AND
VEGETARIANISM
Did She Practice What She Preached?
By Roger W. Coon
Edited by Donald E. Mansell
Copyright 1986 by Pacific Press Publishing Association
Used by permission.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Roger W. Coon is an associate secretary of the Ellen G.
White Estate. During the past thirty-eight years he has served the Seventh-day
Adventist Church as a preacher, pastor, evangelist, hospital chaplain, college
and seminary professor, public relations director, radio broadcaster, foreign
missionary, writer, and administrator. His wife, the former Irene Strom, is
a certified public accountant. The Coons have two children, Donald, an electronics
technician, and Susan, a registered nurse.
ABOUT THE BOOK
It is said that "to err is human," and this certainly is true
of the judgments certain critics of Ellen White have made, claiming that, on
the one hand, she urged vegetarianism on Seventh-day Adventists, while on the
other, she "secretly" ate meat. This little booklet brings out all the relevant
facts and offers a reasonable explanation for these charges.
Page 5
Ellen White and Vegetarianism
One hundred years ago ex-Adventist
preacher, Dudley M. Canright, wrote that Mrs. White "forbade the eating of
meat, . . . yet secretly she herself ate meat more or less most of her
life."1 He also is reported to have claimed that
he saw James and Ellen White eat ham right in the dining room of their own
home.
In 1914 Frances ("Fannie") Bolton, a former "on-again, off-again"
literary assistant of Ellen White, wrote of two incidents which purported to
show Ellen White's inconsistency with respect to meat eating. In the first example
Fannie and others were traveling by train with Ellen White to California. Fannie
stated;
"That at the railway
depot Sr. White was not with her party, so Eld. [George B.]
Starr [a member of the party] hunted around till he found her behind a screen
in the restaurant very gratified in eating big white raw oysters with vinegar,
pepper and salt. I was overwhelmed with this inconsistency and dumb with horror.
Elder Starr hurried me out and made all sorts of excuses and justifications
of Sr. White's action; yet I kept thinking in my heart, "What does it mean?
What has God said? How does she dare eat these abominations?"2
The second example occurred on the same
trip to California. Fannie continues:
Page 6
W. C. White came into the train with a
great thick piece of bloody beef-steak spread out on a brown paper and he bore
it through the tourist car on his two hands. Sarah McEnterfer who is now with
Sr. White as her attendant, cooked it on a small oil stove and everyone ate of
it except myself and Marian Davis.3
Can these shocking charges be explained?
In the case of Canright, the matter is resolved quite
simply. By his own admission, Canright "first met" James White "and embraced
the Sabbath from his preaching" in 1859.4 He claimed to have been a guest in the White home,
and it is altogether possible that he saw pork on their table in the earliest
years of their friendship, for Ellen did not receive her first vision
contraindicating the eating of meat in general and pork in particular until
June 6, 1863--four full years after Canright and the Whites first became
acquainted!
What about the Fannie Bolton accusations?
When W. C. White learned of the 1914 letter of Fannie
Bolton, he secured a copy of it and sent it to Elder Starr for comment. Starr
replied:
I can only say that I regard it as the
most absurdly, untruthful lot of rubbish that I have ever seen or read
regarding our dear Sister White.
The event simply never occurred. I never saw your mother
eat oysters or meat of any kind either in a restaurant or at her own table.
Fannie Bolton's statement . . . is a lie of the first order. I never had such
an experience and it is too absurd for anyone who ever knew your mother to
believe. . . .
I think this entire letter was written by Fannie Bolton
in one of her most insane moments. [Fannie spent thirteen months as a mental
patient in the Kalamazoo State Hospital 1911-1912 and another three and a half
months in the same institution in 1924-25; she died in 1926] . . . .
When we visited Florida in 1928, Mrs. Starr and I were
told that at a camp meeting, Fannie Bolton made a public
statement that she had lied about Sr. White, and that she repented of it.5
Page 7
So much for the oysters story. As for the "bloody
beefsteak" episode, W. C. White gives us the details of what happened:
There were about 35 of us going from
Battle Creek to Oakland in 1884 in two skeleton sleeping cars. . . .
As we approached to the border line between Nevada and
California it was found that our provisions were running low. Some of us were
able to make good meals out of the dried things that were left in our lunch
boxes, but Sister White's appetite failed.
We were in a country where fresh fruit was very
expensive and so one morning at a station where our train had stopped for half
an hour, I went out and purchased two or three pounds of beefsteak and this was
cooked by Sister McEnterfer on an alcohol stove, and most of the members that
composed Sister White's party partook of it.6
At this point W. C. White provides a very
helpful and illuminating sidelight into his mother's dietary practices, as well
as the White family at large:
When I bought the beefsteak, I reasoned
that freshly killed ox from this cattle country, would probably be a healthy
animal and that the risk of acquiring disease would be very small. This was
eight or nine years before Sister White decided at the time of the Melbourne
camp-meeting [1894] to be a teetotaler as regards the eating of flesh foods. .
. .
You will find in Sister White's writings several
instances where she says flesh meats do not appear on our table, and this was
true. During a number of years when on rare occasions a little meat was used,
[it] was considered to be an emergency.7
The distinction between the eating of
meat as a regular article of the dietary and its occasional emergency use,
mentioned here by W. C. White, is one to which we will have occasion to return
later on.
The credibility of a witness is a legitimate and
relevant consideration in any evidentiary hearing, including this
Page 8
one. It may be worth noting that both D. M.
Canright8 and
Fannie Bolton9 were known by their contemporaries for
instability of character and personality. Both had an "in-and-out, in-and-out"
experience in denominational employment before finally remaining out.
A Chronology: Teaching and
Practice
It is well to remember that the prophetic gift was given
to a seventeen-year-old meat-eating Sunday keeper on an unrecorded day in
December of 1844, and that that first vision was totally silent concerning the
advantages of a vegetarian diet. Her first vision dealing with healthful living
was given in the autumn of 1848, when the use of tea, coffee, and tobacco were
forbidden to Sabbath keepers.10 Her first comprehensive health-reform vision,
contraindicating the use of flesh foods, was given still later on
June 6, 1863.11
When she received her first vision, Ellen Harmon had
just passed her seventeenth birthday (November 26). She was in poor health and
weighed but eighty pounds. The man who would become her husband twenty-one
months later described her condition at that time:
When she had her first vision, she was an
emaciated invalid, given up by her friends and physicians to die of
consumption. . . . Her nervous condition was such that she could not write, and
was dependent on one sitting near her at the table to even pour her drink from
the cup to the saucer.12
At the time the health-reform message
first came to her, she characterized herself as "weak and feeble, subject to
frequent fainting spells."13 Concerning this condition she wrote at a later
time:
I have thought for years that I was
dependent upon a meat diet for strength. . . . It has been very difficult for
me to go from one meal to another without suffering from faintness at the
stomach, and dizziness of the head. . . . I . . . frequently
Page 9
fainted. . . . I therefore decided that
meat was indispensible in my case. . . . I have been troubled every spring with
loss of appetite.14
To remedy these
physical weaknesses, Ellen ate substantial quantities of meat daily. She
subsequently referred to herself as "a great meat eater" in those early
days.15 "Flesh meat . . . was . . . my principal
article of diet."16
The resulting alleviation of faintness was, however,
temporary--"for the time,"17 as
she put it--and "instead of gaining strength, I grew weaker and weaker. I often
fainted from exhaustion."18
Ellen White's vision of October 21, 1858, on which she
based her rebuke of "Brother and Sister A" for unduly urging abstinence from
pork as a test of church fellowship, was, as far as can be ascertained, the
only vision dealing with flesh foods prior to 1863. It should be noted,
however, that this vision offered no clue that abstinence from flesh food would
result in improved health.
As regards the rightness or wrongness of the eating of
pork, Ellen White neither condoned (as is sometimes alleged) nor condemned. She
did say that if this position were the mind of God, He would, in His own time,
"teach His church their duty."19
In His own good time and through His chosen channel of
communication God did teach His people. In the first major health-reform vision
of June 6, 1863, for the first time, God's people were urged to abstain from
flesh food in general, and from swine's flesh in particular.
Ellen White characterized this first
comprehensive health-reform vision as "great light from the Lord," adding, "I
did not seek this light; I did not study to obtain it; it was given to me by
the Lord to give to others."20 Expanding on this
theme on another occasion, she added:
The Lord presented a general plan before
me. I was shown
Page 10
that God would give to His
commandment-keeping people a reform diet, and that as they received this, their
disease and suffering would be greatly lessened. I was shown that this work
would progress.21
Mrs. White's personal response was prompt
and positive: "I accepted the light on health
reform as it came to me."22
"I at once cut meat out of my bill of fare;"23 indeed, she says, "I broke away from everything at
once,--from meat and butter, and from [eating] three meals [a
day]."24 And the result? "My former faint and
dizzy feelings have left me," as well as the problem of loss of appetite in the springtime.25 And
at the age of eighty-two years she could declare, "I have better health today,
notwithstanding my age, than I had in my younger
days."26
But all of this did not come without a struggle. In 1870
in recounting this struggle, she said:
I suffered keen
hunger, I was a great meat eater. But when faint, I placed my arms across my
stomach, and said: "I will not taste a morsel. I will eat simple food, or I
will not eat at all." . . . When I made these changes I had a special battle to
fight.27
A struggle, yes, but the point is that
she struggled and won. The very next year, after the 1863 health-reform vision,
she could report, "I have left [off] the use of
meat."28 And five years later, in a
letter to her son, Edson, in which she urged him and his family to "show true
principle" in faithfulness in health reform, she assured him that she was also
practicing what she preached:
We have in diet been strict to follow
the light the Lord has given us. . . . We have advised you not to eat butter or
meat. We have not had it on our [own] table.29
The next year, 1870, the Whites continued
to progress in the same direction. Said she:
Page 11
I have not changed my course a particle
since I adopted the health reform. I have not taken one step back since the
light from heaven upon this subject first shone upon my pathway. I broke away
from everything at once.30
Does this mean that Ellen White never
again ate a piece of meat? No, not at all. And furthermore, she did not attempt
to hide this fact. There were occasional exceptions to a habitual pattern of
vegetarianism. In 1890 she stated: "When I could not obtain the food I needed,
I have sometimes eaten a little meat," but even here "I am becoming more and
more afraid of it."31 And eleven years later (1901) she
openly admitted that "I was at times . . . compelled to eat a
little meat."32
As we examine more specifically now the particular
nature of these "times," we discover three principal categories in which Mrs.
White felt obligated to depart, temporarily, from her habitual practice of
vegetarianism.
Encountering Difficulties and
Resulting Compromise
1. Travel
James and Ellen White were married on August 30, 1846.
Their marriage united dual careers as itinerant preachers in a new and growing
"advent movement." Their combined ministry kept them continually on the move in
a heavy travel schedule that would not let up for Ellen even after her
husband's death in 1881.
Travel in the latter half of the nineteenth century
lacked the comforts and conveniences which we take for granted
today--comfortable hotels/motels, restaurants or fast-food outlets with a wide
choice of menus, etc. But even if these things had been available, the Whites
couldn't have afforded them. The advent movement was poor, and strict economy
and continual sacrifice were a necessary way of life for church leaders as well
as members. Under such circumstances it was difficult, and sometimes
impossible, to follow a strictly vegetarian diet, particularly when two related
types of situations are taken into account:
Page 12
(a) When the Whites traveled they were largely dependent
upon the hospitality of fellow church members. These people were usually poor,
their diet consisting almost entirely of flesh food. Fruits and vegetables,
even when available, could be had only seasonally.
(b) There were also times when one or both of the Whites
spent time in isolated and remote geographical regions, such as the mountains
of Colorado, where one had to "live off the land." In other words, they had to
learn to hunt and fish, or else go hungry.
Some excerpts from Ellen White's diary for September and
October of 1873 illustrate this latter point. During this time she and James
were virtually marooned, awaiting the return of their host, Mr. Walling, to
restock their dwindling store of provisions:
September 22: Willie started over the
Range today to either get supplies or get the axletree of the wagon Walling is
making. We cannot either move on or return to our home at the Mills without our
wagon is repaired. There is very poor feed for the horses. Their grain is being
used up. The nights are cold. Our stock of provisions is fast decreasing.
September 28: Brother Glover left the camp today to go
for supplies. We are getting short of provisions. . . . A young man from Nova
Scotia had come in from hunting. He had a quarter of deer. He had travelled
twenty miles with this deer upon his back. . . . He gave us a small piece of
the meat, which we made into broth. Willie shot a duck which came in a time of
need, for our supplies were rapidly diminishing.33
October 5: The sun shines so
pleasantly, but no relief comes to us. Our provisions have been very low for
some days. Many of our supplies have gone--no butter, no sauce of any kind, no
corn meal or graham flour. We have a little fine flour and that is all. We
expected supplies three days ago certainly, but none has come. Willie went to
the lake for water. We heard his gun and found he had shot two ducks. This is
really a blessing, for we need something to live on.34
Page 13
As previously indicated, poverty made vegetarianism
difficult, if not impossible for many Seventh-day Adventists in the nineteenth
century. For instance, on Christmas Day, 1878, the Whites, then living in
Denison, Texas, invited a destitute Adventist family to join them for Christmas
breakfast. The meal included "a quarter of venison cooked, and stuffing. It was
as tender as chicken. We all enjoyed it very much. There is plenty of venison
in the market." Mrs. White then wrote, "I have not seen in years so much
poverty as I have seen since I have come to Texas."35
Ellen White served as a "missionary" to Australia from
1891 to 1900. In 1895 she wrote to Elder A. O. Tait concerning local
conditions. The letter reveals her broad humanitarian spirit:
I have been passing
through an experience in this country that is similar to the experience I had
in new fields in America [in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century]. I
have seen families whose circumstances would not permit them to furnish their
table with healthful food. Unbelieving neighbors have sent them in portions of
meat from animals recently killed. They have made soup of the meat, and
supplied their large families of children with meals of bread and soup. It was
not my duty, nor did I think it was the duty of anyone else, to lecture them
upon the evils of meat eating. I feel sincere pity for families who have newly
come to the faith, and who are so pressed with poverty that they know not from
whence their next meal is coming.36
2. Transition
with a new cook
Another exigency in Ellen White's household,
which might require a temporary departure from her normally vegetarian dietary,
was the hiring of a new cook who did not know how to prepare vegetarian meals.
Until the new cook could be trained to prepare such dishes, diners at Ellen
White's table had to eat what the new cook knew how to prepare, and this
probably included meat.
From the earliest days of her public ministry, which
Page 14
included a great deal of writing, Mrs. White found it
impossible to perform the tasks she normally would have undertaken as
homemaker, and she had to place the responsibilities of the domestic work in
her home largely upon housekeepers and cooks. From her midtwenties (1852-55) at
Rochester, New York, (when "there were twenty-two who every day
gathered round our family board"37), until her closing "Elmshaven years,"
several dozen persons might be expected to dine at Ellen White's table at any
given meal.
In 1870, she wrote rather whimsically,
I prize my seamstress, I value my
copyist; but my cook, who knows well how to prepare the food to sustain life
and nourish brain, bone, and muscle, fills the most important place among the
helpers in my family.38
In this connection, a letter by W. C.
White, written in 1935, is illuminating. Said he:
Sister White was not a cook, nor was she
a food expert in the technical ways which come from study and experimentation.
Often she had serious arguments with her cook. She was not always able to keep
the cook which she had carefully indoctrinated into the vegetarian ideas.
Those she employed were always intelligent young people.
As they would marry and leave her, she was obliged to get new cooks who were
untrained in vegetarian cookery. In those days we had no schools as we have
now, where our young ladies could learn the system of vegetarian cookery.
Therefore, mother was obliged with all her other cares and duties to spend
considerable effort in persuading her cooks that they could do without meat, or
soda, and baking powder and other things condemned in her testimonies. Often
times our table showed some compromises between the standard which Sister White
was aiming at and the knowledge and experience and standard of the
new cook.39
In 1892, Mrs. White wrote to General
Conference President O. A. Olsen concerning her need for a new cook and
Page 15
expressing the earnest hope that she might soon obtain
the services of "experienced help which I so greatly needed."
Amplifying on this problem, she wrote:
I am suffering more now for want of some
one who is experienced in the cooking lines, to prepare things I can eat. The
cooking here in this country is in every way deficient. Take out the meat,
which we seldom use,--and I dare not use it here at all,--and sit at their
tables, and if you can sustain your strength, you have an excellent
constitution. Food is prepared in such a way that it is not appetizing, but is
having the tendency to dry up the desire for food. I would pay a higher price
for a cook than for any other part of my work. . . . I am really perplexed over
this matter. Were I to act over the preparation in coming to this place, I
would say, Give me an experienced cook, who has some inventive powers, to
prepare simple dishes healthfully, and that will not disgust the appetite. I am
in earnest in this matter.40
3. Therapeutic Use in Medical Emergencies
A third category of situation in which
Ellen White might depart from a vegetarian pattern of eating was in cases of
medical emergency, in which meat might temporarily serve therapeutic purposes.
In 1874, in a letter to her son, W. C. White, Mrs. White made mention of an
interesting (and singular) exception to the vegetarian regimen then in vogue in
the White household:
Your father and
I have dropped milk, cream, butter, sugar and meat entirely since we came to
California. . . . Your father bought meat once for May [Walling, a grandniece
of Ellen's] while she was sick, but not one penny have we expended on meat
since.41
Ellen White was not a fanatic on the
meat-eating question. In a Youth's Instructor article published in 1894,
she declared:
A meat diet is not the most wholesome of
diets, and yet I would [not] take the position that meat should be discarded by
Page 16
every one. Those
who have feeble digestive organs can often use meat when they cannot eat
vegetables, fruit, or porridge.42
Due to a typographical error the second not in the first
sentence of the foregoing excerpt was omitted. This omission was rectified,
when Elder O. A. Tait wrote to ask Mrs. White to clarify what she meant. She
then went on to amplify her position on the meat question, saying:
I have never
felt that it was my duty to say that no one should taste of meat under any
circumstances. To say this when the people have been educated to live on flesh
to so great an extent [in Australia, in 1894] would be carrying matters to
extremes. I have never felt that it was my duty to make sweeping assertions.
What I have said I have said under a sense of duty, but I have been guarded in
my statements, because I did not want to give occasion for any one to be a
conscience for another.43
In dealing with certain illnesses, and in
particular terminal cases, Mrs. White took a sensible position. She said:
In certain cases of illness or exhaustion it may be thought best to use some
meat, but great care should be taken to secure the flesh of healthy animals. It
has become a very serious question whether it is safe to use flesh food at all
in this age of the world. It would be better never to eat meat than to use the
flesh of animals that are not healthy.44
To physicians at Adventist sanitariums in
1896 Ellen White cautioned,
You are to make no prescriptions that
flesh meats shall never be used, but you are to educate the mind, and let the
light shine in. Let the individual conscience be awakened in regard to
self-preservation and self-purity from every perverted appetite. . . .
The change should not be urged to be made abruptly,
especially for those who are taxed with continuous
labor. Let the conscience be educated, the will energized, and the change
can be made much more readily and willingly.45
Page 17
Mrs. White then pointed out that
"consumptives who are going steadily down to the grave" and "persons with
tumors running their life away" should not be burdened about the meat question;
and physicians should "be careful to make no stringent resolution in regard to
this matter."46
Responding to an inquiry from a
physician about whether chicken broth might be appropriate for one suffering
from acute nausea and unable to keep anything on the stomach, Mrs. White wrote:
"There are persons dying of consumption [tuberculosis] who, if they ask for
chicken broth, should have it. But I would be very careful."47
4. In addition to the three foregoing categories of
exceptions to a vegetarian diet, there is a fourth to be considered. Were there
instances when the family grew a bit careless, or when Ellen White was
struggling against a craving for meat (she admitted to loving the taste of
meat), when she actually slipped, and lost--if only temporarily--the battle?
The White Estate is not aware of any definitive,
documented evidence of such a short-coming. Should such evidence be
forthcoming, it would simply show the humanness of prophets. So far as this
researcher is aware, the nearest thing to such a slip is an oblique reference
to "conscience" in a letter Ellen White wrote February 19, 1884, to "Harriet
[Smith]," wife of Review editor, Uriah Smith. Said she:
I am happy to report I
am in excellent health. I have proscribed [i.e., banned] all meat, all butter.
None appears on my table. My head is clearer, my strength firmer, and my
conscience more free, for I know I am following the light which God has given
us."48
Does this mean that Ellen White had been
falling into temptation to satisfy a craving for flesh foods, but had now
gained the victory, and that as a result her conscience
Page 18
was now more free from guilt feelings? Perhaps, but it
seems impossible from the letter itself to arrive at a conclusive
determination.
The Scriptures were written, not only by those properly
categorized as "holy men of God [who] spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost" (2 Peter 1:21), but also by men who occasionally lapsed into sin.
While Ellen White was attending the camp meeting at
Brighton, near Melbourne, in January 1894, her mind was exercised on the
subject of meat-eating, and the overwhelming conviction came to her that from
now on meat should find no place in her dietary under any circumstance. So,
with characteristic forthrightness, she "absolutely banished meat from my
table. It is an understanding that [from now on] whether I am at home or
abroad, nothing of this kind is to be used in my family, or come upon my
table." Furthermore, Mrs. White went to the unusual expedient
of drawing up and signing a "pledge to my heavenly Father," in which she
"discarded meat as an article of diet." Said she: "I will not eat flesh myself,
or set it before any of my household. I gave orders that the fowls should be
sold, and that the money which they brought in should be expended in buying
fruit for the table."49
Subsequent evidence will show that she
kept this pledge. Thus in 1908, just seven years before her death at
eighty-seven, Mrs. White declared, "It is many years since I have had meat on
my table at home."50
While Mrs. White gave up meat-eating in 1894, she did
not at the same time give up the eating of fish, although the evidence seems
fairly clear that she discontinued even the use of this article of diet before
the end of the 1890s, as
Page 19
we shall show. But before we examine this seeming
"inconsistency," let us briefly inquire into Ellen White's position relative to
what today the church considers to be "unclean" shellfish.
In 1882 Ellen White wrote a letter to her
daughter-in-law, Mary Kelsey White (Willie's first wife), who was living with
her husband in Oakland, California. In this letter she included a "shopping
list" of things to bring on their next visit to her home. Concerning certain
items on this list, she said:
"If you can get a good box
of herrings--fresh ones--please do so. The last ones that Willie got are
bitter and old. . . . If you can get a few cans of good oysters, get
them."51
If such a purchase order seems strange to
us today, it must be remembered that the question of whether or not shellfish
was permissible under the Levitical code was still a moot question among
Adventists in the 1880s. Evidence that this was true is seen in an interesting
exchange in the columns of the Review the very next year (1883).
W. H. Littlejohn, pastor of the Battle
Creek Tabernacle, pamphleteer, and soon to be elected president of Battle Creek
College,52 was conducting a
question-and-answer column in the general church paper. In the August 14, 1883
issue he dealt with the question: "Are oysters included among the unclean
animals of Leviticus 11, and do you think it is wrong to eat them?"
Littlejohn's response clearly
illustrates the slow, tentative process by which Adventists worked their way
through the question of permissible versus impermissible kinds of flesh food as
they proceeded to their present rather decided position.53 Littlejohn replied: "It is difficult to
decide with certainty whether oysters would properly come under the prohibition
of Leviticus 11:9-12." He then went on to opine, "It would, however, seem from
the language, as if they might [be unclean]."54
Page 20
As regards the Levitical distinction between "clean" and
"unclean," there is evidence that Ellen White drew a distinction between
"clean" animal flesh food, which she calls "meat," and "clean" fish. This is a
common distinction made in many parts of the world, even today. So, when Ellen
White took the no-meat pledge, she did not mean she had given up the eating of
fish. The distinction she made respecting meat and fish is made abundantly
clear in her correspondence.
In 1876, for instance, Mrs. White
wrote her husband who was traveling, "We have not had a particle of meat in the
house since you left and long before you left. We have had salmon a few times.
It has been rather high."55 (She
is here referring to the price, of course.)
When Ellen White signed the no-meat pledge at the
Brighton camp meeting, she obviously did not include "clean" fish, for the next
year, in a letter to A. O. Tait, she remarked that "we seldom have any fish
upon our table," and she went on to give in detail her reason for decreasing
consumption of this article of food:
In many localities even
fish is unwholesome, and ought not be used. This is especially so where fish
come in contact with sewerage of large cities. . . . These fish that partake of
the filthy sewerage of the drains may pass into waters far distant from the
sewerage, and be caught in localities where the water is pure and fresh; but
because of the unwholesome drainage in which they have been feeding, they are
not safe to eat.56
In spite of this possible danger, there
were circumstances in Australia, in the mid-1890s when Mrs. White recognized
that it was proper, even necessary, to include fish in the daily menu. Thus in
a letter to her son, W. C. White, in 1895, she wrote concerning the problems in
feeding the workmen then building Avondale College. Said she:
We cannot feed them all, but will you
please get us dried
Page 21
codfish and dried fish
of any description,--nothing canned? This will give a good relish to the
food.57
In 1896, Mrs. White wrote to a
non-Adventist niece, Mrs. Mary Watson (nee Clough), who at one time served her
as a literary assistant, and said, referring to her Brighton "pledge":
Two years ago I came to
the conclusion that there was danger in using the flesh of dead animals, and
since then I have not used meat at all. It is never placed on my table. I use
fish when I can get it. We get beautiful fish from the salt water lake near
here. I use neither tea nor coffee. As I labor against these things, I cannot
but practice that which I know to be best for my health, and my family are all
in perfect harmony with me. You see, my dear niece, that I am telling you
matters just as they are.58
But by 1898 Ellen White had concluded
that the flesh of fish as well as the flesh of animals was no longer safe to
eat and hence should not be served at the new Adventist sanitarium in Sydney.
Taking issue with three sanitarium physicians who were prescribing a meat diet
for their patients, Mrs. White surveyed the history of the question in a letter
to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg:
Years ago the light was given me that the
position [at that time] should not be taken positively to discard all meat. . .
. [But] I present the word of the Lord God of Israel . . . [that] meat eating
[now] should not come into prescriptions for any invalids from any physician
[in our institutions] . . . [because] disease in cattle is making meat eating a
dangerous matter. The Lord's curse is upon the earth, upon man, upon beast,
upon the fish in the sea, and as transgression becomes almost universal
the curse will be permitted to become as broad and as deep as the
transgression. Disease is contracted by the use of meat. . . .
The Lord would bring His people into a position where
they will not touch or taste the flesh of dead animals. Then let not these
things be prescribed by any physician who has a knowledge of the truth for this
time. There is no safety in eating of
Page 22
the flesh of dead animals, and in a short
time the milk of the cows will also be excluded from the diet of God's
commandment-keeping people. In a short time it will not be safe to use
anything that comes from the animal creation. . . .
We cannot now do as we have ventured
to do in the past in regard to meat-eating. . . . The disease upon animals is
becoming more and more common, and our only safety is in leaving meat entirely
alone.59 Emphasis supplied.
Here Ellen White indicates that fish as
well as meat should not be prescribed in Adventist health institutions. And by
1905 it appears she was as afraid of fish as earlier she had been of meat; for
in writing the chapter on "Flesh as Food" for Ministry of Healing, she
stated:
In many places fish
become so contaminated by the filth on which they feed as to be a cause of
disease. This is especially the case where the fish come in contact with the
sewage of large cities. . . . Thus when used as food they bring disease and
death on those who do not suspect the danger.60
Was Ellen White a "hypocrite" for urging Seventh-day
Adventists to follow vegetarianism, beginning in 1863, while on the other hand
she "secretly" ate flesh foods for the next three decades and more? Let us
begin by letting Ellen White define the terms: vegetarian, and
principle.
As we have already noted, from W. C. White's letter to
George B. Starr in 1933, "For years the White family had
been vegetarians, but not "teetotalers."60a An
interesting, and even more illuminating distinction is revealed in a letter
Mrs. White wrote in 1894 to Mrs. M. M. J. O'Kavanagh, a non-Adventist active in
the cause of temperance in Australia, who had inquired about the position of
Adventists as "total abstainers":
Page 23
I am happy to assure
you that as a denomination we are in the fullest sense total abstainers from
the use of spiritous liquors, wine, beer, [fermented] cider, and also tobacco
and all other narcotics. . . . All are vegetarians, many abstaining wholly from
the use of flesh food, while others use it in only the most moderate
degree.61
This statement makes it clear that for
Ellen White the term vegetarian applied to those who
habitually abstained from eating flesh food, yet were not necessarily total
abstainers. As for the term principle, Ellen White frequently used it in
her writings in connection with health reform. In 1904, at the age of
seventy-six, she reported that she was experiencing better health than "I had
in my younger days," and she attributed this improvement in health to "the
principles of health reform."62
Here now are some further examples of
her use of the term principle. In 1897, she wrote, "I present these
matters [health reform] before the people, dwelling upon general
principles."63 In 1870, speaking
of her response to the health reform vision of 1863, she said,
I left off these things from principle.
I took my stand on health reform from principle. . . . I moved out from
principle, not from impulse.
[And] I have advanced nothing but what
I stand to today.64
In 1908 she added:
It is reported by some
that I have not lived up to the principles of health reform, as I have
advocated them with my pen. But I can say that so far as my knowledge goes, I
have not departed from those principles.65
And the next year (1909), with criticism still
persisting, she again defended herself:
It is reported by some that I have not
followed the principles of health reform as I have advocated them with my pen;
Page 24
but I can say that I
have been a faithful health reformer. Those who have been members of my family
know that this is true.66
The accusation by the critics--of her time as well as
ours--is apparently based on the facile assumption that Mrs. White considered
vegetarianism a "principle." That she did not will now be made clear.
In his book A Prophet Among
You, T. Housel Jemison offers three principles of hermeneutics for the
interpretation of inspired writings. In the third one, he says, in effect:
Every prophet, speaking in his or her professional capacity as a prophet, in
the giving of counsel, is doing one of two things; either he or she is (1)
enunciating a principle, or (2) applying a principle in a policy statement.
Therefore he concludes, "One should try to discover the principle involved in
any specific counsel."67
A principle is generally defined as "a
basic truth or a general law or doctrine that is used as a basis of reasoning
or a guide to action or behavior."68 Principles, therefore, are
unchanging, unvarying rules of human conduct. Principles never change. A
policy, on the other hand, is the application of a principle to some immediate,
contextual situation. Policies may (and do) change, as the circumstances which
call them forth may change.
That vegetarianism was not a principle with Ellen White
is clear from her statement that:
I have never felt that
it was my duty to say that no one should taste meat under any circumstance. To
say this . . . would be carrying matters to extremes. I have never felt that it
was my duty to make sweeping assertions.69
This was doubtless one of the main
reasons Mrs. White refused to go along with the idea of making vegetarianism a
test of church "fellowship" promoted by some of her brethren.70 On the contrary, while recognizing that
Page 25
"swine's flesh was prohibited by Jesus
Christ enshrouded in the billowy cloud" during the Exodus, Ellen White stated
emphatically in 1889 that even the eating of pork "is not a test
question."71
Writing to Adventist colporteurs in the same manuscript,
she said: "I advise every Sabbathkeeping canvasser to avoid meat eating, not
because it is regarded as a sin to eat meat, but because it is not healthful."
It is obvious that vegetarianism was not a principle
with Christ or with the patriarchs or prophets of Scripture, for they all ate
flesh-meats. The Passover required the eating of lamb--and this by divine
direction. Christ and His disciples ate fish from Galilee more than once--and
in so doing none of them violated principle, and none of them thereby committed
sin.
Vegetarianism for Ellen White was a
policy, based upon at least two principles: (1) "Preserve the
best health,"72 and (2) "eat that food
which is most nourishing,"73 doing the very
best possible, under every immediate circumstance, to promote life, health, and
strength.
Now Ellen White did apply those
principles in an inspired policy statement governing "countries where there are
fruits, grains, and nuts in abundance." In such places, she said quite clearly,
"Flesh food is not the right food for God's people."74
One of the most sensible things Ellen White ever wrote
on the subject of health reform was the following:
Those who understand the laws of health
and who are governed by principle, will shun the extremes, both of indulgence
and of restrictions. Their diet is chosen, not for the mere gratification of
appetite, but for the upbuilding of the body. They seek to preserve every power
in the best condition for the highest service to God and man. . . .
There is real common sense in dietetic reform. The
subject
Page 26
should be studied broadly and deeply, and
no one should criticize others because their practice is not,
in all things, in harmony with his own. It is impossible [in matters of diet]
to make an unvarying rule to regulate everyone's habits, and no one should
think himself a criterion for all.75
Not only did Ellen
White not wish to be a criterion for church members, but neither did she
wish to be a criterion for the members of her immediate family ("I do not hold
myself up as a criterion for them").76
Just prior to the opening of the 1901 General Conference
Session, Ellen White met with a handful of denominational leaders in the
library of Battle Creek College, where she spoke concerning those who made her
their criterion in their dietary practice. Here are her remarks as recorded by
Clarence C. Crisler, her secretary:
How it has hurt me to have the
[road]blocks thrown in the way in regard to myself.
They will tell [you],. . . "Sister White ate cheese, and
therefore we are all at liberty to eat cheese."
Well, who told them I ate cheese?. . . I never have
cheese on my table.
There was but . . . one or two times I have tasted
cheese [since I gave it up]. That is a different thing from making it a diet,
[an] entirely different thing. . . .
But there was a special occasion in Minneapolis where .
. . I could get nothing, and there were some little bits of cheese cut up on
the table, and the brethren were there, and one of them had told me, "If you
eat a little of that cheese, it will change the condition [of your appetite?],"
and I did. I took a bit of that cheese. I do not think that I touched it again
the second time. . . .
Sister White has not had meat in her house or cooked it
in any line, or any dead flesh, for years and years.
And here is [what] the health reform [fanatic says:]
"Now I have told you Sister White did not eat meat. Now I want you not to eat
meat, because Sister White does not eat it."
Well, I would . . . not care a farthing, for anything
like that. If you have not got any better conviction--you won't eat meat
because Sister White does not eat any--if I am the authority, I would not give
a farthing for your health reform.
Page 27
What I want [is] that
every one of you should stand in your individual dignity before God, in your
individual consecration to God, that the soul-temple shall be dedicated to God.
"Whosoever defileth the temple of God, him will God destroy." Now I want you to
think of these things, and do not make any human being your criterion.77
Ellen White needs to be considered against the backdrop
of her times, not ours! Conditions in her times were quite different from those
that obtain today.
Many household conveniences which we take for granted,
such as refrigerators and food freezers for preserving fruits, vegetables, and
other perishable foods, were virtually unknown in her time. In her day fruits
and vegetables were available only in season. For much of the year fresh
produce simply was not available, so that one either ate meat, or he didn't eat
at all. Meat eating was, therefore, more common (and generally more necessary)
in Ellen White's time than in ours--at least in today's more developed
countries.
Something else worth remembering is
that Ellen White never took away flesh food as an article of diet from anyone
until there first was an adequate nutritional substitute available to take its
place.78 The dry-cereal breakfast foods were not developed and marketed until the
mid-1890s. Peanut butter, another excellent source of protein, also was not
invented until the mid-1890s.79 So
there was often more reason--because of greater need--for people in her day to
eat meat than there is for most of us in our day.
Ellen White had to face accusations against her
integrity in her own lifetime. Similar charges against her today are neither
new nor startling, when one examines the facts. Shortly after the turn of the
century she was accused of hypocrisy (if not duplicity) in publicly advocating
Page 28
vegetarianism to her fellow church members while she
continued (allegedly) secretly to follow a flesh diet. Such charges are, as we
have demonstrated, unjustified and without foundation.
To gain a proper understanding of the
charges leveled against Ellen White's integrity, one must view them from the
broader perspective of Satan's latter day objectives and methodology as
revealed to Ellen White in 1890. She declared that Satan's "very last
deception" would be to destroy her credibility, and create a "satanic" hatred
against her writings.80
The case against Ellen White's integrity, as far as
research has revealed to date, is still as unfounded and unproven as it was
during the lifetime of the prophet.
Answers page]