Nineteen eighty was a tough year for me. On the afternoon of Yom Kippur 1979, my father delivered a controversial talk before a thousand people at our Seventh-Day Adventist Pacific Union College (PUC) in the Napa Valley questioning the foundational doctrine of the church — choseness.
In January, my parents moved to Washington D.C. so my dad could organize a defense of his views. I stayed behind at PUC with friends. I was out of my dad’s shadow and I could have a childhood and do all the things normal kids do such as eat candy and talk to girls.
I started listening to pop music, tuning in at night to radio stations KNBR and KFRC.
In the summer of 1980, my father had his ministerial credentials taken away by the church and he moved to Auburn and set up his own non-denominational evangelical Christian foundation Good News Unlimited.
I was outside the warm bosom of the Adventist community for the first time and I felt desolate. My father said we belonged to the invisible church of Jesus Christ but that did not make for much practical community.
