The Fuehrerprinzip of the Seventh-day Adventist Church

"The Seventh-day Adventist Church follows a model of organizational order in the church which is modified from the orders of Roman Catholicism, but it retains the same notions of clerical order which separates the members of the Church into two classes--clergy and laity." (Douglas Devnich, president of the Canadian Union of Seventh-day Adventists, in the Messenger (Official Journal of the Canadian Union Conference), December, 1993, p 2).

"At the local conference level the Seventh-day Adventist church has a representative form of government, above that level the polity of the Seventh-day Adventist is hierarchical: authority flows downward and members in local congregations have virtually no voice.... the Seventh-day Adventist church is a closed, self-operating, and self-perpetuating system, similar to the Roman Catholic church, in which those in authority are not responsible to lower echelons. Above the local conference level, those in authority are not elected by, representative of, or administratively accountable to, local congregations or the membership at large." (Raymond F. Cottrell, former Associate Editor of the Adventist Review and the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, in Spectrum (Journal of Association of Adventist Forums), vol 14, #4, March, 1984, p 42).

"...There is another universal and truly catholic organization, the Seventh-day Adventist Church." (Neal C. Wilson, General Conference President of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, in Adventist Review, March 5, 1981, p 3).

"The plain and undeniable fact is that the Seventh-day Adventist church is most assuredly not a ‘congregational’ one (although it contains elements of congregationalism) but is clearly of the...‘hierarchical’ variety." (Neal C. Wilson, Court Transcript of United States vs. the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission vs. the Pacific Press Publishing Association and the General Conference, Reply Brief for Defendants, Civil Case #74-2025 CBR, parentheses in original).

"...The structure of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is essentially hierarchical...The pyramid of church organization maintains equilibrium and sustains growth..." (Walter Scragg, President of the South Pacific Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, in the Record, June 23, 1990, p 4-5).

"The Seventh-day Adventist Church...maintains ...a hierarchical structure of church authority." (Neal C. Wilson, in the Court Transcript of the United States Secretary of Labor vs. Pacific Union Conference and General Conference of Seventh-day Adventist Church, Case CV 75-3032-R, presided over by Judge Manuel L. Real, February 6, 1976).

"...The church governs by a method of organization...which embraces exactly, from a legal standpoint, the same kind of organization (in opposition to ‘congregationalism’) as is embraced by the term ‘hierarchical’." (Neal C. Wilson, Court Transcript of United States vs. the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission vs. the Pacific Press Publishing Association and the General Conference, Reply Brief for Defendants, Civil Case #74-2025, p 29, parenthesis in original).

"Although it is true that there was a period in the life of the Seventh-day Adventist Church when the denomination took a distinctly anti-Roman Catholic viewpoint, and the term ‘hierarchy’ was used in a pejorative sense to refer to the papal form of church governance, that attitude on the church's part was nothing more than a manifestation of widespread anti-popery among conservative Protestant denominations in the early part of this century and the latter part of the last, and which has now been consigned to the historical trash heap so far as the Seventh-day Adventist Church is concerned." (Neal C. Wilson, past president of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference, Court Transcript of United States vs the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission vs the Pacific Press Publishing Association and the General Conference, Reply Brief for Defendants, p 4, Civil Case #74-2025 CBR, presided over by Judge Charles B. Renfrew, U.S. District Court, San Francisco, California, 1974-1975.)

Likewise, the similarities between the papal and Adventist hierarchies should be compared to the Fuehrerprinzip (Fuehrer Principle) of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.