Canute Birch, an Ooltewah resident, released a book titled A Third Great Disappointment for the Remnant? The book presents Mr. Birch’s research findings on race relations, the Millerite movement, slavery, the Civil War, segregation, the evangelical movement, and much more, addressing how these events have impacted and shaped the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
With a passion for racial and ethnic reconciliation, Mr. Birch offers recommendations as to how to strengthen the Adventist Church through understanding and healing. “I hope that as a result of reading this book readers will develop a similar passion, or an even greater passion than mine, to see people reconciled. Also, that they will be motivated to be proactive in bringing this about in their church. Reconciliation is God's ultimate goal for humans and His entire creation. Jesus died to reconcile us to God and each other and Himself.”
After serving as a senior pastor for approximately 13 years in the Greater New York Conference, Mr. Birch and his family moved to Tennessee where he founded the All Nations group in Ooltewah, which seeks to be organized under the Georgia-Cumberland Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Mr. Birch spearheads this multiracial/multiethnic church plant of passionate, vibrant, mixed generational Adventist reconcilers who, like him, yearn to fulfill Christ’s prayer and dream for His church—“that they may all be one.”
After graduating from Northern Caribbean University with a bachelor’s degree in religion and a minor in Greek, Mr. Birch went on to pursue a master’s degree with a concentration in archaeology and history of antiquity at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Mich. Furthermore, he has finished course work for a doctoral degree in theology from Trinity Theological Seminary in partnership with Canterbury Christchurch University in the United Kingdom.