A Former Officer 'Friend'

I was an officer for eleven years (Messenger of the Faith)

My earliest memory is of climbing up a very steep staircase (I've been back since and it is not steep at all) in the Salvation Army Hall in Sacriston, Co. Durham. I must have been three or four years old at the time. I also remember moving to Maltby in Yorkshire when I was seven and soon after becoming a Junior Soldier, a Singing Company (Junior Choir) member and learning a string of different brass instruments in the Young People's Band. In my teens I left (The SA) for a while, but by sixteen I was a Senior Soldier and bandsman and by the age of eighteen, or a least a few months after my eighteenth birthday, I was a Cadet training to be a Salvation Army Officer in the International Training College in London. It was there that I met my wife to be, who was also training as a Salvation Army Officer. In 1971 we married and continued at a number of appointments together. There was a growing dissatisfaction with what we were doing and, to cut a long story short, by 1977 I had resigned and become a local authority social worker.

I continued as a soldier (member) of the Salvation Army, a youth group leader, bandsman etc. But I found a growing questioning of, not only the practices, but the basic doctrines of the Army. This came to a head when the Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, hit the headlines with his less than conventional views on the authority of the Bible. I began to realise that there was much of the Army Doctrines that I was unhappy about, including the bigotry shown against David Jenkins, not to mention that against homosexuality and other matters that some Salvationists classed as 'sinful'. I was ready to withdraw from the Army but did not feel that I could 'go nowhere'.

I remembered, whilst I was an officer, going with my family on holiday to my wife's relatives in the Lake District. I had accepted the invitation to visit my first meeting for worship at the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and found that much of what I read about them made sense and, as they would say, 'spoke to my condition'. Now some years on, I started going to the Quakers meeting at Grimsby. Over a relatively short time I changed from a Salvationist who attended Quakers in the morning and the Army at night, to a Quaker who attended the Army at night, through joint membership of both the Salvation Army and Quakers, to finally making a full commitment to the religious Society of Friends.

There are a number of reasons why I felt at home with Friends; Quakers do not have a creed, they respect each individual, they have a peace 'testimony' and a non-condemning attitude to most other people's beliefs, whether they are the same as Quakers or not. In short, I found the opportunity to make my own spiritual journey and follow God as I believed that He wanted me to, rather than having to submit to a set of doctrines which I was not sure that believed in anymore, and were more than a bit dated in their language and ideas. Suffice to say that I am really at home with Quakers now and much more involved than I had been with the Salvation Army for years. The only fly in the ointment, there has to be one, is that the rest of my family are still active soldiers (members) of the Salvation Army. My wife is a Songster (senior choir member), a bandswoman and a Corps Secretary. One son is now an officer and the other attends Army meetings regularly. However, I believe I am exactly where I ought to be.

Melvyn Hamilton