Intended for an informed popular audience, this tenth volume in the Adventist Pioneer Series masterfully weaves the life of Arthur Grosvenor Daniells (1858–1935), longest-serving president of the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, into details of broader societal, cultural, national, and religious events and developments of the time. This treatment of Daniells is more comprehensive and thorough than any previous attempt to sketch his life. McArthur dug his way through a humongous amount of correspondence, denominational periodicals, and newspapers, tracing the origin and development of the organizational and administrational skills of the person that shaped twentieth-century Adventism probably more than any other individual.
McArthur presents his intriguing and compelling account of Daniells's life in twelve chapters. Chapter one traces his early life and ministerial efforts in Iowa and Texas. Chapter two describes his evangelistic and administrational work in New Zealand and Australia from 1886 to 1900. The following nine chapters focus on different periods and facets of Daniells's General Conference presidency (1901–1922), a time characterized by organizational restructuring, severe controversies with Battle Creek's charismatic health trailblazer John Harvey Kellogg, the emerging consciousness of Black Adventists in the South, global mission enterprises, city evangelism, apocalyptic expectations aroused by the horrors of World War I, and challenges of the post-prophet years. The twelfth chapter deals with Daniells's active retirement activities after his failed re-election in 1922. The fact that three quarters of the book concentrates on his presidential tenure might intimate that McArthur was mostly concerned with those twenty years, yet he may have had no other choice because the overwhelming mass of primary source material stems exactly from that period.
McArthur's work exceeds the two earlier biographies, May Cole Kuhn's Leader of Men: The Life of Arthur G. Daniells (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1946) and John J. Robertson's A. G. Daniells: The Making of a General Conference President, 1901 (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press, 1977), because it unearths aspects, nuances, and episodes in Daniells's life that were unknown before. Thus it is intriguing to learn about his early struggle to overcome “his stammer and acute discomfort in public speaking” (27, 18, 19). McArthur further draws numerous parallels between Daniells and other historical figures to illustrate his personality, skills, and behavior. Of special interest is McArthur's analysis of the challenges arising after the death of Ellen White, the prophetic voice of the denomination, in 1915. Daniells's leadership was severely tested as tensions arose on “what authority within a religious community a charismatic individual should possess,” whether White's writings could or could not be interpreted “without context,” “how her historical books [had been] written,” and how differences could be settled. As a result, many of these tensions often “assumed a personal edge” (384). Unlike Kuhn's inspiring, albeit anecdotal and undocumented, account and Robertson's thematic study of Daniells's experiences preparing him for the presidency, McArthur's full biography of Daniells's life results from thorough critical research. Yet, instead of reporting mere facts, his work is interesting to read, providing insights into the personality of the man and his strengths and weaknesses, his successes and shortcomings, and not only his but also those of his denomination. McArthur's academic background allows him to highlight the religious, social, historical, and political background of many of the events and developments. His appropriation of Max Weber's sociological insights to the leadership and institutional developments within Adventism are similarly insightful (105, 106, 287, 288).
A few minor imperfections seem to appear in the book though. For example, McArthur suggests that Daniells received his inspiration for the 1919 Bible Conference from the Fundamentalist conference that took place around the same time (398). The example of such conferences may certainly have encouraged Daniells to follow their pattern and organize one for Adventists too, yet McArthur himself suggests that the idea was originally proposed by F. M. Wilcox (386). Here McArthur seems to confuse the identity of F. M. Wilcox with M. C. Wilcox, who proposed such a Bible Conference to Daniells (see [M. C. Wilcox] to A. G. Daniells and I. H. Evans, October 31, 1915, Presidential Incoming Correspondence, box 3109, Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Silver Spring, Md.). Further, the index unfortunately merges all occurrences of the two Wilcoxes under M. C. Wilcox (464), although F. M. Wilcox is mentioned more often in the book. In addition, McArthur refers to the correspondence between Daniells and “F. G. Duffy” in 1920 (400, 401), significant for Daniells's assertions on the inspiration of Ellen White. The actual name of his correspondent was, however, “F. E. Dufty,” as the denominational periodicals and year book indicate (F. C. Webster, “Notice,” Eastern Canadian Messenger, September 23, 1919, p. 3; H. E. Rogers, ed., 1919 Year Book of the Seventh-day Adventist Denomination [Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1919], 48).
Nevertheless, these few inconsequential details do not diminish the contribution and excellence of the volume. It is highly recommended as one of the finest studies in Adventist history to everyone interested in that particular field and in the dynamics that shaped the modern Adventist denomination and gave rise to the challenges and trends it still struggles with.
