Welcome to the Jungle: Adventist School and Top Leaders Celebrate Pagan Dance Rituals

The Seventh-day Adventist Matriculation Higher Secondary School located in Chengalpattu, India, recently hosted the 50th Annual Day celebration, in which church and school administrators, local students, parents, and guests participated in a program that included a wild performance called “Welcome to the Jungle.” This was a kind of animalistic, pagan dance, complete with breakdancing, strange contortions, and loud tribal drums. This style of indigenous dance and drumming in the jungle is seen as a way to connect with the false gods of Mother Earth. These children were imitating Baal worship, and the church and its leaders sanctioned this. The very notion that Seventh-day Adventists approved of this pagan event runs contradictory to our fundamental teachings and practices.

Pastor Edward Duraisamy was a special guest at this pagan ritual ceremony. He serves as the President of the Kanchipuram-Chengalpattu Section (KCS), which is a part of the Southeast India Union Section in the Southern Asia Division of Seventh-day Adventists. The Kanchipuram-Chengalpattu Section (KCS) headquarters are in Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, India. Pastor Duraisamy is the top Seventh-day Adventist in the region, and he approved of this event and even gave his congratulations to the performers for the “Welcome to the Jungle” dance. At the end of the video, you can see Pastor Edward Duraisamy and other leaders presenting awards to the children for their tribal dance performance in a Seventh-day Adventist institution.

When high-ranking officials encourage pagan dancing in our schools while simultaneously rewarding the kids for doing it, what hope is left for our people? “Welcome to the jungle” is an expression used to describe a situation that is chaotic or wild. Adventism is truly at a crossroads because misguided leaders have led us away from the most holy place—the heavenly sanctuary, where our faith is to be centered on Christ—and into a chaotic, confusing jungle.

Early missionaries in India, Africa, and other nations often sought to convert pagans to Christianity due to their religious beliefs and the mandate they believed they had from God’s word. They saw paganism as incompatible with Christian teachings and viewed conversion as a way to bring salvation to those they perceived as living in spiritual darkness. These early missionaries believed they were fulfilling a divine calling to spread the gospel and bring about the conversion of non-believers, which they saw as essential for the salvation of souls.

Tragically, all this is being changed. The role of the church, often seen as a spiritual authority, is supposed to guide its followers towards righteousness and moral conduct. But when we actively promote or endorse pagan dancing, this undermines the authority and integrity of the church. Instead, churches are supposed to call people out of sin, apostasy, idol worship, and paganism by preaching repentance, spiritual growth, and transformation.

Jesus is about to return once again, and these kinds of pagan exhibitions are not preparing us for this event. Adventism and paganism cannot coexist. And those who would dare to bring animistic and pantheistic practices into our schools are encouraging the worship of paganism among our people.

“Though in a different form, idolatry exists in the Christian world today as verily as it existed among ancient Israel in the days of Elijah. The God of many professedly wise men, of philosophers, poets, politicians, journalists—the God of polished fashionable circles, of many colleges and universities, even of some theological institutions—is little better than Baal, the sun-god of Phoenicia.” (Great Controversy, p. 583).