Officership in the Salvation Army I

Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army i OFFICERSHIP IN THE SALVATION ARMY A Case Study in Clericalisation by Harold Ivor Winston Hill A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies Victoria University of Wellington 2004 Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army ii In memory of A.J. Gilliard. 1899-1973 I would love to know what he would have said about it all. Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army iii Commissioning then… Illustration deleted Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army iv Commissioning now. Illustration deleted Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army v CONTENTS ABSTRACT vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii PREFACE x 1 Introduction: Of clerics, clericalism and clericalisation 2 PART ONE: THE FIRST CENTURY 46 2 Booth Led Boldly 47 3 Clerical Roles 73 4 What Manner of Men…? 109 Entr’acte: From Era of the Booths to the 1960’s 146 PART TWO: THE SECOND CENTURY 161 5 Putney Debates 167 6 Official Words 208 PART THREE: OFFICERS WHO MAY NOT BE OFFICERS 254 7 An officer by any other name… 255 8 A Monstrous Regiment of Women 304 PART FOUR: THINGS THAT ARE SHAKEN; THINGS THAT REMAIN 354 9 The International Commission on Officership 355 10 Conclusions 371 Appendices i Bibliography xl Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army vi ABSTRACT This thesis attempts an historical review and analysis of Salvation Army ministry in terms of the tension between function and status, between the view that members of the church differ only in that they have distinct roles, and the tradition that some enjoy a particular status, some ontological character, by virtue of their ordination to one of those roles in particular. This dichotomy developed early in the life of the Church and can be traced throughout its history. Jesus and his community appear to have valued equality in contrast to the priestly hierarchies of received religion. There were varieties of function within the early Christian community, but perhaps not at first of status. Over the first two or three centuries the Church developed such distinctions, between those “ordained” to “orders” and the “laity”, as it accommodated to Roman society and to traditional religious expectations, and developed structures to defend its doctrinal integrity. While most renewal movements in the Church from Montanism onwards have involved a degree of lay reaction against this institutionalisation, clericalism has always regained the ascendancy. The Christian Mission, originating in 1865 and becoming The Salvation Army in 1878, began as a “lay” movement and was not intended to become a “Church”. By the death of its Founder in 1912 however it had in practice become a denominational church in all but name and its officers had in effect become clergy. At the same time it continued to maintain the theory that it was not a church. The first three chapters explore this development, and the ambiguity that this uncertainty built into its understanding of ministry. In the Army’s second century it began to become more theologically aware and the tension between the incompatible poles of its self-understanding led to prolonged debate. This debate is followed firstly through published articles and correspondence mainly from the period 1960-2000, and then in the official statements produced by the organisation. Separate chapters attend to the way in Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army vii which this polarity was expressed in discussion of the roles of women and of auxiliary officers and soldiers of the Army. The culmination of this period of exploration came with the setting up of an International Commission on Officership and subsequent adjustments to the Army’s regulations. The conclusion argues however that these changes have not addressed the underlying tensions in the movement’s ecclesiology, between the “radical reformation” roots of its theology and the hierarchical shape of its ecclesiology, and attempts to explore future possibilities for the Army’s theology of ministry. In retrospect it may be seen that The Salvation Army recapitulates in microcosm the historical processes of the Church as a whole, its history illustrating the way in which pragmatic measures become entrenched dogma, while charismatic revivals and alternative communities are reabsorbed into the structures of power and control. Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Acknowledgements often conclude with a nod in the direction of the `long-suffering spouse. In order to underline the priority of this debt, I begin by thanking my wife, Pat, for her constant forbearance and encouragement, and for making this work possible. The Salvation Army has allowed me to spend a good deal of its time on this project. Lieut.-Colonel Wilfred Arnold and the Appointments Board made it possible for me to spend much of 2002 on part-time study leave for this purpose. My colleague Major Graeme McMurdo also shouldered a heavier burden that year in consequence. Commissioner Shaw Clifton proposed and the Council of the Booth College of Mission provided a travel grant that enabled me to carry out research in Washington and London towards the end of that year. I have been most fortunate in the hospitality and assistance of those who care for The Salvation Army’s Archives. Lieut.-Colonels Moira Wright and Lyn Buttar, Major Alan Robb and Mr Cyril Bradwell in Wellington; Envoy George Hazell and Mr Lindsay Cox in Sydney and Melbourne respectively; Mrs Susan Mitchem and Mr Scott Bedio in Washington DC; and Mr Gordon Taylor and Commissioner Karen Thompson in London, have all been of great help. Gordon has generously continued to support my subsequent research from the far side of the world with useful material. In London, General John Larsson kindly gave me access to relevant records of the General’s Advisory Council and of International Leaders’ Conferences, with my friend Colonel Laurence Hay acting as guide and gatekeeper therein. Margaret and Laurence Hay also provided gracious hospitality at that time. I am grateful to Mrs Beverley McKenzie, Librarian at Booth College of Mission, Trentham, for her assistance at that library and for the interloan arrangements that have enabled me to explore the resources of other libraries belonging to the New Zealand Association of Theological Schools. Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army ix Friends and some who have become friends in the course of this exercise, scholars in various places, have been generous with support and ideas and information. Mr Tom Aitken (London) and Commissioner Shaw Clifton (then in Wellington) laboured through the whole of my first draft and made useful suggestions and corrections. Professor Ian Breward (Melbourne) also read the draft, making helpful suggestions and encouraging me to turn a prolix Master’s thesis into a PhD. Professor Norman Murdoch (Cincinnati) has provided much useful material. Many other people, acknowledged in footnotes, have patiently responded to my correspondence. Mrs Mary Cresswell and Ms Sarah Corkill have saved my document from the consequences of my ignorance of computers. Finally, I acknowledge also the guidance, assistance and light rein of Professor Jim Veitch, my supervisor in the Department of Religious Studies at Victoria. Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army x PREFACE In May 1972 I was “commissioned” as a Salvation Army officer; this military expression for the designation of officers having sufficed for The Salvation Army for more than ninety years. However, since 1978 Salvation Army officers have been not only “commissioned” but also “ordained”. Learning of this change eventually triggered my interest in seeing what discussion had taken place within The Salvation Army on this matter, initially as reflected in contributions to The Officer , a periodical for Salvation Army officers, over the past forty years. I found some polarisation on the subject. The points of difference were between those who (a) identified officership in The Salvation Army with the historic clerical role in the church, involving some kind of “status”, and those who (b) maintained that any suggestion of ontological distinction between “clergy” and “lay” was inappropriate, and that roles in The Salvation Army differed only in their “function”. This led me to undertake a comprehensive search of Salvation Army published sources to see if this polarisation had been evident throughout the lifetime of the movement. I found that an ambiguity on the subject was present from the earliest records up to the latest publications. From the beginning, it was clear that evangelists of the Christian Mission and then officers of The Salvation Army were regarded as “lay”, but their role increasingly approximated to that of clergy. In time they regarded themselves, and the organisation regarded them, as the equivalent to clergy in every respect. Function eventually gave rise to status. It also became clear that others had passed this way before us; the tension between these two poles could be traced far back in Church history. In a word, this is about the process of “clericalisation”. This work is premised on the second of the two positions described above: that officership in The Salvation Army is simply functional. I have an instinctive sympathy with the argument that a separate order of ministry is not of the essence of the Christian faith, but is what Emil Brunner characterised as a “misunderstanding of the Thesis Officership in The Salvation Army xi Church”. 1 It is true that

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