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Salvationist Worship - A
Historical Perspective
by
John Cleary
“If a man were permitted to write all the
ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a
nation"
- Andrew Fletcher, Scottish Patriot 1655-1716
It has been said, "We are what we sing." Australia's
Indigenous Peoples understand this profoundly. Songlines is
the name given to the complex songs that link the land, the
Dreamtime and the people. They are a way of memorizing the
country and its attributes without the benefit of maps and
written records. More than this they sing of both the material
and spiritual connections that make up "my country". Songlines
sing our country and ourselves into existence. If we don't
sing it, we don't see it. In naming it, it becomes real, it
becomes part of our country. The writer Bruce Chatwin in his
book Songlines notes that the more complex of these songs
could cross tribal boundaries and provide a reliable guide
through hundreds of miles of desert wilderness, naming both
the physical and spiritual characteristics of the country and
its people. The song provides a guide to the real world, a map
of our country in both its physical and spiritual dimensions.
Even in our modern cultures we have a lingering understanding
of what this means. When people ignore us, we resort to
phrases such as "He doesn't even remember my name, I might as
well not exist". Naming confers recognition. It brings the
object named into focus - the word becomes flesh.
It has often been said that, "The Salvation Army sang its way
around the world". People quickly picked up both the content
and spirit of the movement through its songs. In adapting the
most accessible and direct form of popular culture the Army
not only reached the unchurched but also consolidated and
educated its membership.
The eminent Evangelical historian Mark Noll, writing in
Christianity Today said,
Evangelicalism at its best is the religion
displayed in its classic hymns. The classic evangelical
hymns contain the clearest, most memorable, cohesive, and
widely repeated expressions of what it has meant to be an
evangelical. Diligent preaching, an incredible
organisational energy, and learned theology have gone into
the creation of modern evangelicalism. But nothing so
profoundly defined the faith of evangelicalism as its
hymnody: what evangelicals have been, is what we have sung.
Perhaps because it so obviously is a creature of the Bible's
salvific themes, the hymnody of evangelicalism defined a
religion that was clearer, purer, better balanced, and more
sharply focused than much of evangelical practice. (Noll,
CT. 12 July 1999)
WORSHIP WARS
At the moment the Church is going through what may be
described as the Worship Wars, a battle between contemporary
and traditional forms in worship and particularly in music for
worship. The war is as much over content as it is over form.
And for the participants the stakes in the war are nothing
less than the future of the Church.
For one side, the critical need is for the Church to connect
to contemporary culture and arrest the collapse in numbers
affecting most mainline denominations. This side of the debate
puts a premium on form and musical style. Attractiveness and
emotional engagement are the critical elements. Words are
employed principally to enhance the emotional impact of the
musical package.
For the other side, what is at stake is nothing less than the
gospel itself. That the essentially costly gospel of Christ
risks being lost amid a flood of "cheap grace" music that,
while high on energy engagement, has little to offer but
shallow emotions and the false idolatry of pop culture.
This war is one in which The Salvation Army has its own
significant place. One hundred years ago The Salvation Army
was being roundly criticised for employing similar musical
methods and techniques. Unfortunately the lessons of our
history seem lost to us.
The Salvation Army began life as a movement that used the most
popular and accessible forms of music to reach a public for
whom the message of the Church was shrouded behind musical
forms that had no relevance to them, and rituals that spoke of
another age. The early Salvation Army captured, cannibalised
and redeemed the popular forms of the day, and filled them
with messages that spoke of the love of God for ordinary
people and the power of God to change the world. This
combination of music that was relevant and lyrics that touched
lives was revolutionary. The message of the Salvationists was
carried in song - songs that mapped the way to a new world.
Early Salvationists recognised the power of musical form,
sometimes as an end in itself, but always within the context
of wider theological convictions. The form was to serve as the
herald of the message, a message that was as distinct, and
powerful as the form itself. Music opened the door of the
heart, and lyrics shaped the life of faith.
The lyrics of worship in the early Salvation Army were
critically linked to evangelism. Songs for worship were also
songs that spoke to the lost and broken. These were not songs
for the elect body of believers but for the whole lost world
for whom Jesus came.
CULTURAL RELEVANCE .
One of the most singularly successful phenomena of
contemporary Christian culture in Australia is the Hillsong
church. Recently the Federal Treasurer Peter Costello made an
appearance at the opening of the Hill-song Convention in
Sydney where some 17,000 people were in attendance. It was a
sign that Hillsong had arrived as a national presence. Such
large numbers for one denominational event were hailed by the
media, and recognised by the politicians as a force worth
noting.
Eighty-five years ago, in 1920, Salvation Army National
Commander, Commissioner James Hay was farewelled from the
platform of the Sydney Town Hall by the Prime Minister of
Australia William Morris (Billy) Hughes. It marked what had
become an almost annual acknowledgement by the statesmen of
Australia of the power and influence of The Salvation Army in
the Australian community.
But there is more than a surface similarity between the impact
of Hillsong today and The Salvation Army in the last century.
The founding Pastor of Hillsong, Brian Houston, has a
Salvationist background, his father was an officer. The
charismatic Pentecostal tradition, of which the Hillsong
church is a part, shares roots in the same holiness tradition
that gave rise to The Salvation Army. Indeed the founder of
one of the best known Pentecostal traditions in the United
States the Foursquare Gospel Alliance was a woman preacher
named Aimee Semple McPherson, who grew up as a young
Salvationist.
By the 1920s The Salvation Army occupied an extraordinary
place in Western popular culture. Films, plays, novels and
musicals regularly appeared featuring The Salvation Army and
particularly Salvationist women as the central characters.
George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara in England and Damon
Runyon's Guys and Dolls in the United States are but two
examples of dozens of works dating back to Edward Sheldon's
Salvation Nell in the 1890s.
In 1920, the year that Billy Hughes farewelled James Hay, one
of the year's most critically acclaimed feature films was a
Scandinavian movie that was a great success in the United
States, Britain and Australia. It was called The Phantom
Carriage, and at its heart was a story of sin, compassion,
repentance and redemption. It not only conveyed the heart of
the Salvationist message, but was also so accurately filmed
that the spirit of the Army still comes through the images.
The Salvation Army's message of compassion and brotherhood
resonated with ordinary folk around the world. An almost
perfect companion to the Salvation Meeting sequence in The
Phantom Carriage is Herbert Booth's song: 'Why are you
Doubting and Fearing?. It is both a story and a conversation.
It talks to and with those broken in spirit. It also makes a
theological point.
Why are you doubting and fearing?
Why are you still under sin?
Have you not found that his grace doth
abound?
He's mighty to save; let him in.
You say I am weak I am helpless,
I've tried again and again,
This may be true, but it's not what you do,
'Tis he who is mighty to save.
Lines such as "his grace doth abound" are a direct expression
of evangelical hope. "Grace Abounding" is a key element of
Wesleyan theology. The emphasis of the song is on shared
experience. This is the essentially compassionate heart of the
evangelical tradition. The Gospel is important for what it can
do for others.
Men and women like Majors James and Alice Barker brought this
Salvationist distinctive to Australia. In September 1882 James
and Alice were married by General William Booth and within a
couple of days set sail for Australia to take charge of The
Salvation Army "in all the colonies of the Southern Seas".
This onerous load was somewhat lightened by the fact that
aside from a few Salvationists in Adelaide, The Salvation Army
did not yet exist in these parts. .James Barker was 27 years
old.
The early Salvation Army, like Hillsong today, successfully
captured the spirit of age. In fact statistics indicate that
the impact of The Salvation Army was somewhat greater in both
relative and absolute terms than that of Hill-song. When James
Barker arrived in Australia he recorded in his diary, "People
against us, press against us, God for us". One year and one
week later Barker held a rally at the Melbourne Exhibition,
the then largest building in the Southern Hemisphere, with
over 10,000 in attendance.
Barker's social conscience was as acute as his evangelical
zeal. He stood outside the Melbourne Gaol and, rather than
preach at those being released, asked if they needed a bed for
the night. Alice and James Barker placed an advertisement in
the press inviting the parents of children they feared lost
into the grim world of the brothels of Little Bourke Street to
contact them for assistance. Alice Barker did not lecture the
brothel keepers, but got to know the girls, and could speak
with them about their parents and loved ones. When the Barkers
were recalled to England in 1889, James' final charge to his
soldiers was, "By all means aim to reach Heaven. But be like
Jesus, and take a thief with you."
The Barkers were acting in the spirit of William Booth who,
though opposed to drink, recognised "the pub is the poor man's
only parlour". Here was a religion that both changed lives and
served humanity - Christianity with its sleeves rolled up. It
burned through Australia like a bushfire. By the time The
Salvation Army reached its 20th anniversary in Australasia,
almost one percent of the population of Australia and New
Zealand claimed to be Salvationists, and The Salvation Army
was at the centre of national life.
By the early years of the 20th century The Salvation Army was
operating the largest commercial film production company in
the southern hemisphere. It also ran a recording studio. More
than 200 recordings were released by the turn of the century.
The power of 21st century technologies fully and radically
deployed to attract mass audiences to the gospel so
effectively seen at Hillsong, are nothing less than a distant
mirror of The Salvation Army's early years in Australia under
the influence of men like James Barker and Herbert Booth.
Though there are enormous similarities in style between
Hillsong and the early Salvation Army there are also
differences. The Salvation Army belongs to the tradition of
Wesleyan evangelicalism. Hillsong is founded on the later
Charismatic tradition. Though both are branches of the same
theological tree, there are differences in emphasis that can
lead to a somewhat different understanding of the nature of
the Gospel.
Perhaps I can illustrate it best with an anecdote from the
life of the man who stood on the platform with Billy Hughes,
Commissioner James Hay. Hay was a very practical man, and
during a stint as head of the International Training College
in London, he had quite an impact on the life of one aspiring
young Salvationist. Fifty years later when writing his
autobiography, our "poet General", Albert Orsborn, recalled
how Hay responded to a request that the trainees sing the most
popular religious song of the day, Tell Mother I'll be there
In Answer to her Prayer. "Sing something more practical!" Hay
cried to a congregation of 500 young cadets. "The Lord of
Heaven has something better to do than go round the golden
city telling various mothers that their respective sons will
shortly arrive."
James Hay was making a point about the tension between emotion
and intellect that has characterized the evangelical movement
for much of the past 200 years. The early Salvation Army was
full of songs for all occasions. Many of them were written for
the moment and did not survive beyond the weeks of their
usefulness. However, at the same time popular songs such as
Champagne Charlie and Drink the Good old Whiskey were being
converted, so too the classic hymns of the evangelical
movement were retained and even re-arranged to anchor the Army
firmly in the tradition of the Great Wesleyan Revival. These
were hymns and songs that spoke to both head and heart, body
and soul. They grounded the young, exuberant Army firmly in
historic Church teaching.
Booth saw himself standing on the shoulders of giants, and one
giant in particular, John Wesley. Wesley founded the Methodist
Church and inspired "The Great Awakening", a religious revival
that swept England and the United States in two great waves in
the 18th and 19th centuries. This revival gave rise to both
Evangelicalism and the Holiness Movement.
THE GREAT AWAKENING
John Wesley was an Anglican clergyman concerned at the lack of
religiosity in the England of his day. English church
attendance was low, in a reaction to the severe Puritan and
Calvinist strands that had dominated Protestantism since the
English Civil War in the previous century.
Jean Calvin, from whom Calvinism takes its name, was a French
contemporary of the great German reformer Martin Luther. He
was both a theologian and a lawyer, and is most often
associated with the idea of predestination, which in its
extreme form teaches that God is utterly sovereign and that
this sovereignty extends to all that has been and will be.
Everything is known and fixed in the mind of God. Thus all
history is predetermined. Human free will is largely an
illusion.
In the words of the popular hymn All Things Bright and
Beautiful by Cecil Frances Alexander,
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate.
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
In other words, if you are rich enjoy it, if you are poor get
used to it - as it is the way God intended it to be. While you
should show charity towards the poor, it is not your business
to seek to change their state. If God wishes to do so then he
can make it so.
This rigid view of the sovereignty of God and passive view of
human responsibility did not sit well with Wesley's
understanding of the Bible. Wesley took human responsibility
seriously. In this, Wesley sided with Calvin's theological
rival Jacob Arminius. Genesis taught that God had made
humanity in his image, and that humanity had exercised free
will in choosing to disobey God. For Wesley, free will
provided the essential counterpoint to sovereignty in God's
great plan. Indeed, free will is the very thing that gave
humanity its likeness to the Creator.
With freedom comes responsibility; responsibility to care for
the world as God would have it. As expressed in the Lord's
Prayer, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". As God
wants the world to conform to his best will for it, saving
people is an urgent task, both for their sake, and for the
sake of building a better world.
COMMUNITY
It began with Genesis and the very first stories of man's
attempt to escape responsibility. "Am I my brother's keeper?"
(Genesis 4:9) is a question posed from the beginning. It is
central to the patriarchs and prophets, to Jesus and Wesley
and Booth.
The great revelation of the Law given to Moses was that God
cares not so much about how humans treat God but how they
treat each other. Jewish theologians point out that worship is
not about "God and me" but essentially about community. Whilst
we may need to worship God through formal acts of worship,
what God actually desires of us is good relations with our
neighbour. In the words of contemporary Jewish scholar, Rabbi
Burton Visotzky:
The Revolution in the Ten Commandments was
that God cares not so much for how human beings treat God,,
that was after all the pagan ideal - you have to sacrifice
to us the right way, you have to watch all your observances,
because the god's will treat you well if you treat them
well. But the Ten Commandments say, God cares how human
beings treat each other. It shifted the focus from you
honour God by treating God well, to, you honour God by
treating well the person standing in front of you.
This focus is critically reflected in worship.
The demand is that we care for one another
and love one another. And in so doing, the prophets tell us,
that is how you find God. The social prophets are ferocious
in their insistence that if you have wealth it must be
shared. You can't just simply, as Amos says, lie on your
couches of ivory and drink wine. If you are not feeding the
poor, it does not make a difference if you are going to
church or synagogue, you are failing God. (Rabbi Burton
Visotzky; Jewish Theological Seminary, USA; Kingdom of
David, PBS)
This emphasis is carried on through the teachings of Jesus.
Jesus is not known for his skill at leading temple worship,
indeed he was generally critical of those who placed, an
emphasis on Temple ritual. Jesus became known as a troublesome
prophet for the way he expressed his faith in the streets and
lanes with the ordinary people. His death and resurrection
mark a triumph of sacrificial love over triumphalist power and
an affirmation of God's continuing love for the world.
For God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not
perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send
the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order
that the world might be saved through him' (John
3:16-17NRSV)
John Wesley had an optimistic view of human life and
salvation. God loves the world. God wants the best for the
world. The greatest demonstration of that love is the life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus. In dying to self we are
assured through the promises of God that we rise to eternal
life.
To the question in Genesis, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Wesley
clearly said, "Yes". More, the gospel proclaimed a radical
mutuality. We are equal before God as his children, and thus
have responsibility to care for our brothers and sisters. To
quote Paul, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no
longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for
all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28 NRSV)
This was good news for the poor and Wesley had to preach it.
More than that, if God had given us responsibility to proclaim
the gospel and the world was good, we had a responsibility to
use the most effective means the world could provide to preach
that gospel.
John Wesley took his views out of the church and into the
highways. His message to the poor was also in sympathy with
the notions of individual freedom, responsibility, and
universal brotherhood emerging in secular thought through the
philosophers of the Enlightenment. Thousands flocked to hear
him and thousands were converted. The joy of personal
salvation was expressed through love of neighbour.
Every believer was to become like Christ - to be sanctified.
Holy living was the mark of the sanctified Christian. Holiness
was a gift of God, received as at Pentecost. It was not
achieved through works but was necessarily expressed in works.
"There is no holiness but social holiness", said John Wesley.
Most significant for our purposes, popular song was critical
to the spread of Wesley's message. John Wesley's brother
Charles was an extraordinarily gifted communicator of theology
through simple verse. John Wesley's message, though spread
tirelessly by his preaching of over 40,000 sermons and
travelling 250,000 miles on horseback, reached across the
world through the songs of his brother Charles. His songs
continue to be sung long after Wesley's sermons have ceased to
be read by any but ardent students of theology. These songs
both moved hearts and changed minds:
My chains fell off, My heart was free, I
rose, went forth, And followed thee.
Liberty is found in Christ. This liberation is not just
spiritual. One of the last letters John Wesley ever wrote was
to William Wilberforce. In that letter Wesley urged
Wilberforce to take up and continue the fight against the
slave trade in both Britain and the United States. Under his
inspiration men like the slave ship captain, John Newton,
discovered Christ and gave the world:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me! *
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
Wesley's message was taken up in the United States by Charles
Grandison Finney. Charles Finney was the greatest evangelist
America had known. An ordained Congregationalist with
Calvinist sympathies he soon put away what he called the "old
Calvinism". Finney took the Armenian concepts of free will and
responsibility into the practice of evangelism. The job of the
preacher was not simply to expound the Bible. He must actually
work to convince people to decide for Christ. Finney developed
what became known as the "new measures" introducing such
radical innovations as the tent revival meeting, the call to
decision, and "the mourner's bench" or "mercy seat". He was
equally committed to the liberating influence of the Gospel in
worldly affairs. Finney actively campaigned for women's rights
and to free the slaves. American Evangelicals were in the
forefront of the fight to end slavery.
The great Anthem of the American civil war has two sets of
words. One sung in church in honour of the coming Kingdom -
Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord - and
the other by soldiers as they marched into battle remembering
an evangelical clergyman who had died for the cause. John
Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes
marching on.
Evangelist Tony Campolo recently suggested that if you went
forward at a Finney rally you could not return to your place
unless you signed on for the anti-slavery crusade or in
support of women's rights.
Catherine Booth when asked to describe her husband, William,
could find no higher praise than to declare him to be "an
English Charles Finney". Bramwell Booth was sent on holiday
with a copy of Finney's sermons. The text book used by the
first sessions of Salvation Army officer cadets was Finney's
Lectures on Revivals.
If Finney's insights influenced the revolutionary style of the
Booth style it was Phoebe Palmer who helped -shape their
theology. Palmer was a contemporary of Finney and a leader of
the developing Holiness movement. A leading advocate of
women’s' right to preach the gospel, Palmer was, like Finney
and Wesley, committed to the ideal that Holiness was very much
linked to this world. As some of those attracted to the
success of Finney's new measures began to emphasise emotional
experience as the only defining test of God's blessing, Phoebe
Palmer consistently maintained that holiness teaching should
not come adrift from its theological and practical groundings
in Wesleyan teaching. She became a pioneer of urban mission
and social rescue work.
Despite Palmer's efforts, many found comfort in a faith that
looked away from the concerns of earth to the joys of the
world to come. This was especially true of Evangelical
Christians in the southern United States. Disillusioned by the
loss of the war and the end of slavery, many saw the
anti-slavery Evangelicals of the north as responsible for
their distress. They found comfort in a holiness that
emphasised private personal experience over engagement with
the world. They began to actively promote the idea that
religion should not have any connection with the sphere of
politics and society. The Wesleyan emphasis on "social
holiness" was lost in the growing popularity of the novel
teaching of Dispensationalism that drew believers away from
this world towards the End Times and speculation on the world
to come. Wesley's optimistic engagement with the world
gradually gave way to a sense of pessimism about the world and
separation from it. Personal salvation became a private
matter.
This new teaching developed two distinct strands. The first
was pessimistic, viewing the world as utterly fallen. The
principle task of the Christian was to get as many into the
heavenly lifeboat as possible before the End Times. During the
1930s these ideas were spread out of the southern USA by radio
evangelists and later, in the 50s and 60s, taken up by tele-evangelists.
In the late 1960s they received a boost with the publication
of a book called The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay.
Politicians like Ronald Reagan in his crusade against "the
Evil Empire", readily took up Lindsay's ideas about the End
Times and the identification of Russian Communism with the
beast of the book of Revelation.
The second strand, while still focusing on personal piety as
the essential concern of the Gospel, took a more optimistic
view of life, and drew much from Finney's new measures. The
emphasis of this strand is best seen with the emergence in the
1930s of the religion of self-improvement represented in such
popular books as Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and
Influence People and the Christian books of the Reverend
Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking and his
Guideposts magazine. This view of Jesus, as a personal coach
on the road to success, reached its peak in the teachings of
the Prosperity Gospel, in which the way of the Christian is
represented as the path to material success.
CONTENT-FREE CHRISTIANITY
For some this has now gone too far. In many of those churches
where the Gospel is reduced to a "feel-good experience" care
for one's neighbour, or any form of social responsibility, is
shunned as deflecting from 'the real business of evangelism'.
Critics, however, ask what is the point of such evangelism if
the Gospel behind it carries no content? It reduces religion
to an insurance policy for the after-life.
Stephen Prothero author of American Jesus - How the Son of God
Became a National Icon notes that in some churches, all
religious symbols that might give offence are carefully
removed. Even the cross is banished from church buildings. On
the cover of Prothero's book is a dramatic image of a peaceful
American suburb over which hovers an immense figure of Christ.
It is in fact a hot-air balloon moulded in the image of Jesus,
making the powerful point that the Jesus of much modern
American Christianity is empty of substance and can be filled
with whatever hot-air any particular believer or group wish to
fill him with.
Will Starrer, the Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh
University, recently remarked, "What sort of Christianity can
it be when the centrality of the cross is concealed?" The
American Jewish literary critic Harold Bloom has observed that
this form of religion, with its emphasis on personal
fulfillment, has more in common with the ancient Gnostic
heresy than it does with the religion of the suffering servant
and the crucified God.
These trends present a real challenge to those who would
uncritically replace traditional Salvation Army worship with
material drawn from the Charismatic tradition. While it is
quite appropriate to sing songs that focus on our emotional
connection to God, to use this material as the central focus
of worship risks losing the link between head and heart that
characterised the evangelical faith of Wesley and the teachers
of holiness through Finney, Palmer, and Booth.
This is not a theoretical concern. I was recently at a seminar
on Christian contemporary music. The guest speaker was one of
Australia's leading writers of Praise and Worship material. He
commented that he once wrote a song that spoke about sinners
coming to repentance only to be told he had written a song
that should not be sung by Christians. His critic said such
songs should only be sung by sinners outside the Church. To my
great surprise the songwriter said he agreed with his critic
and that he is now careful to only write songs that point
Christians towards personal adoration of God.
This is doctrinal and theological nonsense. It is antithetical
to the history of Wesleyan evangelicalism, let alone the
biblical and prophetic traditions outlined above. It is a view
of Christians, not as fellow sinners, but as a separate group
of the elect. My particular concern is that if this view is
widely held by the key writers of the Praise and Worship
style, then those adopting this style will be immersed in an
unbalanced gospel. If Salvationists were to take this
seriously, we would have to abandon much of our songbook and
most of our history.
This goes some way, I think, to explain an unspoken but deeply
felt emotion shared by many Salvationists and old style
evangelicals - grief. .
It is not that the music is wrong or the individual songs are
wrong, but that evangelicals feel cut off from the breadth and
depth of their spiritual heritage at the very time and place
it matters most - in the act of worship.
SALVATIONIST TRADITION
While The Salvation Army has remained nominally true to the
spirit of the evangelical revival, so successful was its early
engagement with popular culture that the Army became wedded to
the cultural forms themselves. And as the "gloomy" Dean Inge
of Westminster noted in the 1920s "He who marries the spirit
of the age is doomed to widowhood in the next"....
Salvation Army methods were so successful that the
Salvationist culture was soon able to close itself off from
the world. By 1912, Army music could be sold only to
Salvationists, and Salvationists were not permitted to perform
non-Army music. Brass bands continued to have a powerful
cultural role long after their evangelical influence had
waned.
This is in some part due to the fact that group music-making
is one of the most creative and cost-effective means of
mobilising a significant body of people for a purpose that is
both personally fulfilling and spiritually uplifting.
Additionally, the brass band is one of the few group musical
activities which is relatively simple to teach, yet allows
amateurs access to the best and most sophisticated music of
the genre.
While this gave Salvationist culture its international
cohesiveness and strength, it turned the culture in on itself.
The composer Eric Ball remembers Bramwell Booth speaking to
cadets at the International Training College of The Salvation
Army as "A nation within the nations, with its own art and
culture and music". The Salvation Army remained largely secure
in this culture, insulated from the currents of the world for
almost a century.
THE HOLY WAR
Historian Barbara Tuchmann in her book A Distant Mirror, makes
the point that a revolution in musical style has accompanied
almost all of the great cultural shifts of the past 1000
years. It is both a product of the change and a bearer of its
message.
We would not be gathered here in quite this way today if it
were not for a particular moment in the mid 1950s. It's a
moment in which music is central, but it's not just about a
song, but about a profound and revolutionary shift in popular
culture. It's commonly represented as a shift from age to
youth. But more importantly it represents a shift in power
from the elite and skilled, to the democratic and instinctive.
In one leap, in the mid 1950s, power passed from the crafted
sophistication of Sinatra and Cole Porter to the instinctive
energy and shocking honesty of Rock 'n' Roll.
Rock music required little more than three chords and a voice;
anyone could give vent to their feelings and find success. The
political outcome of this cultural change was heard within
five years as Peter, Paul and Mary took the words of Bob Dylan
to the streets and sang The Times They Are A Changing.
Youthful idealists dropped commercially driven love songs for
songs about the world and the values that should shape it.
Salvation Army music, like the pop music of the 40s and 50s,
had also developed its own highly sophisticated style and
craft. Every Sunday evening slated instrumentalists and
composers filled Army halls around the world with a culture
that was internally coherent and self-sustaining. By the early
1960s it was preparing to celebrate 100 years of success.
So how did The Salvation Army cope with the challenge
presented by youth and rock in particular? Initially, far
better than most other churches did. While other established
churches were lamenting the loss of choral music, and
Pentecostal pastors were railing about the demonic influences
and primitive urges unleashed by rock music, the General of
the Salvation Army, Frederick Coutts, called the International
Training College.
Coutts suggested that perhaps the college might come up with a
response to the new youth culture. His challenge was taken up
by a group of cadets including Joy Webb. Modern rock was
emerging from Skiffle and Rhythm & Blues. These were not
difficult musical forms, and within a few months The Salvation
Army had elbowed its way back to the centre of popular
culture.
The Joystrings were initially seen as a pop novelty, but with
the success of a series of songs and albums, they were
recognised as "legit" artists in the vibrant UK pop scene at a
time when British pop dominated the world with the Mersey
sound of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann, and a
myriad of other groups. Here was the Army living up to the
best of its traditions of positive engagement with popular
culture, and proving its capacity to successfully respond to
the most dramatic shifts in cultural style.
So what happened? Why did the dramatic success of the
Joystrings not result in a radical reorientation of
Salvationist musical culture towards popular music?
I
think it was largely because in 1965 we also had something
else going on. In 1965 The Salvation Army was about to mark
the centenary of the foundation of the Christian Mission. And
in 1965 the huge edifice that was Salvation Army music
publishing had just entered its most mature and sophisticated
phase. Both composers and musicians reached levels that put
them on a par with the best in the secular world.
Ray Steadman-Allen's The Holy War marked the emergence onto
the world stage of serious Salvation Army brass music. Eric
Ball, Dean Coffin, and Wilfred Heaton, had prepared the way,
but in 1965, with the International Staff Band's album The
Holy War, featuring Ray Steadman-Allen's Holy War on one side
and Christ is the Answer - Fantasia For Band and Piano on the
other, Salvationist music had "arrived".
In this holy war the Joystrings were simply blown away.
Salvation Army brass musicians around the world welcomed the
success of the Joystrings, but regarded them at best as a
novelty, perhaps a distraction, and at worst as a satanic
influence on true Salvationist culture. Numerous youthful
musical aspirations were crushed by the contempt of local
bandmasters, and the threat of Headquarters to act against
those who had not submitted their work to the Music Board for
prior approval.
The Army of the 1960s failed to recognise that brass bands had
come to occupy the very same niche that church choirs had in
the previous century. Choirs achieved the highest form of
musical art with the best composers writing great works of
lasting value-men like Elgar, Stanford, and Parry. But though
of great merit, they were totally out of touch with the sounds
of the music halls and gin palaces, where the early
Salvationists found their inspiration.
Army bands might have been playing Toccata but it was the
Joystrings who touched the public.
THE PRESENT AND FUTURE
That so much of the meaning of The Salvation Army is carried
through its music is a major problem when that musical
heritage appears irrelevant, even to those who are part of the
movement, let alone the general public. The risk is that in
updating the form we will dispense with the substance. Yet
many of our young musicians feel they must be about rescuing
our musical culture from the narrow ghetto in which it has
been trapped for too long.
One thing is certain. It is utterly counterproductive to
deplore the lyrical shallowness of much of contemporary
Christian music in The Salvation Army when that shallowness is
not the fault of the musicians but the failure of the movement
to adequately theologically equip its soldiers to produce
lyrics that match the standard of the music.
Salvationist preachers, teachers and theologians need to be
about the business of filling the new musical forms with
meaning. That requires first having an adequate understanding
of the comprehensive nature of the evangelical gospel, then to
ensure the poetry of that Gospel so permeates the lives of our
musicians they cannot help but sing it.
Praise and Worship music is emotionally powerful. Emotion
charged and spirit filled worship that is also practically
challenging, is an essential characteristic of a vibrant and
healthy evangelical community. Early Salvationist worship was
emotion charged and spirit filled.
There's Joy in The Salvation Army - Hallelujah!
So how do we bridge the gulf between contemporary style and
theological substance? There is in fact a direct link between
the lyrical and musical styles of today and the revolutionary
message of William Booth and John Wesley. It can be found
where the impact of the evangelicals gave hope to the most
oppressed.
Dertrich Bonhoeffer was one of the most influential
theologians of the 20th century. He was executed by the Nazis
in the last days of World War II because of his association
with the plot to kill Adolf Hitler. Several years earlier
Bonhoeffer had the opportunity to leave Germany for the safety
of the United States. While in New York he joined the
congregation of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, one of the
oldest African American churches in the country, and long
associated with the fight for civil rights. There he
encountered the emotional power of a Wesleyan Gospel that sang
its way through the hearts of people. A gospel that spoke to
ordinary people of their pain, yet sang with confidence of the
God who would stand with them and ultimately redeem them. This
gospel changed Bonhoeffer from an academic theologian to a
committed disciple. Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to live and
suffer with his people. The cost of that discipleship was his
own life.
The black spirituals spring out of a combination of the heart
felt cry of the oppressed and the world redeeming hope of
Wesley and Finney. It is music that is grounded in the love of
God, speaks with the voice of the prophet, shows all the
tenderness of Jesus and moves through the power of the spirit.
It is no accident that out of this musical form sprang the
most popular musical forms of the 20th century; Blues, Jazz,
Rock and Soul. This is music that speaks from heart to heart.
It lives with sorrow and pain yet sings of hope.
Black Gospel music is the bedrock of contemporary Christian
music. The Salvation Army has missed this connection twice
before. Once in the 1910s, when having so successfully
embraced the sounds of the secular English Music Hall and the
American Minstrel shows of the 1880s, we turned our back on
the religiously based Blues and Jazz of the early 1900s. And
again in the 1960s, the Joystrings reconnected Salvationists
with popular culture at a critical turning point in the modern
world. Unfortunately the movement was deaf to the message.
The consistent path for the Salvationist is radical
engagement. The Salvation Army needs to embrace contemporary
Christian music. It needs to learn the lessons of its own
history and infuse that music with a comprehensive sense of
compassion and care, which belongs to the roots of Gospel
music and the origins of The Salvation Army.
It is something of an irony that at the very time some
Salvationists are questioning its mission, the evangelical
church is rediscovering its need for a theology that engages
with the world. Evangelists such as Philip Yancy and Tony
Campolo in the United States, magazines like Christianity
Today and Christian History are turning to the great
evangelical revival for inspiration. The evangelical churches
are recovering the message of William and Catherine Booth and
the early Salvation Army.
This essay has been an attempt to trace some
of the historic songlines of The Salvation Army. I began
with the observation, "We are what we sing". I believe that
if we as Salvationist Christians can no longer find a way to
incorporate our distinctive Wesleyan calling into the heart
of our worship and song then that calling will be lost to
us, and with it our reason for being Salvationists.
The essence of that calling is sometimes best
seen by others. Henry Lawson was Australia's great poet of
the dispossessed. He hated hypocrisy, particularly in the
Church, but for some reason, loved The Salvation Army. In
1912, on the death of William Booth, he wrote a tribute to
the Army, called "Booth's Drum". In 1917 when he was
battling the alcoholism that would eventually kill him, he
wrote another, more intimate tribute to the Army simply
called, Booth's Drum II.
BOOTH'S DRUM II (Bulletin Magazine 1917)
No more we see across the "park"
The SA barracks all aglow;
A single gas-jet lights the dark,
A single lassie runs the show,
And other shows - she travels round
To help them here and there a bit;
She knows the Bush, and knows her ground -
She's very small but she has grit.
She said to me the other day;
"I wish you would come in to-night;
think 'twould help me, anyway,
And give me better strength to fight"
I scarce knew what she meant, for she
Hath humour in her winsome face -
Unless 'twould help her heart to see
A BULLY bard in halls of grace.
But I grow tired of doing right.
And then I thought I'd let her know
That I was saved one strenuous night,
In old North Sydney years ago,
And "never had no luck" until
I got "run in and fined five bob"
(And also that I never will
Until I lose my stiddy job.)
"But that old save's worn out," she said;
"And those old days are past and gone.
Come in tonight, and clear your head,
And get a brand-new save put on.
You know that I'm a stranger here,
And find it very dull and slow"-
She paused, and brushed away a tear-
"You'd help me more than you can know."
And so I went, a sinner grey,
And sat among the earnest few,
And prayed, when she said: "Let us pray" -
Or rather I pretended to.
And when the others rose to go
(They very seldom stay out late)
She sat, for half an hour or so,
Beside the Unregenerate.
She showed me (sitting by my side)
A letter from a chaplain's hand
That told her how her sweetheart died
A hero's death in No Man's Land.
I'd known them both in day's gone by,
What time the chaplain used to swear.
I read the lines and saw that my
Unworthy name was mentioned there.
Then, blind with tears, she bowed her head;
But just as soon the tears were stayed.
"Now, brother, let us pray," she said –
And then her "brother" bowed and prayed.
And far, or near, it seemed to me,
Or yesterday, or long ago,
In this town, or across the sea,
Booth's drum was sobbing son and low.
(Lawson, H. Collected Works)
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