sketches. The sketches they did were punchy and right on. They communicated spiritual truth in a compelling way. So, on my own, without consulting anyone, I invited them to take the sermon time, the following Sabbath.

It was a brash thing to do. We were in transition, but this was still a church with a German heritage, with a deep tradition of the dignity of the pulpit. This was New York. Not only the preacher, but nearly everyone in the pews was dressed. Suits and ties. Fashionable dresses. Our liturgy was very traditional, as close to an Anglican format as an Adventist Church could get. The music, the décor was formal and elegant.

And I invited a group of itinerant amateur actors to put on a dramatic production as the sermon.

To make matters worse, in contrast to the punchy, highly effective sketches I saw in audition, the piece they did for the worship service was rambling and disjointed. Further, they had insisted as actors they were used to projecting their voices. They did not need amplification. (This being the 1980s in a church that had never seen a praise band, our PA system was rather primitive any way.) Sitting on the first row, I had to strain to hear them.

For once Edith and Herb agreed. This was a disaster, a shame.

We were in the process of choosing a new organ. There was a congregation meeting scheduled for Sunday morning to make our final decision on which organ to purchase. I opened the meeting with prayer, then said, “I know this meeting has been convened to decide on the organ, however, I know that many of you are concerned about what happened yesterday. So let's deal with that first, then we'll discuss the organ.”

The first person to speak was Elder Roehn. It seemed to me he talked for twenty minutes (I'm sure this is an exaggeration.) He listed every imaginable error of my pastorate. I was a failure as an evangelist. I hadn't visited Sister So and So when she was in the hospital. My theology was suspect. My organizational and management skills were abysmal. And I had desecrated the sanctuary and the church service by inviting a bunch of non-Adventist actors to do a play(!) instead of preaching a sermon. Then he went back to lambasting me for additional errors and omissions.

Finally, one of the English-speaking people who had been there a long time and had the respect of the group interrupted Herb.

“Elder Roehn,” he said, “you are correct that John made a mistake in inviting the acting group to perform in our church service yesterday. He was wrong, but what you have done this morning is worse. You have disrespected our pastor.”

After he sat down someone else spoke up and made approximately the same speech. “John was wrong, but you, Elder Roehn, this morning have committed a graver error.” Most of those present that morning were the old Germans. They all spoke. And everyone made essentially the same speech.

If Elder Roehn had not blasted me the way he did, the congregation would have had to administer their own strong disapproval. However, given Elder Roehn's performance, the congregation acknowledged I had erred then pour their emotional energy into protecting me from an overblown attack. Elder Roehn completely neutralized the force of the criticism they would have been compelled to voice.

In spite of himself, Elder Roehn, was as essential in the transition from Old German culture to a young adult congregation as Edith. When he criticized me, he usually had some basis for his criticism. Often his views were in line with the instincts of most of the Germans. However, he would be so obnoxious and disrespectful in expressing his views that the other Germans had to distance themselves. Because he was constantly attacking me, the other Germans felt a constant need to protect and encourage me. He fully articulated every possible concern the Germans may have had and did it in a way that made it easier for the old Germans to let them go as the church moved forward into its new identity.

Eventually, Herb quit attending Advent Hope and began attending my previous congregation in Babylon where there were several German members. There he and his wife were welcomed and included.