The Remnant and the Republic
Prophetic identity, public witness, and the challenge of Christian nationalism

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, the Seventh-day Adventist Church confronts a critical question: How should we express our prophetic understanding of church-state relations amid deep political polarization and growing religious populism?

Join scholars, pastors, students, church leaders, and members as we explore Adventism’s historical and contemporary relationship with the political realm. 

Speakers include best-selling authors and experts, as well as Adventist scholars and leaders. Together, through the lens of theology, history, and social and political analysis, we will seek clearer ways to live out Adventism’s distinctive calling in the local church and beyond.

Who should attend
Pastors, Educators, Students, Church Leaders, and Members.

Event Speakers

Katherine Stewart is a journalist and author who has covered the rise of anti-democratic movements for more than 16 years. Her most recent book, Money, Lies, and God (2025), is a New York Times bestseller. Her previous book, The Power Worshippers (2020), won major nonfiction honors and inspired the documentary feature God & Country, for which she served as executive producer. Her earlier book, The Good News Club (2012), examined efforts by the religious right to influence public education. Stewart’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Religion News Service, and other outlets. She writes on Substack at katherinestewartbooks.

Matthew D. Taylor is an award-winning author, public scholar, and speaker focused on religion, politics, and democracy in the United States. A theologian and religious studies scholar specializing in American Islam, Christian nationalism, and Christian extremism, he is the author of Scripture People (2023), The Violent Take It by Force (2024), and the forthcoming Defying Tyrants (2026). His work has appeared or been featured in The New York Times, CNN, Weekend Edition, On the Media, Rolling Stone, The Bulwark, Politico, Sojourners, and Religion News Service. He is also the creator of the limited podcast series American Unexceptionalism and Charismatic Revival Fury. Taylor holds a PhD from Georgetown University and an MA from Fuller Theological Seminary, and serves as a visiting scholar at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University.

Randall Balmer is a prize-winning historian, Emmy Award nominee, and public scholar of American religion. He holds the John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth and previously taught American religious history at Columbia University for twenty-seven years. The author of more than a dozen books, his work includes Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory (1989), God in the White House (2008), Redeemer (2014), Bad Faith (2021), and America’s Best Idea (2025), a New York Times bestseller. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation, Christian Century, and other publications, and he is a frequent commentator on religion in American public life. Balmer has also written and hosted documentaries for PBS, served as an expert witness in First Amendment cases, and received the 2024 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion.

Dwight K. Nelson is a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, evangelist, author, and speaker. He served as senior pastor of Pioneer Memorial Church on the campus of Andrews University from 1983 to 2023, following ten years of pastoral ministry in Oregon. A graduate of Southern Missionary College, now Southern Adventist University, he earned his MDiv and DMin from Andrews University’s Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. Nelson has served as speaker for the weekly television program New Perceptions, hosted The Evidence, and taught homiletics as an adjunct instructor at the seminary. His books include Outrageous Grace (1998), The Eleventh Commandment (2001), Pursuing the Passion of Jesus (2005), and American Apocalypse (2021), a study of America, biblical prophecy, and religious liberty.

Maury Damon Jackson is a scholar, speaker, and ordained Adventist minister, whose work focuses on practical theology, preaching, pastoral ministry, ethics, and public theology. He is Associate Professor of Practical Theology at La Sierra University’s HMS Richards Divinity School and Coordinator for Philosophical Studies. His academic credentials include a DMin from Claremont School of Theology, an MA in Philosophy from California State University, Los Angeles, an MDiv from Andrews University Theological Seminary, and a BA in Religion from La Sierra University. Jackson’s research and writing address the church’s pastoral vocation in public life, including reconciliation in communities affected by racism and other forms of social division. His publications include peer-reviewed and popular essays on homiletics, racial rhetoric, Adventist history, public discourse, and moral theology. He is coeditor of A House on Fire (2022).

Warren Throckmorton is an author and speaker specializing in psychology, history, and the political uses of American religious history. A retired psychology professor at Grove City College, he is the author of The Christian Past That Wasn’t (2026) and coauthor with Michael Coulter of Getting Jefferson Right (2012; updated 2023). His fact-checking of David Barton’s claims about Thomas Jefferson played a key role in the 2012 withdrawal of Barton’s bestselling The Jefferson Lies (2012). Throckmorton also wrote, produced, and hosted the podcast series Telling Jefferson Lies, which explores Christian nationalism, church-state separation, and the misuse of history. His writing has appeared in Salon, HuffPost, The Daily Beast, Christianity Today, Religion Dispatches, and other outlets, and he has appeared on CNN, NPR, and the Holy Post podcast.

Elesha Coffman is a historian of American religion and intellectual life and Professor of History at Baylor University. Her books include The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (2013), Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith (2021), and Turning Points in American Church History (2024). She holds a PhD and MA from Duke University and a BA, summa cum laude, from Wheaton College. Coffman previously taught at Waynesburg University and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary and spent a year as a research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion. She edits Fides et Historia and serves as president-elect of the American Society of Church History.

Jeffrey Rosario is a historian, writer, teacher, and Assistant Professor of Religion at Loma Linda University. His research explores the intersection of religion and politics, with particular attention to theology, biblical apocalypticism, Christian nationalism, American empire, and political dissent. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Religion from Yale University, with a concentration in the history of Christianity. His current book project, tentatively titled Unveiling the Beast, examines Adventist anti-imperial dissent and the apocalyptic challenge to Christian nationalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Rosario’s writing has appeared in Diplomatic History, The Oxford Handbook of Seventh-day Adventism (2024), TIME, and The Washington Post. He has also taught and spoken widely in academic, church, and ministry settings, including through Light Bearers ministry.

Kevin M. Burton is a historian of American religion whose work examines minority religions and evangelicalism in the antebellum United States, with particular attention to politics, race, gender, abolitionism, and apocalyptic thought. He is Director of the Center for Adventist Research at Andrews University and teaches church history at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. Burton earned his PhD in Religion from Florida State University in 2023, where he defended his dissertation with distinction. His first book, Apocalyptic Abolitionism (2026), examines how apocalyptic belief helped drive abolitionism and other reform movements in nineteenth-century America. His work has appeared in academic articles, book reviews, encyclopedia entries, and The Oxford Handbook of Seventh-day Adventism (2024). He received the Porterfield Prize in 2022 and was selected for the Young Scholars in American Religion program in 2024.

Douglas Morgan is a historian of Adventism, American religion, and the public role of religious movements. A longtime faculty member at Washington Adventist University, he previously taught at Southern Adventist University and served as chair of WAU’s Department of History and Political Studies. He holds a PhD in History of Christianity and an MA in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Theology from Union College. His books include Adventism and the American Republic (2001), with a foreword by Martin E. Marty; Lewis C. Sheafe (2010); and Change Agents (2020). He also contributed to Ellen Harmon White (2014) and serves as assistant editor for North America for the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. His work has focused especially on religious liberty, Adventism and American public life, race, reform, and the struggle for racial justice within Seventh-day Adventism.

Michael W. Campbell is a Seventh-day Adventist historian, ordained minister, educator, and Director of Archives, Statistics, and Research for the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists. Before joining the NAD, he spent a decade in higher education in Texas and the Philippines, including service as professor of religion at Southwestern Adventist University and associate professor of Historical/Theological Studies at the Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies. He is coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Seventh-day Adventism (2024) and coauthor, with Edward Martin Allen, of A Global History of Seventh-day Adventists (2026), a broad survey of Adventism’s development from nineteenth-century North America into a global church. Campbell has organized and collaborated on research conferences within and beyond the denomination, including conferences on women in Adventist history, creation care, the development of beliefs and creeds, and anti-creedalism in church history. He contributes regularly to the Sabbath School Rescue Podcast and The Ellen White Podcast and speaks widely on Adventist history, beliefs, demographics, and church trends.

Melissa Reid is an associate director of the Public Affairs and Religious Liberty department for the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In this role, she advocates for the religious interests of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and its members on Capitol Hill. Reid also serves as the associate editor of Liberty magazine, a publication that, for the past 120 years, has stood for the proposition that the God-given right of religious freedom is best exercised when church and state are separate. Reid holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Andrews University and a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University.

Bettina Krause is editor of Liberty magazine and associate director of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty for the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Liberty, founded in 1906, is the oldest continuously published journal devoted to religious freedom and has a national print circulation of just under 180,000. Krause previously served in the General Conference Public Affairs and Religious Liberty department, representing the Adventist world church on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. She also served as deputy secretary-general of the International Religious Liberty Association and editor of its journal Fides et Libertas. Krause formerly served as Special Assistant for Global Initiatives to General Conference president Jan Paulsen and news director of Adventist News Network. Originally from Australia, Krause holds a law degree from Macquarie University School of Law in Sydney. She co-hosts the weekly Just Liberty podcast, which addresses issues at the intersection of faith, law, politics, and culture.