Adventist leaders say the Pew findings reflect the church’s mission to prepare all people for Jesus’ return.
"July 30, 2015 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney and Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review
Seventh-day Adventists are the most racially and ethnically diverse religious group in the United States, according to a report released Monday by the Pew Research Center, ....
“Thirty-seven percent of adults who identify as Seventh-day Adventists are white, while 32 percent are black, 15 percent are Hispanic, 8 percent are Asian, and another 8 percent are another race or mixed race,” Michael Lipka, a Pew editor who focuses on religion, wrote in the report.
The analysis, based on data provided by the 2014 Religious Landscape Study, looked at the racial and ethnic composition of 29 major religious groups. Racial and ethnic groups were broken down into five categories: whites, blacks, Hispanics of all races, Asians, and other races and mixed-race Americans.
After collating the data, Pew gave Seventh-day Adventists a score of 9.1 in the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, well above the national average of 6.6, where 66 percent of church membership is white. The least diverse religious group in the United States, according to the report, is the National Baptist Convention, a traditionally black denomination that received a score of 0.2.
In the United States, the Adventist Church has grown more diverse since 2007, according to a similar Pew report carried out that year. In just seven years, the number of white Adventists has decreased by 6 percentage points, from 43 percent to 37 percent, while the number of black Adventists has increased by 11 points, from 21 percent to 32 percent. Asian members grew by 3 percentage points, from 5 percent to 8 percent, and Adventists in the other/mixed-races category doubled from 4 percent to 8 percent.
Daniel Weber, communication director for the Adventist Church’s North American Division, said the 1.2 million Adventists in the United States are a direct reflection of the church’s worldwide membership of 18.5 million people and growing.
The report includes three subsets of people who are unaffiliated religiously:
atheists,
agnostics, and
“nothing in particular.”
All three groups are mostly white."
ANN
And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven,
having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth,
and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,
Revelation 14:6