Seventh-day Adventists and MAGA, MAHA
Some American Seventh-day Adventist leaders have abandoned their political neutrality to join with MAGA and MAHA.
Notes:
Seventh-day Adventists refer to themselves as “Adventist” and “SDA” for short. So do my writings.
Sources:
Smietana, B. (2025, March 27). Can MAGA, MAHA and Adventists make America healthy again? Religion News Source. https://archive.is/f8qJ7
Seibold, L. (2025, April). Adventists Hobnob with MAGA Christian Nationalists and Science Deniers. Adventist Today. https://archive.is/k6xFq
Adventism spans a wide spectrum from very liberal to very conservative and even fringe.
In the USA, there are Adventist liberals who voted for Obama, Biden, and Harris. In the same church, there are die-hard President Trump believers who want to Make America Great Again (“MAGA”, President Trump’s slogan) and Make America Healthy Again (“MAHA”, US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s slogan).
The SDA Church wants all the tithe-paying butts in seats it can get, so:
The Seventh-day Adventist Church maintains a politically neutral stance, the better to appeal to both liberal and conservative Adventists.
As I wrote here:
One historical example of the SDA church refusing to help in a politically charged American social issue: For instance, Black singer Joyce Bryant, a lifelong Seventh-day Adventist, was an activist during the American Civil Rights Era. She approached SDA leaders asking for help.
“She wanted to end discrimination in America. The first place she thought to take her new pursuit was back to the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Sadly, she didn’t get the answer she wanted or expected.
“To Bryant’s surprise, the church didn’t want to participate in “earthly matters” like ending discrimination.” https://www.factinate.com/people/facts-joyce-bryant
The Seventh-day Adventist Church did this because helping a Black activist end discrimination would cause racist members to leave the church. The Adventist church wants as many members as possible. They use terms like “we do not participate in earthly matters” to spiritualize their inaction on American social issues.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church maintains political neutrality by its members forming, using, recommending unofficial Adventist-supporting “ministries”.
The key term is “Adventist-supporting”. That means it’s not an official “Adventist-affiliated” organization.
These “ministries” are usually tax-free in the United States. When a ministry does something bad, hits the news and makes the Adventist church look bad, a church spokesperson makes a press statement:
“Well, that ministry isn’t actually Adventist. We Adventists don't approve of what it did.” says spokesperson.
The incident is swept under the rug. No one looks up how the Adventist Church recommended that ministry, no one sees how much money is funneled from that ministry to the church, no further investigation is done.
Adventist-supporting ministry, Wisdom Pearl, sponsored a MAGA, MAHA conference last month:
The “Will You Be Made Whole?” Conference on March 27-29 was held at the Dream City Church, a pentecostal Christian Nationalist church, in Phoenix, Arizona. It was sponsored by Wisdom Pearl, an organization run by two Adventist-associated right wing activists, Ivan Raj and Eva Tompkins. https://archive.is/k6xFq