Bert Beverly Beach

Bert Beverly Beach (15 June 1928 – 14 December 2022) was a Swiss-born American Adventist theologian, university teacher, author and philanthropist. He was Secretary General of the International Association for Religious Freedom in the 1990s.

Early life and education Beach was born to an American family in Gland, Switzerland, in 1928. His father was the Seventh-day Adventist Church administrator Walter Raymond Beach. Earning his B.A. from Pacific Union College in 1948, he spent the next year at Stanford University, and was then for a time a northern California elementary school principal, and then principal of Italian Junior College in Florence until 1958, when he was bestowed the degree of Ph.D. by the University of Paris. and thereafter directed the education department of the Northern Europe-West Africa Division until 1975. In February 2007, he spoke at the World Conference in Cape Town, South Africa on the relationship between faith and freedom. In particular, he considered the unfolding and deepening of Judeo-Christian dialogue to be a prerequisite for interreligious and interdenominational dialogue on the unfolding of faith in the spirit of freedom as a form of struggle for human dignity. He dealt with the variants of religious fundamentalism, which counteract humble human coexistence in the one humanity.

Writings So Much in Common (1973) Vatican II: Bridging the Abyss (1968) Ecumenism: Boon or Bane? (1974) A church for all Christians?, Advent-Verlag, Hamburg 1975 So that they are all one, Union-Verlag (VOB) Berlin and the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Berlin 1977 Pattern for Progress (1985) Bright Candle of Courage (1989) 101 Questions Adventists Ask, Advent-Verlag, Lüneburg 2000 Brückenbauer, Advent-Verlag, Lüneburg 2013