The Great Visions of Ellen G. White

Three Major Denominations

But—as predicted—the secular soon entered the world of religion. Today there are three major “denominations” of spiritualist churches: GVEGW 52.2

a. The International General Assembly of Spiritualists, organized at Buffalo, New York, in 1936 “for the purpose of chartering Spiritualist churches,” is today headquartered at Norfolk, Virginia. ¹⁹ In 1940 it reported 90 churches, with 1,350 members. ²⁰ In a mere 12 years, by 1952, they had doubled the number of churches to 182, and recorded a membership explosion to 157,000 communicants. ²¹ (The 1956 membership figure of 164,072 continued to be reported as a static statistic annually until 1977, when church officials discontinued making any data available to the public.) ²² GVEGW 52.3

b. The National Spiritual Alliance of the U.S.A. reported 255 churches, with 4,570 members, in 1936. ²³ It fell upon hard times by 1969, with the number of churches dropping to 34, and membership to 3,230. (These figures never changed in annual reports through 1982, when the Alliance, too, discontinued making church records public.) ²⁴ Its self-description during the years of reporting declared that “this body, founded in 1913, believes in supernormal, personal, and impersonal manifestations and in intercommunication between denizens of different worlds.” ²⁵ The last known address of their general organization was Keene, New Hampshire. GVEGW 52.4

c. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches continues to style itself as an “organization ... made up of believers that Spiritualism is a science, philosophy, and religion based upon the demonstrated facts of communication between this world and the next.” ²⁶ In 1970 it hit its high-water mark in number of churches: 204, with membership at 5,000 adherents. From 1984 through 1989 it reported 142 churches, with 5,558 members, and 142 clergy. ²⁷ GVEGW 52.5

The last-named denomination, the NSAC, is considered by at least one historian of American religion, John P. Dever, as “the orthodox body of American Spiritualism and the most prominent“: GVEGW 53.1

“They maintain a seminary for the training of their ministers. Regular services are held by the churches, and many of the standard religious rituals are observed—singing, praying, etc. This is combined with the practice of mediumship. Camps provide convenient centers for worship, instruction, and practice.” ²⁸ GVEGW 53.2

Continuing, Dever summarizes in these words: GVEGW 53.3

“Although the actual membership of the Spiritualist groups in the United States is much less than 200,000 [in 1981], the groups claimed in 1971 that there were over 1,000,000 believers.” ²⁹ GVEGW 53.4

(The Encyclopedia Americana, on the other hand, listed the high-water mark of organized Spiritualism at a figure in excess of 10 million, based on leadership claims, though it does not specify the year for which this figure was attributed.) ³⁰ GVEGW 53.5

Interestingly, the very existence of descriptive articles in religious dictionaries (such as the Abingdon Dictionary of Living Religions, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, and New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, among others) is itself mute evidence that spiritualism has become part of the mainstream of world religious movements in our twentieth century. Interestingly, the 1988 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica carries not one but two articles on the subject: one deals with spiritualism in philosophy, while the other (which is nearly three times longer) covers spiritualism in religion! GVEGW 53.6

Certainly Ellen White’s prediction that spiritualism would be “clothed in a religious garb” has been amply fulfilled, as also Satan’s twofold purpose in producing this metamorphosis to the religious: (a) “to lull the deceived to greater security” and (b) “to draw the minds of God’s people, if possible, to those things and cause them to doubt the teachings and power of the Holy Ghost.” ³¹ GVEGW 53.7

4. Finally, Ellen White predicted that spiritualism would be linked with “mesmerism” or hypnotism. ³² Says historian Dever, “The Spiritualists draw heavily on the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, Franz Mesmer [the German physician who lived from 1734 to 1815 and popularized hypnosis in his practice], and Andrew Jackson Davis.” ³³ GVEGW 53.8

Swedenborg (1688-1772) can be considered in one sense as a “godfather” to modern spiritualism. Long before its rise, “Swedenborg went into a trancelike state and communed with the spirits, bringing back messages of both practical and religious characters.” ³⁴ GVEGW 54.1

As for Mesmer, Stefan Zweig credits him, in The Three Healers (1931), with “great contributions” to the Spiritualist movement. Another summarized and synthesized it this way: GVEGW 54.2

“Mesmer and his followers found that the mesmeric or hypnotic trance seemed to bring out certain powers that the normal state did not, and they used these in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. It is no great jump from this practice to that of spirit healing by the entranced medium.” ³⁵ GVEGW 54.3