I began undergraduate education in the mid 90’s at Pacific Union College. One of the earliest troubling experiences I witnessed was a week of prayer during my first year.

I had never heard of the speaker before. But what was very clear in his presentations was a relentless referencing to his Roman Catholic monastic education with story after story about nuns and priests. As a young Adventist my first assumption was that by the end of the week we would hear his conversion experience. Concerning his theology, I remember clearly thinking over and over, “What is this?” It was unfamiliar, it was strange, and I was put off by his repeated yelling at the audience, “Abba Father!”

The end of the week came, and I distinctly remember the sinking feeling in my gut. There was no conversion story. I had just witnessed a week of prayer conducted by someone clearly deep in Roman Catholic clerical training at an Adventist institution. Why on earth was I spending private school money for this?! The man’s name was Brennan Manning.

Thereafter, through a friend closely related to the Maxwell family, I heard that the President of PUC, Malcolm Maxwell, was claiming that no Roman Catholic priest had spoken at PUC. To me, as a student, my immediate thought was this was either ignorance or deceit.

Vile Reading Assignments

Students in the honors program had their own specialized graduation track. The faculty member in charge of the program content at the time was Eric Anderson.

For a period of time my room at the dorm was adjacent to the room of two students in the honors program. A lot of our evening conversations revolved around what things they were reading as requirements for their program. One of the students was a theology major. The conversations we had served as cliff notes for that content. I will simply say that what I heard was vile, absolutely vile. They spoke of perverse sexual stories they were required to read including rape experiences to you name it. It was terrible and my interpretation of those conversations was of them trying to grapple with it, trying to justify having to read such, frankly satanic, media. Such material being in the curriculum raised large concerns to me about the long term consequences to these students who had to read it.

Naturalism

One of the guest speakers I enjoyed while at PUC was a lawyer, I believe it was Phillip Johnson, that positively addressed the topic of creation. I appreciated the talk enough to go to the digital media department, acquire a copy of the talk, and listened to it several times. At that time, I was taking a nuclear chemistry class from professor Van Hise. As the top student in the class, Van Hise spoke to me on the topic of that speaker, seeking my thoughts. I praised Mr. Johnson, which clearly was not what Van Hise was expecting. I knew the talk so well, so thoroughly, that the attempts of Van Hise to negatively dissect the presentation went nowhere as I could practically quote exactly what the speaker had said to refute my professor. What did this lead to? We, as students in nuclear chemistry, now had to write an essay that was not originally part of the class syllabus, as I recall. The professor laid out the parameters arguing that the spectral analysis of the minerals of the sun correlate with the mineral composition of the earth. We were to write an essay regurgitating his exposition supporting a naturalistic origin of the sun and earth based on a common mineral history. As a student I felt coerced, sick and guilty for having to write that paper to complete the course.

WO

At that time in my life, the matter of the ordination of women to pastoral ministry really was not on my radar. That is, until one of the theology students speaking up front addressed the entire student assembly. He spoke publicly in the most condescending and derogatory manner toward those in the church that were against the ordination of women to pastoral ministry. I was shocked, numb. And indeed he thoroughly convinced me against his position by the way he spoke of his fellow man. But what was more disturbing was that this speaking up front went unopposed by the faculty. Further, this man went on to become a chaplain at PUC, Jonathan Henderson. This same individual is also infamously known for the Adam & Steve talk at PUC.

About 20 years later, Jonathan Henderson was invited by the youth pastor at my church to speak to the young people. After he spoke, I walked up and greeted him. He assumed that since I was a youth leader, I was part of the inner circle of our youth pastor. Two times he stated to me upon learning of my position, “I’m so glad you’re doing what you’re doing to change the church.” I was stunned, without words. And he, upon realizing he had spoken to someone not part of that inner circle, ended the conversation.

Strange Morality

Going back to my days at PUC, in the Psychology department there was an infamous teacher by the name of Aubyn Fulton. I never had a class from him, but I heard a lot from students who did. And the most common theme was his promotion of a normative acceptance of homosexuality. He was using his faculty position in his classes to push this agenda.

One of the upper division courses I took was about the books of world religions. The teacher of the class was Andrew Wheat. In that course we read in whole and part sections from many religious books. The concern about this class was that it was clear this was not just ‘informational.’ Not for Mr. Wheat. While he is a very talented English teacher, the matter of Eastern religions and philosophies was personal to him. It was very clear in that course that he was elevating those disciplines before the students and concurrently being critical of aspects of the Bible, in this case from the book of Job.

Further, his office was the most “ascetic” I have seen of a teacher, and one time in the gym, I spotted him up on the stage in a lotus position in meditation. More recently, I found his bio at the American University in Dubai that stated: "He enjoys cycling, gardening, surfing, and meditation.” Knowing what I know now about the concerns of Spiritual Formation, this represented my first exposure to such concerning Eastern theology promotion.

Environmentalism & Evolution

Walla Walla University has a biology station at Rosario Beach, Anacortes WA. For their courses, at this location, they often have guest teachers from other institutions. I took my General Biology sequence there, and the guest teacher was Gene Johnson from La Sierra University. In this course, each morning he gave a “devotional” of sorts. Except this wasn’t an affirmative Biblical devotion. No, every morning this segment was devoted to the promotion of either environmentalism or evolution. The matter of evolution wasn’t just a section that we covered to be informed. Rather, it was slowly, repeatedly brought up day after day after day. The issue of evolution at Rosario Beach got the attention of people with influential connections at Walla Walla University. Consequently, Professor Joe Galusha had to intervene in the course, interview the students about what was being taught and eventually put an end to the morning “devotions.”

After graduating from PUC I went on to train in medicine at Loma Linda University. The formal religious instruction there was fairly minimal. However, one of the more religious courses I had was led by Dean Henry Lamberton.

What was very weird to me at the time was one of his recommendations in the course. For those under the stress of medical education he was referring us to go to a local Roman Catholic monastery to learn meditation. I did not take up the offer, but was very concerned to see this kind of reference being promoted at an Adventist institution.

LGBTQ+ at Loma Linda

More recently, about 6 years ago, my sister-in-law took a religion class at Loma Linda University from David Larson in which he very emotionally defended homosexuality.

My sister-in-law was shocked to hear that from the professor and innocently challenged him in the class. This occurred on multiple occasions throughout the quarter. On one occasion he aggressively manifested behavior to silence her which she described as completely foreign to his usual mild nature and calm demeanor.

He claimed that he had taught over 10,000 students and she was the first and only one who had ever challenged his theology for Biblical support on this. He invited an open homosexual as a guest to the class on one occasion, and in another he showed the documentary Seventh Gay Adventist and required the class to write an essay in response. My sister-in-law explained several Bible verses on how homosexuality is a sin that people struggle with, just like envy, hatred, etc. and that through a connection with Christ one could overcome and daily gain victories over such tendencies.

She quoted Scripture and Ellen White’s references on the topic. When she received her essay paper back she described it as worn out, stapled and re-stapled several times as if it had been analyzed by multiple people. Dr. Larson took her aside on multiple occasions to try to persuade her to accept homosexuality as okay so that she could advocate for it.

God bless,

Daniel Buxton, MD