YES, The Army does have sacraments, they are Salvationists.
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Recently, a Pew Research survey cataloged the almost complete collapse of the Catholic faith in the United States. The facts are devastating. Only 26% of Catholics under forty in the U.S. believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the holy Eucharist. If the Eucharist is the source and summit of faith, the fountain from which the life of the Church flows, then this report is tragic. The Eucharist is the beating heart of their faith—and yet 7 in 10 young Catholics in the pews do not believe in it. If this is true, then they have dismissed a basic tenet of the Catholic faith.
The loss of faith and the decline of belief in Christianity in Britain reflects a similar experience. Research reveals that there has been an overwhelming emphasis on the intellectual, rather than the moral or social causes of unbelief. The lack of adherence to religious doctrine, symbols and practice for some, and the forcing of others to abandon belief in God altogether was labeled as a key factor in denouncing religious faith.. They are a startling act of surrender to the effect of secular and marketplace values, to a world that interprets the world of matter as greater and higher than Spirit and ourselves, unchosen experiences which close the windows to the Divine.
All relation between essence, existence and salvation is absent. Lost is the concept and belief: Essence is the ideal way a reality should exist, transcending the actual estranged life we know, and salvation is the healing of the splits or problems of existence.
The Catholic substance, including the sacramental system, supplies the actual experience of the presence of the new being. Paul Tillich’s method of correlation insists on formulating the questions raised by contemporary culture accurately in content and form and answering them with the resources of the Christian tradition rooted in the scriptures.
Sacramental symbols, like signs, point beyond themselves but, unlike signs, they participate in the reality and power of the reality symbolized. Symbols open up deeper levels of reality and deeper levels of the soul. Religious symbols point to the dimension of the Holy and Ultimate Reality. All finite realities can symbolize the Holy. There is always the danger of making ritual acts and objects into idols. God transcends our experience of ourselves. Sacraments are symbolic actions. Their symbolic elements carry more than literal meaning not less. Tillich stresses the importance of the cross of the Christ, the sacrifice, the criterion for all other .[1]
The idea of the Eucharist as sacrifice suggests a spiritual characteristic (power) Salvationist can embrace and take on. Within The Salvation Army, the doctrine of Holiness (further elucidated through the writings of Samuel Logan Brengle, Frederick Coutts, Shaw Clifton and others) and the ideal of a sacramental life. The concept of seeing life as sacred, as a sacrament itself, is implicit in one Salvation Army song in particular:
My life must be Christ’s broken bread,
My love His out poured wine,
A cup o’erfilled, a table spread
Beneath His name and sign,
That other souls, refreshed and fed,
May share His life through mine.
The Song Book of The Salvation Army (1986), No. 512.
The Salvation Army is a peculiar hybrid of church and specialized movement. On the one hand, it has always acted like a church in terms of the functions it performs for its members. It is the spiritual home for Salvationists, the place where they are converted, the place where they are nurtured, where they fellowship and serve, mark significant moments in their life, and raise their children”[2]
The Army’s non-observant stance on the sacraments had its historical precedent in the tradition of the Society of Friends. It was not Booth’s intent to disrespect the practice of other traditions, nor to make it a matter of dispute. Moreover, Salvationists have never been prohibited from partaking of the Lord’s Supper in other traditions where they are welcome, and are free to be baptized if they feel it to be of importance .[4]
(“The General’s New Year Address to Officers,” The War Cry, Jan7, 1883):
Now if the sacraments are not conditions of salvation, and if the introduction of them would create division of opinion and heart burning, and if we are not professing to be a church, not aiming at being one, but simply a force for aggressive salvation purposes, is it not wise for us to postpone any settlement of the question, to leave it over for some future day, when we shall have more light?”
Moreover we do not prohibit our own people… from taking the sacraments. We say, ‘If this is a matter of your conscience, by all means break bread. The churches and chapels around you will welcome you for this.
However, don't neglect: The Army does have sacraments, they are Salvationists.
Sven Ljungholm
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[1]Song 512, Songbook of The Salvation Army, The Salvation Army 1986
[1]Song 512, Songbook of The Salvation Army, The Salvation Army 1986
[2]Who are these Salvationists? p. 67
[3]Ibid, p. 65
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