William S. Sadler: Encyclopedia - William S. Sadler

William S. Sadler

Dr. William S. Sadler (1875 - 1969) was a psychiatrist and college teacher in the school of medicine at the University of Chicago, and one of the individuals closely associated with the publishing of the Urantia Book and the Urantia movement.

William S. Sadler - Family life

Sadler was born in Spencer, Indiana, to Samuel C. Sadler and Sarah I. (Wilson) Sadler on June 24, 1875. His father Samuel C. Sadler was a graduate of the Chicago Conservatory of Music and was a teacher and performer. After the death of ome of the Sadlers daughters, William Sadler was home-schooled due to his parents fear of disease.

He was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist. At age 14 he went to Battle Creek, Michigan where he worked as a bellboy and salesman for John Harvey Kellogg, at the Seventh Day Adventist Sanitarium. In 1893, Kellogg made him part of the team that started a new medical mission in Chicago. In 1897 Sadler married Lena Kellogg, niece of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and cousin and sister-in-law to Wilfred Custer Kellogg. On March 7, 1899, Sadler became a licensed minister of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and in 1901 he became an ordained minister.

In 1901 Dr. John Harvey Kellogg asked Sadler to establish a new medical mission in San Francisco. Ellen White, the prophetess of Seventh Day Adventism lived nearby. Sadler and Lena became intimate with the White family.

In 1903, Sadler was caught in Church political intrigue between the supporters of Ellen White and John Harvey Kellog. Accusations were brought against Sadler, including complaints that his expenditure of money to build medical facilities in San Francisco was done at the expense of Church spiritual operations. The accusations were brought openly in Sabbath meeting, the most stern form of indictment against someone in the Church. Kellogg had traveled to San Francisco for the meeting, but did not support Sadler. In October 1903, Sadler was demoted from all managerial responsibility within the Church. Sadler returned to Battle Creek and then to Chicago to continue his medical education. In 1905, Sadler left the Church entirely and was excommunicated in 1906. Prior to his expulsion, Sadler wrote a letter to Sister White, wherein he began questioning her authenticity as a prophetess in light of plagiarism discovered in her writings.

Sadler first studied medicine in 1901 at the Cooper Medical College in San Francisco, as well as studies at SDA Medical Mission School and the Rush Medical College in Chicago. He graduated in 1906.

In 1906, Sadler founded the Chicago Institute of Physiologic Therapeutics (later called the Chicago Therapeutic Institute). Sadler authored over 30 books on topics such as unorthodox health remedies, hydrotherapy and eugenics. Both William and Lena became popular paid speakers on the Chautauqua lecture circuit.

Sadler was regarded by his colleagues as a professional researcher of considerable integrity. He was also a well known skeptic of psychic phenomena and devoted a substantial amount of his time to exposing the proponents of the paranormal as frauds and charlatans. He worked with magician Howard Thurston in exposing frauds and mediums. He was considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject and held the life-long opinion that all psychic phenomena was explainable within the confines of the laws of nature. For almost thirty years Dr. Sadler lecturered in Pastoral Counseling at McCormick Theological Seminary.

The Sadler's first son, Willis, was born in 1899 but died as an infant. Their second son, William Samuel Sadler Jr, was born in 1907. In 1923 they adopted a 33 year old woman Emma Christensen, who served as Sadlers secretary and subsequently became a leader in the Urantia movement.

Dr. William S. Sadler died on April 26, 1969.

William S. Sadler - The Urantia Book

In April 1908, Sadler was introduced to the 'Sleeping Subject', allegedly at the behest of a woman whose husband had began to act strangely in his sleep. In a typical evening, Sadler was able to ask the subject questions and receive a response. Sadler assembled a Forum of interested persons who soon began to submit questions for the subject. This nightly questioning continued for two decades, ending with the publication of the two thousand-plus page Urantia Book in Chicago in 1955. Sadler never revealed the identity of the subject, but recent authors have alleged that he was Wilfred Custer Kellogg.

William S. Sadler - Criticism

Critics have claimed that several of Dr. Sadler's published books, including "Long Heads and Round Heads, or, What's the Matter with Germany?" (1918), "Race Decadence: An Examination of the Causes of Racial Degeneracy in the United States" (1922) and "The Truth About Heredity" (1927) reveal him to be a racist and a proponent of eugenics. Similar themes of eugenics are also prevalent in the Urantia Book.

Modern Urantia researchers such as Matthew Block have identified plagiarism in Sadlers published works. For example, Sadlers 1938 book "The Sex Life, Before and After Marriage" adapts material directly from Havelock Ellis "Psychology of Sex: A Manual for Students" published in 1933. Accusations of plagiarism have also been made against the Urantia Book, and an extensive list of plagiarized sources was published by Block in 1994.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "William S. Sadler", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki