In America, as in Britain, the Victorian era enjoyed a long life, stretching from the 1830s to the 1910s. It marked the transition from a pre-modern to a modern way of life. Ellen Harmon White's life (1827-1915) spanned those years and then some, but the last three months of a single year, 1844, served as the pivot for everything else. When the Lord failed to return on October 22, as she and other followers of William Miller had predicted, White did not lose heart.
Fired by a vision she experienced, White played the principal role in transforming a remnant minority of Millerites into the sturdy sect that soon came to be known as the Seventh-day Adventists. She and a small group of fellow believers emphasized a Saturday Sabbath and an imminent Advent. Today that flourishing denomination posts eighteen million adherents globally and one of the largest education, hospital, publishing, and missionary outreach programs in the world.
Over the course of her life White generated 70,000 manuscript pages and letters, and produced 40 books that have enjoyed extremely wide circulation. She ranks as one of the most gifted and influential religious leaders in American history and this volume tells her story in a new and remarkably informative way. Some of the contributors identify with the Adventist tradition, some with other Christian denominations, and some with no religious tradition at all. Their essays call for White to be seen as a significant figure in American religious history and for her to be understood within the context of her times.
Industry Reviews
"This edited volume provides definitive treatments and a full portrait of Ellen Harmon White... This book should be read by all scholars of religions in America, new religious movements, and women and gender in religions in America."--Journal of American History
"An engrossing study of an era, a church, and an indomitable woman."--Books & Culture
"[D]eeply researched, fluidly written, and imaginatively argued."--Christian Century
"[Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet]'s existence and form--published by a leading academic press, written largely by well-trained scholars with Adventist connections, drawing the attention and even participation of American historians of various orientations and considerable renown--is an important as anything the book contains. And it contains a lot. As an accessible treatment of White's history on an array of topics, this volume is simply
incomparable." --David Holland, Spectrum
"This work...will stimulate further conversations about Ellen White's legacy and role within Adventism and I am grateful that scholars outside the Adventist tradition are now willing to look at Ellen White and her contributions to American religious history." --Denis Fortin, Spectrum
"This particular volume demonstrates that [Ellen Harmon White] deserves more recognition and formal study by scholars... The tapestry of essays-with hues that provide historical, social, economic, and political dimensions-locates and describes how Ellen G. White fits into this broad landscape." --Biblical Research Institute
"Ellen G. Harmon White finally makes it to Oxford University...This book can help readers put the writings of Ellen White in their proper balance and context...[Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet] will also put Ellen White "on the map" of non-Adventist scholarship and culture. In the long run, the book may do more to bring her to the attention of the wider world." --Ministry
"This...volume demonstrates that [White] deserves more recognition and formal study by scholars."--Adventist Review
"An ingenious interconnected series of biographical studies, this collection effectively brings Ellen Harmon White, the seer of the Seventh-day Adventist tradition, into the thick of American religious and cultural history. As a collaborative venture, it is superbly orchestrated: it demonstrates White's profound relevance to any number of historiographies-on gender and race, on medicine and education, on visionary experience and practical theology, on missions
and globalization." --Leigh Eric Schmidt, Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor, Washington University in St. Louis
"...[An] impressive volume... Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet is an important contribution to understanding a prosperous major indigenous faith and its sometimes controversial founder... Scholars of American religion, as well as of the social and cultural history of the nation, inquiring members of the SDA Church, and many lay readers will profit from reading this volume. This reviewer significantly expanded his religious education." --Nova
religio
"It is a work that demands serious attention, and the authors and
editors are to be commended for their diligence and effort."-- Kevin Burton, Andrews University Seminary Studies
"This collection of essays offers fresh thinking about Ellen Harmon White and points toward the need for a scholarly biography of her life and work. It helps historians understand Ellen Harmon White in the context of her time and appreciate her significance in American religious history." --Church History
