David R. Larson
Loma Linda , California
May 7, 2005
May 8, 2005 Revision
Natural and Religious:
Ellen G. White and Ann Taves’
Interpretation of Dissociative
Religious Experiences
“Do not despise the words of prophets,
but test everything; hold fast to what is good;
abstain from every form of evil.” Paul of Tarsus
“We have nothing to fear for the future,
except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us,
and His teaching in our past.” Ellen G. White
“We have nothing to fear from the past,
except as we shall forget the way the Lord will lead us,
and His teaching in our future. Jack W. Provonsha
Those of us who attended Seventh-day Adventist churches and schoolswhen we were youngsters sometimes heard stories about the dissociative religious experiences of Ellen G. White in our own community of faith a hundred or so years earlier. We heard that sometimes she was swept away in vision exclaiming “glory, Glory, GLORY”! We also heard that while she was in vision it was sometimes difficult for others to tell whether she was breathing, even when they held a mirror to her nostrils and mouth to record any exhaled breath. We also heard that at least once she held a large and heavy pulpit Bible with one outstretched arm and hand much longer than any of us could. Some of our ministers and teachers enjoyed telling us these and a number of other similar stories.
Depending upon where we went to church and school in those years, we did or did not also hear that some of these stories were not historically accurate, that dissociative religious experiences were much more common among all Protestants in Ellen White’s time and place than in our own, and that the theological meaning and value of such experiences has been a matter of vigorous discussion down through the years, both within and beyond our own denomination.
In what follows, I hope to participate in these discussions by commenting upon Ann Taves’ study of these developments in Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (
“Setting the Stage” identifies three of the many factors that converged to make dissociative religious experiences increasingly common among all Protestants in eighteenth and nineteenth century
Setting the Stage
In the little classic Dynamics of Faith (
Ann Taves reports that these unusual experiences often included “uncontrolled bodily movements (fits, bodily exercises, falling as dead, catalepsy, convulsions); spontaneous vocalizations (crying out, shouting, speaking in tongues); unusual sensory experiences (trances, visions, voices, clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences); and alterations of consciousness and/or memory (dreams, sumnium, somnambulism, mesmeric trance, mediumistic trance, hypnotism possession, alternating personality).” (p.3)
She agrees with those who pinpoint the sense of losing control of one’s own experience in deference to another power, even if only for a brief moment of awesome terror or joy, or some combination of both, as the defining characteristic that clusters together these otherwise diverse dissociative occurrences. “The crucial element of the experience for the ‘native actor,’ according to [Michele] Stephen,” Taves writes making good use of the language of the theater, “is its ‘self-alien’ or, in the terms used here, its involuntary aspect, that is, the sense that ‘I” am not the agent or cause of ‘my’ experience.” (p. 9)
Although Taves does not give them much focused attention in her book’s first few pages, at least three of the many factors that converged to make dissociative religious experiences increasingly common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries deserve emphasis. One of these factors was philosophical. Some depict the eighteenth century as an “Age of Reason,” and so it was, as evidenced by the flourishing of Enlightenment thinking in
Nevertheless, looking back upon those centuries from our own time, it is perhaps easier to see that, with Descartes in France, Spinoza in the
Because leaders of the Enlightenment had already jettisoned the authority of tradition and scripture, and because Enlightenment authors like Hume and Kant then demonstrated how little human reason can actually prove about God, experience became an increasingly important basis for religious thought and life. Each in his own way, first John Wesley in England and Jonathan Edwards in New England during the eighteenth century, then Friedrich Schleiermacher in Germany and Soren Kierkegaard in Denmark in the nineteenth, made religious experience central to their theological work. Later in the nineteenth century, Marx, Darwin and Freud furthered the damage done to reason’s reputation by demonstrating that it is often captive to economic, biological and subconscious dynamics.
A second factor was more theological. Virtually all of the leading Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth century had endorsed the doctrine of divine predestination, as had many Roman Catholic thinkers before them. Some of the Reformers believed in double election, the idea that God explicitly selects some for salvation and others for damnation even before they are conceived. Others preferred the doctrine of single election, the notion that we all deserve damnation because of our evil ways but that God graciously chooses to save some of us without explicitly condemning the rest of us to the unending torment that is our justified destiny. As Max Weber demonstrated in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Translated by Talcott Parsons. Forward by R. H. Tawney.
Those fortunate enough to have such experiences early in life often moved through its subsequent stages and toward their deaths with sufficient serenity. Those who didn’t, particularly those who intensely desired but did not experience the confirming experience of God’s approval, often lived very stressful lives with some becoming neurotic or even psychotic. Given this theological background, it is not surprising that preachers who were skilled at evoking dissociative religious experiences by what and how they preached were often in great demand by large audiences who were eager for religious ecstasy and thereby the assurance of their salvation. Nothing less than heaven or hell hung in the balance.
Although John Wesley rejected the doctrine of predestination, for a variety of reasons dissociative religious experiences became especially frequent among the Methodists and among the Adventist, Holiness and Pentecostal groups that flowed from them. One of these reasons was theological. Although John Wesley had not been overly clear about all its details, many Methodists affirmed the doctrine of the “second blessing.” This special experience of entire sanctification followed the “first blessing” of justification. For these Methodists, justification was not instantaneous and sanctification “the work of a lifetime,” as many now hold; though usually separated in time and place, both justification and sanctification were instantaneous and both were experientially confirmed. Therefore, just as many Calvinists needed a special experience to assure them that they were justified, so also many Wesleyans needed the same thing to confirm that they were sanctified. Thus, the Methodists became just as eager for dissociative religious experiences as the Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Calvinistic Anglicans, often even more so.
A third factor was cultural. As evidenced by the changes that took place in
There was something very democratic about having dissociative religious experiences. They did not require one to study and teach languages and logic for many years at
Judging the Performances
In addition to its historical depth and breadth, Ann Taves’s study is noteworthy for its methodological richness and complexity. Her book makes important contributions to the humanities, to the social sciences and to the behavioral sciences. In each academic setting she makes constructive proposals about what the disciplines might think about phenomena such as dissociative religious experiences as well as about how they should approach such matters.
Taves, a historian at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University in Southern California, accomplishes these things by constantly juxtaposing throughout her entire book answers to two very different questions: (1) As expressed from their own points of view in term that scholars can understand and appreciate, what actually happens in a person’s life when he or she has an dissociative religious experience? (2) What should all of us, both those who have such experiences and those who don’t, think about them? She calls the answers to the first question “experiencing religion” and the answers to the second “explaining experience.”
Unlike most others, Taves’ book is not about either one of these but about both and, most importantly, about their continuing interaction. In her study, “experiencing religion” and “explaining experience” are not like the two rails of a track that run parallel to each other for thousands of miles without ever crisscrossing; they are more like separate rivers that intersect every so often and thereby share their somewhat different waters.
Taves’ book is also noteworthy for its fairness. Equally unlike those who judge dissociative religious experiences very harshly and those who judge them very favorably, she deems them both “natural and religious.” Working with two sets of two alternatives, the first between the “natural” and the “supernatural” and the second between the “secular and the religious,” she explores three primary possibilities. One of these is that dissociative religious experiences are supernatural and religious. This is akin to the position of those who hold that such experiences are sure signs that God has intervened in a way that contracts the laws of nature. A second option is that these experiences are natural and secular. This is akin to the position of those who regard dissociative religious experiences as frauds foisted upon gullible populations by mavericks and charlatans or as the outcomes of mental or physical disorders. Taves own preference is to regard these experiences in a third way, as natural and religious.
What Taves has in mind when she describes dissociative religious experiences as “natural” rather than “supernatural” is sufficiently clear, particularly because she cites David Ray Griffin when doing so. As developed in Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (
What
Thus, when Taves writes that dissociative religious experiences are “natural,” she does not necessarily mean that God is in no sense active in them. If her thinking follows
This is a point that Ellen White may or may not have understood as a teenager; it certainly is one she and her collaborators appreciated when she was an adult. Among other passages, this is evident in the following paragraphs from one of the volumes she and her assistants assembled from her writings and those of others, Patriarchs and Prophets (
As commonly used, the term “laws of nature” comprises what men have been able to discover with regard to the laws that govern the physical world; but how limited is their knowledge, and how vast the field in which the Creator can work in harmony with His own laws and yet wholly beyond the comprehension of finite beings!
Many teach that matter possesses vital power—that certain properties are imparted to matter, and it is then left to act through its own inherent energy; and that the operations of nature are conducted in harmony with fixed laws, with which God himself cannot interfere. This is false science, and is not sustained by the word of God. Nature is the servant of her Creator. God does not annul His laws or work contrary to them, but He is continually using them as his instruments. Nature testifies of an intelligence, a presence, an active energy, that works in and through her laws. There is in nature the continual working of the Father and the Son. Christ says, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” John 5:17. (Page 114)\
Careful readers will note that in this passage Ellen White denies (1) pantheism, the view that God and the universe are identical; (2) deism, the idea that God created the universe and now lets it operate entirely on its own; and (3) contra-naturalism, the notion that divine action violates the most basic laws of nature. They will also notice at least one apparent difference and one actual difference between her views and those of
The apparent difference is that earlier on the same page from which the above paragraphs were selected, White criticizes those who “do not believe in the supernatural, not understanding God’s laws or His infinite power to work His will through them” whereas Griffin flatly rejects supernaturalism.
The actual difference between
What Taves has in mind when she describes such experiences as “religious” rather than “secular” is somewhat less obvious to me. It is clear that she prefers to think of them as “natural and religious” and that she swiftly changes this to “natural and true,” suggesting that in this context “religious” and “true” mean the virtually the same thing (p. 348), and that by “true” she at least means “not necessarily fraudulent and not necessarily pathological.”
In any case, we seem to have four alternatives instead of the three that Taves emphasizes. Dissociative religious experiences can be:
1. Supernatural and Religious/True
2. Supernatural and Secular/False (omitted by Taves)
3. Natural and Secular/False
4. Natural and Religious/True
Once all four options are displayed, what Taves probably has in mind when she describes dissociative religious experiences as “religious” or “true” becomes more discernable. Although I am not absolutely certain of this, I believe she means two things, each of which is very important to an understanding of her study and to the practice of our own lives.
One of these is that Option # 2 is not acceptable. This is the view that such experiences necessarily are supernatural but false. One common expression of this point of view is that all of them are entirely of Satanic or demonic origin, something that would make them both “supernatural” and “secular” or “false.” The other is that Option # 3 is also unacceptable. This is seen most often in the view that dissociative religious experiences are nothing but frauds or hoaxes contrived by clever but ordinary people or nothing but the outcomes of human pathologies.
Taves has already rejected Option 1, the judgment that these experiences are “supernatural” and “religious” or “true,” not because, if she is really following David Griffin at this point, she believes that necessarily God is wholly absent from them, but because she believes that, if God is present in them, this is so in harmony with, rather than in contradiction to, the most basic laws of nature.
The upshot of all this is that Taves favors Option 4, the judgment that dissociative religious experiences are “natural” and “religious or true.” She holds that having such experiences is something like singing. Almost all human beings can both sing and have dissociative religious experiences; some have more talent for each than others; and support from companions and training from experts almost always helps even the least talented. “In my view,” she writes, “sympathy, suggestibility, and hypnotizability are better understood as abilities or capacities that can be discouraged or cultivated rather than as symptoms of mental weakness. Most anthropologists and many psychiatrists would agree that the capacity to dissociate is a psychobiological capacity of the species, although like other human abilities not necessarily one that is evenly distributed throughout the population or over the lifespan of the individual.”
Citing on behalf of her case recent criteria in psychiatric literature that distinguish between pathological and non-pathological dissociative events by emphasizing “context” and “adjustment,” Taves writes that “An understanding of involuntary experiences as involving practical mastery or skilled performances implies, as with all acquired abilities, the possibility of more or less skilled performances. Levels of skill may be related to individual aptitude as well as socialization and training.” (pp. 357, 358) Again, she uses the language of the theater with good results.
Pondering the Play
In addition to its scholarly contributions, which are considerable, I believe that Ann Taves’ study can help those of us who are Seventh-day Adventists today to avoid three unfortunate and insufficiently informed reactions to the dissociative religious experiences of Ellen White in the nineteenth century. One of these inadequate responses is to view them as singular, isolated, and obvious indications of God’s activity her life and therefore of the unending accuracy of everything she said and wrote. Another inadequate response, one that is more common among those who are angry at Ellen White today because of the ways others have used her writings to make their lives miserable, is that her dissociative religious experiences were entirely Satanic or demonic in origin and character. A third inadequate response is to view them as natural but false, either because they were fraudulent or because they were expressive of nothing but the illnesses and misfortunes from which Ellen White suffered. Attributing Ellen White’s dissociative religious experiences to nothing but the things that ailed her is an approach that Ann Taves’ warnings against “diagnosing the dead,” to use my language, seems especially pertinent.
This last point, that we should be very tentative when “diagnosing the dead,” is important for at least three reasons. First, diagnosing at a distance is always a risk. This is why we believe physicians and other healers should actually see and touch their patients and not merely interact with them on telephones or on the Internet or hear about them from others. Second, even if it were possible to establish that Ellen White suffered from this or that ailment, it would take much additional effort and expertise to establish causative, and not merely correlative links, between her illness and what she said and wrote. Third, even if we established causative, and not merely correlative, links between Ellen White’s illnesses and what she said and wrote, these links, in and of themselves, can neither confirm nor disconfirm the truth of what she asserted.
Any attempt either to credit or discredit what Ellen White asserted by linking her claims either to her well-being or to her illnesses is an expression of “the genetic fallacy,” the false idea that we can determine the truth of an assertion merely by judging its source or origin. The first human being to have noticed that two of anything plus two more of the same thing always equals four of that same thing may have been insane by every conceivable standard; nevertheless, what he or she asserted in this regard has stood the test of time because its truth is independent of his or her mental illness.
This strongly suggests that dissociative religious experiences are interesting historically and psychologically but irrelevant philosophically and theologically. No falsehood is made true because it flows from an dissociative religious experience and no truth is made false because it doesn’t. As Paul of Tarsus made clear in one of the earliest Christian letters, we are to test all assertions, even those made by prophets, and we are to retain only that which passes our examinations. We are to accept no assertion on the basis of sheer authority, even if the one who makes it acts in strange and awesome ways.
We ought to test all assertions, I suggest, according to their inner consistency, their coherence or “fit” with other things we believe to be true, their correspondence with the relevant facts as we now know them, and their consequences when we put them into practice. Whether an idea occurs to someone while he or she is having an dissociative religious experience neither confirms nor disconfirms its truthfulness. In and of themselves, such experiences neither add to nor subtract from any assertion’s truth even though their unusual character may draw our attention to truths we were otherwise overlooking.
Was Ellen White inspired by God? The answer to this question depends upon what we mean by “inspiration.” On the one hand, if by “inspiration” we mean that God unilaterally and overwhelmingly caused the whole of each of her dissociative religious experiences in ways that violate the most basic laws of nature, and guarantee that none of her strengths and weaknesses affected the outcome, the answer is “no.” On the other hand, the answer is “yes” if, when applying the term “inspiration” to her dissociative religious experiences, we refer to that portion of each of them, and of every occurrence, that is of God.
Paul of Tarsus wrote that “in all things God works for good.” (Romans 8:28) I take this to mean that, among other things, God is a positive influence that non-coercively fosters health and healing in every experience, even those that are dissociative. The whole of any one of our current experiences is never of God; nevertheless, some portion of it, that aspect of the experience that tends toward health and healing, always is and it is our privilege and challenge to discern and cooperate with it. In any case, assertions are not true because they are of God. They are of God because they are true.
We Adventists today are in danger of forfeiting the positive contributions Ellen White can still make to our lives and thinking. On one hand, although we are well past the time of adolescence, some us are still smoldering over the way she was used against us when we were young people and every so often we erupt in flames that attempt to eradicate her influence. This is hardly a mature response. On the other hand, others of us are so defensive of her that we cannot admit that, like all the rest of us, she was a child of her time and place who was finite and fallible. This, too, is hardly a mature response.
When we think about it calmly and candidly, many of us can admit that the life and writings of Ellen White have helped us in some ways and hurt us in others, partly because of the way others have used her comments but also partly because of what she actually said and did. Our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to recognize this as a fact of our lives, make the most of what we find helpful in her writings and leave the rest on the shelf, seeking only to be willing to learn from a complex and accomplished woman who lived in a time and place that was very different from our own. In my view, Ann Taves’ Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James can inform and inspire us as we travel together on the interesting and very important journey we call life.
Thanks for introducing Taves' work. I am elsewhere trying to do a little work on social-scientific reading of glossolalia and one of the main explanatory theories originating in the work of Felicitas Goldman is glossolalia taking place within a similar dissociative state to what Taves describes.
I may have to dig out the Taves volume.
Posted by: Richard | September 18, 2009 at 11:51 AM
I am an editor for Christian.com which is a social network dedicated to the christian community. As I look through your web site I feel a collaboration is at hand. I would be inclined to acknowledge your website offering it to our users as I'm sure our Pentecostal audience would benefit from what your site has to offer. I look forward to your thoughts or questions regarding the matter.
Vicky Silvers
vicky.silvers@gmail.com
Posted by: Vickey Silvers | June 04, 2010 at 12:13 PM
Ann Taves' chapter on Ellen White briefly treats her in the context of the larger history of religious experience in America since Jonathan Edwards, the Methodists, and black experience. But her chapter on Roy Sunderland, mesmerism, and the development of spiritualism are also crucial reading to understand White's experience. I hope readers read the whole book and appreciate White's gifts for what they were-- a singular experience of the divine, yet in continuity with the arc of women's spirituality and American religious history, from Ann Hutchinson to Pentecostalism.
Graeme Sharrock
graemesharrock3@mac.com
(see my art. on Ellen Harmon White in "The Westminster Handbook to Women in American Religious History," (2008)
ed. by Susan Hill Lindley, Eleanor J. Stebner, p. 233.
Posted by: Graeme Sharrock | November 01, 2010 at 08:21 PM
Graeme
Thanks for your informative comment and for the reference to your essay in the "Handbook.........." I was aware of neither and look forward to becoming so.
I just learned of a 2010 University of Helsinki doctoral dissertation on "Holisitic Spirituality in the Writings of Ellen White." The entirety of it is at
https://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/63691/holistic.pdf?sequence=1
Thanks!
Posted by: David R. Larson | November 02, 2010 at 07:25 AM