BURRILLVILLE – On Sunday the aromas of a meal cooking permeated the tiny kitchen of the 1908 Seventh Day Adventist church building in Mapleville. Seated at tables in the adjacent dining room where more than 20 attendees sampling plant-based cooking prepared by volunteers.
“So many people enjoy coming to the cooking classes,” said volunteer Claire Entwistle. “Covid threw things off, and now we’re back to it. People are learning to eat better and to feel better,” she said.
Two teachers were at the helm, Rita Ducharme and Katherine Bergstrom, each taking turns teaching a few recipes, while other volunteers, including the pastor and his spouse, were helping in the kitchen and dining room.
The cooking class series has ended; however, it isn’t the last, said Pastor Yeison Gonzalez. Opportunity to join a class is forthcoming, and SDA churches typically hold plant-based potluck lunches or dinners.
Instead of hiring chefs for the three part series just held, the church tapped into its own culinary enthusiasts.
“They’re sharing recipes. They’re not experts brought in. They’re our church people – members who share their knowledge and skills,” said Gonzalez.
His wife, Maxine Langerfeld, busy in the kitchen, said of the church members, “We just like good food and to share it with others.”
One of the culinary concoctions shared and evoking “oohs” and “aahs” was a sandwich of pulled jackfruit. The tropical fruit is a relatively new star in the plant-based culinary world.
“It has the texture of meat and takes on the flavor of whatever it is cooked with,” said Langerfeld as she helped to prepare the food.
“We try to keep it as vegan as we can for health purposes. It keeps the mind healthier, too, focused on the things of God, and the whole person is healthier,” said Entwistle, who was helping in the kitchen.
Plant-based dining is nothing new for the SDA church.
“Years ago it was not too well known,” Langerfeld said about plant-based cooking, aka vegan. Today plant-based is ubiquitous at places including stores such as Walmart, she said. The retail giant has an “Organic Vegan Food” category on its website. Nevertheless, for vegetarian and vegan members of the church, having a supportive community makes it “easier.”
“My wife is a great cook,” said the pastor sounding pleased while acknowledging that the other cooks are excellent as well.
Langerfeld grew up in the SDA vegetarian tradition, and can’t recall ever having to decide to “go veg.” Plant-based was natural, “just a part of the world” of the SDA community she was raised in in northern Germany, she said.
Although vegetarianism or veganism is not required of SDA church members, it is a strong tradition. Sharing of plant-based food “is the Adventist tradition of promoting health, healthy living,” said the pastor. “That’s the main reason we do it. We believe the Bible teaches us through the Apostle Paul that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.”
“We promote healthy living,” said the pastor, who is originally from Columbia, and is the pastor for three Rhode Island SDA churches.
From the SDA’s religious point of view, healthy living includes such factors as abstaining from using illicit drugs, and avoiding over-consumption of other substances that could damage the body. For example, if a person drinks coffee, then “don’t get hooked,” the pastor explained. Exercise and other health-promoting practices are encouraged by the church as well, he said.
The SDA religion is long famous for health-oriented cuisine that tastes good. In fact, SDA cookbooks and restaurants, like the church itself, are found around the world.
“Since the 19th century, when we began as a movement, the church has been up front, a leader of the vegetarian and vegan options. There’s now a lot of interest in healthy foods,” said the Rhode Island-based pastor. The SDA church, “the Adventist tradition, was established in the 1860s in New England,” he said.
Founder Ellen G. White was from Maine. She promoted the faith and health, and eventually, the SDA way reached to Battle Creek, Michigan, where John Harvey Kellogg, M.D. was in charge of a famous health resort hospital that served plant-based meals and taught patients how to cook, in hopes that they wouldn’t have to return, said the pastor.
“He was an SDA at the time and a great promoter of vegetarianism for health,” said Gonzales.
At the time of the typical big breakfast, Kellogg was promoting the concept of a practical, lighter, plant-based breakfast; that is, a bowl of cereal. Later, said the pastor, the Kellogg company was created, and the SDA church tradition kept growing to include the New England Sanitarium and the current Loma Linda in California and Southern Adventist University in Texas, the pastor said.
The other churches where the pastor calls home are at a Johnston SDA church that offers a vegan potluck meal on Saturday afternoons, and the Wickford SDA, which also is known to put on such events. In total, Rhode Island has five English-speaking SDA churches, and about a dozen in other languages, including in the Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian and Guinea language, he said.
The pastor welcomes newcomers to a class his churches are hosting in April at PiANTA vegan restaurant on Federal Hill on Atwells Avenue in Providence.
If last Saturday’s group of attentive cooking class attendees, men and women, younger and older, indicate the future, the next class, and the likely many to come, might just help keep the SDA tradition going strong.
