In his article, “Waco Revisited,” in the March/April issue of Book and Culture, Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, reviews Kenneth G. C. Newport’s The Branch Davidians of Waco: The History and Beliefs of an Apocalyptic Sect (Oxford University Press, 2006) and makes a poignant appeal to Seventh-day Adventists to “acknowledge some responsibility on the part of their tradition for the developments” that led to the 1992 tragedy in Waco and to exercise leadership in helping evangelicals stay away from the insensible “prophecy-based anti-Americanism.” I’m grateful to Dr. Mouw for the permission to post the following excerpt from the review. Over the next few days, a response to Dr. Mouw’s comments will be posted here. Meantime, comments on this post may be made at the Forum.

One matter that impressed me particularly as an evangelical reading Newport is his insistence that the tragic errors in David Koresh’s understanding of the Bible do in fact have a history, a history that can in turn be traced to a perspective that was birthed by Ellen White, whose denomination has by now rightly earned considerable respect in evangelical circles and beyond. When the Waco tragedy was unfolding, the Seventh-day Adventist community engaged in a major public relations campaign to distance themselves from the Branch Davidians. I find no fault in that effort—having done my own share of public denying that this or that person who once studied at the seminary that I lead does in fact represent our theological position! The distancing was especially important in the Waco case, since that situation was a highly visible example of theology gone awry, and it was necessary for the general public to be advised that the Branch Davidians had long departed from the mainstream of Adventist thought.

But the flames at Waco no longer burn, and the smoke has cleared. Now is a good time for Adventist theologians to acknowledge at least some responsibility on the part of their tradition for the developments chronicled by Newport, since those developments do in fact draw on important elements in early Adventism. Many of us in the Dutch Reformed communities expended considerable energy insisting during apartheid days that South African racism was not a necessary consequence of our theological convictions. But some of us also did a good deal of soul-searching during that time, checking out the ways in which those racist themes did make connections—legitimately or illegitimately—to motifs that are indigenous to Reformed theology. That theological self-examination was a healthy exercise, and I recommend a similar project to my Adventist friends.

It is a fact, for example, as Newport points out, that the Davidians share with the early Adventists an expectation that some sort of violent cleansing in the end-time is a necessary preface to the coming Kingdom. And this scenario was often connected, in early Adventism, to the notion that in the last days America would function as the second beast of Revelation 13, a deceptively “lamb-like” collective entity that would foster false worship and persecute the faithful remnant of Sabbath-keepers.

The prophecy-based anti-Americanism looms large in Davidian thought, but it does not seem to be a prominent emphasis these days among the Seventh-day Adventists. While we can be grateful for that de-emphasis on purely theological grounds, the question of the theological status of the American nation in God’s plan for the world is no minor theme in certain parts of the Christian world today. It is not uncommon to hear contemporary theological voices—including not a few evangelical ones—describing the United States in the present world as a beastly “imperial force” that has aligned itself with much that is destructive on the global scene. Sicne these thoughts often lack the serious attention to biblical specifics that the Davidians, in all of their confusions, have exhibited, this might be a good time for Adventist thinkers to lead the way in helping all of us get clearer about how we can think sensible—and appropriately biblically informed—thoughts about such important matters.