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Communion reconsidered
– a response to
Colonel Richard Munn
by Captain Sam
Tomlin
The April-May 2022
edition of the Journal of Aggressive Christianity was
dedicated to Colonel Richard Munn, featuring a number of very
interesting and thoughtful articles written by him in recent
decades on the occasion of his retirement. I have enjoyed Col.
Munn’s reflections as part of the International Social Justice
Commission, on social media and on his podcast. One article
stood out for me, however – ‘More Communion – Please?’
<More Communion link>
in which Col. Munn outlines his thoughts on the issue of the
sacraments (‘communion’ in particular). The argument includes
many helpful anecdotes and illustrations, and adheres to the
traditional Salvation Army understandings of the sacraments
and the sacramental.
I want to offer this response to Col.
Munn’s article as I think it highlights a number of issues
with the Army’s stance that have been bubbling away for me in
recent years.
Ceremony and ritual
Central to Col. Munn’s argument – as
with other Salvationist defences of our official sacramental
position – is the highlighting of the dangers of ceremony and
ritual. After outlining different Christians’ approaches to
communion, Col. Munn suggests that ‘we’ve come a very long way
from the Luke text where a close group of friends in the
faith, eating a meal with the master teacher they love, gather
in a home, talking, giving thanks and praying together.’
Indeed, he proposes ‘a more accurate interpretation of the New
Testament’ away from the ‘‘High Altar only’ to the humble meal
table.’
This is a familiar argument in the
Salvation Army – while other Christians endlessly deliberate
and argue over the correct way to conduct sacraments, the Army
bypassed these debates by simply getting back to the real
world where people were. No special or magic words need to be
spoken, no particular vestments worn – just simple acts of
compassion, mercy, holiness, and justice, draw followers of Jesus back to
the basics. In this regard we can have more communion not less
– just when a priest might give us a wafer and some wine.
Is there not a
danger here, though, that we caricature ritual in other parts
of the church to its worst elements? Are there parts of the
church that have become too obsessed with ritual, encouraging
people to partake through rote repetition and empty ceremony?
Of course. Does this mean that all ritual should be discarded
and deemed unhelpful for us Salvationists? As James K.A. Smith
among others has shown
<video link>, human beings are
ritualistic creatures and the question is not whether we
partake in ritual or liturgy, but which rituals and liturgies?
Even we Salvationists, as Col. Munn accepts – the part of the
body of Christ seemingly least interested in rituals – created
a whole swath of rituals, whether it is our uniform, bands,
flags etc., a point to which I shall return later on.
My particular worry here is that we end
up contrasting the sacramental life (good) against the
dominical sacraments (communion and water baptism - bad) as if
they are inherently in tension.
Why do we need to bother with the
dominical sacraments, the argument goes, when they are not
essential to salvation, and God is calling us away from the
sanctuary to the world of pain and suffering? Worrying about
these two ceremonies simply distracts from our service of the
poor, our search for justice and acts in the ‘real world.’
What of the examples of Mother Teresa,
Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero and Dorothy
Day, to name but a few from other traditions who integrated
acts of mercy and justice with communion or Eucharist? Indeed,
to varying degrees and in different ways they also argued that
their action could not be separated from this ceremony. Is our
social and justice-seeking action as Salvationists special in
a way that these examples are not? It is an interesting
comparison to look at the emergence of the Oxford Movement,
around the same time the Booths founded the Army. While one
group wanted to move away from ritual and ceremony, the other moved
towards it, but for both there was a centrality for acts of
service and justice.
As NT Wright
outlines
<video link>,
rather than being in competition, the call to gather as
believers (represented by the sacraments) and the sending into
the world are inherently linked – interpreting and enriching
one another. Col. Munn uses the example of Brother Lawrence
washing the dishes as being ‘as near to Christ’ as ‘he ever
did at the Blessed Sacrament.’ The key word here is ‘as’.
There is no suggestion that Brother Lawrence stopped receiving
the sacrament because he felt close to God at other points.
In this regard, do we Salvationists
downplay a key aspect of our social work – its firm placement
in the context of the rich Christian narrative? This is a key
element of the sacraments understood in other denominations. A
major achievement of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has been
to show that our actions only make sense as part of the
narrative in which they fall. You can give bread to someone
who is starving for very different reasons: you might be doing
so to look good to others, to improve your karma, to meet
government targets for helping the hungry, or because you are
following your saviour Jesus Christ. Without anchoring our
actions within a particular narrative, they remain rootless
and arbitrary.
Of course, we Salvationists do worship
the particular God revealed in Jesus Christ as we gather in
our corps or homes – or on the street as we march and sing.
The point about communion, however, is that it is a more
intense and suggestive way of doing what we already do. It
draws us back to the very central event in the history of the
cosmos – the death of Jesus on the cross through specific
remembrance (as a continuous event with the resurrection) –
bread representing Jesus’ body and wine (or grape juice)
representing his blood. ‘For whenever you eat this bread and
drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes,’
says Paul in 1 Corinthians 11.26. Col. Munn suggests that the
meal shared by Jesus with his disciples is a simple meal among
friends, yet this forgets that this meal was specifically a
Passover meal (Luke 22.8) – a ceremony of itself, with all the
resonance of communal memory, identity and the dramatizing of
a past event made present. Jesus does not do away with the
ceremonial aspect of this but reinterprets it to now be about
himself.
This is why the Church has
traditionally insisted upon the dominical sacraments – as a
key means of avoiding drifting away from the central truths of
the faith; a drift that the Army has arguably witnessed as
much of our social work has been divorced from worshipping
Salvationist congregations.
Ecumenical unity
Col. Munn also repeats a familiar
argument that in being released from the sacraments of
communion and water baptism, the Army ‘serves as an important
reminder to the rest of the Christian world…reminding
communities of faith that ritual easily becomes an end in
itself and that many Christians lead vibrant and spiritual
healthy lives without regularly taking communion.’ Our role in
the wider body of Christ in this regard is primarily as a
witness to the possibility of salvation without ritual
(specifically the sacraments) – being free to focus on the
essence of faith, namely salvation through faith alone and the
outworking of this salvation.
There are various issues with this,
however. Firstly, does it not absolve us from a concrete
command of Jesus? ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ ‘Do what?’
it is often replied. William Booth suggested this ‘doing’
relates to the enactment of the sacramental life related to
the example Jesus gave us. Yet this interpretation fails to
deal properly with the text in Luke. ‘Then he took a loaf of
bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it
to them… Do this in remembrance of me’ Jesus said. ‘This’
clearly relates to the breaking of bread and to Jesus’ body on
the cross and the cup to his blood. Col. Munn suggests that we
should ‘cherish the family meal as a place of closeness. Use
it as a time of prayer, communion and thanksgiving… Read
scripture before or after the meal.’ I say ‘Amen’ to all of
this, but also suggest this does not necessarily fulfil what
Jesus commanded in Luke 22: the specific remembrance of Jesus’
death on a cross as the central event embodying and
representing with greater clarity than anything else God’s
self-giving love.
In this interpretation we are removing
ourselves from the plain understanding of almost every other
Christian in history. Do we really think that almost every
Christian – including the greatest theological minds in church
history – have misinterpreted these verses when they support
the taking of communion, and it was only towards the end of
the nineteenth century that the true meaning was discovered?
Col. Munn suggests
the Army’s approach is a ‘more accurate interpretation of the
New Testament.’ Is he suggesting that other denominations are
wrong to practice communion as a ceremony? If not, perhaps it
is right for other denominations to practice communion, but
the Army has been called to a special role as suggested above.
Aside from the rather postmodern assumptions when it comes to
biblical interpretation (‘something might be right for you,
but not right for us’), this clearly undermines ecumenical
unity in my mind. Andy Miller III has written a suggestive
essay
<essay link>
in this regard, asking whether we really, ‘assume that our
witness to the church is more important than our being a part
of it?’
The sacraments are a significant factor
in our ‘adviser’ rather than full status as a member of the
World Council of Churches. Col. Munn also mentions the age-old
issue for Salvationists in ecumenical settings where communion
is taken but we are not sure whether to participate. Surely
the (re)adoption of sacraments in the Army would help foster
greater unity in such settings – where we do not deliberate
whether to join our siblings in other denominations but can do
so joyfully. We may not share their same enthusiasm for
regular ritual, but we can join with them, and they with us in
the breaking of bread in remembrance of a specific event – the
death of Jesus. Beyond such remembrance, we might also find
true their testimony that this simple act can nourish our
individual and corporate spiritual life as the bread we break
is ‘a participation in the body of Christ’ (1 Cor. 10.16). God
may not always be present at a communion table – if it becomes
rote repetition, or the poor are excluded; but surely we can
accept the testimony of our brothers and sisters in Christ
that it can and has been a significant source of spiritual
benefit just as our hearing scripture and preaching is. If we
want others to listen to our witness of the dangers of
ceremony, surely we can listen to their testimony too?
Of course this would not bring
worldwide unity overnight. Protestants cannot join with Roman
Catholics or Orthodox at the Eucharist – so are we not just
wading into unnecessary and endless debates that lead nowhere?
While such debates can draw us away from other key aspects of
the faith, I refuse to believe that such dialogue with fellow
brothers and sisters in Christ is wasted. Jesus called us to
unity, and our acceptance of fracture in the body of Christ is
one of the greatest stains on the modern church. By debating
these matters, it shows we care about unity. By absolving
ourselves entirely from them, I worry we subtly communicate we
are not as concerned for ecumenical unity.
I am not suggesting that we aim for one
world-wide denomination (unity is not uniformity), but when
there is so little that visibly unites Christians across the
world, the seemingly small act of joining our siblings in a
foundational understanding of Jesus’ command - that he asks us
to periodically remember his death through the sharing of
bread and wine (or grape juice) - would be of great prophetic
significance in my mind. Who knows what God might do with this
simple act of humility as other denominations see the witness
of the Salvation Army moving ever-so-slightly towards
ecumenical unity?
If it is suggested that we should avoid
such time-consuming debates to focus on the important matters
of salvation, let us also pause for a minute and remember the
time we have spent as a movement on matters specific to our
context. How many articles, social media posts and official
minutes have been written on whether women can wear trousers
as part of the official uniform for instance? As Luke
Bretherton outlines:
‘In the Salvation Army there is, at
present, an ardent but to an outsider baffling debate about
whether wearing uniforms is a requirement for full membership
of the Salvation Army. This debate is a good illustration of
what happens when renewal movements abandon the given
practices and theological coordinates of the Christian
tradition - in the case of the Salvation Army it is the
abandonment of the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist. The
result is that they end up sacralising the non-essential.’
In this regard, I also wonder how true
it is that other denominations view our non-participation in
the dominical sacraments positively as our self-proclaimed
prophetic role suggests. In my experience, speaking with those
from different denominations, there is certainly an admiration
for our passion for justice and the connection between social
action and evangelism; but there is usually a confusion and
even sadness regarding our stance on the sacraments.
Mediation
At the heart of the Army’s decision to
reject the dominical sacraments is of course a particular
theology of mediation. Col. Munn alludes to this by
emphasising the ‘immediacy of grace’ and ‘sufficiency of
Christ’ as opposed to ‘taking communion to ensure salvation.’
The Holy Spirit cannot be contained in physical items, and God
wishes to speak directly to humans, not using physical items
as means of grace.
This is a dense
theological matter and I can only scratch the surface here.
Commissioner Phil Needham, however, has critically analysed
<link> this
aspect of Salvationist theology and suggested it comes close
to ‘heresy’ – strong language indeed from one of our key
ecclesial voices of recent decades. Such an emphasis on the
entirely unmediated means of grace ‘represents a dualistic
separation, or even contradiction between spiritual and
physical’ which comes close to Gnosticism. That God speaks to
people today is unquestioned, and we need not abandon the
Booths’ insistence on the simplicity of God’s dealings with
humans. But does God ever communicate his presence entirely
unmediated? If we are listening to a song, we have language
and notes vibrating in the air, reading scripture involves a
physical book (or phone!) in a particular language, and we
emphasise the importance of the physical mercy seat as a
special place to meet with God.
In response to this, it is sometimes
suggested that God will use physical things for his purposes
(they can be ‘sacraments’ in the sense of being an outward
sign of inward grace) but they are not means of grace in
themselves. I am not convinced by this argument for the
reasons Commissioner Needham suggests, but even if this is the case our
official position effectively amounts to suggesting that God
can use anything to be a sacrament apart from the two things
or actions which over 99 per cent of Christians have
considered sacraments in Christian history. Why should we not
allow two more if everything else can be used by God to
communicate his immediate presence in our hearts? There is a
Protestant tradition, originating with Zwingli (who disagreed
with Martin Luther on precisely this point at the Marburg
Colloquy in 1529), that denies the real presence in bread and
wine – surely this would be the starting point for a
Salvationist theology of communion which can honour the
tradition of the immediacy of grace and not have to affirm the
real presence in the bread and wine/grape juice.
Without the sacrament of communion, it
is also unclear what our sacramental life is supposed to be
sacramental of. This is an extension of the point made above
regarding the family meal not specifically drawing attention
to Jesus’ death. Col. Munn suggests that we should read
scripture when having a meal together as a family or with
fellow Salvationists. This is right – but it remains unclear
to me why this cannot sometimes include specific memory of
Jesus’ death with bread and grape-juice to represent his body
and blood. In this way, our sacramental life is more clearly
linked to the self-giving love of God as he revealed through
Jesus’ death on the cross.
Practical steps moving forward
In recent years voices have grown to
(re)adopt the dominical sacraments in the Army. No surveys
exist that I am aware of, but anecdotally I would suggest
around 30 per cent of officers and corps members I have spoken
with about the issue are in favour of their re-admittance. In
one case, a passionate, Spirit-filled, young Salvationist I
knew in Germany with whom I corresponded over a number of
years recently took the decision to leave the Army and join
the Lutheran church. One of the main reasons? The Army’s
sacramental position. We have probably lost the rest of his
life’s service within the Army because of this position. What
a tragedy for our movement! As Col. Munn suggests, many others
want to join Army corps but feel they cannot because of our
sacramental position.
I understand that there is a fear that
if we (re)adopt the dominical sacraments that we will lose a
key element of our identity – the ‘aggressive’ Christianity of
which this journal speaks. I think these fears are
over-played. I and others arguing for their (re)adoption are
not suggesting we move to an Anglo-Catholic ritualism.
Commissioner
Needham has written a helpful outline of how the global Army
might tackle the issue of (re)adoption of communion and water
baptism at the end of the article I referenced above. They
could be performed by any corps member – we are a priesthood
of all believers and need not descend into clericalism; many
of the original barriers (women in leadership not accepted by
others, no non-alcoholic alternative to wine) are no longer
present; a simple set of words could be designed to help
Salvationists if they so desire (if we are worried this might
come close to ‘liturgy’ let us remember we already have such
words for dedications, funerals, weddings etc. in our aptly
named ‘ceremonies book’); and crucially no one (or
congregation) would be forced to practice them.
It is on this final point I wish to
finish, because I think it comes to the crux of the matter.
For, in fact, I agree with much of what Col. Munn wrote! He
expresses the beauty of Salvationism and the spirit with which
the Booths founded this wonderful God-inspired movement. I
simply do not think that anything he said means we cannot
allow Salvationists to practice communion and water baptism.
Far from compromising this spirit, Salvationists specifically
remembering Jesus’ death for us as an expression of God’s
self-giving love, with a basic bread roll and grape juice at a
corps meeting, a homeless drop-in or on the streets would
enhance and deepen our action for justice and compassion of
which we should rightly be proud. If our current position
represents the freedom to live the Christian life without
relying on ritual for salvation, then surely we must also
affirm the freedom to include the dominical sacraments as part
of an expression of the salvation of Jesus Christ.
William Booth himself admitted there
might come a time when his decision in the 1880’s might need
to be reconsidered (which itself surely calls into question
the firm foundation of the non-practice of communion and water
baptism). Now is surely that time.
Captain Sam Tomlin is a corps officer
in the UK & Ireland territory, at Liverpool Stoneycroft Corps.
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