Lovers or Fighters? Military Identity in the 21st Century Salvation Army

Reflection: The Salvationist Mind for the 21 Century - An Ambiguous Heritage (Adapted from the Coutts Memorial Lecture presented on July 14, 2005 at The Salvation Army National Training Seminar, Crestmont College, California) by Barbara Robinson

I

would like to share some very personal thoughts and convictions around what might be described as Salvationist ‘ mindset’ in these early years of the 21st century.

The Ambiguous Heritage:Conflicting Metaphors

I entered The Salvation Army Training College in 1976 in the “Disciples of Jesus Session”. In those days, cadets engaged in a number of curious practices. We spent time in the first few days learning how to strap on Victorian headgear - bonnets designed for modest plainness but by then absolutely guaranteed to attract wolf whistles when we passed.

On Friday evenings we were assigned to stand in pairs on the milling street corners of downtown Toronto and read loudly from the Scriptures until we gathered a crowd. Sometimes we stuffed our pockets with a collection of gospel bugs, booklets, gloves and other paraphanalia - blitzkreig evangelism I guess one could call it: ‘conversion by concussion’. We would fall into bed at 2 am feeling brave, pumped and smug. We saw ourselves as shock troops of Aggressive Christianity, true “Blood and Fire” cadets.

In hindsight, I am perplexed at just what the correlation was between those training activities and the ministries which engaged my mind and heart in the ensuing decades. It eludes me.

Not along ago I came across a Reuters’s news photo in our local paper which grabbed my heart and snagged at something in my consciousness. It was a perplexing, conflicted image of a photo of a soldier in full combat gear cuddling an injured child. As I studied this image, I could not help thinking of the title of the acclaimed book by Charles Glen on the relationship between government and faith based schools and agencies: “The Ambiguous Embrace.”

The photograph highlighted for me, in a graphic and poignant way, some of the contradictory components we are required to negotiate as aspects of our denominational identity in The Salvation Army. Some of these are quite obvious and the conversation probably overworked such as the long standing discussion of the relationship between congregational and ‘social’ care; The debate over identity - are we a mission or are we church?

We affirm that we are leaders in an Army of care. We prepare soldiers for conflict and compassion. We are warriors and we are lovers. We live in paradox.

We affirm that we are leaders in an Army of care. We prepare soldiers for conflict and compassion. We are warriors and we are lovers. We live in paradox..

The use of the phrase ‘ for me’ is not incidental. Again, I stress that these thoughts are highly personal. I share with you as a woman, a Canadian, an introvert. I share as one who has spent over half her ministry in the hospital field and as an officer who has not always found it easy to live within the efficient (if utilitarian) structure our founders created.

It is a common exercise in spiritual formation to ask students or practitioners to identify their personal metaphor for ministry. For me, there are elements of the words of American theologian Sallie McFague with which I resonate.

I have come to see patriarchal as well as imperialistic, triumphalist metaphors for God in an increasingly grim light; this language in not only idolatrous and irrelevant - besides being oppressive to many who do not identify with I t- but it may work against life on our planet.

I have come to see patriarchal as well as imperialistic, triumphalist metaphors for God in an increasingly grim light..

I too have come to see triumphalism - dare I say ‘church militance’ …in an increasingly grim light.’

McFague on Metaphorical theology

Those of you who are familiar with McFague’s work will know that she puts the analysis of metaphor at the heart of the theological task. To engage in constructive theological work is to attend carefully to the images in the culture and church which appear to be emerging and to experiment imaginatively with them, reflecting on their implications for life with God and with others.

As Evangelicals (which McFague is not) we would add a clarification and claim that a central task of Biblical theology is to attend to images of the Scriptural witness and flesh them out for each culture, each time.

Turning to the Scripture we find a text laced with metaphor, often in combinations which seem ambiguous. Take, for example, Psalm 28:8, 9:

The Lord is the strength of his people,’
A fortress of salvation for his anointed one.
Save your people and bless your inheritance;
Be their shepherd and carry them forever.

God is revealed to us as fortress, as shepherd. These Biblical metaphors have proved so helpful that it has become a common worship exercise to catalogue and declare them: ‘We worship you as rock, king, father, husband, shepherd, bridegroom, morning star, rose, light, bread.’

If ever there was a denomination which took metaphor and story seriously …surely it is us! We are a movement with ‘soldiers’ and ‘officers,’ ‘recruits’ and ‘cadets’. We’ fire
cartridges’, attend ‘War Colleges’, embark on ‘campaigns.’
But metaphor - indeed language itself - is useful only to the degree that it retains its ability to address and cope with the most pressing needs of one’s day. Frederick Buechner reminds us that ‘Words, especially religious word, words that have to do with the depth of things - get tired and stale the way people do.’

If ever there was a denomination which took metaphor and story seriously …surely it is us! We are a movement with ‘soldiers’ and ‘officers,’ ‘recruits’ and ‘cadets’. We’ fire
cartridges’, attend ‘War Colleges’, embark on ‘campaigns.’..

Consequently a central theological task requires us to ‘live within’ the received language of faith, while perpetually reviewing its dynamism; re-testing the words we so blithely use for what McFague would call their ‘disclosive power’.

I can’t be the only one who has found herself waking up some days, scratching my head and asking with a measure of perplexity questions such as:

• What exactly is a Christian Army? An aggressive Christian?
• Can we reconcile this language with the ministry style of Jesus?
• Do images of militancy enable us to address and cope with the most pressing needs of our day, our time?
• Although Biblical, are these words the best conveyers of truth to our age?
• Is there a problem when the playfulness of metaphor becomes deadly in earnest and when it slips from Biblical picture to organizational modus operandus?

Method

It would be intellectually and pedagogically ‘neat’ and satisfying to be able to divide Salvation Army documents by time: To claim that ‘this is the way in which the early or formative Army thought and chose to express herself ‘vs ‘ this represents a 20th or 21st century perspective.’ For example, it would be convenient to be able to claim that we have moved from an emphasis on militant evangelism to a culture of care.

But in fact, the images of Warrior/ Lover have always coexisted. Our metaphors have always been locked in ‘ambiguous embrace’. Furthermore there has ever been an abiding tension in the organizational values implicitly undergirding the denominational rhetoric. We have simultaneously affirmed obedient conformity and daring creativity, emphasized discipline and corporate allegiance and encouraged each other to ‘move forth in freedom.’ (Not that these are, in truth, oppositional values, but they can certainly seem so).

Like Wesley before them, both William and Catherine Booth were studies in psychological contradiction. They valued order and enabled chaotic creativity. They were dispositional and social conservatives at the helm of a movement of radicals. It was the very hybrid ambiguity of the Salvationist spirituality which emerged - one which allowed for the playful and the imaginative while relentlessly challenging its adherents to the hard and the holy - which intrigued and enraged a late Victorian public.

We have simultaneously affirmed obedient conformity and daring creativity, emphasized discipline and corporate allegiance and encouraged each other to ‘move forth in freedom.’ (Not that these are, in truth, oppositional values, but they can certainly seem so). ..

So, how to Proceed?

Taking McFague’s advice, let us reexamine current understandings of Aggressive Christianity or Christian militance and the imagery of warfare, in order to ‘retest its disclosive power’.

It is helpful to ask three questions: why was this imagery highlighted - or avoided? What did it or does it - mean in the slice of time under consideration? Does this imagery still speak to us? And should it?

Militarism and Aggressive Christianity

As a Canadian, I have had scant exposure to military culture. In 50 years, I have only had one close friend with military association. For most of my generation, our direct awareness of military culture has been limited to the sad rhetoric of the annual November 11, Remembrance Day service, and a national story of jaunty Canadian innocents slaughtered in a European war on the other side of the world.

This may partly explain my fascination with the popular American TV series, JAG, which positively portrays military life. The characters are gorgeous people working in efficient units and demonstrating high standards. There is a consistent emphasis on integrity and self-sacrifice for the larger good.

It was ‘JAG-like’ imagery that was utilized so effectively by the emerging Salvation Army. For many Victorians, and certainly for many of those attracted to the Army, military service represented an otherwise unattainable elevation in status and self-worth.

Pamela Walker is a social historian who has done considerable analysis of the meaning of militarism in working class culture. The military played a central role in English political culture. In 1859 the Volunteer force was founded. Within four years over 200,000 working-class men had enlisted. According to one Victorian observer, volunteers enjoyed ‘the show, the dress and the camp’. The Volunteers founded brass bands which figured prominently in State funerals and celebrations through the 1860s and 1870s. These musical units functioned as a kind of social leveler, opening an avenue for accomplishment and excellence to the working class man.

The military was inextricably linked to visions of Imperial power and Empire. A strong force was essential to imperial dominance - and military service was consistently put before the public as the essential antidote to ‘debilitation, urban decay, effeminacy.’

“Military service was associated with manliness, robust health, citizenship, independence and a vigorous body that could withstand the enervating effects of urban life.”

military service was consistently put before the public as the essential antidote to ‘debilitation, urban decay, effeminacy…

These musical units functioned as a kind of social leveler, opening an avenue for accomplishment and excellence to the working class man.

‘The opposition in the open- air has been dreadful, but leaning on the mighty arm of Jehovah, we have been able to stand our ground and have not once beaten a retreat.”

For the many, many Salvationists who had little expectation that they would ever even be able to vote, the movement offered a voice and an opportunity. Militarism in their understanding, meant inclusion, equality and purpose.

Moreover, it suggested a leadership style which resonated with the personalities of prominent Army leaders. Bramwell Booth frequently makes reference to his mother’s combative spirit. In “These Fifty Years”, he writes: Catherine Booth’s was a fighting soul. Perhaps even more definitely than her husband. She conceived Christianity as a holy warfare, its forces and an Army with banners.

In other places, Bramwell wrote of the differing ways which his parents characteristically responded to criticism. William Booth was inclined to ignore it, regarding engagement with his critics as an unnecessary dissipation of time and passion. His mother’s response was very different, and was what Bramwell described as ever ‘Up and at ‘em William’.

Some of Catherine Booth’s most powerful preaching developed the theme of Aggressive Christianity. She was an absolutist. There were no gray areas for Catherine.

The truth, as she saw the truth must be received by all or there would be no truth in them. It was splendid of course, but it made hard going for many who longed to follow her as she followed her Lord.

It is evident from extant primary documents from the early years of the emerging Salvation Army that not every recruit was prepared to adapt without debate to the organizational emphasis on unquestioning obedience and authoritarian dispatch which expressed the military structure. Many regarded it as neither Biblical or necessary. And William, it seems was prepared to live with this.

A humorous example of this can be demonstrated in the Candidates papers for Adelaide Cox, on file in the International archives. In her Form of Application for Appointment as an Officer of the Salvation Army Cox writes,

‘The General asked me if I would be agreeable to go to Paris for two years in the service of the Army and I replied that I would, subject of course to being lovingly cared for as a young lady, and subject to recall by my father or friends should illness or some other unavoidable necessity require it.’

She was not, at the time of application a total abstainer. She was not prepared to provide an unqualified ‘yes’ to General Booth’s question. ‘Do you pledge yourself never to marry anyone, marriage with whom would take you out of the Army altogether?’ She did agree to notify the General in the event of a commenced courtship, but clarified her understanding of appropriate accountability. ‘In the event of such possibility, I should first consult my father.’ Reservations notwithstanding, within days Cox had been signed up and was en route to Paris with Kate Booth.

Documentary evidence suggests that the Army’s structural hardening, or transition from playfulness to policy, and from inclusion to sectarian attitudes - proved a struggle for a number of intellectuals in the movement. By the mid-1890s, the Salvation Army had lost some fine and influential minds because of this.

Documentary evidence suggests that the Army’s structural hardening, or transition from playfulness to policy, and from inclusion to sectarian attitudes - proved a struggle for a number of intellectuals in the movement. ..

Let me provide an example from American Salvation Army history.

Susie Swift was the Vassar educated sister-in-law of Samuel Logan Brengle. She was a gifted writer and one of the Army’s first editors. Commenting on her years of service as a Salvation Army officer, Swift observes,

‘In Scotland in 1884 I met the Salvation Army… To those who find it hard to understand how an Episcopalian of ‘ High’ tastes could work with the Army, I answer that the Army taught in those days that it was not a church but a mission and placed no obstacle in the way of my receiving the sacraments of my own or any other denomination. To those who do not see how an educated person can work with these Salvationists, I simply say that they do not know the Army’s leaders, or the freedom of thought and mental activity permitted to those officers who show they can make a wise use of liberty….. Many highly educated men and women surround the leaders - men and women for the most part like my old self- all untaught in history and metaphysics, but clever linguists, fair scientists, brilliant popular writers. For twelve years I worked with them… (But) Port Royal at it worst was never narrower or bitterer than we sweetfaced Training Home Lasses who were actually taught to say, “Thank God we are not as other women.” ‘

An article which throws a fascinating light on the Army’s inaugural decades was published in The Contemporary Review in 1898. It was written John Hollins, a journalist who remained a soldier for almost 20 years, and entitled ‘The Salvation Army: A Note of Warning.’ For Hollins, a potential danger for the movement lay in the fact that ‘ really discriminating views of The Salvation Army are by no means plentiful.’ Instead, he observed, ‘ Our enemies batter us and our friends flatter us’.

Much of this problem, he maintained was structural. It was a structure which impeded dialogue. ‘Under the domination of the military idea and in the name of loyalty we appear to have all agreed to keep silence concerning the disquieting symptoms and weak places existing in this.’

Hollins went on to argue that this was unfortunate because ‘ The Salvation Army is sound enough and strong enough to profit by an honest exchange of opinion among its members in their councils and publications’.

The journalist commended the Army for religious passion, deep spirituality, sensible recognition of women’s rights, and cosmopolitanism.

But autocratic authority and in military form is surely a remarkable thing in a religious organization. It seems to me that such authority makes its appeal to fear rather than to love. It tends to summary action and to the suppression of legitimate opinion. It will not bend to compromise; it dare not admit mistakes…,The military system has obvious advantages as a working method. It ensures economy of time, dispatch, punctuality but tends to mechanical action.

The military system has obvious advantages as a working method. It ensures economy of time, dispatch, punctuality but tends to mechanical action.

What demons possess us that we behave so well?

The Nature of Training

In many ways this was the question haunting Catherine Bramwell-Booth 25 years later, as she delivered a series of lectures on the Nature of Officer Training at the first International Training Staff Councils convened in London in 1925. From Monday September 7, until Thursday October 1, 1925, 46 delegates from 20 nations and 30 territories representing the 40 Training Colleges in operation world-wide came together for deliberation and dialogue.

It seems that a primary impulse for the conference was a fear of federalism and the attendant conviction that Army unity and internationalism could only be preserved by a unified curriculum. A need was expressed for ‘faithful training according to the pattern’.

Most of the published papers were devoted to the thinking of ‘the Firm’- Bramwell, Florence and Catherine- Bramwell Booth. There are at least a couple of ways in which these documents are historically curious.

There is a recurring emphasis in the Booth lectures on the need for flexibility and innovation, and this at a time when Bramwell’s administration was under intense internal and international criticism for secrecy, nepotism and rigidity.

For example, Florence Booth in The Spirit Which Should Possess the Training Work writes: I wish we could order our Garrisons, in respect to freedom, after the fashion of Colleges, so that apart from the actual classes and lectures, the cadets could be absolutely free; but perhaps that cannot be. It is vital that as much time, freedom and room as possible should be allowed the cadets for the natural expression of their own personality.

Something of the same impulse can be detected in Catherine Bramwell’s concluding comments in the lecture, Dangers of Institutional Life.

Red tape must never be in evidence except as a lifeline. You see what I mean? Only when it is essential; rules as few as you can possibly make them, but enforce them.

The lectures are striking because of the almost complete absence of reference to Aggressive Christianity or Christian militancy. Instead, there is an appeal for officers who will model and cultivate what they term ‘the Spirit of Salvationism ’, a spirit of submission, self-sacrifice and love.

Why might this be so? Why this altered rhetoric?

I venture a theory. In the 1920’s, Western Civilization was still reeling in the aftermath of the Great War. The European church ‘bled out’ in a flood of cynicism and accusations of moral ineptitude. It was asserted that a culture-accommodating, politicized Church had spent the war years “painting roses on the lids of hell”. Might this be the reason for the muting of the military metaphor?

What we find in this lecture series from the 1920s is more ‘ambiguous embrace’ - the simultaneous affirmation of uniformity and originality, of innovation and obedience.

What we find in this lecture series from the 1920s is more ‘ambiguous embrace’ - the simultaneous affirmation of uniformity and originality, of innovation and obedience…

Through the international training work, the Army hoped to achieve greater uniformity of curriculum but less insistence on conformity among cadets. It hoped to foster innovation - evidently regarded as a defining characteristic of the Army’s golden years - and cultivate submissive obedience in the officer ranks.

But Catherine Bramwell asserted that it was an obedience in contrast to that which could be achieved through conventional understandings of militarism:

No training can be regarded as successful which does not gain the willing cooperation of the pupil. Perhaps I ought to make an exception here and say except military training. They can perhaps catch a man and make him into a soldier against his will, drill him and turn him out from the military point of view a good soldier. Ours is not a training by coercion and force

The Revenge of God and The Next Christendom

What then are the emerging metaphors at the beginning of the 21st century? What is the nature of religious discourse?

I clearly recall my first awareness that there was a new religious sensibility gaining momentum. In 1994, I was returning from an International Health Conference in Sri Lanka and reading an English translation of Gilles Kepel’s best selling study of the resurgence of fundamentalism in Islam, Judaism and Christianity, entitled The Revenge of God. A comment on the book jacket observed that: “Where most of us notice but freak and isolated sparks, Kepel discovers a smouldering bonfire”.

At that time, Kepel’s work was a bomb dropped into the community of religious-studies scholars, most of whom had cut their teeth on the secularization thesis. By the turn of the 21st century, it was very clear that he was right. Far from faltering, religion was alive, well, powerfully ideological and growing like wildfire.

More recently, North American students of religion have been riveted by Philip Jenkin’s study, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity and his assertion that

‘ Whatever the value of Christian claims to truth, it cannot be considered as just one religion out of many; it is, and will continue to be by far the largest in existence’.

Global Christianity is flourishing but the explosive growth remains ‘off the radar’ of most Western Christians. By 2050 only one in 5 Christians will be non-Latino, whites.
The centers of power will have decisively shifted decisively to the Southern hemisphere and cities like Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, and Manila.

Global Christianity is flourishing but the explosive growth remains ‘off the radar’ of most Western Christians..

Even in North America, it is evident that we are living in a time of Evangelical ascendancy in the political realm which parallels that of the mid- nineteenth century. Is it incidental that we are also witnessing a powerful reemergence of the use of the military metaphor and of the language of aggressive Christianity?

One cannot help but be struck by the titles of articles published in the May 2005 issue of Harpers’ magazine: The Wrath of The Lamb, Soldiers of Christ, Feeling the Hate with the National Religious Broadcasters.

This issue highlights the fiery, aggressive rhetoric of 21st century Evangelical Christianity: It is the language of the young: Colorado Springs… this particular city, this one city is a battleground- between good and evil. This is spiritual Gettysburg… I’m a warrior dude. I’m a warrior for God.

One of the contributing journalists documents its use by a prominent local pastor to describe the spirit of his congregation: United they are the kingdom ready for battle…Massive warfare.

Another comments: Spiritual warfare, a metaphor as old as the gospels has been invoked for the sake of power before - the Crusades, the conquest of America - but for most of Christian history it has been no more bellicose than jihad, a term that once referred primarily to internal struggle.But the imagination of the Christian right has failed and its language has become all encompassing, mapped across not just theology but also emotion; across not just the church but across the entire world.

Where, then, is the Salvation Army in all of this? Warfare, aggression, the Church militant - is this truly what we are about? When people think of The Salvation Army, is this the imagery which comes to mind? To return to McFague’s question: Is this the imagery best able to help us address and cope with the most pressing needs of our day?

And if so, how do we respond to the musings of a writer like Carlo Carretto:

Enemies, always enemies on the Church’s horizon! Yet Jesus told us in no uncertain terms that we no longer have any enemies, since they are the same people we are supposed to love and love especially. Can it be that we have not understood?Don’t’ we read the Gospel in our churches?How long shall we wait before following the teaching of Jesus?

It is sobering to read the words of Jesus preserved for us in Matt 5:43-48 (TEV):

You have heard that it was said,”Love your friends, hate your enemies.’ But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may become the sons of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil. Why should God reward you if you love only the people who love you? Even the tax collectors do that! And if you speak only to your friends, have you done anything out of the ordinary? Even the pagans do that! You must be perfect- just as your father in heaven is perfect.

Is it not curious that we place so much emphasis on spiritual warfare, about which the Biblical record says comparatively little, and so little on the largest collection of Christ’s teaching, The Sermon on the Mount?

Is it not curious that the mysterious, figurative language of apocalyptic is made so literal while the spare, clear prose of the Sermon is assumed to be figurative, idealistic?

‘Won’ for Christ

Our guest for our annual Youth Councils recently was a man by the name of Wadji Isekandar. He is an Arab/ Bedouin from Northern Sudan and a converted Muslim. As a university student he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, by any definition a terrorist organization. Wadji’s conversion story is long and convoluted, but I want to share how he described the defining moment.

He had been seriously compromised within his faith community by unknowingly accepting alcohol at a work gathering. The disciplinary action taken involved a kind of public shunning, and he responded in what he describes as a spirit of youthful defiance, by living a decadent and secular lifestyle.

Wadji was invited to church by an Arab Christian colleague who had worked with him in Egypt for a well-established hotel chain. It was his first direct exposure to Christians. He listened to them praying:

• ‘I’ve been forbidden to sit my final exams because they know I am Christian. God, help me to love the University administration.’

• ‘Our family is being evicted from our home because they have learned we are Christians.. Help us to find ways to show care to our landlord.’

• ‘God heal my resentment because my son has been refused a place in a medical residency because they know I’m a Christian. Give me a forgiving heart.’

Wadji was staggered by this entirely unfamiliar religious posture, by this completely new religious language. He approached the pastor at the conclusion of the service saying something like, ‘This is crazy. Let me help you get justice–I have connections”.

Ultimately, he responded to Christ as a man ‘undone’, overwhelmed by the counterculture vision and spirit of grace expressed in that Christian assembly.

In the Salvation Army we sing the words with words like, “We want to Win the World for God” Wadji was ‘won for God’ by ‘soul winners’ in the way my husband won my heart: ‘Won’, by the winsome tenderness of love.

Abandoned Jingoism

So where do we go from here? Am I suggesting that we jettison the military metaphor?

Deny Christus Victor? Walk away from our history and up the steps of City Hall for a name change?

Or is it simply a reminder to admonish one another to live more ‘mindfully.’ Perhaps we need to challenge one another to handle this metaphor more thoughtfully: To abandon jingoism and seek a meaning which speaks to the terrible sorrows and brokenness of our time.

At the beginning of this reflection, I commented on the way in which ministry students - certainly chaplains - are challenged to explore and flesh out their own philosophy of ministry through a consideration of their own defining metaphors. Probably because of my own nursing background, I have gravitated to the image of the minister as midwife. Our life with God is all of grace and gift. But at times we are privileged to play a part in helping spiritual life come to birth in another man, woman or child.

I thought about the midwives in the second chapter of Exodus who were called to serve in a difficult time. I note their subversive action, their espionage. They were faithful and courageous agents of the resistance. These women were not naïve, they knew they were living in a time of real evil, real oppression and real war.

But the narrative reveals them going about their vocation with godly mind; a mindset which remained quietly, gently, and unrelentingly on the side of life. They were among the life-giving, not death-dealing, people of God.

Are not we, in The Salvation Army, called to a similar stance and called to resist anything - action, imagery or attitude - that clouds this awareness?

The Salvationist mind is a mind shaped by the Wesleyan Tradition. We are people of prevenient grace, people on the side of life: Mindful, ever mindful, that in Teilhard de Chardin’s words, we live in a ‘God-filled, Christ soaked universe’. We are a people of gentle confidence in the knowledge that God is ever at work in advance of us in world mending activity. Even Gandhi observed that: If you look back through human history you will see that every evil regime is ultimately overcome by good.

We would do well to understand that: You cannot command or compel people into holiness, you cannot increase their spiritual stature one cubit by any kind of force or compulsion. You can do it only be sharing your life with them, by making them feel your goodness, by your love and sacrifice for them.

May this be a reality unambiguously embraced!

Barbara Robinson is a professor of Christian Studies, William and Catherine Booth College Winnipeg and is the DDWM in the Ontario Central Division. Eight years of her ministry were spent as a Parish-(Street Health) nurse working with the profoundly marginalized in inner city Ottawa- an experience which shaped the thinking reflected in this article.

3 Comments to Lovers or Fighters? Military Identity in the 21st Century Salvation Army

1. This is truly a thoughtful piece. I’ve been reading some of the blogs on ‘aggressie Christianity’ and am becoming more and more disturbed by the war mentality each time I read it.

   It seems to me our role (as Christians, not just Salvationists) is as peacemakers. (Jer.29:7, as well as “Blessed are the peacemakers…”) To be a peacemaker acknowledges that there is warfare but that we are in it to bring shalom, not to fire our guns (salvos?)
   Dion
Dion Oxford on June 1st, 2006

2. Thank for a provocative to and not from the ‘militants’ for once.
   As for myself I am always energized by the use of militant symbols and imagery, understanding their robustness as a sinewy, muscular Christianity that is well aware of and fully engaged in the war that is present in the spiritual realm and effects this world so directly. I constantly find that awareness of this realm is very shallow and little real experience or engagement with it occurs.
   Until that changes I feel they should remain primary metaphors among the others discussed here otherwise we hide behind Christ’s teachings at the cost of embracing the reality he pointed to. Thank-you.
Matt Reid on June 2nd, 2006

3. Praise God for the saints and their guidance in this next century of the Army. May we be an Army on the offensive and not one stuck in discussion or retreat.
Patrick Lyons on June 5th, 2006

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