p. 17 | World's Conference of Adventists by Waldon Fawcett

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 15, 1909

World's Conference of Adventists

By Waldon Fawcett

AN interesting religious gathering which is now in progress and will continue until June 6, is the thirty-seventh session of the World's General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is being held at Takoma Park, Md., a few miles from the city of Washington. Takoma Park is an attractive suburban community, which a few years ago was selected as the general headquarters of this religious denomination.

A considerable settlement of the church workers has grown up there. Various administrative buildings have been erected for the executive work of a church body which has now twenty-five hundred churches and more than one hundred thousand adherents.

The picturesque features of the present Conference are due largely to the fact that the assembled people are housed for the most part in a great white city of tents, erected on the grounds of the Foreign Mission Seminary at Takoma Park. The foreign delegations are being entertained in the Seminary dormitories, but the more numerous home delegations are camping in over three hundred tents, each capable of accommodating from five persons upward.

The sessions of the Conference are held in a spacious auditorium tent, capable of seating fully two thousand persons. Meals are served in a dining-tent, where more than one thousand persons may be accommodated at one time at long tables. The diners all serve themselves, somewhat after the fashion which prevails in “quick-lunch” establishments. All the food is furnished at actual cost, and the items on the menu are restricted to vegetarian dishes, in accordance with the tenets of the denomination.

The officers of the General Conference are: A. G. Daniells, president; G. A. Irwin, vice-president for the United States; L. R. Conradi, vice-president for Europe; W. A. Spicer, secretary; and I. H. Evans, treasurer. In addition, there is a committee of thirty-eight members, known as the General Conference Committee, which is composed of the presidents of the union conferences (which have church jurisdiction in the geographical grand divisions) and the representatives of distinct lines of work, carried on under the auspices of the denomination, including medical, educational, publishing, young people's, and religious liberty.

There are in attendance at this cosmopolitan open-air conference, in the neighborhood of one hundred foreign delegates, including fifty from Europe, representing practically every country on that continent, and also the Asiatic provinces of Russia; nine from India and Burma; seven from Africa; nine from South America; twenty from Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies; six from China and four from Japan. Besides, there are delegates from Australia and the islands of the sea, and about two hundred delegates from North America. However, these regularly accredited delegates represent but a fraction of the whole attendance. Other adherents come as spectators, so that the Conference community numbers close to three thousand persons. Almost all of this army of enthusiasts remains on the grounds continuously during the sessions of the Conference.

There has been a considerable growth of the Seventh-day Adventist movement since the last previous gathering of this kind. The last session of the General Conference was held in 1905, and it was then decided that henceforth the world-wide assemblages should be held only once in every four years, thus prescribing an interval much longer than had previously intervened between the gatherings. During the four years that have passed, there has been ceaseless activity, according to reports submitted at the present gathering. Twenty mission fields have been entered; two hundred ninety-four churches have been organized, and sixteen thousand new adherents have been enrolled in the denomination. The tithes for 1908 were $1,101,396—an increase of more than $400,000 over 1904—while the contributions to missions were $308,000, or more than double what was contributed four years ago. One of the aims of the present Conference is to project a great world-wide mission campaign, exceeding all previous effort in this direction.

One of the phases of Adventist activity which is attracting much attention at the present Conference is the Medical Missionary Department. The Medical Department stands for the promotion of temperance and healthful living, as well as medical missionary work. Forty sanitariums, under full denominational control, are now operated in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America, in addition to some thirty-six private institutions—about double the number of sanitariums in existence four years ago.

The head of the Educational Department has reported to the Conference that sixty-seven colleges, academies, and intermediate schools are now conducted by the denomination. Although English is generally spoken at the Conference, many foreign tongues are heard by visitors to the fifty-acre tract in rural Maryland, which is now the hub and center of the Adventist world.—Waldon Fawcett, in Christian Herald, June 2, 1909.