Seventh-day Adventist Church - Independent Ministries, Offshoots, and Schisms - Offshoots and Schisms

Offshoots and Schisms

Throughout the history of the denomination, there have been a number of groups who have left the church and formed their own movements.

Following World War I, a group known as the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement was formed as a result of the actions of L. R. Conradi and certain European church leaders during the war, who decided that it was acceptable for Adventists to take part in war. Those opposed to this stand and refused to join the war were declared "disfellowshipped" by the local Church leaders at the time. When the Church leaders from the General Conference came and adomonished the local European leaders after the war to try to heal the damage, but attempts at reconciliation failed after the war, the group became organized as a separate church at a conference from July 14–20, 1925. The movement officially incorporated in 1949. Conscientious Objection to all acts of war and bloodshed remains a major point of contention. In 2005, the mainstream church apologized for its failures during World War II expressing that they "'deeply regret' any participation in or support of Nazi activities during the war." However, the actions of the SDA Church towards those who took a conscientious stand against all military service during World War 1, were not acknowledged in the apology. The position of the SDA Church towards those engaged in military service, particularly combatants, remains an unresolved issue today.

A well known but distant offshoot is the Branch Davidians, themselves a schism within the larger Davidian movement. The Davidians formed in 1929, after Victor Houteff's book The Shepherd's Rod was rejected as being heretical. A succession dispute after Houteff's death in 1955 led to the formation of the Branches. Later, another ex-Adventist, David Koresh, led the Branch Davidians until he died in the 1993 siege at the group's headquarters near Waco, Texas.

Crisis, persecution, and compromise in the Soviet Union produced the group known as True and Free Seventh-day Adventists. This highly secretive splinter group rejected compromises of necessity that were made by the "Official" Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Soviet Union. The group refused to send their children to school on Saturday, refused to join the Soviet military, and called the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists "Babylon". The group remains active today (2010) in the former republics of the Soviet Union.


A controversy within Adventism was the Glacier View controversy of 1980. This issue centered on the 900-page research paper by Dr. Desmond Ford entitled Daniel 8:14, the Investigative Judgment, and the Kingdom of God. The paper questioned the church's position on the investigative judgment. At the meetings at Glacier View Ranch, near Estes Park, Colorado, the church rejected Ford's proposals and ultimately resulted in Ford being removed from teaching and having his ministerial credentials revoked. Some Adventists also left the church as a result. In the years since, Ford has worked through the independent ministry Good News Unlimited.

A number of Adventists such as former ministers Walter Rea and Dale Ratzlaff left the church and have become critics of the church's teachings and particularly of Ellen White. The official position of the church related to the prophetic gift of Ellen G. White remains unchanged.

SDA Kinship International, was formed in 1976, and is a social network that is not officially associated with the church for individuals who are or were former Adventists who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT). The Adventist church filed a 1987 lawsuit for trademark infringement against Kinship International to stop their use of the name—District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer ruled that Seventh-day Adventist Kinship International, Inc. did not infringe on the Adventist church's use of the name and therefore could continue to use the identifying name.

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