INTRODUCTION
From among a broad range of mission images that have expressed and supported the mission of The Salvation Army historically, the early decades of the twenty first century in Australia will require emphasis on a cluster of images around hospitality, accompaniment, participation and sanctuary. These images need to be
§ theologically coherent and compelling
§ practically applied in sociological, political, environmental and economic contexts
§ expressive of the holistic mission that has marked The Salvation Army in distinctive ways, naming the transcendent in people and circumstances
§ capable of engaging all partners in Army mission
§ positively interacting with the underlying military metaphors of the movement.
The purpose and function of an image of mission is to create an open space into which people can enter with new energy.
Mission is understood within this thesis as the reason for existence, which in the case of the Church always contains an outward focus. The mission of the Church always seeks to discern God’s care and action within the world, and accept the divine invitation to join that care and action. The subtitle of this work comes from an autograph penned by William Booth on October 4, 1910. a facsimile of which appears in the cover pages. He writes for the unknown collector: “Your days at the most cannot be very long, so use them to the best of your ability for the glory of God and the benefit of your generation.” Booth understood that the glory of God was tied intimately to the good society.
Chapter one establishes my personal context, the reasons for this research and the most suitable research methodology appropriate to the research question: What is the dominant mission image best suited to The Salvation Army in Australia in the early decades of the twenty first century?
The design of this research asserts that the dominant mission image best suited to The Salvation Army within contemporary Australia will emerge from a range of influences working together: the Army’s distinctive history, theology and practice (tradition); the context of society in which the Army finds itself (culture); and its learning along the way (experience).[1] The practice of listening to many voices is not at odds with the Army’s hierarchical structure, where, in theory at least, mission is ‘declared’ from senior levels. In reality, and even in the days of a highly autocratic founder, foundational identity has always been formed and shaped by many factors. [2] As such it can be expected that a dominant mission image can emerge within the complex processes of The Salvation Army, including ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ dialogue. These three conversation partners, tradition, culture and experience, as established by James and Evelyn Whitehead, have wide acceptance as a schema for theological reflection and serve this project well in offering an overall structure.[3]
I have carried the basic question of this thesis, matching the mission identity of The Salvation Army to daily ministry, through more than twenty-five years as a Salvation Army Officer. Coherent and compelling answers to this basic question are both important and urgent if the mission identity of The Salvation Army is not to be swamped by burgeoning programmes carried by diminishing faith communities. The mix of staff, officers, Salvationists and other employees has changed dramatically over three decades, and many identify this as a serious threat to mission capacity and identity, while few recognize inherent opportunity. Growing professionalism, needed but perhaps adopted uncritically, and increasing governance and corporate concerns further threaten mission identity as it has been conceived and understood.
As outlined above, the well-established paradigm of James and Evelyn Whitehead provides the overall structure for this study, bringing together three conversation partners, tradition, culture and experience. Methodologies suited to each of these conversation voices will be adopted. Three enquiry paradigms, from among five outlined by Lincoln and Guba, are especially useful within this project: Critical Theory, Constructivist, and Participatory paradigms.[4] Critical theory is particularly useful in Chapters two and three. Constructivist and participatory paradigms are well suited to Chapter four. Each of the three enquiry paradigms is useful throughout, and they are drawn together into constructive statement in Chapter five. These naturalist paradigms stand in contrast to earlier positivist paradigms. Narrative and poetic forms will be incorporated to complement the constructivist and participatory methodology.
Consistent with naturalistic enquiry, the practical theology espoused, and the long instinctive history of The Salvation Army, the theological style of this project is theology ‘from below’. Such a style of theology, with recent history in theologians such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich,[5] begins with lived experience in dialectic conversation with the ‘other’ subject of inquiry. This hermeneutical style, championed more recently by Hans-Georg Gadamer,[6] is in contrast to theology ‘from above’, such as that expressed by (the early) Karl Barth.
Chapter two establishes the historical and theological context of Salvation Army mission. The voice of tradition incorporates the distinctive history and theology that marks The Salvation Army, including its use of scripture, and will be developed principally in Chapters two (Theology in Mission) and five (Luke 4:16-30, and emerging images of mission).
The Salvation Army is deeply marked by Arminianism, convinced that all people are essentially free to choose their destiny in a theological sense, and able also to rise above social determinism and make positive impact on the condition of the world.[7]
The Army was born into Evangelicalism, with lively emphasis on
conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; what may be called crucicentrism, stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.[8]
Of these characteristics “the expression of the gospel in effort”, with its conviction that human agency is part of God’s mission in the world, is especially important within this study, reflecting also the Army’s Wesleyan heritage.
Wesleyanism provides much of the theological ground for the germination and nurture of the early Salvation Army.[9] Especially important are elements identified by Theodore Runyon: individual salvation always sits within the cosmic context of creation and re-creation, essential humanity properly belongs in concrete existence and human partnership with divine work in this world, and God actively and presently working to transform creation.[10]
From its origins in 1865 in the East End of London, and in its rapid spread through Britain and the inhabited continents of the world, these formative marks have combined in ways that express God’s care for the whole person and for all people within the circumstances of life and society, as well as for the life to come. From its formative influences, and shaped further by its mission context, The Salvation Army has gathered and expressed an understanding of the transcendent within the circumstances of life that mark it in unique ways, marks that continue to resonate positively in the hearts and minds of Australian people.
A project I convened over several years under the title Theology in Mission has been central to renewed debate and articulation of Salvationist mission, strongly influencing both training and the shaping of strategic framework within the Australia Southern Territory. Theology in Mission work informs this thesis in two ways. Research and reflection on the processes and transformative impact of this project for those involved will be a resource for further discussion in Chapter four. In Chapter two the content of Theology in Mission work, outlining the distinctive identity forged within the Army’s historical and theological origins, will provide resource and continuity necessary for the mission image best suited to the circumstances of twenty first century Australia to emerge.
Chapter three gives voice to culture, the context external to The Salvation Army, the “spirit of the age” modern and postmodern sensibilities, theological reflection, and social and political circumstances, as they impact on the mission of God in the world.
The mission identity of The Salvation Army as outlined in Chapter two is also set alongside two twentieth century ‘practical’ theologies in Chapter three.[11] The Salvation Army has typically been more active in practice rather than theological formulation, and as it seeks to chart its future there is considerable benefit in dialogue with other practical theologies. Dennis McCann compares and contrasts two such expressions in Christian Realism and Liberation Theology,[12] and these provide very useful reference points in clarifying and articulating an Army perspective. In a time of growing postmodern sensibility it is useful to compare and contrast these two expressions of practical theology, as they respond to the questions and context from which postmodernism has emerged. McCann writes from a North American Roman Catholic perspective in 1982. He enters a then current debate between advocates of Reinhold Niebuhr’s expression of Christian realism and Gustavo Gutierrez’s articulation of liberation theology. Each is passionate to ‘do’ theology in their context, to provide a theological basis that not only makes sense of individual religious experience but also names and critiques social realities and provides motivation for positive social change. McCann explores the internal coherence and relative adequacy of these two expressions of practical theology as an indication of their sustainability. His analysis offers helpful reference points for the Army’s more intuitive approach, an approach in grave danger of subsiding into an individualized and otherworldly spirituality.
Experience has an honoured place in the Wesleyan/Salvationist history, and Chapter four will research the lived experience of mission inherent in a range of services.
1. The first case study explores, through questionnaire, the personal impact of long-term participation in the Theology in Mission focus group on individual members. The outcomes of the work of this group have also fed directly into a mission values statement and a strategy planner, each intended to support local planning across all types of work, local corps, social services and administration, and assist mission understanding and alignment. Reference to these tools indicates their value for incorporating a centralized denominational framework and mission image into local planning.
2. An example of new forms of local mission, based in a shopfront in Reservoir, Victoria, provides a second case study. This work began as youth worker and social worker responses with students of a secondary school college, and is evolving towards a worshipping community including students and their families. Research will seek to uncover the cluster of mission images, implicit and explicit, that ground this venture. A questionnaire directed to staff gathers data. Pictorial and poetic forms have been incorporated as options for respondents. This research is effective in proposing rich and sustainable mission images for The Salvation Army in the early twenty first century, these images emerging largely out of response to local concerns and interests.
3. The Salvation Army’s global team for community capacity development, in response to HIV/AIDS, also expresses a cluster of mission images that emerges as foundational for their work. I explore these mission images, from international, cross-cultural and local interactions, for what they might suggest for the Army in Australia at this time.
Chapter five includes a study of the mission of Jesus in the Gospel according to Luke, and proceeds then to identify mission images suitable for The Salvation Army in the early part of the twenty first century that emerge from the various voices of this inquiry.
Brendan Byrne, New Testament scholar and prominent Australian Jesuit, offers a reading of Luke’s Gospel that presents a profound image of hospitality, the hospitality of God and human response in hospitality to God and other people.[13] A focus on Luke 4:16-30, and a wider treatment of the theme of hospitality in this Gospel will set the scene for drawing together the themes and directions indicated in Chapters two, three and four into a constructive statement.
Chapter 1 Images of Salvationist Mission and a Framework for Inquiry
1.1 Introduction
What is the dominant mission image best suited to The Salvation Army in Australia in the early decades of the twenty first century? This chapter outlines the personal context that has presented and sharpened this question for me, and establishes a methodological framework that will best allow suitable answers to emerge.
In September 1880 two men met by chance in the Pirie Street Methodist church in Adelaide. Each had recently migrated from England, and each had been part of the Christian Mission. William and Catherine Booth had joined this mission to the poor of the East End of London in 1865, and soon come to lead it. In 1878 it was renamed The Salvation Army, and by 1880 had grown beyond its East End origins. It was about to explode onto the world scene.
These two men, John Gore and Edward Saunders agreed to meet that Sunday afternoon to lead a public meeting in Adelaide’s Botanic Park. Two elements are recalled from this first open air meeting of The Salvation Army in Australia, conducted from the back of Gore’s fruit cart. One was the evangelical challenge in the words of the song “We’re traveling home to heaven above, will you go?” The other was the invitation “If anyone has not had a meal today, let him come home with me.”
This founding event functions as a programmatic statement of meaning and purpose, linking the transcendent in daily experience. It speaks at depth of what it means to follow Jesus within The Salvation Army. The compelling reason for the founding and ongoing existence of The Salvation Army is in the way it expresses God’s care for the whole person, meeting the transcendent in the daily, concrete experience of human life.
In these present days The Salvation Army has to work hard to retain a clear sense of its single founding mission, particularly the elusive but essential connection of the spiritual and physical that is necessary to faithful following after Jesus.
“Christian mission gives expression to the dynamic relationship between God and the world, …” [14] William and Catherine Booth, founders of The Salvation Army, would have raised a resounding “Amen!” to this well made point of missiologist David Bosch. Not for them any sense that God’s work is confined to the few, the elect, within the walls of secure and comfortable church buildings. Nor for them any suggestion that God the creator has withdrawn from the physical world of time and space.