Ellen G. White, nee Harmon (1827-1915), is among the least known of the prophet-founders of major American religious movements. The Seventh-day Adventist prophet has received neither the celebrity nor the notoriety of Mormonism’s Joseph Smith, Shakerism’s Ann Lee, or Christian Science’s Mary Baker Eddy. Yet she deserves at least the recognition of these other sect founders. Ill, introverted, and undereducated, White ultimately asserted the most forceful influence on Seventh-day Adventism and ensured it a place among the major American sects. Her long and resourceful career as the Adventist visionary inspired the transformation of a single-minded, other-worldly, Millerite off-shoot into a complex and established denomination with wide-ranging interests in sabbatarianism, eschatology, health reform, temperance, medicine, child nurture, education, and religious liberty. Her legacy includes an impressive global network of sanitariums and hospitals and a vast educational system unparalleled in contemporary Protestantism. Her writings number eighty printed volumes, circulated among an Adventist world membership of over five million.

In his early writing on language, truth, and art, Nietzsche notes that art “treats illusion as illusion; therefore it does not wish to deceive; it is true.” Insofar as art is an illusion whose only truth is that it is illusion, art is only true as a lie. When the illusion of art is mistaken for truth, art is destroyed. Nietzsche's observations about the truth of a work of art are instructive when considering the questions raised by postmodern artworks such as Blue Velvet, a film written and directed by David Lynch.

As Lynch explores the consequences of mistaking illusion for truth in Blue Velvet, he offers a disquieting analysis of the American Dream, its icons, and the cultural idolatry that sustains it. With a degree of suspicion characteristic of postmodern interpretative strategies, Lynch examines the values that define the “American Way of Life” and provides evidence to challenge the truth claim of traditional notions of good and evil.

One of the more consistent characterizations of both American Fundamentalism and other versions of conservative Evangelicalism is that these groups represent authoritarian religious and social systems. Such characterizations are not entirely without some basis in fact. Fundamentalism will almost always appear authoritarian, and so too will forms of Pentecostalism which, like Fundamentalism, place a heavy emphasis on correct thinking and combine a belief in the infallibility of scripture with a commitment to literal readings. Outsiders are sometimes disconcerted to find that “authoritarian” and related concepts are not assessed negatively in conservative Evangelical circles. Quite the contrary is the case: the Bible, infallible, inerrant, “God-breathed,” is the clear center of Evangelical authority. Many a Fundamentalist sermon has sought to clinch its case with the phrase, “on authority of the holy Word of God.”

The Christian church, including all its various branches, has been consistently susceptible to the forces that form or change cultures. Scholars claim that this adaptability has been extremely important in the rise and spread of the religion. In the American environment, Protestants formed voluntary associations that attracted people individually and by family groups. This environment actually shaped “denominations” even during the colonial period. One such denomination was the Presbyterians, who pioneered in the formation of a communion that existed as neither a “state church” nor a “dissenting” church body. As the United States experienced industrialization and growing complexity in economic and cultural patterns, the Protestant denominations were affected by those same forces. Thus, denominations naturally became what came to be termed “non-profit corporations,” subject to the limitations and problems of such organizations but also the beneficiaries of that system as well.