Statement 10: Amalgamation of man and beast

In Spiritual Gifts, volume 3, published in 1864, Ellen White referred to the “amalgamation of man and beast.” “But if there was one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood, it was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of God, and caused confusion everywhere.” Further, “the confused species which God did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood. Since the flood there has been amalgamation of man and beast, as may be seen in the almost endless varieties of species of animals, and in certain races of men” ^{48EGW, Spiritual Gifts, 3:63, 75.} These statements were retained in the edition of 1870, ^{49EGW, The Spirit of Prophecy (Battle Creek, MI: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing/Review and Herald®, 1870-1884), 1:69, 78.} but omitted in 1890 when the same materials were revised for Patriarchs and Prophets.^{50EGW, Patriarchs and Prophets, 81, 82; EGW, Selected Messages, 3:452.}UEGW 188.1

The grammatical construction of these statements, their context, and Ellen White’s other uses of the term amalgamation allow several possible interpretations. Amalgamation of man with beast implies (1) bestiality, a crime for which the Bible required the death of both the human and the animal involved (Lev. 20:15, 16), or could also refer to (2) genetic combination of human and animal genomes to create chimeras. However, contemporary publications also used the term amalgamation to refer to sexual relations between different human races resulting in offspring. ^{51E.g., consider the following in a letter to the prominent scientist Louis Agassiz: “Will not the general practical amalgamation fostered by slavery become more general after its abolition? If so, will not the proportion of mulattoes become greater and that of the pure blacks less?” Letter from Dr. S. G. Howe to Louis Agassiz, Portsmouth, August 3, 1863, in Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence, ed. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1885).} (3) F. D. Nichol^{52See EGW, Spiritual Gifts, 3:53, 54, 60-64; cf. F. D. Nichol, “Amalgamation of Man and Beast,” in Ellen G. White and Her Critics (Washington, DC: Review and Herald®, 1951); available online at http://www.WhiteEstate.org/books/egwhc/EGWHCc20 .html#c20.} (following the lead of George McCready Price) argued for an alternative grammatical reading, “amalgamation of man[,] and [amalgamation of] beast,” referring on the human level to mingling of races of men, specifically, the pre-Flood intermarriage of the righteous descendants of Seth with the “ungodly race of Cain,“ ^{53EGW, Spiritual Gifts, 3:60.} and on the animal level, to (4) the pre Flood production of “confused species” of animals “which God did not create” and which did not survive the Flood, as well as to the post-Flood proliferation of “almost endless varieties of species.” ^{54Ibid., 75.} White’s other uses of amalgamation include (5) the emergence of thorns and thistles (Gen. 3:18); she wrote, “Every noxious herb is of his [Satan’s] sowing, and by his [Satan’s] ingenious methods of amalgamation [malicious genetic engineering of plants] he has corrupted the earth with tares.” ^{55EGW, Manuscript 65, 1899; “Ellen G. White Comments” Gen. 3:18, Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, ed. Francis D. Nichol (Washington, DC: Review and Herald®, 1953), 1:1086; EGW, Selected Messages, 2:288; EGW, Manuscript Releases, 16:247 (undated); Nichol, Ellen G. White and Her Critics, 306-322.} Finally, (6) she uses amalgamation in a moral sense to denote the moral declension of the righteous by association with the wicked. “By union with the world, the character of God’s people becomes tarnished, and through amalgamation with the corrupt, the fine gold becomes dim.” ^{56EGW, Review and Herald, August 23, 1892, par. 3.}UEGW 188.2

The most disturbing aspect of the amalgamation statements is their potentially racial implications. Two years after the first publication of the amalgamation statements, Adventist defectors B. F. Snook and W. H. Brinkerhoff published a pamphlet accusing Ellen White of racism on the basis of the amalgamation statements. ^{57B. F. Snook and Wm. H. Brinkerhoff, The Visions of Mrs. E. G. White Not of God (Cedar Rapids: Cedar Valley Times Book and Job Print, 1866), 9. The Snook and Brinkerhoff pamphlet was apparently released early in 1866 as Uriah Smith began a series responding to it in the June 12, 1866, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald.} “These visions teach that the Negro race is not human.” ^{58Snook and Brinkerhoff, “They Teach Doctrines Contrary to the Bible, Absurd, Inconsistent and Contradictory,” in The Visions of Mrs. E. G. White Not of God, 9; emphasis in original.} Snook and Brinkerhoff’s second allegation was that “she [Ellen White] told it to her husband, and he made it known to Eld. [sic] Ingraham, and he divulged the secret to the writer, that Sister White had seen that God never made the Darkey. “ ^{59Ibid.; emphasis in original.} The second allegation is simply “hearsay” and does not fit the context of her many direct statements in support of different ethnicities and particularly those of African descent.UEGW 188.3

In 1851, thirteen years before she penned the amalgamation statements, she contrasted the “pious slave” who would “rise in triumph and victory and shake off the chains that bound him,” to the “wicked master” who stood under the judgment of God. ^{60EGW, A Sketch of the Christian Experience and Views of Ellen G. White (Saratoga Springs, NY: James White, 1851), 17; reprinted in EGW, Early Writings (Battle Creek, MI: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing, 1882), 35.} In 1858 she passionately defended the full humanity of Africans in bondage: “The tears of the pious bond-men and bond-women, of fathers, mothers and children, brothers and sisters, are all bottled up in heaven. Agony, human agony, is carried from place to place, and bought and sold.” With hot indignation she denounced “professed christians” [sic] who “hold their fellow-men in slavery” and “cruelly oppress from day to day their fellow-men.” ^{61EGW, Spiritual Gifts, 1:191; emphasis supplied. See EGW, Early Writings, 275, 276.}UEGW 189.1

In 1859, she charged Adventists to disregard the Fugitive Slave Law, requiring runaway slaves in nonslave states to be returned to their masters, “whatever the consequences.” ^{62EGW, Testimonies for the Church, 1:201, 202.} She solemnly charged Adventists to remove from church membership any of their number who clung to proslavery views. ^{63Ibid., 1:360.} “The black man’s name is written in the book of life beside the white man’s. All are one in Christ. Birth, station, nationality, or color cannot elevate or degrade men.” ^{64EGW, Manuscript 6, 1891; EGW, Selected Messages, 2:342; EGW, Testimonies for the Church, 7:223.} The hundreds of pages of antislavery writing give strong evidence that, whatever she meant by the two brief enigmatic amalgamation statements, her belief in the full spiritual, moral, and intellectual equality of the Black race with all other humans is beyond question.UEGW 189.2

One common understanding of the term “amalgamation” in nineteenth-century America was interracial marriage or other sexual coupling between Europeans and Africans. ^{65See, e.g., in addition to the already cited letter to Louis Agassiz, John Campbell, Negro- Mania: Being an Examination of the Falsely Assumed Equality of the Various Races of Men (Philadelphia: Campbell and Power, 1851), 11. Note that this work argues against the humanity of African slaves, whereas Howe’s letter seems to assume their humanity, so “amalgamation” was not necessarily a pejorative term.} Some have wondered if she viewed racial intermarriage as the sin so grievous that it brought on the Flood. ^{66There is a rich literature espousing this view around the time Ellen White wrote. See, e.g., Ariel [Buckner H. Payne], The Negro: What Is His Ethnological Status? 2nd ed. (Cincinnati: The Proprietor, 1867), 31.} This interpretation is unsupportable on several grounds. First, she was clear on the full humanity of different ethnicities. Second, she did not oppose interracial marriage on moral or theological grounds. ^{67EGW, Patriarchs and Prophets, 383.} She counseled against interracial marriage on the grounds of the social difficulties it caused in a nineteenth-century postslavery society. ^{68EGW, Selected Messages (1896), 2:343, 344.}UEGW 189.3

Because of the brevity and inherent ambiguity of the amalgamation statements, and the fact that Ellen White never publicly clarified her meaning, several of the interpretations given could be viable. From the perspective of current science, none of these interpretations is unreasonable. Human-animal genetic chimeras are routinely made today in molecular biology labs. ^{69For a spectacular example, see Aideen O’Doherty et al., “An Aneuploid Mouse Strain Carrying Human Chromosome 21 With Down Syndrome Phenotypes,” Science 309, no. 5743 (2005): 2033-2037.} More controversial are chimeras made up of cells from human and animal embryos. ^{70Phillip Karpwicz, Cynthia B. Choen, Derek J. Van der Kooy, “Developing Human-Non- Human Chimeras in Human Stem Cell Research: Ethical Issues and Boundries,” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 15, no. 2 (2005): 107-34; Erika Chueck, “Biologists Seek Consensous on Guidelines for Stem-Cell Research,” Nature 431, no. 7011 (2004): 885; and Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s statement on its decision regarding hybrid embryos. September 5, 2007.} Depraved behavior clearly separates people from God and mars the image of God in man.UEGW 189.4

Ironically, the problem with Ellen White’s amalgamation statements from a scientific perspective is not that they may not be true, but that there are so many ways they could be true that it is difficult to figure out exactly what she may have meant. From a historical and linguistic perspective, Nichol’s interpretation may be most defensible.UEGW 190.1