Did Ellen White Write Steps to Christ?

Dirk Anderson, 2000 (last updated Feb., 2022)

Many readers find Steps to Christ to be a wonderful and inspiring book about the Christian experience.¹ First published in 1892, it is Ellen White's best-selling book, with an estimated 100 million copies having been printed in at least 165 different languages.² SDAs sometimes point to this book as evidence of Mrs. White's prophetic ministry. If it was indeed written by her, it would at least demonstrate that she authored a fine Christian book late in life. However, authoring a fine Christian book is no proof of a prophetic calling. The real question is, did Mrs. White actually write this book?

Who wrote Steps to Christ?

The authorship of this book is called into question because there is so little evidence that Mrs. White actually wrote it. The book is a compilation that includes some of her prior writings.³ It also includes substantial plagiarism of other authors, as will be demonstrated below. Unlike many of her other books, there are no handwritten pages of Steps to Christ in existence. According to the White Estate, the book was put together by Mrs. White's "editorial assistants" and their work was reviewed and approved by Mrs. White.⁴

Fannie Bolton?

Fannie Bolton was employed by Mrs. White as an editorial assistant while the book was being written. Ms. Bolton joined Ellen White's staff in 1888, and Steps to Christ was published in 1892. Ms. Bolton made the following statement to Edward Ballenger, who provided a notarized copy in 1952:

"...during the period 1895-97 I was told in person by Miss Bolton in Battle Creek that she had written the book Steps to Christ and that Mrs. White had taken the MSS and had published it under her own name."⁵

This appears to be the only known instance where Ms. Bolton claimed to have written Steps to Christ. However, over a period of many years, she raised the concern to many SDA ministers and corporate leaders that she and Marian Davis were writing material that was being published under Ellen White's name. To counter Ms. Bolton's claims, in 1982, the White Estate published various documents to support their position that Fannie Bolton was mentally unstable and spiritually immature and repeatedly confessed to having the wrong attitude towards Sister White's writings.⁶ While Ms. Bolton did indeed confess her attitude of desiring recognition for her efforts in producing Ellen White's writings, she never confessed to lying about writing the material published under Ellen White's name. In fact, after she left the employ of Mrs. White, she continued for decades to insist she was involved in more than just polishing Sister White's writings.

While Ms. Bolton's claims cannot be proven or disproven, it certainly fits into Ellen White's pattern of taking the writings of others and making them her own. Some SDAs have suggested it was Marian Davis, not Fannie Bolton, who compiled Steps to Christ.⁷ Regardless of which editoral assistant compiled the book, it is evident that substantial material originated in the minds of non-Adventist authors.

Ellen White the Author?

SDA Professor Jud Lake argues that Ellen White was the author of Steps to Christ:

"The rhetorical structure (sentence and paragraph length, vocabulary, etc.) of Steps to Christ mirrors the rest of the Ellen G. White writings, which is strong evidence of a single author."⁸

Lake provided no proof on his web site to back up his claim that "sentence length" and "paragraph length" mirror Mrs. White's other writings. The problem is, by the White Estate's own admission, much of Mrs. White's writings produced after 1870, involved "editorial assistants." Thus, in order to compare against Mrs. White's real writings, one must look at the writings from the first twenty years of her career, before she hired an editorial team. An analysis of sentence length and paragraph length comparing thirteen chapters of Steps to Christ with thirteen chapters of Early Writings demonstrates the exact opposite of what Lake claims. In her early writings, Mrs. White wrote 23 words per sentence while Steps to Christ has 17 per sentence; in her early writings, Ellen White wrote 154 words per paragraph whereas Steps to Christ has 114.⁹ Contrary to what Lake would have us believe, Ellen White's actual writings do not provide any evidence that she wrote Steps to Christ.

The Real Authors?

Lake assures us, "all the writing came directly from Ellen White."¹⁰ Critics have never denied that editorial assistants copied some of the material from Mrs. White's previous books. However, this does not mean Ellen White wrote the book. It only means some writings from Ellen White were copied-and-pasted into the book by Ms. Bolton, Ms. Davis, or whoever else actually wrote it.

The fact that Mrs. White was plagiarizing heavily from other authors during this time period was well-known by her editorial assistants. The SDA Church spent considerable time and expense in determining that a large portion of the book Ms. Davis worked on, Desire of Ages, was plagiarized from other non-SDA authors. In her "confession" of 1901, Ms. Bolton explained how Mrs. White's practice of copying from other authors without giving credit was a source of consternation with her:

"I tried for years to harmonize what seemed to me inconsistency in the work with a worldly literary maxim that requires an author to acknowledge his editors and to give credit to all works from which he quotes. In contending that Sr. White was not open and honest about this matter, I supposed myself standing for a principle of ordinary justice and literary honesty..."¹¹

Walter Rea, in his groundbreaking book The White Lie, was one of the first to identify that some material in Steps to Christ was copied from Daniel March's Night Scenes in the Bible, and Almon Underwood's God's Will Known and Done. Those examples are below, along with additional ones researched by Brother Anderson. These are likely only the "tip of the iceberg" in terms of the totality of the plagiarism:¹²

Conclusion

What was Mrs. White's involvement in this book? One paragraph describes a dream not appearing in any other of Mrs. White's books and appears to be written by her.¹³ Some of her earlier writings were copied into Steps to Christ. Mrs. White no doubt reviewed and approved the work of her editorial assistants. How much of it came from Ellen White? How much was added by her assistants? While we may never know, the bottom line is this: It is fair to say that Mrs. White previously wrote some of the words that were copied into the book; however, there is no evidence Mrs. White actually wrote this book. The evidence suggests it was pieced together by her editorial assistants and included not only her own writings, but substantial material from non-Seventh-day Adventist authors. As with Desire of Ages, a detailed analysis would likely reveal the same degree of large-scale copying from other authors, along with word-smithing by the editorial assistants to make the plagiarism less visible. While Mrs. White got all the credit (and presumably all the royalties), those who actually compiled the work, and the non-SDA authors whose material was used in the book, got no credit and no royalties. To make matters worse, some SDA professors teach unwitting SDA students "all the writing came directly from Ellen White," perpetuating the myth that Ellen White wrote Steps to Christ.

Citations

1. Brother Anderson harbors no bias against this book. Though now out-dated, Brother Anderson still considers Steps to Christ as one of the best available. He has personally given out over 1,000 of these books and recommends it to anyone, especially new believers. This web site was the first to make this book available on the Internet in the Spanish language. If any book can lead a soul to Christ, this web site applauds that book. Brother Anderson feels it is regrettable that the real authors of this book never got the credit or royalties they deserved for their work.

2. Loma Linda University Library, December 11, 2017. Grant Wacker, Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet (NY: Oxford University Press, 2014), xi. The book was targeted not only for Adventists but for other Christian denominations, which was why it was originally published by Fleming H. Revell (Chicago). Pusblishing the book under this publisher would hide the fact it was a Seventh-day Adventist book. Furthermore, the royalties paid to Mrs. White appeared to be substantially more than she was getting from SDA publishers at Battle Creek. For more info, click here.

3. The original Steps to Christ, published by Revell in 1892, did not have the first chapter entitled "God's Love for Man." That chapter was added in when the SDA Church bought back the publishing rights to the book in 1896. It appears to have come from Ellen White's 1892 manuscript 41, entitled, "God's love for man." Parts of that chapter were plagiarized from John Harris' book, The Great Teacher. Other material used in Steps to Christ came from Mrs. White's previously published writings. For example, paragraph 1, p. 12 from Review and Herald, 12/16/1884; paragraph 1, 2, p. 15 from Testimonies, vol. 4, pp. 563, 46; the chapter on "Confession" from Signs of the Times 3/16/1888 and Testimonies, vol. 5 pp. 635-641; page 83 from Testimonies, vol.3 pp. 246, 247; pages 121-123 from Review and Herald, 2/3/1885. "Jesus is our friend ; all heaven is interested in our welfare... We should not indulge a solicitude that only frets and wears us, but does not help us to bear trials... It is not the will of God that his people should be weighed down with care" found in Steps to Christ, p. 122, and the 1888 version of Great Controversy, p. 294, along with Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 280.

4. Tim Poirier (assistant director of the White Estate) to Robert K. Sanders, Jan. 8, 1997. Part of the letter reads as follows: "Nor did Ellen White write the book by hand—so I cannot send you a handwritten page. It was compiled by her editorial assistants from her earlier writings."

5. Edward Ballenger letter to "Whom it May Concern," June 26, 1952. The notarized letter and the White Estate statement regarding the book can be found on TruthOrFables.

6. "The Fannie Bolton Story", (White Estate, 1982).

7. It is difficult to measure the degree of Marian Davis' involvement in writing Steps to Christ. She did use some quotes from Steps to Christ in her later book, Desire of Ages:

8. Jud Lake, http://www.ellenwhiteanswers.org/answers/steps-to-christ/, as of June 23, 2000.

9. Anyone with a computer can perform this analysis at countwordsworth.com. Chapter titles were excluded, but page numbers were included. Multi-line scriptural references in Steps to Christ were reformatted into a single sentence/paragraph so as not to skew the results.

10. Lake on the web site cited in footnote #8.

11. Fannie Bolton, "A Confession Concerning 'The Testimony of Jesus Christ,'" W.D.F. 445, 1901.

12. Unlike the seven-year effort to research the Desire of Ages, this web site does not have the tithe resources of loyal SDA members to finance its research on Ellen White's plagiarism. However, our own three-day analysis has uncovered countless examples where the words of other authors were copied into Steps to Christ without giving credit to the real authors. If years could be invested in researching all the sources for Steps to Christ, there is no doubt that many more examples could be shown.

13. Mrs. White makes one personal statement and relates a dream in Steps to Christ, p. 116, para. 3. The paragraphs following that on page 117 are taken from Signs of the Times, 3/18/89, para. 2.

14. Mrs. White had the 1834 edition of Bickersteth's book in her personal library.