Richard B. Ferret is a retired lecturer from Avondale University in New South Wales, Australia, and has a background in nursing, cross-cultural ministry, hospital chaplaincy, and administration. His major research discipline is sociology and religion. He is the author of Charisma and Routinization in a Millennialist Community (2008) and several journal articles.
"""This is a fascinating study of two leading figures of nineteenth-century Adventism--Ellen White and John Kellogg. Richard Ferret outlines White's and Kellogg's radically different visions of the role of health in Adventism and, indeed, of the nature of the church itself. He provides tantalizing glimpses of where their trajectories may have led the church. If White's vision led to a biblicist, fundamentalist denomination, Kellogg's would have aligned the church more closely with liberal Christianity."" --David Thiele, retired dean of theology, Pacific Adventist University ""Richard Ferret's work shines a new light on a dynamic and challenging era of Adventist history, viewing it through the lens of identity. He demonstrates the strongly divergent visions for Adventism's future between Ellen White and John Harvey Kellogg, thereby underscoring perhaps what was really at stake in the Kellogg controversy in the early twentieth century."" --Mark J. P. Pearce, director, Ellen G. White/SDA Research Centre, Avondale University"