Student Name: Celeste Jackson
Project Title: Artifact: Ellen G White, “The Great Controversy”, and the Controversy of Plagiarism
Celeste Jackson 4/13/22
REL 230 Research Project #1 - Religious Artifact
Ellen G. White, “The Great Controversy”, and the Controversy of Plagiarism
Ellen G. White is a dominant and influential part of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. She is one of its founders and their prophet. Many of her writings helped shape and influence the beliefs and culture of the church. Throughout her life “it is estimated that she had over 2000 visions and wrote 100,000 pages of articles, books, and pamphlets...” (Pathways of the Pioneers). White claims the contents of her book The Great Controversy (TGC) were given to her through visions received from God detailing the history of the Christian church and ending with the last confrontation between God and Satan at the end of time on earth. Today one of the distinctive beliefs of the church is the acceptance of Ellen G. White as a prophet.
I chose to write my research paper on TGC because I was raised in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (SDA) and experienced the book's influence first hand. One of the core teachings of the church is a belief in the “second advent” or second coming of Jesus. Although this book was written over 100 years ago it is still distributed today by Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) to spread their message of the end time prophecy and the second advent of Christ which is explained in detail in this book. Parallel to the 100+ year history of the book are 100+ year old accusations of plagiarism and great dependence on other authors' work. In this paper I will present occasions where White’s use of other texts was brought to light, include acknowledgements by church leaders and show how the book is still held in high regard and distributed today.
From about 1795 to 1835 America experienced a time of spiritual revival called the Second Great Awakening. During this period many new religious movements would spring up including the Millerite movement which was a precursor to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The leader of the Millerites, William Miller was a farmer from New York who studied the Bible and believed he had discovered a new prophecy in the book of Revelation. Miller and others began to preach that Christ would return in 1843. When Christ did not return that year they adjusted the date to October 2, 1844. That day became known as the Great Disappointment. One group of Millerite followers continued to study the book of Revelation and eventually formed their own doctrine and understandings regarding the return of Jesus. Ellen Gould was a member of this group and in 1863 they founded the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
Ellen Gould was born on November 26, 1827 in Gorham, Main. At the age of 9 Ellen was struck in the face by a rock. The injuries were so severe that she was in a coma for three weeks and her face was greatly disfigured. Because of the injuries she was eventually no longer able to attend school. Ellen was 16 years old when she experienced the disappointment of William Miller’s failed predictions. In December of 1844, a few months after the disappointment, Ellen had her first vision. In August 1846 she married James White who believed her visions were from God. She eventually started writing down what she saw and with the help of her husband began to publish and distribute her writings. In the spring of 1858 while attending a conference in Ohio she had one of the first visions that would make up TGC. Regarding the divine inspiration of the book she wrote in 1911, “While writing the manuscript of The Great Controversy, I was often conscious of the presence of the angels of God. And many times the scenes about which I was writing were presented to me anew in visions of the night...” (White, Colporteur Ministry 74).
The first edition of TGC was published in 1858 and titled Spiritual Gifts: The Great Controversy between Christ and His Angels and Satan and His Angels. It contained 41 chapters and was 224 pages. The second edition was published in 1884 under the name Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 4 was 549 pages. These and other writings of hers were eventually collected into a series of books called The Conflict of Ages. The fourth edition of TGC published in 1888 would become the 5th book in the series. It included 26 full page illustrations and a 13 page appendix. This was the first edition that attempted to credit other authors with an explanation included in the introduction. “In some cases where a historian has so grouped together events...has summarized details in a convenient manner, his words have been quoted; but except in a few instances no specific credit has been given,... because his statement affords a ready and forcible presentation of the subject” (White, The Great Controversy 1888 16). Additionally an expanded edition of TGC was published in 1911 which included additional illustrations, notes, and a larger index. The book can be divided into two parts. Part one covers history in chapters 1 through 21 and the remainder of the book focuses on prophecy in chapters 22 through 42. The book chapters cover history from the “Destruction of Jerusalem”, and “John Wycliffe”, to the “French Reformation”, “The Pilgrims” and to” The Great Awakening in America”. White goes on to address topics of “Spiritualism”, “The Time of Trouble”, and finally the “Desolation Of The Earth”, and “The Controversy Ended”.
As early as 1887 there are documented charges of plagiarism concerning the contents of TGC. In his book Seventh-Day Adventism Renounced 1887, D. M. Canright, who was a former SDA pastor and friend of White says in his book, “She often copies, without credit or sign of quotation, whole sentences, paragraphs and even pages, word for word, from other authors. Indeed, her last book, “Great Controversy,”... is merely a compilation from Andrew’s History of the Sabbath, History of the Waldenses by Wylie, Life of Miller by White, Thoughts on Revelation by Smith, and other books” (Canright 44). In 1989 the paper Healdsburg Enterprise gives an account of meetings between Canright and local church leaders addressing Canright’s accusations. Canright presented his proof that Ellen had copied parts of TGC from SDA author J.N. Andrews’ book, History of the Sabbath. At the conclusion of the meetings the pastors agreed that Ellen White had copied from Andrews’ work, “...we are compelled to say that we believe Mrs. White had Eld. Andrews’ work before her when she wrote her visions, and copied largely both in ideas and language from it” (“False Charges Refuted”).
Questions around Ellen and her writings surfaced again in 1970. That year a professor from Andrews University, William S. Peterson, studied the quoted sources from TGC that were used in chapter 12 titled “The French Reformation”. The results of his studies were written in his paper “A Textual and Historical Study of Ellen G. White's Account of the French Revolution". In his paper he notes that during her stay in Europe in 1885 Ellen had access to the works of J. N. Andrews. After her trip Peterson says the 1888 version of TGC “was liberally sprinkled with long quotations from historians, but again, the sources were not identified” (Peterson 2). Peterson’s paper says that not only did Ellen use the words of cited and uncited authors, some verbatim, but she also included their biases and inaccurate historical accounts. In the conclusion of his paper Peterson he writes “ It will simply not suffice to say that God showed her the broad outline of events and she then filled in the gaps with her reading. In the case of the French Revolution, there was no “broad outline” until she had read the historians” (Peterson 9). In 1971 William Peterson's colleague, Donald McAdams, continued Petersons research.
McAdams researched chapter 6, “Huss and Jerome” and 14, “Later English Reformers” along with other plagiarism accusations. He wrote in his report, “...Ellen White was not inerrant. Inevitably, as she incorporated into her own articles and books contemporary ideas and the words of contemporary historians, health reformers and devotional writers, she passed along errors of fact and some of the misconceptions of her generation” (McAdams). Not long after the work of Peterson and McAdams another Adventist pastor looked into the books of Ellen White and her use of other writers' work.
Walter Rea was a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor who also studied and compared TGC and White’s other books to other writers. “On January 28th and 29th Rea met with a committee set up by the church, which included Donald McAdams “to review not only the quantity but the quality of the work done...” (Wilson 8). The Conference president at the time Neal C. Wilson summarized the findings of the committee in the March 20, 1980 edition of the Adventist Review, “The initial report from this very competent committee indicates that in her writing Ellen White used sources more extensively than we have heretofore been aware of or recognized.” He states in his conclusion, “ I believe with all my heart that Ellen White was an inspired messenger of God. Based on my understanding of revelation and inspiration as taught by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I must conclude that she is a reliable teaching authority and that she is a part of God's continuing revelation and corroboration of doctrine and truth” (Wilson 10). After that meeting Rea would give an interview to the Los Angeles Times in November of 1980.
In 1981 the church published the book“The White Truth”, “which was intended to defend the inspirational integrity of Ellen White” (Willey). The church also hired a patent and copyright infringement lawyer that same year, Vincent L. Ramik, who concluded in his legal opinion,“Based upon our review of the facts and legal precedents... Ellen White was not a plagiarist, and her works did not constitute copyright infringement/piracy" (Wood 3). Rea eventually published his findings in his book “The White Lie” in 1982.
Despite the controversies surrounding this book, The Great Controversy continues to be a book widely distributed in the United States. Remnant Publications is a major distributor that sends out bulk mailings by zip code across the country. In August 2021 the current president of the General Conference of Adventist churches Ted Wilson, son of N. C. Wilson, introduced “The Great Controversy Project 2.0” which aims to distribute up to 1 billion copies of TGC between 2023 and 2024 (Adventist Today). On Twitter Wilson wrote “The Great Controversy is a marvelous book. I believe every word in this book. I support it and I promote it—the full and complete book” (Adventist Today).
Although the legal findings show that there was no legal copyright infringement or piracy the moral use of other writers' material and the question of inspiration is still there. For someone reading The Great Controversy one might wonder why any portion of the book is taken from other sources if her writings are supposed to come from visions given to her by God. In this paper I presented occasions where White’s use of other texts was brought to light, acknowledged by church leaders and I've shown that the book is still being distributed today. The validity of TGC has been brought into question as far back as 1887 and has continued to crop up again and again. Each time the Seventh-Day Adventist church leaders acknowledged the claims but continued to trust the divine inspiration of the book.
One of the reasons I decided to study religion in college was so I could find the human side to religion. Researching this book has brought to light for me the truth behind a book I’ve known about for as long as I can remember. Ellen G. White used the material of many authors throughout The Great Controversy. The Great Controversy appears to be a collection of various authors' work which Ellen G. White expounded upon and then sold as a fully inspired book of her own.
Works Cited
Adventist Today. “Ted Wilson Announces GC Plans to Distribute 1 Billion Copies of “The Great Controversy.”” Adventist Today, 13 August 2021, https://atoday.org/ted-wilson-announces-gc-plans-to-distribute-1-billion-copies-of-the-great-controversy/. Accessed 11 April 2022.
Canright, D. M. Seventh-Day Adventism Renounced. Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo Publishing Co. Print, 1888. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/1888canrightseventhdayadventismrenounced/mode/2up. Accessed 9 April 2022.
“False Charges Refuted.” Healdsburg Enterprise [Healdsburg, Sonoma County], 13 ed., no. 42, 13 March 1889, https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=HE18890313.2.10&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1. Accessed 11 April 2022.
McAdams, Donald R. Shifting Views of Inspiration: Ellen White Studies in the 1970s. 1980. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/stream/DonaldR.McadamsShiftingViewsOfInspirationEllenWhiteStudiesInThe/1980_mcadams_shiftingViewsOfInspiration_ellenWhiteStudiesInThe1970s_spectrum_v10_n4_27-41_djvu.txt. Accessed 11 April 2022.
“Pathways of the Pioneers - Ellen G. White.” Ellen G. White® Estate,
https://whiteestate.org/resources/pioneers/ewhite/. Accessed 12 April 2022.
Peterson, William S. A Textual and Historical Study of Ellen G. White's Account of the French Revolution. 1970. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/W.S.PetersonATextualAndHistoricalStudyOfEllenG.WhitesAccountOf/page/n1/mode/2up?view=theater. Accessed 11 April 2022.
White, Ellen G. The Great Controversy. Ellen G. White Estate, 1888. Centro White, http://www.centrowhite.org.br/files/ebooks/egw-english/books/The%20Great%20Controversy%201888.pdf. Accessed 11 4 2022.
White, Ellen G. Spiritual Gifts. vol. 2, Ellen G. White Estate, Inc., 1860. 4 vols. Centro White, http://www.centrowhite.org.br/files/ebooks/egw-english/books/Spiritual%20Gifts,%20vol.%202.pdf. Accessed 11 4 2011.
Willey, T. Joe. “The Great Controversy Over Plagiary: The Last Interview of Walter Rea (Part Two).” Spectrum Magazine, 12 January 2017, https://spectrummagazine.org/article/2017/01/12/great-controversy-over-plagiary-last-interview-walter-rea-part-two. Accessed 11 April 2022.
Wilson, Neal C. “This I Believe About Ellen G White.” Adventist Review, vol. 157, no. 12, 1980, 8, 10. Adventist Archives, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/RH/RH19800320-V157-12.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2022.
Wood, Kenneth H., editor. “Ellen White's Use of Sources.” Adventist Review, vol. 158, no. 38, 1981, p. 3. Adventist Digital Library, https://adventistdigitallibrary.org/adl-355411/adventist-review-september-17-1981. Accessed 11 April 2022.
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