Spotlight on the Center for Adventist Research

Located on the lower level of the James White Library, the Center for Adventist Research boasts a wide range of physical as well as digital Seventh-day Adventist archival materials in the largest collection of any Adventist institution. Something unique about the CAR section from the rest of the James White Library is that its Special Collections include rare, fragile or unusually formatted materials that aren’t able to be circulated. This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing the associate director of CAR, Katharine Van Arsdale, on her experience and a general overview of the history and types of artifacts included in the collection.

Van Arsdale came to her present role in May of last year. Previously, she had worked down the hall as the digital librarian for the Adventist Digital Library, a consortium that includes Andrews University as one of its founding partners. When asked what drew her to her current position, Van Arsdale replied, “I wanted to work with all these different, interesting kinds of material. I wanted to get deep into history, and you get to do both of those things here.” These aforementioned materials may include papers from important Adventist members, as well as “a lot of very rich collections that have to do with Andrews University…and even some actual publications that were written and published by Martin Luther.”

In addition to books, periodicals, audiovisual materials, and photographs, the CAR also contains a museum gallery with the newest feature being a light cabinet used by John Harvey Kellogg in the sanitarium at Battle Creek. Van Arsdale describes it as “a cabinet with a chair inside, where you’re surrounded by a bunch of light bulbs.” This kind of medical equipment has modern-day equivalents, such as the red light therapy that is available in the Wellness Center, which Van Arsdale said, “is some aspect of what they were trying to do 100 years ago at the sanitarium.” Another fitness artifact is the exercise belt, an antiquated workout machine with a fabric belt that goes around the user’s waist. The belt attaches to a motor, which vibrates, functioning as a weight loss machine. Both the light cabinet and exercise belt are connected to the “Adventist Health message and the connections with the sanitarium, where the health message was played out for the public to share ideas about healthful living, eating and practice.” 

Van Arsdale’s own work is mainly driven by what other research is being done, with the most current one being the impact of Seventh-day Adventists on smoking in the United States. She is working with undergraduate researcher Corinna Bevier to explore the premise that “the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Adventist Health Advocacy, particularly in the 20th century, had a really strong impact on the decline of smoking rates in the United States.” 

Van Arsdale and Bevier are researching The Five-day Plan, a 1960s smoking-cessation clinic that was implemented by the Adventist church to help people stop smoking “ right at the point that the United States turned on smoking in 1964, when the Surgeon General put out a report that definitively tied smoking to cancer.” Further investigation points to the fact that “this Adventist-led program was the premier Stop Smoking program…and there is evidence that it truly had a national impact that then moved on and became international.”

Overall, Van Arsdale suggests that “if you are doing any kind of research or have any kind of question about any topic related to Adventism and you're not sure where to get started, you can come to us, and that's what we're here for. We're excited to do the research.” Though materials cannot leave the CAR, Van Arsdale assures that, “it’s always just to protect the material, but it’s here to be used. We'd love to see more people come in through the doors and feel that this place also belongs to them as part of the library.”