Ellen White and Vegetarianism

Chapter 4—The Brighton Camp Meeting: A Transition

While Ellen White was attending the camp meeting at Brighton, near Melbourne, in January 1894, her mind was exercised on the subject of meat-eating, and the overwhelming conviction came to her that from now on meat should find no place in her dietary under any circumstance. So, with characteristic forthrightness, she “absolutely banished meat from my table. It is an understanding that [from now on] whether I am at home or abroad, nothing of this kind is to be used in my family, or come upon my table.” Furthermore, Mrs. White went to the unusual expedient of drawing up and signing a “pledge to my heavenly Father,” in which she “discarded meat as an article of diet.” Said she: “I will not eat flesh myself, or set it before any of my household. I gave orders that the fowls should be sold, and that the money which they brought in should be expended in buying fruit for the table.” ¹ EWV 18.2

Subsequent evidence will show that she kept this pledge. Thus in 1908, just seven years before her death at eighty-seven, Mrs. White declared, “It is many years since I have had meat on my table at home.” ² EWV 18.3