Born in Zion? The margins of fundamentalism and the definition of Seventh-day Adventism (Walter Martin, Donald Gray Barnhouse)

From its inception, Christianity has struggled with the definition of what is or is not an authentic form of the faith. The question of legitimacy has faced every emerging religious group. From its inception in the nineteenth century, Seventh-day Adventism struggled with the question of whether acknowledgment by other Christian groups was desirable or simply a sign that it had compromised its calling. In the 1950s, following meetings with LeRoy Froom and other Adventist leaders, prominent fundamentalists Donald Gray Barnhouse and Walter Martin declared Adventism a part of the Christian community. Their embrace of Adventism inflamed some members of the fundamentalist community who considered Adventism a "cult" as well as those Adventists who believed that fraternization with fundamentalists threatened their own unique purpose. This work chronicles the development of Adventist doctrine and how those doctrines led to its precarious relationship with those in the Christian community to which they had the most affinity, fundamentalists. Despite the fact that there are still many fundamentalist churches today which consider Adventism to be a cult, the issue no longer dominates the pages of major evangelical journals. Much of the credit for that belongs to those who were persistent enough to reach out a hand to each another in the 1950s and tried to understand what lay on the other side.