Do Sports belong in SDA Schools?

The subject of sports in Adventist schools has received considerable attention recently. With many of our academies and colleges now engaging in interschool sports, the General Conference has set up a committee to investigate the role of sports in Adventist education. Perhaps the time has come to review the historical foundation of present church policy, and to apply these principles to our modern-day practices.

The Battle Creek incident

During the late 1860s, several years after six state conferences had formed the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in Battle Creek, Michigan, members felt the need to increase the educational posture of the church. In 1868 Goodloe Harper Bell, who had at tended Oberlin College, opened a small school in Battle Creek with 12 students.

In 1872 Ellen White wrote her first major treatise on education, "Proper Education," ¹ in which she stressed a rural location for SDA schools. Agricultural and industrial pursuits were to be combined with a quality education based on Scripture. She reasoned that such training would enable students to learn a second vocation while also maintaining their health. "In order to preserve the balance of the mind, labor and study should be united in the schools."² This perspective came many years after other American educators had turned away from student manual labor programs.³ In response to educational reforms by Locke, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Von Fellenberg in Europe between 1700 and 1830, American educators during the early 1800s became attracted to the concept of providing useful work for students during their secondary and college education. Manual labor education aroused great enthusiasm starting in 1820, peaked in the early 1830s, and declined rapidly thereafter. Proponents argued that the manual labor system would furnish natural exercise for students, pro mote development of character, diminish the expense of education, and reduce class distinctions.

The quick demise of manual labor schools during the 1840s resulted from a variety of complex factors, including economic and management problems; time considerations; the continued rise of the Industrial Revolution, which made manual labor unattractive; and the rise of tax-supported schools that made student work for tuition unnecessary.

Typical of the scores of colleges started along manual labor lines was Oberlin, founded in 1833. ⁴ As the first coed college in the United States and the first to admit "Colored students," it was progressive in women's rights, race issues, health reform, and practical education. Using the motto "Learning and Labor," Oberlin required students to work four hours a day. But "for the better part of two decades all sorts of makeshift and unsuccessful experiments were tried to carry out this much-vaunted feature of the school."⁵

The first gym

As student enrollment climbed, supplying daily manual labor became a burdensome task for the administrators, and the program finally ceased in 1852. By 1860 the first gymnasium was built, which led to the providing of gymnastics classes in the European tradition. By the turn of the century, Oberlin, along with most other U.S. schools, moved toward well-regulated student sports. ⁶ This movement toward school sports coincided with the time during which most of our present-day sports were formally organized. ⁷

So when Ellen White in 1872—several decades after the heyday of manual labor education in the U.S.—submitted her treatise on the subject, she experienced unusual resistance to the idea. ⁸ Ignoring her urging of a rural location, the General Conference paid $16,000 for 12 acres in Battle Creek (then a town of 7,000), directly across from the Health Institute, soon to be directed by John Harvey Kellogg. In distant California Ellen White wept upon receiving word of the acquisition.

Battle Creek College was dedicated in 1875, and under the leadership of Sidney Brownsberger adopted the typical Latin-and-Greek-based curriculum, with Bible classes offered as electives. In response to repeated testimonies from Ellen White, halfhearted attempts were made to offer manual training to students on the city campus. Finally in 1889 Battle Creek students staged a "monster debate" on the worth of any manual training at all, and as a consequence all such programs were abolished.⁹

Between 1890 and 1893, Battle Creek students formed baseball, rugby, and boxing teams that played against the sanitarium, the Review and Herald, and other high schools and colleges. The teams were outfitted with uniforms, awards were given, and much excitement was generated.

Ellen White, who had moved to Australia to help pioneer the work there, received letters from a few students who were attending Battle Creek College from Australia and New Zealand. PoMare, a Maori from New Zealand, complained that he had given up football and other sports because he could not retain the peace of God while playing them. ¹⁰ He asked Ellen White what advantage Battle Creek College offered over the schools he had left in Australia.

On September 5, 1893, the day after receiving the letter from PoMare, Ellen White wrote a pointed letter to President William Warren Prescott at Battle Creek College. "Has not the playing of games, and rewards, and the using of the boxing glove been educating and training after Satan's direction? . . . The time is altogether too full of tokens of the coming conflict to be educating the youth in fun and games." ¹¹

While Ellen White was responding to PoMare's letter, the Battle Creek College students formed "American" and "British" teams, which played an exciting intramural rugby game. A local reporter wrote about it in a local newspaper under the heading "The Great International Football Game." One of the "British" participants sent a copy of the article to his parents in Australia, who shared the information with Ellen White, who once again sent President Prescott a letter.

"I want to say, I have seen Satan triumphing over the entering into his devices in games, plans which he will use to decoy souls to their everlasting ruin." "There are ways that the time of the students can be employed that their young zeal and youthful ardor can be used to glorify God."¹²

The same day she wrote a letter to Edgar Caro, son of an Australian dentist: "There are plenty of necessary, useful things to do in our world that would make the pleasure/amusement exercises almost wholly unnecessary. . . . The same power . . . might invent ways and means of altogether a higher class of exercise, in doing missionary work." ¹³

President Prescott took Ellen White's letter to the faculty and students, then wrote a reply: "We have decided to have no more match games of any kind on the grounds. Our recreation will be planned in such a way as to give the physical benefit desired without arousing up a spirit of contest, and without having it on the basis of athletic sports. We had already seen the evil of these things sufficiently to decide not to have any such games with the high school students, but had planned to permit games with those at the sanitarium and the Review office; but since the receipt of your letters, we have decided to drop the whole thing." ¹⁴

Ellen White also sent a special testimony to all the teachers and students at Battle Creek College. She emphasized that all needed exercise, and that "God has pointed out that this should be useful, practical work; but you have turned away from God's plan, to follow human inventions." "For Christ's sake call a halt at the Battle Creek College, and consider the after-workings upon the heart and the character and principles, of these amusements copied after the fashion of other schools.. .. Diligent study is essential, and diligent hard work. Play is not essential.... I cannot find an instance in the life of Christ where He devoted time to play and amusement."¹⁵

In response to Prescott's letter, Ellen White lamented that the sports program had helped to eclipse the recent spiritual revival on campus. "Among the youth the passion for football games and other kindred selfish gratifications has been misleading in influence. Watchfulness and prayer, and daily consecration to God, have not been maintained.... They act as if the school were a place where they were to perfect themselves in sports, as if this were an important branch of their education, and they come armed and equipped for this kind of training. This is all wrong, from beginning to end. . . . The training and discipline you undergo in order to be successful in your games is not fitting you to become faithful soldiers of Jesus Christ. . . . The money expended for garments to make a pleasing show in these match games is so much money that might have been used to advance the cause of God in new places. . . . We need now to begin over again. It may be essential to lay the foundation of schools after the pattern of the schools of the prophets. It is so easy to drift into worldly plans and methods and customs." ¹⁶

Unfortunately, any reform by Battle Creek College to stop the sports program was short-lived. By 1896, only three years after Ellen White's pointed testimonies, the local Battle Creek Daily Journal again reported the results of Battle Creek College sporting events. On June 12, 1896, for example, the newspaper reported that "the second nine of the Battle Creek high school defeated the college nine, score 14 to 9."

The Avondale incident

On October 5, 1896, approximately five years after Ellen White had left for Australia, she laid the corner brick there for the first building at Avondale College. During these years she had fought hard to establish a school program that would set a pattern for all others to follow. She moved into an eight-room house (Sunnyside) one mile off campus to direct the organization of the school personally. ¹⁷

During the early years of Avondale a pattern program consisted of four phases: religious meetings (1-2 hours daily), classes (4 hours), study periods (2 hours), and work (2-3 hours). The students constructed buildings, cleared timber, planted orchards and vineyards, and started various industries. They received instruction in printing, bookbinding, carpentry, household tasks, and gardening. Bible study held a prominent position in their academic program, which also included instruction in health, business, nursing, education, and missionary work.

During these formative years Ellen White submitted many articles urging a higher standard for Avondale. 1S She was especially adamant that the Battle Creek College experience not be repeated in Australia. On December 20, 1896, she wrote from Sunnyside: "I have been warned that the teachers in our younger schools should not travel over the same ground that many of the teachers in the Battle Creek College have passed over. Popular amusements for students were brought into the Battle Creek school under a deceptive garb. . . . If the education given is not of a different character than that which has been given in the Battle Creek College, we need not go to the expense of purchasing land and erecting buildings. ... It is [Satan] who would lead students, sent to school for the purpose of receiving an education and training for the work of evangelists, ministers, and missionaries, to believe that amusements are essential to keep them in physical health, when the Lord has presented to them that the better way is for them to embrace manual labor in their education." ¹⁹

Later she emphasized "it reveals cowardice to move so slowly and uncertainly in the labor line—that line which will give the very best kind of education. . . . Working the soil is one of the best kinds of employment, calling the muscles into action and resting the mind. Study in agricultural lines should be the A, B, and C of the education given in our schools."20

In January 1897 W. W. Prescott, now educational secretary of the General Conference, returned from Australia, where he had conversed with Ellen White regarding plans for Avondale. That year in April the General Conference met in Lincoln, Nebraska, where the session featured appeals for educational reform. Edward A. Sutherland, who since 1892 had striven to follow Ellen White's education counsels at Walla Walla College, became president of Battle Creek College. ²¹

From 1897 to 1901 President Sutherland, strongly supported by John H. Kellogg, Alonzo T. Jones, and Percy T. Magan, sought to reform Battle Creek College, completely overhauling its academic program. A group of friends of the school purchased an 80-acre farm one mile north of the campus, on which fruit trees, shrubs, and vines were set out.

To symbolize this break with the past, Sutherland got out the plow, Magan drove the team, and 200-pound Justus G. Lamson sat on the beam as they plowed up the college playing field and planted a garden on it.

The reforms proved so overwhelming that enrollment began to drop. Sutherland decided that they must move the college away from "city quarters, with city environments, and city-minded teachers." Ellen White cautioned delay for the time being.

Meanwhile, on April 28, 1897, classes began at Avondale. By the end of the term the new school had 81 students. C. B. Hughes, who had graduated from Battle Creek in 1892, served as president. By April 1899 a central building containing a chapel had been constructed and 153 students enrolled.

During February 1900 the school administration decided to let the students play cricket on Sunday afternoons, to keep them from "walking around in the bush." As the one-year anniversary of the erection of Avondale's central building drew near, President Hughes and faculty decided to observe the day as a holiday. They asked Ellen White to deliver an address in the early morning; they then planned to spend the remainder of the day in games.

Ellen White spoke earnestly that morning, then left, not knowing what was to come. The students spent the rest of the day playing tennis (outfits had been purchased for the women), cricket, sack relay races, and other games.

That evening Ellen White could not sleep past 1:00 a.m. because of a heavy burden. She was then taken into vision: "I was a witness to the performance that was carried on on the school grounds. ... A view of things was presented before me in which the students were playing games of tennis and cricket. Then I was given instruction regarding the character of these amusements. They were presented to me as a species of idolatry, like the idols of the nations."²⁴

Early the next morning Ellen White drove her carriage over to the residence of President Hughes and told him that she wanted to talk to the faculty before talking to the students about the way they had spent the previous day. Hughes and the faculty were indignant upon learning what Mrs. White intended to say to the students, and engaged her in heated debate. The faculty thought it best for her to wait a day before speaking to the students, and she returned home saddened by the response of the teachers. ²⁵

That evening Ellen White was again taken into vision, and was shown that "these things are a repetition of the course of Aaron, when at the foot of Sinai he allowed the first beginning of wrong by permitting a spirit of reveling and commonness to come into the camp of Israel."²⁶

Friday morning Ellen White spoke to the assembled students and "never gave a more pointed testimony." She read many of her Battle Creek College testimonies. Even her son Willie reported that "we were all somewhat surprised at the pointedness of what Mother wrote, and more so at the earnestness of her remarks protesting against the sports." After her re marks, the students sat quietly without responding. ²⁷

President Hughes felt sorely tried, and began to have doubts about Ellen White. He later reported that "it was the beginning of one of the darkest experiences of my life. I felt that Sister White was unreasonably extreme in the matter."²⁸ The students were also upset, and on Sunday afternoon went on with their usual cricket game.

On Monday Willie White talked to the students about how counsel should be received from "the Lord's ministers, especially when they present to us thoughts that were new and not in harmony with our wishes and feelings."²⁹ Ellen White also felt very "pained" over the matter, and in her diary wrote: "It has been understood all through our ranks that these games are not the proper education to be given in any of our schools. The school in Avondale is to be a pattern for other schools which shall be established among our people. Games and amusements are the curse of the Colonies, and they must not be allowed in our school here."³⁰

By Thursday the Spirit of God had worked on C. B. Hughes, the faculty, and the students. After another presentation by Ellen White, most expressed their desire to follow in the way of the Lord's guidance. Willie White reported that "at the close of this meeting, we felt that a great victory had been gained, that the school board, the faculty, and the students saw things in a much clearer light as a result of our study and prayer during the week."³¹

The tennis set was sold, with the proceeds put into a missionary fund, and the cricket games ceased. A large number of students began studying the Scriptures together in the evening and spreading their love of God to the surrounding community.

Emmanuel Missionary College

Later that year Ellen White returned to America. With her strong and active support, the General Conference voted on April 12, 1901, to relocate Battle Creek College in the country. In May equipment was loaded onto 16 railroad cars, and the college moved to its new site 90 miles away at Berrien Springs, where it was renamed Emmanuel Missionary College (EMC). ³² Percy T. Magan wrote Ellen White that "this new school must be the Avondale of America."

With enrollment down nearly two thirds during the first year on the new campus, students and teachers united their efforts to farm and build while con ducting classes. Students worked all day, then had classes for three hours in the evenings. Six collegiate departments—Ministerial, Missionary Teachers, Premedical, Christian Business, Music, and Manual Training, embraced the institution's academic offerings.

By May 1904 tensions were running high between Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the church leaders. Magan and Sutherland were also accused of "Kelloggism"—independency from the denomination, institutionalism, and pantheism. Conflicts arose, and Sutherland and Magan eventually resigned and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where they started the Nashville Agricultural and Normal Institute on a 400-acre farm. Thus began the self-supporting school network that to this day emphasizes a manual labor-based education, without any sports. Although Ellen White thought Sutherland had resigned at an untimely moment, she sup ported his desire to start a new school, and sat on its board. ³³

In September 1910, only six years after Sutherland had left EMC, students sought permission from the faculty to participate in organized ball games. When the faculty responded by voicing its disapproval of organized baseball games on campus, the students played their games off campus. ³⁴

Application for our time

Ellen White died in 1915. To the very end she remained firm in her stand for a work/study-based educational program devoid of sports. A few years before her death she reiterated her viewpoint: "The public feeling is that manual labor is degrading; yet men may exert themselves as much as they choose at cricket, baseball, or in pugilistic contests without being regarded as degraded. . . . While the youth are becoming expert in games that are of no real value to themselves or to others, Satan is playing the game of life for their souls. . . . He seeks to engross and absorb the mind so completely that God will find no place in the thoughts."³⁵

Following Ellen White's death, our schools experienced several decades of uncertainty in implementing these concepts. The accelerating Industrial Revolution, increasing mechanization and urbanization, and the tremendous growth of sports in society and public schools created an environment in which such decisions became ever more painful. Beginning in the 1920s at EMC, for example, ball games were allowed on festive occasions, with "careful regulation." During the 1930s and 1940s a few low-key sports like ice skating, volleyball, table tennis, roller skating, etc., were allowed. A definite change came on March 11, 1949, when a groundbreaking ceremony took place for the physical education building, initiating an era of intramural games and physical education. 36 EMC's experience proved typical of many of our colleges, despite the repeated disapproval of several influential Adventist leaders. 37 Today individual, dual, and team sports permeate physical education classes at both the secondary arid collegiate levels, and students engage in intramural sports competition. In addition, many schools have stepped into previously forbidden territory—interschool sports.

The Battle Creek and Avondale incidents clearly indicate that Ellen White was led of God to strongly advocate a manual labor-based educational program without organized sports. This ideal, so hard for early leaders to cope with, seems even more perplexing now. Would Ellen White still advocate such a program to day? In 1904 she stated: "God wants us all to have common sense, and He wants us to reason from common sense. Circumstances alter conditions. Circumstances change the relation of things."³⁸ On the other hand, she also stated: "The great principles of education are unchanged. They stand fast forever and ever' (Ps. 111:8); for they are the principles of the character of God. "³⁹

The principle that students should work during their years of study forms perhaps the strongest concept that Ellen White advanced concerning our schools. Today many of our educational institutions have voluntary work programs in which students can earn money for tuition. However, with modern technology, most work does not give students adequate exercise. I have observed that even at self-supporting institutions, the majority of students do not obtain sufficient exercise while working because of the increasing use of labor-saving devices. Most of our schools prepare students to enter a technological workplace, which I believe is vitally important. We must not align ourselves with a "Mao mentality" in which modern technology is shunned, leaving us out of step with the rest of the world.

Our dilemma comes in providing students with some form of suitable exercise. What not to do appears very clear from both the Battle Creek and Avondale experiences. Ellen White never endorsed the concept that students should engage in organized sports for exercise. While she explained that "I do not condemn the simple exercise of playing ball; but this, even in its simplicity, may be overdone,"⁴⁰ she vigorously condemned any level of school-sponsored sports activity. This stance, so perplexing to our early leaders, has provided even more consternation to present educators.

Our schools have moved with increasing speed in the direction of organized sports. However, we have attempted to carefully regulate the sports within our schools, emphasizing character development, proper human relationships, respect for authority, observation of rules, healthful living, physical fitness, and co operation. Some schools, such as Union College, now blend witnessing with competition, as Athletes in Action has done for many years. The question is Do these developments represent legitimate improvements in our educational environment, or are they attempts to placate uncertain and confused movements toward a lower standard?

Many educational leaders today feel that "carefully regulated" sports provide a suitable compromise between the unusually demanding counsels of Ellen White and the pressures of a sports-centered society and less-than-ideal Adventist home environments. Others argue that regulating sports is like "making meat kosher." According to this line of reasoning, meat can be somewhat "safe guarded" by removing the fat and blood, but the improved material remains less than ideal.

Arthur Spalding made this point in his book Who Is the Greatest? "If I want to grow tall corn or luscious watermelons, I am not going to select the burning, sandy desert of Death Valley for my garden." ⁴¹In other words, while carefully regulated sports education and participation might be "OK" in developing character, building fitness, and promoting spiritual development, such an emphasis represents a "preoccupation with the secondary" (a common failing of the ancient Israelites). Thus the question of sports becomes not so much a question of right versus wrong as of better versus good.

No one listening to media reports would deny that much potential harm exists in schools' emphasis on sports. Constant reports appear of an overemphasis on winning leading to excessive injuries, brutality, use of drugs, and illegal recruitment. Some schools have terminated their interschool sports programs for both financial and academic reasons. Some decry the problem of sports idolatry, with its glorification of individual players. Many Americans approach sports with unusual vigor and dedication.

Thus in typical sports programs Spalding reasons that much exertion must take place to produce even stunted crops, thus demanding a disproportionate amount of guidance to allay the inherent problems. He argues that if we would exert the same amount of effort on more fertile soil, we would have wonderful crops.

We must avoid dogmatism regarding which types of activities today constitute fertile soil, for we find no easy answers. My personal opinion is that if manual labor opportunities are limited because of our urbanized, mechanized society, activities to improve individual physical fitness provide a good substitute. Aerobic exercises such as jogging, brisk walking, swimming, and cycling, combined with musculoskeletal activities such as flexibility exercises, heavy body calisthenics, and weight lifting all improve total body fitness.

In an era when circulatory diseases and obesity have reached epidemic proportions, such an emphasis is most certainly needed. Millions of Americans have met the fitness challenge) becoming active participants in the greatest American fitness revolution ever.

Ellen White promoted exercise for physical fitness; she herself engaged in brisk walking and deep breathing calisthenics. While she emphasized that "the tiller of the soil finds in his labor all the movements that were ever practiced in the gymnasium,"⁴² she strongly advocated brisk walking. "Ministers, teachers, students, and other brain workers often suffer from illness as the result of severe mental taxation, unrelieved by physical exercise. What these persons need is a more active life .... Those whose habits are sedentary should, when the weather will permit, exercise in the open air every day, summer or winter. Walking is preferable . . . , for it brings more of the muscles into exercise. The lungs are forced into healthy action, since it is impossible to walk briskly without inflating them. "⁴³  

Outdoor recreational activities such as sailing, canoeing, wilderness survival, camping, and backpacking might be given more room in our student programs. More attention to modern applied arts and vocational skills in our educational curriculums might help qualify our students for second vocations. These programs, combined with a physical fitness emphasis, might provide the activity our students need, as well as developing character traits such as discipline, working toward a goal, and love of the outdoors. Of course, even these activities can become competitive and all-absorbing, but perhaps their potential for abuse is less.

Some people feel that because so many aspects of life are competitive (seeking good grades, a life companion, or a job), successful participation in sports provides a good preparation. Others counter that Christians, as pilgrims on earth, are citizens of God's kingdom (see Phil. 3:20, NIV, NKJV), and therefore "do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world" (Rom. 12:1, NIV). They reason that the sin of variance, of striving for supremacy and greatness, is a common human failing, one concerning which Christ continually had to counsel His disciples. He who "did not consider equality with God something to be grasped" (Phil. 2:6, NIV), emphasized that "he who is least among you all—he is the greatest" (Luke 9:48, NIV).

Watchman Nee, in his book Love Not the World, cautioned that as Christians we cannot operate the way people of the world do. "Christians are indeed aliens, living here in an element that is not naturally theirs. A swimmer may dive deep into the sea, but without special clothing and airline to the atmosphere that is his own, he cannot stay there. The pressure is too great, and he must breathe the air of the world to which he belongs."⁴⁴

Could it be, then, that sports distort a real understanding of the biblical concept of true greatness? Sports participation may prove excellent for those of the world, for life is very competitive. But for the people of God, the artificial arena of sports may provide a rather sorry preparation for God's way of life. "The leaven of truth will not produce the spirit of rivalry, the love of ambition, the desire to be first."⁴⁵

Might regular sports participation also confuse our understanding of godly pleasure—the pleasure of knowing and communing with Him? As the psalmist has written: "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand" (Ps. 16:11, NIV). The pleasure of sports may reduce our ability to enjoy the more subtle pleasures involved in knowing God. If anything should inspire our enthusiasm, pleasure, or delight, it should be the cross of Christ!

Any reforms in these areas need to be considered carefully. Any discussion on the sports issue within our schools must come within the context of where we stand as a church. I worry that our schools are becoming more and more like public schools. Modern marketing strategy emphasizes that groups must position themselves in the marketplace, offering a unique service to a certain target group. Our spiritual uniqueness may not be discernible to our young people, which perhaps helps to explain why more than half of them choose their education elsewhere. Our real task is to make sure that we are going God's way and not our own.

Ellen White had high hopes for our schools. In 1894, while in Australia helping to establish the program at Avondale, she wrote: "Our institutions of learning may swing into worldly conformity. Step by step they may advance to the world; but they are prisoners of hope, and God will correct and en lighten them, and bring them back to their upright position of distinction from the world. I am watching with intense interest, hoping to see our schools thoroughly imbued with the spirit of true and undefiled religion. When the students are thus imbued, they will see that there is a great work to be done in the lines in which Christ worked, and the time they have given to amusements will be given up to doing earnest missionary work."⁴⁶