JAC Online

The Salvation Army and the Priesthood of all Believers
by Major Harold Hill

The “priesthood of all believers”, usually and incorrectly attributed to Martin Luther, is sometimes used to mean that anyone in the church can do anything. This was directly contrary to Luther’s teaching on good order in the Church.  His concern was to demolish the idea that there were two “stands” (or “walks”) of life: the spiritual and the fleshly, the sacred and the secular, that of the clergy and that of everyone else. Luther did not deny that there was a need for leadership in the Church – called to the ministry of Word and Sacrament – but denied that such people were made ontologically different from other Christians by ordination; they just had a different role.

 

The “two stands” view, described by Colin Bulley “as the priesthood of some believers”, gradually became dominant in the church over the first millennium.[1] The process by which a priestly elite emerges, with a mediatory role between God and the people, can be described as “clericalisation”. The second view, “the priesthood of all believers”, claims that all have equal access, in John Dominic Crossan’s phrase, to “the brokerless Kingdom of God”, and all have their part to play in it. [2]

 

The Salvation Army has never subscribed to the former doctrine but the kind of language sometimes used of officership is entirely compatible with it.

 

On the one hand, William Booth denied that there was any “exclusive order of preachers” or that ministry was

 

confined to a particular class of individuals who constitute a sacred order specially raised up and qualified… on the ground of their ancestors having been specially set apart for it, and authorised to communicate the same power to their successors, who are, they again contend, empowered to pass on some special virtues to those who listen to their teaching … I deny the existence of any order exclusively possessing the right to publish the salvation of God… I honour the Order of Preachers; I belong to it myself… but as to his possessing any particular grace because of his having gone through any form of Ordination, or any other ceremonial whatever, I think that idea is a great mistake.

And I want to say here, once and for all, that no such notion is taught in any authorised statement of Salvation Army doctrine or affirmed by any responsible officer in the organisation… the duty in which I glory is no more sacred, and only a few degrees removed in importance, from that of the brother who opens the doors of the Hall in which the preacher holds forth… As Soldiers of Christ, the same duty places us all on one level.[3]

 

At the same time, Booth also spoke of officers as akin to a priesthood: “Indeed, the fact is ever before us – like Priest, like People; like Captain, like Corps.”[4]

 

The Officer magazine claimed:

 

The ex-officer, no matter what was the cause that resulted in his loss to our fighting forces, is still a child of the Army. He entered the sacred circle. He became one of us, sharing our joys and sorrows, losses and crosses. He received the commission of a divinely-appointed authority to proclaim Salvation, build up men and women in their most holy faith, and help to win someone to God. He received the spirit of officership, whereby he mingled amongst us, for a season, as one of us, and go where he likes, and do what he likes, the imprint of the life he lived will remain. Time will not efface it; sin even will not blot it out. So that in a sense which we ought ever to remember, the ex-Officer still belongs to The Salvation Army.[5]

 

Does that sound like an indelible mark and character conferred by ordination?

 

These incompatible views about ministry have continued to be held in the Army ever since.  Major Oliver Clarke (R) aligned himself firmly with Luther when he wrote in 1961:

 

Of recent years I have noticed a growing tendency to pronounce what we call the Benediction … in the pontifical manner: “The Blessing … be with YOU all…”

We do not claim endowment by apostolic succession in the sacerdotal sense. We believe in “the priesthood of all believers”. It was against this practice that the Founder remonstrated … when Commissioner Jeffries, asked to pronounce the Benediction, merely said: “The blessing of God Almighty be with us all.” Note, he even did say us instead of you; but he gave the appearance of administering something instead of invoking the same by saying “May the blessing of Almighty God be with us all.”

We have already gone far enough already for the good and safety of our Movement in the direction of classifying officership as a higher ORDER. Does this seem to be pedantic? To my view a vital issue is at stake, namely: a Clericalism versus Laity; Ecclesiasticism versus an Evangelical non-conforming Movement…[6]

 

By way of contrast, Brigadier Bramwell Darbyshire, wrote:

 

In spite of all the stuff about the priesthood of all believers, ordained and commissioned officers are different from non-officer Salvationists. They are not cleverer, wiser, more loved of God than their fellows, but they are special, set apart for Jesus in a way that involves sacrifice and often great inconvenience to their families… No one is more grateful for the Army’s dedicated lay staff than this old warrior; but let’s get it right. They may be as much involved as officers, but there is for an officer a sacramental dimension and if we lose sight of this the Army is finished.[7]

 

Lt. Colonel Evelyn Haggett in 2006, basing her argument on God’s gift of priesthood to Aaron (Numbers 18:7), saw officership as a “gift of ordination to a sacramental life…” and found it “awesome to be called by God to the priesthood.” Officers, she claimed, were “of the cloth” like clergy and priests.[8]

 

For a Movement which does not practise the sacraments, so ready to point out that the very word is not found in Scripture, we seem increasingly anxious to use it when it suits us – Priesthood returns by the back door.

 

The Church’s history illustrates that function always gravitates towards status, and status validates its claims by asserting that it was all God’s plan. As it institutionalises, the early zeal fades, energies are expended on maintaining rather than advancing, and the functionaries get delusions of grandeur. As a spiritual wave peaks and plateaus, even declines, sometimes a new movement strikes out, seeking to recapture the “first fine careless rapture” of the founders. Some of these new ventures, like the Montanists in the second century or the Albigensians in the thirteenth, are discarded as heretical, while others, like the followers of Benedict in the fifth century or Mary MacKillop in the nineteenth, are retained as “orders”. Protestant sects follow a similar trajectory; some like the Children of God relegated to the status of cults and others like Methodism becoming respectable denominations.

 

 

Most such movements begin by emphasising the equality of believers and rejecting a priestly class, but as they too institutionalise they also clericalise.  Bryan Wilson put it like this:

 

What does appear is that the dissenting movements of Protestantism, which were lay movements, or movements which gave greater place to laymen than the traditional churches had ever conceded, pass, over the course of time, under the control of full-time religious specialists… Over time, movements which rebel against religious specialization, against clerical privilege and control, gradually come again under the control of a clerical class… Professionalism is a part of the wider social process of secular society, and so even in anti-clerical movements professionals re-emerge. Their real power, when they do re-emerge, however, is in their administrative control and the fact of their full-time involvement, and not in their liturgical functions, although these will be regarded as the activity for which their authority is legitimated.[9]

 

 

Not just Protestants. The Benedictines and the Franciscans also became clericalised. Milton complained that “New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.” Methodist lay-preachers, with Wesley dead, began styling themselves ministers. A recent Methodist statement admitted, “The challenge remains both to have an ordained ministry… without promoting an indelible spiritual hierarchy”.[10] The Salvation Army mirrored Methodist history, and moved more quickly, while its autocratic founder was still living, probably because its military, hierarchical structure lent itself even more readily to perceptions of status – though it did take us 100 years to start “ordaining” our officers. The Army recapitulates the history of the church in microcosm. My argument is not that officership has become a sacerdotal priesthood in theory, but that the end result is the same in practice.

 

What does that mean in practice for the Salvation Army?  Because we do not practise the sacraments does that mean that there is no way in which the officer can assume a mediatory, “pontifical” role between the people and God? Sadly, it has happened. While the officer’s leadership was emphasised in the early Army, the importance of everyone else being able to participate in as many ways as possible was equally stressed – in speaking, pastoring, evangelising – and in exercising leadership. That is what has been progressively lost.

 

Now, what is the problem?

 

Firstly, it is not what the Founder – I mean, Jesus – evidently proposed. Jesus and the community which grew up after his death appear to have valued equality in contrast to the priestly hierarchies of received religion. Jesus said,

 

You know that foreign rulers like to order their people around. And their leaders have full power over everyone they rule. But don’t act like them. If you want to be great, you must be the servant of all the others. And if you want to be first, you must be the slave of the rest. The Son of Man did not come to be a slave master, but a slave who will give his life to ransom many people.[11]

 

But you are not to be called “Rabbi”, for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth “father”, for you have only one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called “teacher”, for you have only one Teacher, the Christ.[12]

 

As Alfred Loisey observed, Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God, and what we got was the Church.

 

Secondly, clericalism fosters a spirit incompatible with the “servanthood” Jesus taught and modelled; it is inimical to the kind of community Jesus appeared to call together. Salvation Army leaders have been aware of this. Commissioner Brengle also wrote against the “diotrephesian spirit”.[13] “Every Diotrephesian,” he wrote, “‘loveth to have the pre-eminence’ – not pre-eminence in goodness, Christlikeness, brotherly love, humility, meekness, or holiness, but pre-eminence in name, in fame, popular acclaim, in wealth, in place, or authority. These it is that the members of the tribe lust after, scheme, plot and plan, whisper and fawn and flatter and backbite to obtain.”[14]  That’s just within officership. Further, a “class distinction” between officers and non-officers has become so entrenched as to be invisible to most officers but painfully obtrusive to many soldiers – and non-Salvationist employees.

 

Although having a clerical class does not inevitably lead to sacerdotalism, leadership is always in that danger. Yves Congar wrote that “Protestant communions, starting from strict congregationalist premises and an associational and community basis, are in practice as clericalised as the Catholic Church… No doubt there are sociological laws in virtue of which the most ‘charismatic’ religious communities, those most made ‘from below’, quite soon become organisations with authority, traditions, a ‘church’ sociological structure.”[15] Even in the contemporary unstructured house-church movement, as Miroslav Volf notes, “…a strongly hierarchical, informal system of paternal relations often develops between the congregation and charismatic delegates from the ascended Christ.”[16] In fact, the real issue is power, and its exercise. Theology is merely the mask.

 

Thirdly, clericalisation can diminish the Church’s effectiveness in its mission. By concentrating power and influence in the hands of a minority it disempowers the majority of members of the Church. Congar wrote of the end result of clericalism being that “the faithful got into the habit of receiving without activity, leaving to the clergy the charge of building up the Church – like citizens who leave the making of their country to the civil servants and officials, and the defence of it to the military.”[17] The Indian Jesuit Kurien Kunnumpuram claims that “the clergy-laity divide and the consequent lack of power-sharing in the Church are largely responsible for the apathy and inertia that one notices in the bulk of the laity today.”[18] Nazarene sociologist Kenneth E. Crow sums up: “Loyalty declines when ability to influence decision and policies declines. When institutionalization results in top-down management, one of the consequences is member apathy and withdrawal.”[19]

 

Theorising can be supported by circumstantial evidence at the least. For example, Finke and Stark link the decline in the growth of Methodism in the USA in the nineteenth century with growing clericalism. “We think it instructive that Methodists began to slump at precisely the same time that their amateur clergy were replaced by professionals who claimed episcopal authority over their congregations.”[20] A. D. Gilbert produces statistics showing how the decennial increase of membership per minister in the Wesleyan Church in Great Britain declined steadily from 93.7% in 1801 when there were 334 ministers, to 12.6% in 1911 when there were 2,478 ministers. The reasons were of course various, but Gilbert does suggest that it was partly that “maintaining themselves, their families, and their homes, tended to divert preachers from the business of itinerant evangelism still expected of them by many laymen”. To that had to be added “the increasingly complex task of running a massive national association… The preachers more or less consistently displayed a willingness to accept reduced recruitment and even schism as a price for organisational consolidation under ministerial leadership.”[21] In New Zealand the proportion of Salvationists to the general population reached a peak of 1.5% of the population in 1895 and declined slowly but steadily thereafter.[22] By 1926 it was 0.91% and by 1956, 0.65%. In the 2001 census, it was 0.33%.[23] One interpretation of these figures is to say that as the movement institutionalised, and officership clericalised, it lost momentum. This was not the only process going on, nor was there a direct cause and effect. It would be difficult to establish whether clericalisation had led to a loss of zeal, or loss of zeal had been compensated for by a growing preoccupation with status, or whether each process fed the other.

 

There is a paradox here: the military system, quite apart from the fact that it fitted Booth’s autocratic temperament, was designed for rapid response, and is still officially justified in those terms. The Army’s first period of rapid growth followed its introduction. However the concomitant burgeoning of hierarchical and bureaucratic attitudes came to exert a counter-influence. The reason for success contained the seeds of failure. The longer-term effects of autocracy and “sectarian totalitarianism” were to lose the loyalty of many of those hitherto enthusiastic, and to deter subsequent generations, more habituated to free thought and democracy, from joining.

 

Against this conclusion, the centuries in which the Church clericalised it grew to become a world religion – though the reasons for growth were not always related to the Gospel! The Salvation Army’s growth today is in the developing world where rank and status seem more important. A host of historical, sociological and cultural, even political, factors are involved. Possibly the Salvation Army’s current growth in the third world is because those societies, less individualistic, with a stronger culture of “belonging” and traditional respect for authority, are more susceptible to the attractions of firm and decisive leadership.

 

Of the Western world however the period of the Army’s apparent stagnation and decline has coincided broadly with its increasing accommodation to the “world”, its becoming more like a mainstream denomination and its officers becoming indistinguishable from clergy. The attitudes which produce clericalisation also produce decline.

 

So how can the priesthood of all believers be sustained or revived in the Army? Our roots might be rediscovered in two ways.

 

Firstly we can encourage the kind of fresh initiative which has renewed the church in every age.  Our neo-primitive Salvationists, the 614 movement, represent our own home-grown sectarian reaction to institutionalisation. The “War College” in Vancouver is a “lay”-training facility. Alove, in the UK, is essentially a “lay”-movement. Stephen Court’s MMCCXX vision – a mission to see new outposts in 2,000 cities, in 200 countries, in 20 years, is quite independent of the Army’s formal planning. Can the institution keep its hands off long enough for these to reach their potential? Can the Army give its children the independence, along with the support, necessary for them to grow up and become its adult friends? They too will clericalise, but not yet. Seldom have new patches successfully taken on old wineskins: can Protestantism learn the trick of retaining its “orders”?

 

Secondly, ways have to be found to rejuvenate the leather of the old wineskin, the “mainstream” Army. Historically, new movements have sometimes managed to reinvigorate at least parts of the existing church – the reformation’s stimulus to the counter-reformation and the charismatic movement’s 3rd wave are examples. Can neo-primitive Salvationism rub off on the rest of us?

 

Most commonly, an emphasis on “Servant Leadership” is recommended to mitigate the ill-effects of élitist clericalisation. However, mere exhortations to “Servant Leadership” can be used to legitimate a reality of another kind. Without structural safeguards, all talk of servanthood too easily becomes an instrument of spiritual abuse.  But it is also true that servant-leader behaviour flows only from servant-leader attitudes, which have to be caught as well as taught, by the example of what Paul called “working together”, by way of contrast with “ruling over”.[24] No structural mechanisms will compensate if this heart-attitude is lacking. Attention to both may help tilt the balance towards the functional end of the status-function continuum, and foster the recovery of the priesthood of all believers among us.

 

To sum up, then, the “priesthood of all believers” is a way of summarising the belief that all believers have immediate access to God and that all have a part to play in the life of the church. Both of these are attenuated in the process of institutionalisation as a clerical class gains ascendancy. To the extent that the Salvation Army has followed this pattern, its spirituality and effectiveness has been affected. Like other ecclesial bodies, the Army is challenged to find a way of ensuring that the function of leadership is not compromised by the accretion of status.

 

 

 

  

 

 

Questions arising:

 

  1. How might fresh initiatives be encouraged and given permission while retained in association with the mainstream Salvation Army?

 

  1. What kind of structures could ensure the successful practice of servant leadership?

 

  1. How might servant leadership be modelled and inculcated?

 

  1. How else might the old wineskins be renewed?

 

 


 


[1] Colin Bulley, The Priesthood of Some Believers (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000).

[2] J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (North Blackburn Vic.: Collins Dove, 1991) p. 422.

[3] Officer (June 1899) pp. 202-3.

[4] William Booth, Letter to Commissioners and Territorial Commanders, London, 1900, p. 15.

[5] Field Officer (December 1900) pp. 453-4.

[6] Officer (September-October 1961) p. 339.

[7] Salvationist (18 April 1998) p. 6.

[8] Officer (January-February 2006) p. 23.

[9]  Bryan Wilson, Religion in a Secular Society (London, C.A. Watts, 1966) p. 136.

[11] Matthew 20:25-28.

[12] Matthew 23:8-10.

[13] Staff Review (October 1930) pp. 317-24. The reference is to 3 John 9.

[14] Officer (March 1931) pp. 222-3.

[15] Yves Congar, Lay People in the Church: A Study for a Theology of Laity (London: Bloomsbury, 1957) p. 45.

[16] Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church in the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1998) p. 237.

[17] Congar, Lay People in the Church, p. 47.

[19] Kenneth E. Crow, “The Church of the Nazarene and O’Dea’s Dilemma of Mixed Motivation” (www.nazarene.org/ansr/articles/crow_93.html) downloaded 30 March 2005.

[20] Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, “How the Upstart Sects Won America: 1776-1850”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (1989) 28 (1) p. 42.

[21] A. D. Gilbert, Religion and Society, pp. 152,3,4.

[22] New Zealand WC (26 June 1965) p. 9.

[23] New Zealand census figures.

[24] 2 Corinthians 1:24.


 

 

 

 

   

 

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