A Hospitable Army
by Candidate Andrew S. Miller III

             The word “hospitality” does not mesh well in a periodical entitled the Journal of Aggressive Christianity, or within the context of an Army for that matter. Salvationists probably are more prone to see hospitality as something done by the Home League and League of Mercy. With no insult toward those fine institutions of the Salvation Army, this paper will suggest that hospitality is a basic part of our identity as Christians and as Salvationists. 

            The breadth of the Salvation Army’s mission often complicates the Salvationists self-understanding. Implementing a historically informed social ethic is possibly the greatest challenge facing the contemporary Army. How does the ethical task set before the Army function distinctively within the kingdom of God? Is there a connecting point between the diverse ministries of the Salvation Army? This paper will seek to understand the origins of this holistic[1] approach to urban ministry with the aim of putting forward a proposal for the contemporary Army’s ethical perspective. 

 The Army and the Paradigm[2] of “Social Work”

The contemporary Salvation Army’s self-identity is often blurred by an unnecessary dualism between social and spiritual missions.[3]  Since 1890 Salvationists have developed a variety of ways for discussing the approach to social and spiritual ministries.

William Booth’s first way of distinguishing the social wing was to make it an office unto itself with its own officers and commissioner.[4] William Booth himself was seen as the autocratic, connecting link between the various wings of the Salvation Army. Commenting on the development of his own theology he remarked: “I had two gospels of deliverance to preach—one for each world [temporal and eternal], or rather, one gospel which applied alike to both. I saw that when the Bible said, ‘He that believeth shall be saved,” it meant not only saved from the miseries of the future world, but from the miseries of this [world] also.”[5] This quote demonstrates Booth’s desire to find and maintain equilibrium in ministry. His autocratic structures, which he felt were a sign of the millennial kingdom,[6] demanded the delegation and creation of a social wing. Herein lies the problem that has remained with the Salvation Army: in trying to find a “balance,” the Salvation Army further dichotomizes social and spiritual ministries. Is it possible that this dichotomy is unduly emphasized as a result of the Salvation Army’s insufficient paradigm of “social services?”

The striving to make the paradigm of “social services” fit into a theological system is arduous. This problem is apparent within the title of the important work edited by Commissioner John D. Waldron, Creed and Deed: Toward a Christian Theology of Social Work in The Salvation Army,[7] which compiled a variety of reflections of Salvation Army social ministries. The positive effects of this scholarly reflection are somewhat tainted by the insufficient polarizing paradigm of “social services.”[8]

The important reflections found in Creed and Deed begin with a premise that is flawed, that “social services” is (or should be) the overarching paradigm of Salvation Army social ministry. The paradigm of “social services” is inadequate in placing the Salvation Army within the meta-narrative of Christian social action. “Social services” automatically creates an impersonal and professional atmosphere.[9] An example of this bifurcation would be the soldiers of a corps who faithfully attends Sunday holiness meetings, but when encountering a person in need of “temporal” salvation, they refer the person to the “social worker” of the corps. Such a pattern and paradigm divorces the so called “spiritual work” from “social work” and generally delegates the “social services” to professional “social workers” that may or may not share the Army’s holistic mission.

If not “Social Services” then What?

The impact and legacy of William Booth’s eschatological ethic is a holistic approach to mission. How can the contemporary Army maintain this legacy? Recent scholarship has rediscovered the paradigm and practice of hospitality as a way of approaching Christian social ethics.[10] Hospitality can serve as a preferable paradigm for social ministries within the Salvation Army’s holistic mission. This paradigm is presented as “preferable” because it does not bifurcate spiritual and social ministries. The early Salvation Army presents the contemporary Army and the Christian church in general with a prophetic social ethic that has at its core an implicit form of hospitality. This legacy of hospitality and holistic ministry should be the model by which the contemporary Army looks to the future.

The Christian Tradition of Hospitality[11]

The practice of hospitality finds its apex in the nature of the Triune God who continually welcomes humanity into the eternal fellowship of the Godhead. Such welcome is clearly exhibited through Jesus’ sacrificial welcome in his passion. Receiving the welcome that Jesus offers necessitates participation in the fellowship of God’s trinitarian nature. The tradition of hospitality is more than desserts and prosaic conversation among friends and family. It is not a spiritual gift for those who like to bake. On the contrary, throughout church history hospitality has been concerned with the interaction between “others” and the practice of welcoming “strangers.”

The macrocosmic picture of the Old Testament is of the Israelites’ call to and from a foreign land where they were aliens.[12]  The Israelites were utterly dependant on God and were commanded to express their understanding of his providence in how they treated others who were in need. They were told to show welcome to strangers in light of the welcome of God.[13]  Specific examples of hospitality that reflect this macro picture in the Old Testament microcosmically are Abraham’s welcome of angels in Genesis 18, Rahab’s welcome of Israelite spies in Joshua 2, and the widow of Zarephath’s hospitality to Elijah in 1 Kings 17.

The teachings of Jesus powerfully encouraged people to show welcome toward others. Christine Pohl illustrates that Matthew 25 and Luke 14 are central in the formation and praxis of the tradition of hospitality.[14] Believers are explicitly commanded in various epistles to practice hospitality: Romans 12:13; Hebrews 13:2; 1 Peter 4:9; 1 Timothy 3:2; and Titus 1:8. The concept of loving and welcoming strangers is a pivotal message of the New Testament.

The practice of hospitality was critical to the development of the early church due to the intersection of the house and church. The young church regularly found itself meeting in homes for times of worship. Because of this intersection, the common meal became an important expression of hospitality that flourished in the multiracial society where the early church was submerged.  In the fourth and fifth centuries, leaders like Jerome, John Chrysostom, Benedict of Nursia, and Lactantius kept the tradition and language of hospitality vibrant. Through the medieval period hospitality became associated with entertainment and personal advantage from hospital practices. Hospitality became an expectation, rather than a natural sign of Christian fellowship.  Pohl states that, “In the diversity of institutions, in the loss of the worshiping community as a significant site for hospitality and the differentiation of care among recipients, the socially transformative potential of hospitality was lost.”[15]

The leaders of the Protestant Reformation reasserted the importance of hospitality. This realization of the importance of welcome was pragmatically significant because the social structures of Europe were stirred during the Reformation. A century later, John Wesley demanded a social understanding of the gospel in 18^th century England, and the Methodist movement he led reflected this articulation of social holiness. This social motivation was also prompted an imminent millennial hope.[16] Wesley grasped the theological and moral significance of hospitality without explicitly naming it.

The semantic difficulties of Wesley’s day continue to perplex the contemporary church’s connection to the tradition of hospitality. The significance of naming the tradition is important to William Booth’s connection with the overarching social ethical tradition of Christianity. The language provides the means where by a Christian can understand his or her social responsibility within the realm of theological, historical, and moral reflection. This understanding is specifically significant for contemporary practitioners of hospitality because hospitality enables their service to move beyond the realm of “duty” or “social services.” Hospitality then becomes a way of life for individuals and communities to express welcome as an outgrowth of their identity as a Christian body. Pohl shares that, “reclaiming hospitality is an attempt to bring back the relational dimension to social service, and to highlight concerns for empowerment and partnership with those who need assistance.”[17] Any Christian movement that takes seriously the exhortation to “welcome one another”[18] can benefit from viewing this welcome through the lenses of hospitality.

A Hospitable Legacy

            If hospitality is to be applied to the contemporary Salvation Army, does it line up with the ethical heritage of the life, ministry, and writings of the early Salvation Army? William Booth’s famous book, In Darkest England and The Way Out, is one such example. In Darkest England, was his effort to transport the theme of social redemption to the forefront of Victorian society. The unique power involved in recognition is a key theme in the tradition of hospitality.[19] Booth saw within each person the possibility of deliverance from sin and social evil because he theologically understood that salvation was available for all people. An example of such recognition is Booth’s explanation that the cab-horse in London has three things: “A shelter for the night, food for its stomach, and work allotted to it by which it can eat its corn.”[20]  Booth illustrates that these basic rights, given to horses, were being denied to a tenth of the population.  He calls this group the “submerged tenth.”  Booth’s proposed solution to this problem (“the Way Out”) is outlined as his “social scheme.” He comments on the ultimate goals of this “social scheme,” which implicitly embody themes of dignity and respect:

To attempt to save the lost, we must accept no limitations to human brotherhood.  If the scheme which I set forth in the following pages is not applicable to the thief, the harlot, the drunkard and the sluggard it may as well be dismissed without ceremony. As Christ came to call not the saints but the sinners to repentance, so the message of temporal salvation, of salvation from pinching poverty, from rags and misery, must be offered to all. [21]

Possibly drawing upon the language of Matthew 25:31-36, Booth later in the same book stresses the power of dignity and respect: “But we who call ourselves by the name of Christ are not worthy to profess to be His disciples until we have set an open door before the least and worst of these who are now apparently imprisoned for life in a horrible dungeon of misery and despair.[22] 

The Booths and Wesley both recognized God’s prevenient grace at work in the lives of people, and as a result their outlook on social ethics was dramatically transformed. Catherine Booth, when speaking on the subject of home visitation explained, “They need to be brought into contact with a living Christ…They want to see and handle the words of life in a living form. Christianity must come to them embodied in men and women, who are not ashamed to ‘eat with publicans and sinners.’”[23] Wesley’s understanding of social holiness pneumatologically influenced Catherine Booth’s understanding of communion with Christ in entire sanctification. 

Catherine also recognized the significance of seeing Jesus in every stranger: “Oh, for grace always to see Him where He is to be seen, for verily, flesh and blood doth not reveal this unto us! Well … I keep seeing Him risen again in the forms of drunkards and ruffians of all descriptions.”[24] Similarly Bramwell Booth illustrated:

When I see the poor, shivering creatures gathered in the warmth and comfort of our Shelters, and the famished ones in the Food Depots, and the workless hard at work, and the lost and lonely in the bright hopefulness of the Women’s and Children Homes, and the prisoners—set in happy families in our Harbours of Refuge, my heart sings for joy, and I say, ‘Is not this the Christ come again?’ If he came now to London and Boston and New York and Melbourne and Tokio, as He came to Jerusalem and Nazareth and Caesarea, would He not want to do exactly this? I believe He would![25]  

Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) redefines the way that humanity looks at “neighbors.” William Booth recognized the importance of this passage for early Salvation Army hospitality ministries as he frames this pericope in sacramental terms, which is somewhat ironic for a non-practicing-sacramental denomination, by urging soldiers “to observe continually the sacrament of the Good Samaritan.”[26]

            Bramwell Booth records an interesting conversation with his father in his popular book Echoes and Memories.[27] The conversation took place when the Booths were crossing the Thames River on London Bridge, and William Booth noticed the homeless men sleeping under the arches of the bridge at nightfall. His son Bramwell was obviously aware of their lack of lodging, but William was disgusted by the poverty he saw. Bramwell records their conversation (Bramwell’s responses in Italics):

‘Go and do something! We must do something.’ ‘What can we do?’ ‘Get them a shelter!’ ‘That will cost money.’ ‘Well that is your affair! Something must be done. Get hold of a warehouse and warm it, and find something to cover them. But mind, Bramwell, no coddling![28]

This conversation illustrates how the boundaries of hospitality, in general, are often hard to define. Despite the ambiguous parameters, the imperative nature of hospitable practices can be found in William’s comments.

Frank Smith, the first leader of the “Social Wing” commented about working with the dangerous people who are on the borders of society: The fact is, deny it who can, the churches are wedded to the wealthy world. Let us of The Salvation Army, from this day forth, wed ourselves to the fate and the fortunes of the so-called dangerous classes. Let us go down to our bride in the Boweries of our cities. God approves of this union.[29]

The way in which people understand the proper balance between that which is social and spiritual is continually an issue in the Salvation Army’s hospitality ministries. The personal secretary to William Booth, Brigadier Fred Cox, recalled at a later date how Booth would often respond to questions about this dilemma:

He believed in keeping religion first. People used to say to him in the early days, ‘You know, General, we can do with your social operations, but we can’t do with your religion; we don’t want it.’ The General would say—‘If you want my Social Work, you have got to have my Religion; they are joined together like Siamese twins; to divide them is to slay them!’[30]

          The delicate harmonization of the relationship between these two aspects of Salvation Army ministry is a frequent task for any Salvationist. In 1966 Philip Needham described the Salvation Army’s identity problem as “schizophrenic.”[31] On the other hand, General Fredrick Coutts described the idealized mutual existence of social and spiritual ministries by quoting a marital metaphor.[32] It is key to the Salvation Army’s self-understanding that this relationship be understood in light of the Army’s historical theology while remaining relevant to the people it serves.

Hospitality: A Preferable Paradigm for the Army 

The Biblical/theological tradition of hospitality can serve as a preferable paradigm for Salvation Army ministries. The Christian tradition of hospitality has been buried for three centuries, as the 18^th century largely considered it “an antiquated practice, out of step with busy commercial society, a relic from an earlier time.”[33] Christine Pohl suggests: “Hospitality is a way of life fundamental to Christian identity.”[34] Hospitality is a paradigm that connects theological reflection with everyday concerns. The Salvation Army has arguably had the most consistent social witness in the past 150 years; however, acknowledging and naming and refocusing this social witness as “hospitality” will connect the Salvation Army’s work in general with the theological history of the church. Explicit theology has often been a secondary concern for the pragmatic Salvation Army;[35] therefore, it has admittedly lacked a theological foundation for its practices.[36] The theological heritage supplied by the tradition of hospitality can provide a foundation for the existing social ministries of the Army.

Hospitality can further connect and unite the progression of William Booth’s theology in a way that does not tend towards Murdochian separatism. First, Booth recognized the importance of offering a neglected group personal redemption, and eventually he saw the need to institutionally welcome the holistic person. Indeed, one begins to see William Booth’s ministry and theology as a journey of hospitality.  This journey had significant influences; Catherine Booth and George Scott Railton, who both helped refine his early theological understanding of personal and social holiness, influenced his journey. Then the influences of Bramwell Booth, W. T. Stead, and Frank Smith helped him realize the social dimensions of the theology handed to him from Wesley, Finney, Palmer, and Caughey.

John Wesley was a culminating and reviving figure in the tradition of hospitality, but his use of these themes were implicit, much like Booth’s. A major challenge for Salvation Army mission today is for a historically informed reappraisal of the Salvation Army’s social ministry. Hospitality can act as a linking paradigm because it was implicitly a part of William Booth’s theology, and it can further function as therapy for the bifurcated soldier therein.  

            In Salvation Army literature, the first explicit challenge to view social ethics through the lens of hospitality came from Miroslav Volf’s keynote lecture to the Salvation Army’s International Theology and Ethics Symposium in 2001.[37]  Volf explains that in pursuing the care for others: “The exclusive pursuit of justice will not do. We need more than justice, not less. We need grace.”[38] He explains that hospitality is a form of grace. Volf illustrates: “Hospitality has at its background some need of the person to whom we are hospitable (food, shelter, human touch, love, etc.)…. If we don’t offer hospitality, we do the person no wrong; if we do offer it, we give something more than the person had a claim upon.”[39] Volf further connects concepts of welcome that are intrinsically involved in the life of the economic Trinity:

We don’t quite know why the world was created, we just know that this divine love sought a place to ‘spill itself over.’…Part and parcel of the economic Trinity is not only creating the world in an incredible act of generosity and sustaining it in an act of hospitality, but also engaging the world in love to restore it to a communion it once had with God, a communion that has now been ravaged by sin and death.[40]   

Looking at the Church’s practice of hospitality in line with an understanding of the economic Trinity, Volf states: “The church’s mission is situated at this particular point. The church’s identity emerges from God’s estrangement from the world. The church’s mission is a continuation of that love that God has shown toward the world and participation in that love towards the world.”[41]  

Within the scheme of the Christian message, hospitality begins with its demonstration in the life of the economic Trinity. This divine life overflows into our own personal redemption as the cross invites humanity into that divine life. This activity on our behalf provides the grounding for the hospitality that Christian’s personally demonstrate. Communities transpose personal acts of hospitality into a corporate expression of hospitality.

Conclusion

William Booth’s goal of working toward the millennial reign of Christ, through the labor of the Salvation Army, was a motivating factor for the Army missional addendum of social ministries. Hence, eschatology conditioned the social response of William Booth. His teleological ethic is, therefore, identified as an eschatological ethic. This eschatological ethic produced a prophetic form of a holistic ministry that is institutionally present today. The contemporary Army has inherited the fruits of this eschatological ethic, and if the Army today looks at the coming kingdom of God as the template by which the kingdom of God is now a reality, then an eschatological ethic is advantageous for the Army today.[42]  Dichotomizing this mission into distinct categories of spiritual and social mission often debilitates the Army from recognizing this holistic heritage. “Social Service” as a paradigm has perpetuated this dichotomy.

A shift in paradigms is an answer to this problem. The historical, Biblical, theological, and moral tradition of hospitality can serve as an antidote to a sometimes-bifurcated Salvation Army. The early Army implicitly embraced the themes of hospitality in a prophetic way. The contemporary Army could explicitly embrace this tradition by refocusing its social ethic toward an eschatological ethic that responds as hospitable support rather than a social service.

This paradigm shift can practically happen by refocusing the social ministry language and self-understanding. A wonderful example of a name that already embodies concepts of hospitality is the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Centers. Harbor Lights are reclamation centers that are usually located within inner cities. These centers seek to offer hope for men and women suffering from the negative effects of urbanization. Harbor lights would be in no need of changing their name, as their mission statement could embrace the paradigm of hospitality so as to renew its focus as a place of welcome and “harbor.” If the Army pursued such a shift it would need to seek creative ways to describe its ministry. This ministry is not limited to “professionals” but is seen as basic to the identity of every Salvationist who wears on his or her uniform two “Ss” which personify the eschatological ethical challenge to be “Saved to Serve.” Does your concept of the Army include hospitality? If not maybe it should.

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