World Church: Adventist Leaders Meet United States President at White
House
[Rajmund Dabrowski/Mark A. Kellner/ANN]
Leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church met with United States
President, George W. Bush at the White House.
Religious liberty and humanitarian concerns were the highlights of an
April 4 meeting between leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church
and President George W. Bush of the United States.
At the invitation of the president, the 45-minute Oval Office session
included Pastors Jan Paulsen, Adventist church world president;
Matthew Bediako, secretary of the world church; Don Schneider, who is
both president of the Adventist Church in North America and a vice
president of the world church; and with James D. Standish, director
of legislative affairs for the Adventist Church.
President Bush was particularly interested in religious liberty
issues. Paulsen, who also informed Bush of his recent visit to
Russia, said Bush "disclosed how passionately he feels about
religious liberty; freedom of conscience, freedom to worship, freedom
to think, and against that background asked us some questions about
how we found it to be in some countries of the world which do not
have a good track record."
The president was highly engaged and very interested in talking about
HIV/AIDS, education and the reduction of poverty worldwide,
particularly in Africa, the church leaders said. The pastors shared
the scope of the Adventist Church's involvement in the fight against
the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Paulsen said the president "wanted to know
what we were doing in areas having to do with HIV/AIDS in Africa. We
told him about that, and about the breadth of our initiative,
although our resources are very limited."
Paulsen also told President Bush that Adventists are "using ... the
hospitals [to deal] with the virus being transmitted from mother to
child," and he spoke about what the church is doing "quite
comprehensively in so many of our churches throughout Africa, namely
making the church sensitive as to how they must function as a caring
center for people who carry the virus, [and] that they treat them as
human beings of full worth in the eyes of God, and that they extend
that sort of acceptance to them in spite of the fact that they carry
a virus."
In greeting his visitors, President Bush mentioned that as governor
of Texas he knew a Seventh-day Adventist church member on his staff
who had explained some of the church's beliefs, and that he was also
familiar with Southwestern Adventist University, which is in Keene,
Texas.
President Bush was also informed of a legislative initiative in the
United States aimed at helping employees to be faithful to their
beliefs while meeting the needs of employers. Called the Workplace
Religious Freedom Act, the bill is under consideration by committees
of the U.S. Congress.
Adventist leaders told the president they appreciated the involvement
of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID,
in projects organized by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency,
ADRA, as well as Loma Linda University, which undertakes many global
medical projects, including efforts in China and Afghanistan.
Speaking with Adventist News Network after the visit, Paulsen said he
hopes for continued cooperation between the church and the nation in
which it was founded.
Paulsen said it is his hope, "that both the president and those with
whom he works and influences remember that the Seventh-day Adventist
Church is a good partner in matters of religious liberty, in matters
of combating HIV/AIDS, and in creating, frankly, a better future for
all people."
He added that Adventists are "a people who can be partners with
government in good programs which are related to better health and
related to more freedom. ... Obviously, no government, including this
one, can step in and do what we have to do as a church. But we have
never, as a church, in respect ... to community life, we have never
seen ourselves as solitary agents."
The meeting ended with prayer, Paulsen noted.
Established in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1863 and with headquarters
near the capital city of Washington, D.C. for more than 100 years,
the Seventh-day Adventist Church is active in more than 200 nations
around the world, with an extensive network of medical and
educational institutions. Each week, an estimated 30 million adults
and children attend Adventist worship services worldwide.
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