CME AT A CROSSROADS
By 1915, The Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelists’ growing pains, evidenced by its substandard status with the American Medical Association and the ever-growing peril of economic disaster for its supporting Seventh-day Adventist Church, motivated the denomination to hold its 1915 Autumn Council in Loma Linda. CME accommodated 150 delegates in a tent city on the present-day site of the Centennial Complex. Busy church administrators began their work at 6 a.m. each day, facing countless growing pains. The denomination not only expanded internationally by establishing the South American and Far Eastern Divisions during these meetings, but had been growing rapidly in America, building new churches and hospitals. To exercise fiscal responsibility, the Council adopted a firm resolution to reduce church indebtedness, an understandable but ominous action from Loma Linda’s perspective. By this time CME had accumulated an astronomical $400,000 debt, which in those days caused the church to experience an apprehensive shudder.
What to do with the School of Medicine dominated these meetings. A subcommittee appointed by the church to study the crisis decided that the only way the denomination could provide the heavy annual subsidies needed to continue the School of Medicine would be to call home a large number of foreign missionaries and to divert their mission subsidy to Loma Linda. Because subcommittee members considered that to be unthinkable, they recommended closing the School of Medicine.
After a painful and almost paralyzing silence, an old, gray-haired brother arose from the front and spoke in a quavering voice. “Brethren, I am bewildered. I can hardly believe my eyes and my ears. What is this I hear you say? We must close this school? …Soon the vote will be taken, but before it is taken, let me say this: You know who I am, George I. Butler. I used to be president of the General Conference, and I think I received more testimonies from the servant of the Lord than any of you, and most of them rebuked me. We were at times urged to do what seemed impossible, but when we went forward by faith, the way opened.”
Then, waving a pamphlet containing Loma Linda co-founder Ellen White’s instructions to establish and operate a medical college in California, he appealed earnestly for faith and confidence in her counsels. Then he added: “Now, Brother Daniells [president of the General Conference] will soon call for a vote. When he does, here is one old hand that will not go up.” Butler held out his quivering arm and added, “This hand has not learned how to vote to close what God says should be open.”
One of the delegates, A. V. Olsen, wrote years later, “I thrust my right hand into my pocket and said to myself: ‘I know another hand that will not go up!’
Some felt strongly that the church should no longer attempt the impossible and should close the School of Medicine. Others suggested that the curriculum should be reduced to the first two years of basic sciences. Students would then be encouraged to complete their medical education elsewhere. Burden and Magan felt strongly that the recently adjusted four-year School of Medicine curriculum should remain intact. Most delegates favored the two-year plan. Feelings ran deep.
Mrs. White had proclaimed that the School must provide a full course of study so that the church's youth would not be forced to attend medical schools that might compromise their beliefs and ideals. The concept of Loma Linda providing only basic sciences originally had been presented to Mrs. White before the College of Medical Evangelists had even been incorporated. Approximately six years earlier, in an interview held on September 23, 1909, Mrs. White had told John Burden about her feelings on the subject: “I felt a heavy burden this morning, when I read over a letter that I found in my room, in which a plan was outlined for having medical students take some work at Loma Linda, but to get the finishing touches of their education from some worldly institution. God forbid that such a plan should be followed.”
While heated discussions continued, four non-delegate women asked to be heard. The group included Dr. Florence Keller, a pioneer surgeon in New Zealand, Josephine Gotzian, a wealthy widow, Mrs. Stephen N. Haskell, a woman of faith and strong belief, and her sister, Mrs. Emma Gray. They urged the Council to continue the School and suggested that the women of the denomination raise the funds with which to build the needed hospital for clinical teaching in Los Angeles; said hospital to be named in the memory of Ellen G. White, who had just recently died. Dr. Magan later reported, "A sacred hush pervaded the room."
The next day, A. G. Daniells, the president of the General Conference reviewed Mrs. White’s position with alarm. “My brethren, I am astounded and I must speak. If I do not say my mind I will be a coward and unworthy of your confidence. Brethren, listen to me. We all profess faith in [Mrs. White’s special gift], but we forget that one of the last things [she] ever wrote was that our young men and women should be given their full training in our own school and should not be forced to go to worldly schools. And here we are, before [she] is hardly cold in her grave, proposing that our young men and women shall only have half of their education from us and then shall be turned loose in these worldly schools. Now, I protest against it. That is all I can do, but I do most earnestly protest it. We can build up this school. We can support it. We can do anything that God wants us to do.”
The women of the church saved what is now Loma Linda University School of Medicine by raising $61,000 to build the 64-bed Ellen G. White Memorial Hospital in East Los Angeles.
To be continued…