Bishops, Generals, and Evangelical Totalitarianism
Photo of William Booth, 1912. (Source: WikiCommons)
After spending 42 years in the Salvation Army and being a sixth-generation Army officer (clergy), God called me to transfer my credentials to the Global Methodist Church where I am now an elder and will be a clergy delegate to its convening General Conference. I was attracted to the GMC, in part, because it articulates and upholds a classical Wesleyan theological foundation, and it emphasizes the local church while maintaining connectionalism.
The conversations surrounding the GMC episcopacy pique my interest. My last Army appointment was in the Florida Division, which has 38 Salvation Army churches (Corps). Those churches have a state headquarters in Tampa with more than 140 full-time employees, ten who are Salvation Army officers (clergy). By contrast, my GMC Annual Conference, Mississippi-Western Tennessee, has 202 churches and one full-time employee. The Salvation Army is the denomination that discipled me, and I love and appreciate it. Most Salvationists desire to see the Army’s spiritual foundation and ecclesial witness renewed. Yet, there are historical and structural challenges with its leadership model that I believe have made it less effective as a denomination and more of an organization maintaining its existence.
While some, like Billy Abraham, identified John Wesley as a “benevolent dictator,” they might be surprised to learn William Booth, the Army’s founder, believed the weakness of Wesley’s movement was that his leadership wasn’t strong enough (Abraham, Methodism: A Very Short Introduction). Booth went as far as to call John Wesley’s polity a “failure.” For Booth, Wesley didn’t utilize enough power, he didn’t demand sufficient obedience, and his mission was not fully realized. Booth saw his Army as the embodiment of Methodism’s true potential.
Booth’s Methodist History
Booth came to Christ at a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Nottingham, England, and responded to God’s call to preach in that tradition. He matriculated during what John Kent called “the age of disunity” within Methodism. Differences regarding ecclesiological polity and doctrinal emphases led to the founding of several denominations who all considered themselves heirs of Wesley. Booth served in two Methodist denominations before he was ordained in the Methodist New Connexion. He left that denomination in 1861 because he resisted the directives of its hierarchy. After spending four years as an itinerant revivalist, he came to London’s East End and “found [his] destiny” preaching to the masses.
Except for his decision to jettison the sacraments in 1883, Booth never moved away from Wesleyan theology. One of his commonly repeated stump speeches alluded to his love for Wesley, where he explained:
I worshiped everything that bore the name of Methodist. To me there was one God, and John Wesley was his prophet. I had devoured the story of his life. No human compositions seemed to me to be comparable to his writings, and to the hymns of his brother Charles, and all that was wanted in my estimation, for the salvation of the world was the faithful carrying into practice of the letter and the spirit of his instructions.
Even with this admiration for Methodism and Wesley, Booth’s evangelistic agency shifted away from Mr. Wesley’s model.
Booth’s Evolution Toward Total Control
The earliest expressions of the Army mirrored the theology Booth learned in Methodism. Nevertheless, Booth began to part with Wesley in one key area—polity. From 1865 through 1878, Booth’s movement functioned with a Methodist-like polity. Power flowed from the conference and in turn was given to its General Superintendent, William Booth. Throughout the 1870s decision-making authority was increasingly given to Booth. So much so that in 1878 when the name changed from the Christian Mission to the Salvation Army, he was given total control of all personnel, property, finances, and veto power over every decision of the Conference. As a result, Booth was often accused of taking papal power, a charge he welcomed. In fact, Booth’s power was stronger than the Pope’s because he was granted the authority to name his own successor. This happened by a secret envelope to be opened by his lawyers at his death. He also saw his system as the closest to that of the Bible and the primitive church.
When he appealed for more power in 1877, he lamented how evangelistic ground had been lost because of his “Methodist-like” Conference committees. He appealed to the Conference to give him total control: “This [proposal to abolish Conference authority] is a question of confidence as between you and me, and if you can’t trust me it is no use for us to attempt to work together. Confidence in God and in me are absolutely indispensable both now and ever afterwards.”
In 1878, with the name change, Booth adopted what he called an “absolute military system,” that relied on the obedience of Salvationists to Booth and the surrogates to whom he delegated authority. He modified existing ecclesiastical norms by using military terms to describe his ministry workers. In this system, modeled loosely on the British Army and Navy, his pastors, ministers, and evangelists became Field Officers, Staff Officers, and Commanding Officers with ranks like Captain, Lieutenant, Major, and Colonel. Booth, the General Superintendent, became simply the General.
Booth’s Objection to Methodist Polity
In the 1878 Order and Regulations, Booth differentiated his Army by saying that there was a “uselessness” in the “Methodistic system” and “ordinary systems of Church government” because of their democratic functions. Instead, his system gave “absolute authority to every officer within the range of his command from top to bottom.” Later in that same document, he suggested the Army had “tried and rejected that system” even though the effects of the “Methodistic system are not, alas, entirely gone from us yet. There are still some here and there who like to have business meetings and determine by vote what shall and shall not be done.”
He gladly declared that he was like an emperor and spoke positively about imitating Napoleon and Caesar. He argued that “under anything like a system of self-government they [his officers] would soon turn the Salvation Army into a carpet regiment.” To him, this kind of ecclesiological absolutism maintained the Army’s evangelistic edge. He suggested that democratic functions were the weakness of Methodism: “That’s what has ruined Methodism; that’s what threatens to ruin Christianity; that’s what shall never touch us as long as I live or my son.”
In the late 1870s through the mid-1880s the Army experienced exponential growth. Booth didn’t attribute such growth to his pragmatic theology, brass bands, revivalistic methods, or military uniforms. The Army hadn’t begun its social wing at the time, so social action wasn’t the reason, according to Booth, for its growth. For Booth the Army’s success was based in his polity—his absolute military system. His total control over this new denomination and the ‘uniform obedience’ of his officers and soldiers was the reason for its success.
Speaking to the Wesleyan Methodist Conference in 1880, he linked himself to Wesley, and said, “This movement is the continuation of the work of Mr. Wesley, for we have gone on, only a great deal further, on the same lines in which he travelled.” To Booth, he took the Army “further” than Wesley because of his military approach to polity. On another occasion, he suggested that Wesley’s polity and lack of control was a “failure.” Furthering his critique of the Methodist system, Booth asserted in his Methodist Times interview with Hugh Price Hughes: “Every soldier in the Army is willing to obey and wait for orders.… The great weakness of Methodism is that you are not governed. You meet in Conference, and pass the most beautiful resolutions, and they are not carried out. Your president has no authority.” Ironically, Booth was unwilling to submit to the governance of the Conference when he served with the Methodist New Connexion. Yet, his Army was structured to go “on further” than Wesley and was careful to “avoid his mistakes.”
Evangelical Totalitarianism
In the past, I assumed that references to Booth and Wesley as totalitarians were mere scholarly hyperbole. However, in my research on Booth, the word “total” kept surfacing to describe how he ecclesiologically ordered the Army’s existence. All assets, personnel, doctrine, and methods were, and technically are, under the authority of the General. Salvationists’ outfits, marriage ceremonies, hymnal, reading material, and bedroom layouts were directed by Booth with a militarized accent. Political scientist David Roberts suggests that totalitarianism involves “total mobilization” and a “direction” of energies toward some great end. Such systems reduce individual freedom not “simply to maximize control but to mobilize the population.” (Roberts, Totalitarianism). For Booth, the totality of his Army’s energies were directed to saving people from eternal damnation. His totalizing control was modified by his evangelistic foundation of saving the whosoever. Hence, it was an evangelical totalitarianism.
Booth’s intellectually astute wife, Catherine, provided exegetical justification for adopting an absolute military system. She recognized that the Bible doesn’t contain explicit guidelines for church governance, “We cannot get the order of a single service from the New Testament, nor can we get the form of government for a single church.” When seeking a map for polity, she said, ‘It is not there!! Do you think God had no purpose in this omission?’ To their credit, this system came about because of their conviction that people were headed to hell. Thus, all ecclesial forms could be bypassed for saving souls. For Catherine and William, the total mobilization of resources and the accumulation of power was justified because of the evangelistic need.
Sadly, Booth’s absolute military system was the foundation for his estranged relationships with three of his eight children and their spouses. They, along with many others, Christian leaders like J.B. Lightfoot, Henry Manning, B.F. Wescott, and the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper), who criticized the Army, suggested the Army’s polity was its chief defect. In 1929, the Salvation Army changed one aspect of its polity when it deposed Booth’s designated successor, his son, Bramwell Booth. Its constitution had a provision for implementing a High Council where a group of Commissioners (i.e. bishops) elect each succeeding General, which since that time has been operative. Still, there have only been minor governance changes to Booth’s “absolute military system.” When a leader has control of both temporal and spiritual aspects of an organization, the urgency of the temporal needs drives the leader to prioritize survival and maintenance over missional priorities. When the burden of leadership is shared and separated, shepherding leaders are freed to focus on the mission to a greater degree.
While the Army in the West has grown as an organization it has struggled to maintain an ecclesial identity. As one of “America’s favorite charities” it has expanded in the USA to holding more than $12 Billion in net assets. Though not intentional, the ecclesial and evangelistic mission is easily and often neglected. I suggest that the Army’s polity has been the primary reason it has moved toward maintaining itself as an organization rather than growing as an ecclesial movement. Nevertheless, this leadership structure has positioned the Army to be a leading force in “doing the most good.” This system makes it quick to “meet human needs in his [Jesus’] name without discrimination.”
As the GMC anticipates its Convening General Conference, I hope it can learn from the example of the Army, its ecclesial cousin. I don’t believe the GMC is in danger of becoming merely a charitable organization, but its mission could be hindered if too much authority is given to one office. Separated powers can prevent one leader from grasping more power than is healthy. Local churches need order, discipline, and connectionalism. Yet, organizations that move toward maintaining themselves, and handing too much power to one leader can embrace an evangelical totalitarianism. It may not happen in one generation, but this structure is problematic in the long run. As such, United Methodism’s abuse of the episcopacy and the Salvation Army’s absolute military system should serve as a warning to avoid accumulating such power.
Andy Miller III is the president of Wesley Biblical Seminary, Ridgeland, MS.