I. Allegations of hypocrisy against Ellen White

1. Ex-Adventist preacher, Dudley M. Canright, wrote that Mrs. White "forbade the eating of meat, . . . yet secretly she herself ate meat more or less most of her life."  He also claimed to have seen James and Ellen White eat ham right in the dining room of their own home.
 

2. In 1914 Frances (Fannie) Bolton, a former literary assistant of Ellen White, wrote of two incidents which purported to show Ellen White's inconsistency with respect to meat eating.

a. According to Bolton, when she and others were traveling by train with Ellen White to California, George B. Starr found EGW behind a screen in the restaurant eating big white raw oysters with vinegar, pepper, and salt.

b. On the same trip to California, she claimed, W. C. White came into the train with a great thick piece of bloody beef-steak spread out on a brown paper.  Sarah McEnterfer, her attendant, cooked it on a small oil stove, and everyone ate of it except herself and Marian Davis.

II. Refuting the Charges
 

1. Canright first met James White and embraced the Sabbath from his preaching in 1859. He claimed to have been a guest in the White home. It is possible that he saw pork on their table in the earliest years of their friendship, for Ellen did not receive her first vision regarding the eating of meat and pork until June 6, 1863--four years after Canright and the Whites first became acquainted.

 
2. When W. C. White learned of the 1914 letter of Fannie Bolton, he secured a copy of it and sent it to Elder Starr for comment. Starr replied:

I can only say that I regard it as the most absurdly, untruthful lot of rubbish that I have ever seen or read regarding our dear Sister White. The event simply never occurred. I never saw your mother eat oysters or meat of any kind either in a restaurant or at her own table. Fannie Bolton's statement . . . is a lie of the first order. I never had such an experience and it is too absurd for anyone who ever knew your mother to believe.

I think this entire letter was written by Fannie Bolton in one of her most insane moments [Fannie spent thirteen months as a mental patient in the Kalamazoo State Hospital 1911-1912 and another three and a half months in the same institution in 1924-25; she died in 1926].

When we visited Florida in 1928, Mrs. Starr and I were told that at a camp meeting, Fannie Bolton made a public statement that she had lied about Sister White, and that she repented of it.

3. As for the "bloody beefsteak" episode, W. C. White explained what happened:

There were about 35 of us going from Battle Creek to Oakland in 1884 in two skeleton sleeping cars.

As we approached to the border line between Nevada and California it was found that our provisions were running low. Some of us were able to make good meals out of the dried things that were left in our lunch boxes, but Sister White's appetite failed.

We were in a country where fresh fruit was very expensive and so one morning at a station where our train had stopped for half an hour, I went out and purchased two or three pounds of beefsteak and this was cooked by Sister McEnterfer on an alcohol stove, and most of the members that composed Sister White's party partook of it.

 
4. W. C. White also provides a very helpful and illuminating sidelight into his mother's dietary practices, as well as the White family at large:

When I bought the beefsteak, I reasoned that freshly killed ox from this cattle country, would probably be a healthy animal and that the risk of acquiring disease would be very small. This was eight or nine years before Sister White decided at the time of the Melbourne camp-meeting [1894] to be a teetotaler as regards the eating of flesh foods.

You will find in Sister White's writings several instances where she says flesh meats do not appear on our table, and this was true. During a number of years when on rare occasions a little meat was used, [it] was considered to be an emergency.

III. Chronology of Ellen White's teaching and practice

A. December, 1844

Seventeen-year-old Ellen had her first vision. It was silent concerning the advantages of a vegetarian diet. She was in poor health and weighed but eighty pounds. James White described her condition at that time:

When she had her first vision, she was an emaciated invalid, given up by her friends and physicians to die of consumption . . . Her nervous condition was such that she could not write, and was dependent on one sitting near her at the table to even pour her drink from the cup to the saucer.

B. Autumn of 1848

1. EGW's had the first vision dealing with healthful living--abstaining from the use of tea, coffee, and tobacco.
 

2. At the time the health reform message first came to her, she characterized herself as "weak and feeble, subject to frequent fainting spells." She later wrote:

I have thought for years that I was dependent upon a meat diet for strength . . . It has been very difficult for me to go from one meal to another without suffering from faintness at the stomach, and dizziness of the head . . . I . . . frequently fainted . . . I therefore decided that meat was indispensable in my case . . . I have been troubled every spring with loss of appetite (Spiritual Gifts, IV:153-154 [1864]).

3. To remedy these physical weaknesses, Ellen ate substantial quantities of meat daily. She subsequently referred to herself as "a great meat eater" in those early days (2T 371, 372). "Flesh meat . . . was . . . my principal article of diet" (Letter 83 [July 15], 1901; cited in CD 487).
 

4. The resulting alleviation of faintness was, however, temporary, "for the time, (4SG 153). as she put it and "instead of gaining strength, I grew weaker and weaker. I often fainted from exhaustion" (Letter 83 [July 15], 1901; cited in CD 487)

C. October 21, 1858

The only vision dealing with flesh food prior to 1863--a vision on which she based her rebuke of Brother and Sister A for unduly urging abstinence from pork as a test of church fellowship. However, the vision offered no clue that abstinence from flesh food would result in improved health.

As to the rightness or wrongness of the eating of pork, Ellen White neither condoned nor condemned it. She did say that if this position were the mind of God, He would, in His own time, "teach His church their duty" (1T 206, 207).

D. June 6, 1863:

1. Her first comprehensive health reform vision regarding the use of flesh food was given. God's people urged to abstain from flesh food in general and swine's flesh in particular.
 

2. Ellen White characterized this first comprehensive health reform vision as "great light from the Lord," adding, "I did not seek this light; I did not study to obtain it; it was given to me by the Lord to give to others" (Manuscript 29, 1897; cited in CD 493 #24).
 

3. Expanding on this theme on another occasion, she added:

The Lord presented a general plan before me. I was shown that God would give to His commandment-keeping people a reform diet, and that as they received this, their disease and suffering would be greatly lessened. I was shown that this work would progress (General Conference Bulletin, April 12, 1901; cited in CD 481, 482).

4. EGW's personal response was prompt and positive:

"I accepted the light on health reform as it came to me . . ." (Manuscript 50, 1904; cited in CD 482, #3). "I at once cut meat out of my bill of fare;" (Letter 83 [July 15], 1901; cited in CD 487, #10) indeed, she says, "I broke away from everything at once,--from meat and butter, and from [eating] three meals [a day]" (2T 371). And the result? "My former faint and dizzy feelings have left me," as well as the problem of loss of appetite in the springtime." (4SG 154).

5. At the age of eighty-two she could declare, "I have better health today, notwithstanding my age, than I had in my younger days" (9T 159; cited in CD 482).
 

6. All of this did not come without a struggle. In 1870, in recounting this struggle, she said:

I suffered keen hunger. I was a great meat eater. But when faint, I placed my arms across my stomach, and said: "I will not taste a morsel. I will eat simple food, or I will not eat at all" . . . When I made these changes I had a special battle to fight (2T 371, 372).

7. The very next year, after the 1863 health reform vision, she could report, "I have left the use of meat" (4SG 153). And five years later, in a letter to her son, Edson, in which she urged him and his family to "show true principle" in faithfulness in health reform, she assured him that she was also practicing what she preached:

We had in diet been strict to follow the light the Lord has given us . . . We have advised you not to eat butter or meat. We have not had it on our table. (Letter 5, May 25, 1869)

8. In 1870, the Whites continued to progress in the same direction.

I have not changed my course a particle since I adopted the health reform. I have not taken one step back since the light from heaven upon this subject first shone upon my pathway.  I broke away from everything at once (2T 371).

9. There were occasional exceptions to a habitual pattern of vegetarianism.  In 1890 she stated: "When I could not obtain the food I needed, I have sometimes eaten a little meat," but even here "I am becoming more and more afraid of it" (Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 117, 118 (1890); cited in CD 394).  And eleven years later (1901) she openly admitted that "I was at times . . . compelled to eat a little meat" (Letter 83, July 15, 1901; cited in CD 487).

IV. Encountering difficulties and Resulting Compromise
 

Principal categories in which Ellen White felt obligated to depart temporarily from vegetarianism.
 

A. Travel.

1. As itinerant preachers in a new and growing "advent movement," James and Ellen White were continually on the move in a heavy travel schedule that would not let up for Ellen even after her husband's death in 1881.
 

2. Travel in the latter half of the nineteenth century lacked the comforts and conveniences of today--comfortable hotels/motels, restaurants or fast food outlets with a wide choice of menus, etc. Even if these things had been available, the whites couldn't have afforded them. Under such circumstances, it was difficult, and sometimes impossible, to follow a strictly vegetarian diet, particularly when two related types of situations were taken into account:

a. When the Whites traveled, they were largely dependent upon the hospitality of fellow church members. These people were usually poor, their diet consisting almost entirely of flesh food. Fruits and vegetables, even when available, could be had only seasonally.

b. There were also times when one or both of the Whites spent time in isolated and remote geographical regions, such as the mountains of Colorado, where one had to "live off the land"; they had to learn to hunt and fish, or else go hungry.

c. The following excerpts from Ellen White's diary for September and October of 1873, when they were stranded in the mountains with little provisions, illustrate this.

September 22: Willie started over the Range today to either get supplies or get the axletree of the wagon Walling is making. We cannot either move on or return to our home at the Mills without our wagon is repaired. (sic) There is very poor feed for the horses. Their grain is being used up. The nights are cold. Our stock of provisions is fast decreasing.

September 28: Brother Clover left the camp today to go for supplies. We are getting short of provisions . . . . A young man from Nova Scotia had come in from hunting. He had a quarter of deer. He had traveled twenty miles with this deer upon his back . . . . He gave us a small piece of the meat, which we made into broth. Willie shot a duck which came in a time of need, for our supplies were rapidly diminishing (Manuscript 11, 1873).

October 5: The sun shines so pleasantly, but no relief comes to us. Our provisions have been very low for some days. Many of our supplies have gone--no butter, no sauce of any kind, no corn meal or graham flour. We have a little fine flour and that is all. We expected supplies three days ago certainly, but none has come. Willie went to the lake for water. We heard his gun and found he had shot two ducks. This is really a blessing, for we need something to live on (Manuscript 12, 1873).

B. Poverty of Some Members:

1. Poverty made vegetarianism difficult, if not impossible for many Seventh-day Adventists in the nineteenth century. For example, on Christmas Day, 1878, the Whites, then living in Denison, Texas, invited a destitute Adventist family to join them for Christmas breakfast. The meal included "a quarter of venison cooked, and stuffing. It was as tender as chicken. We all enjoyed it very much. There is plenty of venison in the market." Mrs. White then wrote, "I have not seen in years so much poverty as I have seen since I have come to Texas" (Letter 63, Dec. 26, 1878).
 

2. Ellen White served as a "missionary" to Australia from 1891 to 1900. In 1895, she wrote to Elder A. O. Tait concerning local conditions. The letter reveals her broad humanitarian spirit:

I have been passing through an experience in this country that is similar to the experience I had in new fields in America [in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century]. I have seen families whose circumstances would not permit them to furnish their table with healthful food. Unbelieving neighbors have sent them in portions of meat from animals recently killed. They have made soup of the meat, and supplied their large families of children with meals of bread and soup. It was not my duty, nor did I think it was the duty of anyone else, to lecture them upon the evils of meat eating. I feel sincere pity for families who have newly come to the faith, and who are so pressed with poverty that they know not from whence their next meal is coming. (Letter 76 June 6, 1895)

C. Transition with a new cook:

1. Another exigency in Ellen White's household, which might require a temporary departure from her normally vegetarian dietary, was the hiring of a new cook who did not know how to prepare vegetarian meals. Until the new cook could be trained to prepare such dishes, diners at Ellen White's table had to eat what the new cook knew how to prepare, and this probably included meat.
 

2. A letter by W. C. White, written in 1935, is illuminating:

Sister White was not a cook, nor was she a food expert in the technical ways which come from study and experimentation. Often she had serious arguments with her cook. She was not always able to keep the cook which she had carefully indoctrinated into the vegetarian ideas.

Those she employed were always intelligent young people. As they would marry and leave her, she was obliged to get new cooks who were untrained in vegetarian cookery. In those days we had no schools as we have now, where our young ladies could learn the system of vegetarian cookery. Therefore, mother was obliged with all her other cares and duties to spend considerable effort in persuading her cooks that they could do without meat, or soda, and baking power and other things condemned in her testimonies. Often times our table showed some compromises between the standard which Sister White was aiming at and the knowledge and experience and standard of the new cook (Cited by Arthur L. White in a letter to Anna Frazier, Dec. 18, 1935).

D. Therapeutic Use in Medical Emergencies.

1. Another category of situation in which Ellen White might depart from a vegetarian pattern of eating was in cases of medical emergency, in which meat might temporarily serve therapeutic purposes. In 1874, in a letter to her son, W. C. White, Mrs. White made mention of an interesting exception to the vegetarian regimen then in vogue in the White household:

Your father and I have dropped milk, cream, butter, sugar and meat entirely since we came to California . . . Your father bought meat once for May [Walling] while she was sick, but not one penny have we expended on meat since. (Letter 12, Feb. 15, 1874)

2. Ellen White was not a fanatic on the meat-eating question. In a Youth's Instructor article published in 1894, she declared:

A meat diet is not the most wholesome of diets, and yet I would [not] take the position that meat should be discarded by every one. Those who have feeble digestive organs can often use meat when they cannot eat vegetables, fruit, or porridge (Youth's Instructor, May 31, 1894; cited in CD 394, 395).

3. Due to a typographical error the second not in the first sentence of the foregoing excerpt was omitted. This omission was rectified, when Elder O. A. Tait wrote to ask Mrs. White to clarify what she meant. She then went on to amplify her position on the meat question, saying:

I have never felt that it was my duty to say that no one should taste of meat under any circumstances. To say this when the people have been educated to live on flesh to so great an extent [in Australia, in 1894] would be carrying matters to extremes. I have never felt that it was my duty to make sweeping assertions. What I have said I have said under a sense of duty, but I have been guarded in my statements, because I did not want to give occasion for any one to be a conscience of another. (Letter 76, June 6, 1895)

4. In dealing with certain illnesses, and in particular terminal cases, Mrs. White took a sensible position:

In certain cases of illness or exhaustion it may be thought best to use some meat, but great care should be taken to secure the flesh of healthy animals. It has become a very serious question whether it is safe to use flesh food at all in this age of the world. It would be better never to eat meat than to use the flesh of animals that are not healthy. (CTBH 117, 118, 1890; cited in CD 394)

5. To physicians at Adventist sanitariums in 1896, Ellen White cautioned:

You are to make no prescriptions that flesh meats shall never be used, but you are to educate the mind, and let the light shine in. Let the individual conscience be awakened in regard to self-preservation and self-purity from every perverted appetite . . . . The change should not be urged to be made abruptly, especially for those who are taxed with continuous labor. Let the conscience be educated, the will energized, and the change can be made much more readily and willingly. (Letter 54, July 10, 1896; cited in CD 291, 292)

6. Mrs. White pointed out that "consumptives who are going steadily down to the grave" and "persons with tumors running their life away" should not be burdened about the meat question; and physicians should "be careful to make no stringent resolution in regard to this matter." (Letter 54, July 10, 1896; cited in CD 291, 292)
 

7. Responding to an inquiry from a physician about whether chicken broth might be appropriate for one suffering from acute nausea and unable to keep anything on the stomach, Mrs. White wrote: "There are persons dying of consumption who, if they ask for chicken broth, should have it. But I would be very careful." (Letter 231, (July 11), 1905; cited in CD 292)

V. 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" (Letter 76 June 6, 1895).

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" (Letter 50 (Feb. 5), 1908; cited in CD 492).

VI. The Question of Fish and Shellfish

A. Eating Fish

1. While Mrs. White gave up meat-eating in 1894, she did not at the same time give up the eating of fish, although the evidence seems fairly clear that she discontinued even the use of this article of diet before the end of the 1890s. What is Ellen White's position relative to what today's church considers to be "unclean" shellfish?

2. In 1882, Ellen White wrote a letter to her daughter-in-law, Mary Kelsey White, who was living with husband in Oakland, California. In this letter she included a "shopping list" of things to bring on their next visit to her home. Concerning certain items on this list, she said:

If you can get a good box of herrings--fresh ones--please do so. The last ones that Willie got are bitter and old . . . . If you can get a few cans of good oysters, get them (Letter 16, May 31, 1882).

B. The Levitical distinction between clean and unclean

As for the Levitical distinction between "clean" and "unclean," there is evidence that Ellen White drew a distinction between "clean" animal flesh food, which she calls "meat," and "clean" fish.

1. When Ellen White took the no-meat pledge, she did not mean she had given up the eating of fish. The distinction she made respecting meat and fish is made abundantly clear in her correspondence.  In 1876, for instance, Mrs. White wrote her husband who was traveling, "We have not had a particle of meat in the house since you left and long before you left. We have had salmon a few times. It has been rather high" (Letter 13, April 24, 1876).
 

2. When Ellen White signed the no-meat pledge at the Brighton camp meeting, she obviously did not include "clean" fish, for the next year, in a letter to A. O. Tait, she remarked that "we seldom have any fish upon our table," and she went on to give in detail her reason for decreasing consumption of this article of food.

In many localities even fish is unwholesome, and ought not be used. This is especially so where fish come in contact with sewage of large cities . . . . These fish that partake of the filthy sewerage of the drains may pass into waters far distant from the sewerage, and be caught in localities where the water is pure and fresh; but because of the unwholesome drainage in which they have been feeding, they are not safe to eat. (Letter 76, June 6, 1895)

3. In spite of this possible danger, there were circumstances in Australia, in the mid-1890s when Mrs. White recognized that it was proper, even necessary, to include fish in the daily menu. Thus in a letter to her son, W. C. White, in 1895, she wrote concerning the problem in feeding the workmen then building Avondale College.

We cannot feed them all, but will you please get us dried codfish and dried fish of any description,--nothing canned? This will give a good relish to the food. (Letter 149, Aug. 6, 1895)

4. In 1896, Mrs. White wrote to a non-Adventist niece, Mrs. Mary Watson (nee Clough), who at one time served her as a literary assistant, and said, referring to her Brighton "pledge":

Two years ago I came to the conclusion that there was danger in using the flesh of dead animals, and since then I have not used meat at all. It is never placed on my table. I use fish when I can get it. We get beautiful fish from the salt water lake near here. I use neither tea nor coffee. As I labor against these things, I cannot but practice that which I know to be best for my health, and my family are all in perfect harmony with me. You see, my dear niece, that I am telling you matters just as they are (Letter 128, July 9, 1896).

5. But by 1896, Mrs. White had concluded that the flesh of fish as well as the flesh of animals was no longer safe to eat and hence should not be served at the new Adventist sanitarium in Sydney. Taking issue with three sanitarium physicians who were prescribing a meat diet for their patients, Mrs. White surveyed the history of the question in a letter to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg:

Years ago the light was given me that the position [at that time] should not be taken positively to discard all meat . . . . [But] I present the word of the Lord God of Israel . . . [that] meat eating [now] should not come into prescriptions for any invalids from any physician [in our institutions] . . . . [because] disease in cattle is making meat eating a dangerous matter. The Lord's curse is upon the earth, upon man, upon beast, upon the fish in the sea, and as transgression becomes almost universal the curse will be permitted to become as broad and as deep as the transgression. Disease is contracted by the use of meat . . . .

The Lord would bring His people into a position where they will not touch or taste the flesh of dead animals. Then let not these things be prescribed by any physician who has a knowledge of the truth for this time. There is no safety in eating of the flesh of dead animals, and in a short time the milk of the cows will also be excluded from the diet of God's commandment-keeping people. In a short time it will not be safe to use anything that comes from the animal creation . . . .

We cannot now do as we have ventured to do in the past in regard to meat-eating . . . The disease upon animals is becoming more and more common, and our only safety is in leaving meat entirely alone (Letter 59 July 26, 1898).

6. Here Ellen White indicates that fish as well as meat should not be prescribed in Adventist health institutions. By 1905 it appears she was as afraid of fish as earlier she had been of meat; for in writing the chapter on "Flesh as Food" for Ministry of Healing, she stated:

In many places fish become so contaminated by the filth on which they feed as to be a cause of disease. This is especially the case where the fish come in contact with the sewage of large cities . . . .Thus when used as food they bring disease and death on those who do not suspect the danger (MH314, 315).

VII. The Allegation of Hypocrisy

A. A matter of definition

Was Ellen White a "hypocrite" for urging Seventh-day Adventists to follow vegetarianism, beginning in 1863, while on the other hand she "secretly" ate flesh foods for the next three decades and more?  Let us begin by letting Ellen White define the terms: vegetarian and principle.
 

As has already been noted, from W. C. White's letter to George B. Starr in 1933, "For years the White family had been vegetarians, but not "teetotalers." An interesting and even more illuminating distinction is revealed in a letter Mrs. White wrote in 1894 to Mrs. M. M. J. O'Kavanagh, a non-Adventist active in the cause of temperance in Australia, who had inquired about the position of Adventists as "total abstainers":

I am happy to assure you that as a denomination we are in the fullest sense total abstainers from the use of spirituous liquors, wine, beer, [fermented] cider, and also tobacco and all other narcotics . . . . All are vegetarians, many abstaining wholly from the use of flesh food, while others use it in only the most moderate degree (Letter 99, Jan. 8, 1894).
 

This statement makes it clear that, for Ellen White, the term vegetarian applied to those who habitually abstained from eating flesh food, yet were not necessarily total abstainers. As for the term principle, Ellen White frequently used it in her writings in connection with health reform. In 1904, at the age of seventy-six, she reported that she was experiencing better health than "I had in my younger days," and she attributed this improvement in health to "the principles of health reform" (Manuscript 50, 1904; cited CD 482 #3).

B. Ellen White's emphasis upon "acting from principle"

1. The following are further examples of her use of the term principle. In 1897, she wrote, "I present these matters [health reform] before the people, dwelling upon general principles" (Manuscript 29, 1897; cited in CD 493 #24).  In 1870, speaking of her response to the health reform vision of 1863, she said,

I left off these things from principle. I took my stand on health reform from principle . . . I moved out from principle, not from impulse. I have advanced nothing but what I stand to today" (2T 372).

2. In 1908 she added:

It is reported by some that I have not lived up to the principles of health reform, as I have advocated them with my pen. But I can say that so far as my knowledge goes, I have not departed from those principles (Letter 50, Feb. 5, 1908; cited in CD 491, 492, #23).

3. The next year (1909), with criticism still persisting, she again defended herself:

It is reported by some that I have not followed the principles of health reform as I have advocated them with my pen; but I can say that I have been a faithful health reformer. Those who have been members of my family know that this is true (9T 159).

4. The accusation by the critics is apparently based on the facile assumption that Mrs. White considered vegetarianism a "principle." That she did not will now be made clear.
 

5. In his book A Prophet Among You, T. Housel Jemison offers three principles of hermeneutics for the interpretation of inspired writings. In the third one, he says in effect: Every prophet, speaking in his or her professional capacity as a prophet, in the giving of counsel, is doing one of two things; either he or she is (1) enunciating a principle, or (2) applying a principle in a policy statement. Therefore he concludes, "One should try to discover the principle involved in any specific counsel" (T. Housel Jemison, A Prophet Among You, 1955, p. 445).
 

6. A principle is generally defined as "a basic truth or a general law or doctrine that is used as a basis of reasoning or a guide to action or behavior" (Oxford American Dictionary, 1980 edition).  Principles, therefore, are unchanging, unvarying rules of human conduct.  Principles never change.  A policy, on the other hand, is the application of a principle to some immediate, contextual situation.  Policies may change, as the circumstances which call them forth may change.
 

7. That vegetarianism was not a principle with Ellen White is clear from her statement that:

I have never felt that it was my duty to say that no one should taste meat under any circumstance. To say this . . . would be carrying matters to extremes. I have never felt that it was my duty to make sweeping assertions (Letter 76, June 6, 1895).

8. This was doubtless one of the main reasons Mrs. White refused to go along with the idea of making vegetarianism a test of church fellowship promoted by some of her brethren (9T 159). On the contrary, while recognizing that "swine's flesh was prohibited by Jesus Christ enshrouded in the billowy cloud" during the Exodus, Ellen White stated emphatically in 1889 that even the eating of pork "is not a test question" (Manuscript 15, 1889).  Writing to Adventist colporteurs in the same manuscript, she said: "I advise every Sabbath keeping canvasser to avoid meat eating, not because it is regarded as a sin to eat meat, but because it is not healthful."
 

9. It is obvious that vegetarianism was not a principle with Christ or with the patriarchs or prophets of Scripture, for they all ate flesh meats. The Passover required the eating of lamb, and this by divine direction. Christ and His disciples ate fish from Galilee more than once, and in so doing, none of them violated principle, and none of them thereby committed sin.
 

10. Vegetarianism for Ellen White was a policy, based upon at least two principles: (1) "Preserve the best health" (YI, May 31, 1894; cited in CD 395) and (2) "eat that food which is most nourishing," (9T 163) doing the very best possible, under every immediate circumstance, to promote life, health, and strength.
 

Now Ellen White did apply those principles in an inspired policy statement governing "countries where there are fruits, grains, and nuts in abundance." In such places, she said quite clearly, "Flesh food is not the right food for God's people" (9T 159).

VIII. Ellen White Not Our Criterion

1. One of the most sensible things Ellen White ever wrote on the subject of health reform was the following:

Those who understand the laws of health and who are governed by principle, will shun the extremes, both of indulgence and of restrictions. Their diet is chosen, not for the mere gratification of appetite, but for the upbuilding of the body. They seek to preserve every power in the best condition for the highest service to God and man . . . .

There is a real common sense in dietetic reform. The subject should be studied broadly and deeply, and no one should criticize others because their practice is not, in all things, in harmony with his own. It is impossible [in matters of diet] to make an unvarying rule to regulate everyone's habits, and no one should think himself a criterion for all (MH 319, 320)

 
2. Not only did Ellen White not wish to be a criterion for church members, but neither did she wish to be a criterion for the members of her immediate family ("I do not hold myself up as a criterion for them" (Letter 127, Jan. 18, 1904; cited in CD 491 #22).

 
3. Just prior to the opening of the 1901 General Conference Session, Ellen White met with a handful of denominational leaders in the library of Battle Creek College, where she spoke concerning those who made her their criterion in their dietary practice. Here are her remarks as recorded by Clarence C. Crisler, her secretary:

How it has hurt me to have the [roadblocks thrown in the way in regard to myself].

They will tell [you] . . . "Sister White ate cheese, and therefore we are all at liberty to eat cheese."

Well, who told them I ate cheese? . . . I never have cheese on my table.

There was but . . . one or two times I have tasted cheese [since I gave it up]. That is a different thing from making it a diet, [an] entirely different thing . . . .

But there was a special occasion in Minneapolis where . . . I could get nothing, and there were some little bits of cheese cut up on the table, and the brethren were there, and one of them had told me, "If you eat a little of that cheese, it will change the condition, and I did. I took a bit of that cheese. I do not think that I touched it again the second time . . . .

Sister White has not had meat in her house or cooked it in any line, or any dead flesh, for years and years.

And here is [what] the health reform [fanatic says:] "Now I have told you Sister White did not eat meat. Now I want you not to eat meat, because Sister White does not eat it."

Well, I would . . . not care a farthing for anything like that. If you have not got any better conviction--you won't eat meat because Sister White does not eat any--if I am the authority, I would not give a farthing for your health reform.

What I want [is] that every one of you should stand in your individual dignity before God, in your individual consecration to God, that the soul-temple shall be dedicated to God. "Whosoever defileth the temple of God, him will God destroy." Now I want you to think of these things, and do not make any human being your criterion. (Manuscript 43a, 1901)

IX. The Importance of Historical Perspective

1. Ellen White needs to be considered against the backdrop of her times, not ours. Conditions in her times were quite different from those that obtain today.

Many household conveniences which we take for granted, such as refrigerators and food freezers for preserving fruits, vegetables, and other perishable foods, were virtually unknown in her time. In her day fruits and vegetables were available only in season. For much of the year fresh produce simply was not available, so that one either ate meat, or he didn't eat at all.  Meat eating was, therefore, more common in Ellen White's time than in ours -- at least in today's more developed countries.
 

2. Something else worth remembering is that Ellen White never took away flesh food as an article of diet from anyone until there first was an adequate nutritional substitute available to take its place (MH 316, 317). The dry cereal breakfast foods were not developed and marketed until the mid 1890s. Peanut butter, another excellent source of protein, also was not invented until the mid 1890s (Richard William Schwarz, John Harvey Kellogg: American Health Reformer, p. 283). So there was often more reason, because of greater need, for people in her day to eat meat than there is for most of us in our day.

Conclusion

Ellen White had to face accusations against her integrity in her own lifetime. Similar charges against her today are neither new nor startling, when one examines the facts. Shortly after the turn of the century, she was accused of hypocrisy in publicly advocating vegetarianism to her fellow church members while she continued secretly to follow a flesh diet. Such charges are unjustified and without foundation.
 

To gain a proper understanding of the charges leveled against Ellen White's integrity, one must view them from the broader perspective of Satan's latter day objectives and methodology as revealed to Ellen White in 1890. She declared that Satan's "very last deception" would be to destroy her credibility, and create a "satanic" hatred against her writings. (ISM 48)
 

The case against Ellen white's integrity, as far as research has revealed to date, is still as unfounded and unproven as it was during the lifetime of the prophet.
 
 

[Much of this lecture is based on Roger Coon, Ellen G. White and Vegetarianism: Did she practice what she preached? (Pacific Press, 1986).]