Supper Club Series

Salvation Army Identity Crisis
Stories of an organisational adolescence?

The Supper Club: see the end of this article for an introduction to the newest section of theRubicon.

Autocratic Practical Holiness: A recipe for decline in postmodernity?

by David Taylor

Introduction:

If the Salvation Army is, as proposed for this series of dialogues, an “adolescent teenager experiencing vital growing pains,” then its identity crisis is chiefly wrapped up in a lack of theological clarity. From my reading, the issue of the Salvation Army’s ecclesiology—or, its status as a church rather than another sort of organisation entirely—was not sufficiently advanced by the recent International Theology and Ethics Symposium in Johannesburg (9-13th August 2006), even though the symposium set Salvationist Ecclesiology as its major theme.

In his paper “People of God – Salvationist Ecclesiology,” General Shaw Clifton told those assembled that the discussion over whether the Army is a church should move on: “If then it is a settled matter that the Army is a church—and I think it is—the question to engage us all is: ‘What kind of church?’” Since the UK Territory’s Mission Statement has been changed to declare that the Salvation Army is no longer simply a “part of the universal church” but is “an evangelical church” in its own right, it would appear that the General’s statement is an accepted presumption.

This assertion doesn’t, however, address two major contributions to this discussion from previous Generals. The first, submitted by General John Larsson in his paper “Theology and Ethics for the New Millennium” at the previous International Symposium, suggests that “we are in a period of transition towards a fuller understanding of ourselves as a church—and theological concerns lie at the very heart of this process…when our self-understanding truly is that we are a church, all kinds of consequences flow—or ought to flow. And it is in this area that a great deal of thinking has yet to be done.”

The second ignored contribution is that of Albert Orsborn, who only fifty years ago upheld the position maintained from the beginning:

“We are almost universally recognized as a religious denomination by governments, and for the purposes of a national emergency—such as war service—or for convenience in designating our officers, they group us with the churches. That is as far as we wish to go in being known as a Church. We are, and wish to remain, a Movement for the revival of religion, a permanent mission to the unconverted…but not an establishment, not a sect, not a Church except that we are part of that body of Christ called ‘The Church militant’…” (“The World Council of Churches,” 1954).

It seems to me that our search for status, rather than identity, has driven much of the discussion of late. This is based largely on our place in society, with prison, hospital and university chaplains; our acceptance into the “fraternals” and councils of other churches; and our recorded legal position in many nations, giving us certain rights and privileges. But it does not attempt the deeper theological reflection requested by Larsson.

Indeed, we were founding members of the WCC in 1948, at a time when we were denying that we even were a church. Herein lies much of our confusion! While the judgment of these bodies is not insignificant, it operates on a human, legal and sociological level—not a theological one. And it is this theological assessment that is lacking. We cannot use the term “church” carelessly, as if we can be content with so many different and competing theologies of what church is, as if God is comfortable with a fractured body—as if He designed it to be that way! All too readily, we accept the human sin, pride and weakness in our divisive actions as God’s plan.

There is only one Church—the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church—expressed in many local settings, and we must determine whether the Salvation Army counts as a true expression of that church. Without doing so, we cannot understand how that theology contributes to our overall understanding of the church, nor can we discover those areas of our Christian practice and belief that are problematic or not easily reconciled with that ecclesiology.

Autocratic Practical Holiness

My concern is with what I call “autocratic practical holiness.” Put simply, “autocratic practical holiness” is a theology of the Holy Spirit and His freedom in our lives, within the confines of an authoritarian (autocratic) and institutional set of human laws. The Army’s critical theological error as to its identity involves the three intertwined strands of Army, Church and Order—creating a cord that does not give us strength, but instead creates tension, misunderstanding and frustration. These strands must be successfully disentangled for us to move forward confidently and securely.

There is an inevitable tension that can potentially lead to human control, corruption and sterility. This short paper attempts to unpack some of these issues within the context of the Army’s transition towards a theology of church, looking specifically at the two issues that were at the heart of its failed negotiations with the Church of England—issues which continue to be caught up in the web of tangled strands that create its identity. Fundamentally, ours is a discussion about whether the Salvation Army’s autocratic governance—its military-style authority and discipline, together with the practical holiness teaching that both formed its theology and guided its decision to not observe the sacraments—is compatible with the identity of a church. Or, rather, whether the Salvation Army even expresses the nature of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. These two areas are fundamental to any study of the Army’s ecclesiology, and therefore to its identity.

1. The Salvation Army as a disciplined, military-styled Christian movement

The Salvation Army’s negotiations with the Church of England failed because of William Booth’s understanding of his own position of power and authority. Bramwell Booth remarks that “just as Dr. Davidson felt that the question of authority was the real difficulty, so we saw on our side that the absence of authority was a grave weakness of the Church of England, and that its sacrifice on our part would involve the ruin of the Army…the so-called ‘autocracy’, although it might lay us open to misunderstanding, was necessary for the effectiveness of our War” (Echoes and Memories, 1925).

The question we must ask is what place “autocracy” has in any theology of the church. It may questionably have some place in a kind of religious order, where obedience and strict discipline is an accepted and freely undertaken rule of life. George Scott Railton enthused that “we have got an organisation…formed of people whose devotion, determination and confidence at least equal that of the Jesuits.”

Michael Hill’s study of nineteenth-century religious orders identified several pertinent features. Firstly, the Order, “though originally a lay movement, exists only as part of the church but retains a degree of moral and organisational autonomy.” While the Army clearly understood from its beginnings that it was a part of the universal Church, it resisted overtures from the Church of England. Nevertheless, Hill’s assertion may be qualified by further insights. Workman states that “the monastic idea in its origin lay outside of the church” (The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, 1918), in much the same way as Booth set about his mission work in the East end of London. Gould suggests, “An influential theory about early monasticism has seen it as a movement of protest against the secularisation of the church, a rejection of the state-supported Christianity of the era of Constantine, and an attempt to return to the values of primitive Christianity” (“Early Egyptian Monasticism,” 1990). Further to this, O’Dea helpfully notes that “monasticism and its extremes of self-denial were at first suspected by the church. It appeared to be a protest movement that bypassed the church’s institutionalised means of salvation in the sacraments” (The Sociology of Religion, 1966). These orders were eventually embraced by church structures.

It is important to make the distinction that members of religious orders were not people who ran from the world in search of personal piety, but, as Workman has it, “Monasticism was a protest…the hermit fled not so much from the world as from the world in the church.” In the light of these assertions, we cannot say that the Salvation Army is not an Order simply because it is a separate body. The truth is far more complex than that.

Hill’s second insight has special relevance for the Salvation Army: “The individual member of a religious order is basically seeking personal perfection, whether such perfection is defined in terms of individual or social goals, or of an active or contemplative life” (The Religious Order, 1973). The Army’s holiness teaching and its Wesleyan emphasis on Christian perfection were a central feature of its spiritual focus. When you combine this idea with Hill’s third insight that “the order demands considerably more obedience from its members than the wider church demands from either its lay members or its clergy,” we begin to see a significant correlation. Clearly, the Army’s emphasis on holiness teaching (interpreting the doctrine of sanctification) and on military organisation and discipline line up with Hill’s image of religious orders.

Railton commented on holiness teaching within the Salvation Army: “The teaching and enjoyment of this great blessing, with all the deliverance from self-seeking and pride which it brings, has made it possible to go on imposing more and more of regulation and discipline on all sorts of men and women without either souring their spirits or transforming the Army’s system into mere machinery” (The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, 1912). Railton admitted, however, that “owing to our allegiance to this rigid military system, we are losing almost every year evangelists, as well as people, who, having lost their first love, begin to hanker after the ‘rights,’ ‘privileges,’ ‘comforts,’ ‘teaching,’ or ‘respectability’ of the churches” (Heathen England, 1879).

Soldiership and officership continue today to more resemble a quasi-religious order within the church than a true expression of the one church of Jesus Christ. The Army’s wrestling with the concept of adherancy, with an attached statement of faith, proves the point. It has developed this position of membership because it recognises the importance of allowing people within our congregations to be acknowledged as full members of God’s church, even if they can’t be recognised as full members of the Salvation Army. Larsson makes it clear that the word “member” does not indicate that adherents are “full members of The Salvation Army in the way that soldiers are and do not make the same commitments—but…they nevertheless are ‘members’. An advantage of this is that it makes it possible to retain the lack of ‘regulation’ and the freedom that is such a valued part of the adherency system.”

The freedom that Larsson refers to is the freedom to be a member of God’s church without the “order-like” vows of soldiership, vows that stemmed from the Army’s teaching of practical holiness within a military-styled discipline. Railton explains, “To teach practical holiness is to teach abstention from drink, and tobacco, and showy dress, and worldly books and amusements.” The individual is not free, however, to choose under the guidance of the Holy Spirit whether these rules are appropriate for them, since they are mandatory according to the authority of the movement. This does not in any way deny the legitimacy of people freely entering into such a disciplined environment to express their discipleship, but is it a true expression of the character of the one holy, catholic and apostolic church—or indeed of God? It would be a more faithful reflection of what it means to be a church were we to gather the church (adherents as full members) around the order-like membership of soldiership and officership.

Modern Trinitarian studies and their emphasis on equal, intertwined and indwelling relations of Father, Son and Spirit in God suggest that our views of church authority and power stem from a wrong view of God—one that is monotheistic, monarchian and dominating. From the days of Constantine, theologians supported such a view of monarchy. Even in an age where monarchs have lost their divine right, Fiddes maintains that we have retained “the character of power itself as the desire to unify, to place oneness and universality above diversity and difference” (Participating in God, 2000). In many parts of the Church, God is viewed as a dominating Father, rather than a complementary union of Father, Son and Spirit.

Hierarchy has constantly undermined the priesthood of all believers. Kevin Giles states, “The Reformers’ doctrine of the church was radical in its conception, but in actual practice it was not fully realized. They assumed the prevailing hierarchical view of society, where some were set by God over others. Each congregation was to be led by an ordained man who alone was to provide the teaching and administer the sacraments” (What on Earth is the Church?, 1995). Even though this ministry was considered in terms of prophets rather than priests, “a high view of the ordained ministry as a permanent office with special powers was therefore maintained.”

In The Priesthood of Some Believers, Colin Bulley charts the rise of the special priesthood of the ordained over the first three centuries of the church, with regard to whether “the distinction between the clergy and the laity is essential, functional, or at all valid.” He further notes that while there is clearly the expectation of people leading and being led in the New Testament, there is also “the lack of a distinction between clergy and laity,” and there is no clear evidence of the “succession of church leaders by ordination from the apostles and the high priesthood of Christ.”

Bulley tests the argument that the special priesthood of the ordained developed after the NT, under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit—expecting that if it did it would in no way diminish but rather enhance the dignity and ministry of all Christians in virtue of their gifting by the Spirit. He concludes that “both the understanding of the general priesthood and the active participation of the laity in the church’s life, and above all in its public life, ministry and mediation of God’s grace, were significantly limited, diminished and harmed by the rise in the clergy’s specialized priesthood and the clergy’s domination of the church’s power and public ministry…rather than enhancing the Spirit’s ministry, they diminished it and restricted it increasingly to the ordained.”

The Salvation Army, in scrambling for the status of “church,” has not reflected deeply enough upon either its own practice—which involves restrictions that go beyond the boundaries of what it means biblically to belong to God’s church—nor upon the practice of other churches. The Army is quick to accept the status of church as expressed by these other ecclesiologies without any reflection upon their weaknesses in such areas as ordination, the separation of clergy and laity, and the justifying of hierarchy, all features that both deny a strong Trinitarian perspective and have undermined the “priesthood of all believers” and the exercise of ministry by all within the Body of Christ.

2. The Salvation Army and the Observances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

The second issue upon which negotiations with the Church of England broke down was the matter of the Sacraments. Following early sacramental practice in the Christian Mission, up until the early 1880’s, Booth clearly laid out his reasoning for putting the issue of the Sacraments on one side until further light should illuminate the way forward (The War Cry, 17 January 1883). This decision was made against a historical backdrop of turmoil within the nineteenth-century Church of England, where the “ritualists,” in their enthusiasm for sacramental practices and rituals, had exceeded the Oxford movement and created dissention, suspicion and disunity.

In this context, where early members of the Salvation Army were drawn from many denominations and none, Booth pragmatically avoided such disputes on two specific theological premises: firstly, that sacraments were not essential to salvation and therefore not essential to a Salvation Army, and secondly, that sacraments were essential to an evaluation of the nature of the church, but not essential to an evaluation of the nature of the Salvation Army, since it was not claiming to be a church.

Clearly then, in view of the Army now claiming to be a church, the issue of the sacraments—or, as we should more properly call them, the observances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—cannot be summarily dismissed; they must be re-assessed. This would have been William Booth’s understanding, and he rightly kept the option open. The recent Spiritual Life Commission (1999) did just this, and while it maintained the Army’s position of non-sacramental observance, it also suggested further exploration of the fellowship of shared meals that the early church enjoyed. The Army has not yet formally acted upon this suggestion.

In my own view, the Commission did not fully identify and explore the two separate strands of thinking that have influenced the Army’s position. The first is the view that we are in reality sacramental, but that we express our sacramentality through the direct mediation of the Spirit in our lives rather than through the symbols of water, bread and wine. This view has been most clearly expressed by David Rightmire, in Sacraments and the Salvation Army. He concludes that the Army’s ability to let go of the sacraments lay in its theology of holiness. Booth did not formally enunciate this in his reasoned assessment of the non-essential character of these sacraments, but instinctively the experience of holiness as taught by the Army proved spiritually satisfying enough to discount the need for any other mediating means of grace.

Rightmire maintains that this Holiness teaching drew immediate inspiration not so much from the nuanced theology of John Wesley, who maintained the sacraments (and who was undoubtedly the original source of inspiration), but from the crisis-focused holiness teaching of those North American visitors to Britain. Such visitors as Caughey, Finney, Mahan, Pearsall and Palmer were at the forefront of the nineteenth-century Holiness Movement and taught a more dramatic and instantaneous sanctification and perfectionism based on claiming the experience in faith. Catherine Booth in particular was captivated by Phoebe Palmer, who taught what was known as “the short cut” or the “shorter way” of achieving holiness in this life through her “altar” theology of laying our lives before God and in faith claiming instantaneous holiness, a step which Catherine took in 1861 in Gateshead.

There are problems with this “sacramental life” view. Rightmire maintains that since the Army has abandoned this nineteenth-century holiness teaching, it has lost its essential foundation for not using the sacraments and should consider re-introducing them and return to the position of Methodism. But many would disagree with this assessment, saying that the Army has not lost its emphasis on the Spirit’s immediate presence in a believer’s life.

On the other hand, Catholics are taken aback when the Army insists that it can have a theology of a “sacramental life”—an idea that they instinctively support and encourage—without entertaining the theology of the sacraments. If we can allow the principle of sacramentalism beyond Christ as the one true sacrament, why cannot this also include Baptism and the Lord’s Supper and, in the case of Catholics, several other sacraments as well? They maintain that we are inconsistent in our theology.

The second strand that has emerged is the view that there is only one Sacrament, Jesus Christ, and no other, and that the Church’s adoption of the term “sacrament” to refer to anything other than Jesus is a false trail—a trail laid by Tertullian in the second century, and encouraged in our day by the Spiritual Life Commission. Its logic was not, however, fully developed—the logic which says having stripped the sacramental significance from these actions sees no need to discount them of fundamental significance for the life of the church.

In The Christian Life, Karl Barth suggests that they “are not events, institutions, mediations, or revelations of salvation…nor indeed guarantees and seals of the work and word of God; nor are they instruments…or means of God’s reconciling grace. They are not what they have been called since the second century, namely, mysteries or sacraments.”

Nevertheless, Barth says, they still are “actions of human obedience for which Jesus Christ makes his people free and responsible. They refer themselves to God’s own work and word, and they correspond to his grace and commands. In so doing they have the promise of the divine good pleasure and they are well done as holy, meaningful, fruitful, human actions, radiant in the shining of the one true light in which they may take place and which they have to indicate in their own place and manner as free and responsible human action.”

To Barth’s mind, these human actions are testimonies, not sacraments, and in that respect must surely have a significant place in an Army that is both non-sacramental and values highly the place of testimony. He insists, “Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are not empty signs. On the contrary, they are full of meaning and power. They are the simplest, and yet in their very simplicity the most eloquent elements in the witness which the community owes to the world, namely the witness of peace on earth among the men in whom God is well pleased.”

In the face of such a positive theology, the Army’s recent paranoia with the use of symbols of water, bread and wine—in which officers sympathetic to the use of such symbols can immediately have appointments withdrawn or denied and the freedom of teaching curtailed—displays an alarming level of ignorance. Firstly, such a view fails to recognise that no denomination today would see such symbols as essential to salvation, and therefore the Army is fighting a battle that is no longer relevant. Secondly, as Clifton’s paper reveals, there seems to be no appreciation that there is a major theology that addresses these symbols non-sacramentally. Thirdly, many denominations use them without any sacramental overtones of mediation and simply as ordinances, observances, or, as Barth maintains, testimonies. Fourthly, such a position fails to see its own fundamental inconsistency within a movement that has developed its own compensatory symbols of uniform, flag and mercy seat—symbols of testimony that try to accomplish the same as those of bread, wine and water, but without the same biblical depth and resonance. Fifthly, this position fails to recognise that whilst formal sacramental ceremonies may be a later development in the life of the church, the actual symbols of bread, water and wine are intrinsic to the nature and worship of the church from the resurrection of Jesus onwards. Finally, the autocratic denial of these human actions of testimony, in view of the proceeding five points, remains a continuing prominent example of the Army’s lack of theological reflection in calling itself a church, and the potentially abusive nature of such autocracy.

Conclusion

The Salvation Army faces significant challenges in its need to develop its self-understanding and ecclesiology. It is not ready yet to comfortably call itself a church, or indeed to claim that it is a faithful expression of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. There may be value in the “order-like” expression of the Army for some individuals and congregations; nevertheless, into its sixth, seventh and eighth generations, many of those raised within this movement are not seeking to belong to an Order, but to an expression of church. It cannot, therefore, afford to forcefully reaffirm its primitive or neo-primitive identity, but must allow a positive transition into a wider and more all-encompassing definition of what it means to be a church.

By all means, this church can be gathered around the existing orders of soldiership and officership, but it cannot keep a two-tier membership and call itself a church. This does not need to signal any lessening of commitment to Christ and His calling on our lives, or indeed any undermining of the Salvation Army’s mission to seek the lost, grow saints and serve suffering humanity.

The Salvation Army must also urgently seek to examine the autocratic nature of its governance that is out of step with not only our understanding of Trinitarian theology, but also with the postmodern reaction against authoritarian and abusive power. We must find a servant leadership that seeks to dethrone its power base in favour of more compatible forms of shared leadership and governance. Finally, our positive tradition of testimony to the saving and transforming work of Christ must be allowed to find full expression in those fundamental human actions of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as a positive witness to what it means to be a church, rather than to the misleading language of sacrament. The signs and symbols which the Army has substituted for those of bread, wine and water are failing, and we must either find new ones or return to those simple elemental symbols that Jesus himself used, with all their biblical depth and resonance. This is not to suggest that we abandon the principle of the immediacy of grace that may be enjoyed without them. Rather, it is to affirm that in our postmodern generation, symbols will be as important as ever and, ironically, they will be vital to our mission in complete contrast to an age in which they were a distraction. What we cannot afford to do is to continue much further with the tangled threads expressed in autocratic practical holiness. We will not do so without continuing decline and irrelevance.

Writer: David Taylor and his wife Kathy have been church leaders for the past 13 years with The Salvation Army’s Wood Green Christian Centre in London, England - one of the most multicultural and multi faith corners of the world, where the present congregation includes about 35 nationalities. David is presently researching for a D Phil in Theology at Oxford University where he is hoping his church experience will help him to explore options for the ecclesial future and health of the Army in a rapidly changing world.

The Supper Club is an eclectic group of thinking individuals who are either active Salvation Army members or with some connection and/or history with the movement. “Contemplative activists”, might be a good description of the group. The Supper Club meets in London, England on a monthly basis to present papers and discuss ideas over dinner. The papers presented at each meeting are subsequently posted on theRubicon. In addition, all longer, more academically focused submissions that we receive and approve for posting at theRubicon will be published as segments of The Supper Club.

Friday, March 2nd, 2007 Belief, Ecclesia, Supper Club, Thought

17 Comments to Supper Club Series

I’ve wanted to blog some of these very ideals for a couple of years now but never seemed to have adequate words to communicate what I feel. Now I seem to have no need to do so. Powerful stuff.

patrick lyons on March 2nd, 2007

thanks for this David.. i will need to read it over a few times before commenting in detail but do appreciate the general direction of your thinking
david

David Robertson on March 3rd, 2007

I’ve just been through spiritual formation as a Franciscan Novice in the Third Order Society of St Francis, an Anglican Order which accepts (or accepted) from other denominations - I am a soldier. However, when the point was reached for my review prior to making Life Profession I had to leave, as at least some members of my local Chapter were unable to accept the Salvation Army’s view of Eucharist. This despite a decision made at Provincial (ie Europe) level in 2005 that Salvationists could be accepted. I am now a Sister under private vows, and have asked the Salvation Army to receive my vows as a Sister instead of the Order, making me what is termed an Independent Religious.

The whole foundation of life in an Order is spiritual formation, both preparatory to vows and subsequent to them. Coupled with that is sensitive and careful discernment, ongoing, for each individual on the development of their particular vocation. I can only speak from my own experience, but looking around the wider religious/monastic world, the orders certainly fit within their own denominations, but many are now ecumenical, and many are highly independent. But the crux of it all is formation, and vocation development. I sense this is at the heart of what being a soldier in the Salvation Army should be or could have been, but it is not the way the army has evolved. Soldiers have a number of recruits classes, and then ?
If the army were to respond to my request by asking me to express my vocation as a Sister through simply being a soldier they would be asking me to do the impossible, because the army simply isn’t like that in reality. It does not offer a searching formation or vocation development outside officership training. My vocation as a Sister is for life and does not require me to be able to lead a congregation - but it does not mean I do not have some ministry I can develop. The Salvation Army as I experience it - I am not a theologian - is not an Order. In some ways I wish it was, but I also would not want to exclude those who don’t sign up in full. It has some vague characteristics of an Order but in terms of its lack of formation work and religious vocation development it is most definitely nothing like an Order in its reality. It is a church as I experience it, and one in which a life under vows, a vocation as ‘Sister’, which is essentially a lifelong calling (strong emphasis on calling) to focus, is needed alongside the various openings for service in officership and lay leadership. Otherwise, at least here in the UK, it would mean having to totally re-invent what it means to prepare someone for Soldiership and beyond, and change on a scale that would be neither practical nor perhaps welcomed?

Eleanor Burne-Jones on March 4th, 2007

Fantastic stuff, lots of food for thought and discussion.

I would be interested in hearing people’s ideas of just how a church community can be gathered around an “order” of soldiers and officers. We are trying just such a thing where I am at, but it is obviously set up for tension when for a lot of people soldiership has always meant membership.

I see soldiership as an expression of discipleship within the larger TSA, but not as a measure of local membership in a Corps or community. But how can this be prevented from seeming to be a twp-tiered system?

Grace,

Aaron

aaron on March 4th, 2007

Just to say in light of Eleanor Burns-Jones’ comments, some preliminary work on an SA order (Credo) wsa done awhile ago, and was something very interesting to me.

Where I am, we do try to operate more as an order, with ongoing spiritual formation for soldiers (and others) being a siginificant part of our communal experience. But I am aware that this is by no means the reality across the board. (And where it is not, I do have to question the point of soldiership.)

Grace,

Aaron

aaron on March 4th, 2007

Thanks for the comments so far. Eleanor, I know exactly what you mean when you say that from your experience the Army is not an Order - in most places Salvationsts are pretty much doing ‘church’ - but we are living with this historical theological imprecision and complexity and the difficult tensions that stem from it - I as a Corps Officer live with these tensions.

Aaron, we have a membership at Wood Green (worked out with our DHQ) in which members (adherents) are full members, and therefore there is no difference in status between a soldier and member, in that they all have full access to all ministry with our congregation - the only thing they cannot do is become an Officer.

David Taylor on March 5th, 2007

I’m more interested then as a conflict mediator in seeing how the tensions are resolved, rather than in finding theological simplicity (though that can help!). I’ve just spent a frustrating day at the start of my second year in theology undergrad study, and have been feeling theology is all about taking something, a net of argument, a mesh of concepts, that is horribly complicated, and making it into something simple, understandable, and applicable.

Maybe complexity is appropriate to us, internal inconsistency is inevitable, and precision would kill us! But tension, unless it’s creative, is something else, as that saps energies and can lead to sense of impasse. I sense a yearning, all over the army, for a greater simplicity in the way we see ourselves. But I guess looking at TSA’s evolving understanding of itself as church is a bit like being a spiritual director working with a pilgrim. It is no good looking at them and sighing inwardly, and thinking ‘if I was going to Dublin I wouldn’t start from here’. :0) We have to start from where we are. I remember standing there trying to explain to a CO why I wanted to be enrolled, and why I was distressed I’d been messed about for over a year and a half. He said, ‘It’s just a piece of paper’. I didn’t have the courage even to respond. I no longer had the energy. This is where we are, and without doing violence to anyone’s understanding of how they do SA ministry or membership, I think we need to find a way together that brings a greater simplicity into the complexity. I am not sure what I mean by that simplicity, whether it is theological, or the articulation of our charism, or structural or cultural transformation. I suspect cultural transformation is the pivot, as everything flows in the end from that. The question is what will drive it - a clearer theology? Practical considerations? However it pans out, we have surely the opportunity of learning a great deal about navigating together as we make the journey.

Eleanor Burne-Jones on March 5th, 2007

David,

Does that mean in your setting the officer takes on the priestly role?

And do people become soldiers out of a desire to covenant with the larger SA, or is there another reason for it?

Grace,

Aaron

aaron on March 5th, 2007

G’day David,
Well I’m not sure how autocratic a movement we are because even the General, try as he might, is unable to have the final word on whether or not the Army is a church. So here’s my word.

In the New Testament there are two understandings of the word church (ekklesia). The first and least used is The Church, “the one holy catholic and apostolic church” or as it is often referred to the Church Universal”. The second and most commonly used meaning is that of the local church. And so Paul writes to the church in Corinth and the church in Rome, the author of Revelation writes to ‘the churches’ etc. Most Christians who are not Catholic, Anglo-Catholic or Orthodox would understand ‘church’ that way. All Christians belong to The Church, all Christians are hopefully part of a church.

However, by these definitions, The Salvation Army is not a church although Wood Green is. IHQ is not a church, DHQ is not a church. Our Welfare centre is not a church. They are places of Kingdom activity (the Kingdom and the church are not synonymous). So you can do Kingdom ministry at DHQ or in your kid’s club but it ain’t church. Your chapel service or your corps is.

It is why, perhaps, labelling the Army ‘a church’ or an expression of ‘The Church’ has seemed to so many to be uneasily unsatisfactory. Denomination, (a collection of local churches united on some theological or ecclesiological issues) isn’t a lot better. Albert Osborn’s ‘movement’ or ‘permanent mission’ or perhaps missional movement seems to fit best.

Of course if secular organisations calls us a church and it has a pragmatic benefit why would we quibble? After all to be the body of Christ is a good thing.

Which brings us to what it means to be a member of a church. And I need to point out that when Paul uses the word ‘member’ in Romans 12 for example, he doesn’t mean ‘name on the roll and dues paid’ he actually means ‘member’ in its literal sense of ‘body part’. A believer who is involved in a church community is a ‘body part’ of the church. Membership as we normally discuss it is a human, formal way of naming and witnessing to this. In that sense adherency or senior soldiership are the organisational constructs that we attach to a spiritual reality.

Does that then mean that they are meaningless or mere formalities? Not at all. In fact they are a vital way of connecting to the Army and its mission. In my view, the Salvation Army is essentially a missional idea. Our various covenants help us connect and commit to that idea.

So if someone says, “I’ve been a ‘body part’ of this church for a while and think the ‘idea’ of the Army is great, how can I express that?” I answer, “Well you can connect via a personal covenant with God as a soldier or an adherent or as a junior soldier or as an officer. They are all meaningful and valid although some of these covenants will ask more of you than others”. That is, we connect to the movement via our covenants, we are members of the body of Christ by our confession of faith and our commitment to a church community.

Borrowing one of Harold Hill’s theses, I would say that (theoretically), “There are no priests/clerics/orders in the church, and the Salvation Army does not aspire to any”. Affirming all the varied covenants, which connect us via our congregations to the central idea of the Army, as equal but different would be a good thing. It would help remove the ‘two-tiered view’ of membership and rid us of our growing clergy/laity divide and affirm our commitment to the ‘ministry of all believers’.

My summary (since it’s been such a long response): The Salvation Army is a worldwide missional movement. Each of her congregations is a church. We can connect to that missional idea via one of her equal but different covenants lived out in your local congregation.

Grant
PS - I’d be interested to know why you think the Salvation Army is an “adolescent teenager experiencing vital growing pains”. That seems to be a rather flattering age estimate.

PPS - It is also not entirely clear to me why the Lord’s Supper and baptism are “fundamental human actions”, nor do I understand your implication that our Christian faith somehow lacks full expression without them.

Grant on March 5th, 2007

Grant,

Good stuff, though I have to question why the kids club that I run, whilch includes worship, teaching, witness, prayer, and fellowship, and which we view as Church, ain’t Church. Meanwhile the chapel services, which we don’t do, is Church.

Methinks that definition might be a bit narrow.

Grace,

Aaron

aaron on March 6th, 2007

Well I was thinking of our Kid’s club where lots of the kids aren’t christians or from christian families. So it’s a missional kingdom activity but it’s not ‘a’ church. If yours is lots of christian kids worshipping, it may be a church. I didn’t mean to give an ecclesiological ruling on Kid’s clubs, I was merely giving an example (I would have said SAGALA but I didn’t know if everybody used that term)

I was rather hoping that my NT definition of church was simple and fuzzy/soft around the edges rather than ‘narrow’.

Grant on March 6th, 2007

Grant,

Sorry to be picky, but the reason I bring it up is that even in your definition of Church, which I don’t think is a bad one by any means, we still seem to be missing out things which I think legitimately can be called Church, or part of Church.

This is part of the issue raised in the article. Are we strictly a mission, engaged in Kingdom activities, or are we a Church, (or local churches) and if we are, why are we? It’s half Christian half non in my kids cells, most of those who have become Christians have become so recently, but almost every kid there would identify what we do as “Church”. We seem to fulfill all the “functions” of a Church.

In my community we very rarely ever all meet together in one large body, but we still consider ourselves a Church community, and the boundaries are really fuzzy. You show up to cell regularly, you can be a member. And commitment is a measure of how you are walking towards the central vision / idea of the Corps, or walking away from it.

I’m actually pretty content to live with the creative tension of wondering whether or not we’re a (C)church, or a mission, or a community in mission (my personal favourite). I suspect it grants us a lot more freedom.

As you said, the main thing is understanding that we’re part of the Church, and everything after that is still important, but more from a human perspective of membership etc…

Grace,

Aaron

aaron on March 7th, 2007

Hi Grant,
What I’m fundamentally trying to say, amongst othe things, is that there is no biblical authenticity for calling a body ‘church’ where there are two tiers of membership, in which an adherent who makes a profession of faith, and belongs to the church universal, is technically considered NOT to be a full member of the local congregation. That is the strange reality that we officially have at the moment, and we have two options: 1. make it clear that what we really want to do is make soldiers, and hope that adherents will eventually get there, because that in reality is the goal, or 2. we are satisfied and comfortable with adherents remaining in that place for life, and embrace them as full members, able to access all ministry opportunities. The former option I believe is not a full expression of what it means to be church, because it doesn’t value adherents as full members of the church, and the latter option is a way of gathering the church around the existing ‘order-like’ options of soldiership and officership, as we are attempting to do at Wood Green, and where to be perfectly honest many of our members (adherents) are as devoted disciples of Jesus as any of our soldiers.

To answer your point Aaron, in our setting, people who opt for soldiership see that both as a specific calling from God to embrace that ‘discipline’ and a way of identifying with the International SA. For many of our members (adherents) ‘denominations’ are a rather distant reality, in an age where people are looking for a good local church rather than a denomination. Officership in a setting like ours is primarily a function of leadership within the body of Christ, where we are aiming to be a ‘priesthood of all believers’. I deeply regret that the Army has got mixed up in the language of ordination, of clergy and lay! and I believe this has far more to do with a search for status than any real theological conviction.

David Taylor on March 7th, 2007

G’day David,
As a former soldier of Wood Green, whose name wasn’t on the roll but still considered it my church, let me say that you are absolutely right in your concerns. This is a critical question that can and must be answered via your option 2.

It is not possible to have a two tiered membership to a church. It is meaningless. I don’t mean that as an opinion but as an objective fact. Either you are a part of the body of Christ or you are not. Are you a believer? Do you worship here? You are in! We must affirm that being part of the body of Christ is not conferred by an Officer or a Census board via soldiership. “Called to Be God’s People”, which in effect said that Soldiership is our baptism, has further clouded that issue. As a CO what do you do with the passionate committed Christian who wants to minister in your church but who enjoys a glass of wine, or likes to buy a raffle ticket or can’t give up smoking? To say that they don’t want to be hardcore Jesus warriors and can go elsewhere to be full members won’t do. Instead let’s say, ‘you’re fully a part of our church, which is in itself an expression of The Church, because you believe and you choose to belong. Would you like to covenant yourself to the mission of the International SA as well?’

Does that make sense? We have been trying to make the SA somehow a synonym for church. The reason we can’t agree on how it is a synonym is because it isn’t one. In terms of connecting to a corps as one’s church, what we need is a simple ceremony that says you’re in! Baptism if it is helpful? The testimony - which probably always had that function anyway?

Hear, hear to your last two statements. Have you read Harold Hill’s book yet?

Grant on March 7th, 2007

Do people feel that a sense of calling to TSA is intrinsic in becoming a soldier? Because one thing we are not tackling here is the whole area of helping an incoming member to begin the process of discerning their vocation, whether it is as a soldier, adherent, or whatever. Is it appropriate to think every new member has one, and have the natural expectation that over the next few years it will begin to emerge more clearly as they journey in faith and their gifts and role in the church develop? The question of calling seems to me to be connected to the question of soldiers v. adherents.

I sense it is an open question for many whether or not a Soldier needs different spiritual formation to an adherent. If so, what are the differences?

Is the heart of the question not what form of church we are - sacraments/no sacraments etc, but what our ’spiritual heart’ is. Not vision statements, not polished phrases or sentences we exchange, but that inner sense of who we are. Are we a group whose members feel called, and if so, to what? I sense there is something we are not articulating together and I cannot put my finger on it! Is it simply that on a large scale we are not talking together the language of calling and vocation (outside officership at least) and this is impacting our collective culture, identity and direction?

Eleanor Burne-Jones on March 10th, 2007

Hi Eleanor,
What we are trying to do in our setting is to raise up the value of costly Christian discipleship for all (Officers, Soldiers and Adherents alike) as a biblical standard - I happen to agree with Chick Yuill in his book ‘We Need Saints’ that this is the appropriate language for re-presenting the Army’s Holiness teaching in our contemporary world - but I am not going to be dogmatic about what that should mean for everyone, beyond what is biblically mandatory, (beyond this we move into an area of personal response, choice and calling), where diversity and difference can be celebrated and monadic inclinations towards making everyone conform to the same response resisted. For me that is a better picture of ‘church’ if a lesser picture of an ‘order(ed)-like’ community.

David on March 12th, 2007

This is a very well thought out post.

I now realise the reason I THOUGHT I left the Army 20 odd years ago is not the actual reason. You have articulated in one document something I was not able to, mainly down to my own lack of discipline in learning from the bible, but also my narrow SA viewpoint.

If the army is to grow. the issue of embracing ALL believers is vital. That an individual is not a band playing, songster singing, uniform wearing soldier is not an excuse for stopping a believer from being included in a corps/church community. I do feel that those who argue otherwise will have to acount for why TSA has lost too many good people for no good reason. Just look at the statistics.

Adrian D.