First, there’s the confusion — in my mind, at
least — as to whether this is a news article or a commentary. It’s labeled as
“news” on the Telegraph’s website, but perhaps the word “commentary” or
“analysis” or “opinion” appears in the printed version. It may well be intended
as a commentary, but it’s not presented that way.
But either as a news story or a commentary, the
piece, written by Christopher Howse, a Catholic journalist who did a stint at
Britain’s Tablet magazine, fails on several levels in relation to the
Army, its beliefs and its reasoning.
(Disclosure: I can speak with some authority
here, having been a Salvation Army lay church member for 17 years before
joining the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1999. I also married a Salvation
Army officer, or pastor, and wrote for several Army publications, including
their annual yearbook in 1997.)
There’s little to suggest a hard news angle as
the story begins, however:
What is the difference between the General of the
Salvation Army and the Pope? Less than I presumed a week ago. Both, of course,
care about the poor, which has ever been a mark of the Church.
“Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is
to steal from them and deprive them of life,” declared St John Chrysostom 1,600
years ago. “The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.”
Until last week, I’d thought the Salvation Army
was Calvinist. That is no crime. But the Army, I find, believes that the
“saved” can backslide. “We believe that continuance in a state of salvation
depends upon continued obedient faith in Christ.” That is No 8 in the 11
succinct doctrines of the Salvation Army. As William Booth put it in 1879: “We
are a salvation people – this is our speciality – getting saved and keeping
saved, and then getting somebody else saved, and then getting saved ourselves
more and more.” One hostile commentator on the internet characterises such a
belief as “demonic works-salvation”.
It’s only three paragraphs later that we come to
the startling revelation that William Booth, the Founder and first General of
The Salvation Army was — wait for it — a Wesleyan Methodist. That,
if you can believe it, is why Booth and his Army weren’t Calvinist, because
John Wesley wasn’t one. Phew! That was a close one! (And, yes, there’s a
bit of snark here, which I’ll explain in a moment.)
Howse then goes on to chastise the Army for being
non-sacramental, performing neither baptism nor celebrating the Eucharist:
Yet, if I may say so without impertinence, the
scandal of Salvation Army doctrine is its rejection of the Supper of the Lord
as a sacrament – as the effective memorial that Jesus commanded his followers
to perform.
It is all very well the Army saying that there is
a danger of ceremony being mistaken for the grace it signifies. It also says
that each meal at which a grace is said, and thanks given, brings to mind the
injunction of Jesus to remember him. Nor does the Army prevent members from
taking part in other denominations’ Communion, if they are welcome.
But none of this excuses doing away with the
central act of worship which at all times has defined the Church.
The Salvation Army sets no store by Baptism
either, which is consistent. But it has a strong idea of what Baptism is
intended to mend: sin. Salvationists believe that mankind fell into “total
depravity” with original sin. Do they mean that eating a piece of toast
deserves hell fire? I’m not sure.
As you can see, gentle reader, snark in relation
to this matter isn’t limited to a Get Religion writer’s comments. What “eating
a piece of toast” has to do with salvation is unclear.
Maybe it’s one of those Britishisms best
explained by Hugh Grant to Julia Roberts in a gauzy closeup or some such.
Howse — who said he was impressed by a BBC4
documentary about Salvationist ministers-in-training — said he jumped into
these questions because he “was troubled to see Salvationists suppose their
close relations were damned because they had not shown outward expression of
faith in Jesus.” Fair enough, but doesn’t John 14:6, with its bit about “no man cometh
unto the Father but by me,” as Jesus’ words are rendered in the Authorized
(King James) Version, make the same point?
The theological history of The Salvation Army can
best be understood, I believe, by a grasp of the conditions which created it.
Booth was a “New Connexion” itinerant Methodist evangelist, and in the mid-19th
Century, found his calling among the poorer classes of London’s East End. These
people — often poorly clothed, dirty, odiferous perhaps and certainly not as
cultured as middle- and upper-class Victorians fashioned themselves — were not
all that welcome in the Methodist chapels of Booth’s day. That’s why Booth’s
Christian Mission to East London began holding services of its own, adopting
“The Salvation Army” as a name a few years later in what can only be described
as a marketing masterstroke.
Because many of Booth’s early (and later)
converts, were enslaved by alcohol, communion with wine was out of the
question. Moreover, Booth, who’d early in his life advocated moderation, was
persuaded to adopt a teetotal position by a young Catherine Mumford, later to
become Catherine Booth and known as the “Army Mother.” Baptism was described as
the outward symbol of an inward change, and, that thief on the cross didn’t
have time or opportunity for baptism, did he?
Much of this, and more, would have been available
to just about any journalist willing to telephone the Army’s headquarters in
London, which, oddly enough, is where the Telegraph is published. That
Howse relied, apparently, solely on the Internet and maybe a printed book,
enabled him to skip over not only nuance, but also context, leaving the reader,
in my view, under-informed, if not misinformed. Whether intended as “news” or
as reported commentary, the lack of speaking with someone from The Salvation
Army is a glaring omission that would have been very easy to avoid.
Mark Kellner
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/getreligion/2014/01/uk-journos-general-salvation-army-confusion/
News Editor, Adventist Review • Adventist World magazines
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