A Response to “Bishops, Generals, and Evangelical Totalitarianism”

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The President of Wesley Biblical Seminary, Andy Miller III, argued in a Firebrand article that William Booth’s “totalizing control” of The Salvation Army was “evangelical totalitarianism.” He also argues that The Salvation Army has only had “minor governance changes” since Booth’s death in 1912 and that the Army “has moved toward maintaining itself as an organization rather than growing as an ecclesial movement.” The article leverages these points in service of a larger rhetorical purpose: arguing that the Global Methodist Church reject a particular view of the episcopacy or be defeated by the same evangelical totalitarian threat. To the contrary, however, the GMC risks becoming “totalitarian” as much as The Salvation Army was and is—that is to say, not at all.

The term “totalitarian” was coined in 1926, fourteen years after Booth’s death, to describe the rise of fascism in Italy. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia also serve as definitional instances of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism inherently entails the control of the state or the aspiration to use the state to deny individual freedom through force, not merely “total mobilization” or the “direction of energies toward some great end.” Miller’s article relies upon David Roberts’ conception of totalitarianism when proposing “evangelical totalitarianism” as a category. Yet, the only non-state actor Roberts treats in his work on the subject, Radical Islam or Islamism, pursues the establishment and enforcement of an Islamic theocracy through the imposition of violent state action. Such an imposition was antithetical to William and Catherine Booth’s cause. While mobilizing their volunteer army to proclaim scriptural holiness to the “submerged tenth,” the Booths never entertained the possibility of doing so by violence or the powers of the state.

Further, the Booths recognized that imposing Christianity by force was an impossibility. Catherine Booth contrasted the means of social change available to the Army and that to the state in “The Salvation Army in Relation to the Church and State.” The state could force submission with pressure “from without, not from within,” Booth observed. The Army, by contrast, pursued the reform of individuals by appealing to them through reason and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As Miller indicates, evangelism motivated the Booths’ adoption of their measures. A desire to safeguard orthodoxy and orthopraxis did also. At the dawn of modernism and biblical criticism, William Booth wrote, “The chief danger of the 20th century will be religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.” In large part because of the Booths’ efforts, the core doctrinal commitments of The Salvation Army remain unchanged, even as ecclesial structure and methods have changed.

112 years have elapsed since William Booth was, as we say in the Army, Promoted to Glory. If an organization, let alone one operating in 134 countries, were to have only “minor governance changes” in 112 years of operating through decades of world-historic change, it would be an astonishing achievement in small-c conservatism. Yet, significant changes have occurred to The Salvation Army’s “absolute military system.” The article notes the implementation of the High Council in 1929, which not only elects a new General but can also remove him or her if deemed unfit for office. An act of the British Parliament, The Salvation Army Act, last given royal assent by Elizabeth II in 1980, governs this procedure and other aspects of accountability. If having a central decision-maker accountable to a board makes something totalitarian, then the term unquestionably applies to a wide array of institutions, from corporations to seminaries.

I don’t aim to comment much on the proposals considered at Global Methodist Church’s Convening Conference; however, based on my reading of the Transitional Leadership Council (TLC) Plan, the use of Conference Superintendents alongside a Bishop bears some resemblance to the practice within The Salvation Army of appointing General Secretaries under Divisional Commanders or Chief Secretaries under Territorial Commanders. Such leaders have, as in the case of the Florida Divisional Headquarters mentioned by Miller, teams of individuals under them tasked with sharing their responsibilities and authority. Furthermore, corps officers (local clergy) and corps councils (church boards) possess a wide degree of latitude in how best to implement the mission in their context. Delegating authority down the chain of command sustains the Army’s work across a diverse and expansive number of places, from Palm Springs to Paris to Pretoria to Mumbai. While “all assets, personnel, and methods” are technically under the authority of the General, in practice, authority over such matters is enormously diffuse—a major change since the early days of The Salvation Army. Moreover, the TLC Plan gives Bishops a twelve-year maximum term. William Booth served as General for 47 years and 49 days. In the last 47 years, The Salvation Army has had 13 generals with an average term length of three-and-a-half years. I raise this point not to say Bishops would serve for too long under the plan but that it would allow a leader far more control in the GMC than a General could ever have in the Army.

Admittedly, many Salvationists would bristle at the notion that headquarters has adequately delegated authority to the field. Still, no system can totally remove questions concerning the distribution of power and authority. In the Army, these dynamics are navigated through orders and regulations, minute books, boards and councils, avenues for voicing ideas and hearing complaints, auxiliary committees of community members, international, territorial, and divisional oversight, regular audits, annual reviews, technology, legal guidelines, etc. Most importantly, the Scriptures provide, as stated in the Army’s first doctrine, “the only divine rule of Christian faith and practice.” The myriad ways The Salvation Army holds leaders accountable across every leadership level again belies the notion that only minor governance changes have occurred. Yet, in spite of these significant changes, the via salutis, way of salvation, remains enshrined in The Salvation Army’s eleven articles of faith. While The Salvation Army Act of 1980 provides the means for removing a General, it freezes in place the thoroughly Wesleyan tenets central to Salvationism. It would literally take an act of Parliament to change them. The longevity of Salvationist doctrine explains in part how The Salvation Army is, in fact, seeing ecclesial growth.

The Army’s paramilitary structure does not require the sacrifice of ecclesial growth at the altar of urgent “temporal needs.” Miller claims that The Salvation Army in the West has struggled to maintain an ecclesial identity. That this is implicitly not true elsewhere contradicts the article’s thesis that the Army’s “totalitarian” polity undermines ecclesial growth. Miller's evaluation excludes hundreds of thousands of Salvationists in countries like Kenya or India. Thus, if the problem of poor ecclesial growth is located solely in the West but the Army’s so-called “totalitarian” structure is not, then perhaps the Western Army actually faces problems more familiar to other denominations in Western countries, namely secularism, hyper-individualism, polarization, social fragmentation, isolation, sexual revolutions, shifting cultural headwinds, technological changes, and relativism. In this age of apathy, when people increasingly don’t care about their religious affiliation and prefer to check the box “none,” virtually every denomination in the West faces challenging questions of how to foster greater ecclesial growth. In 2022, Pew Research projected that Christianity’s share of the US population will drop below 50 percent by 2070. The Army needs to make crucial reforms to address the present crisis, but the Army’s polity does not present the most pressing need for reform.

Reform is necessary, but Salvationism also presents a pathway forward in our increasingly secular milieu. An intricate web of philosophical assumptions, economic forces, historical factors, and social structures undergirds modern life in the West today, in which we face hostility to faith, community, and Christian witness. To counteract these effects, Christians must resist the impulse to coopt the web, looking to make Christianity more palatable and culturally accommodating. Instead, we should follow the Apostle Paul’s lead in Romans by articulating what John Barclay terms “a new embodied habitus”: “new perceptions, goals, dispositions, and values” that reconfigure all of life in Christ (Barclay, Paul and the Gift). William Booth’s ecclesiology was totalizing but not totalitarian. His aim, and that of The Salvation Army today, was to create a habitus built unshakably upon the foundation of Scriptural holiness—one that could move the Army into enemy territory and simultaneously maintain its fidelity to the gospel and Christ. The Army today remains in the trenches, fighting against sin and the attacks of an insidious foe that seeks only to steal, kill, and destroy. Salvationists, like many Christians in the West, long for revival and work tirelessly to that end through their ecclesial efforts, whether in a shelter or sanctuary. Salvationists press forward, as William Booth did, through trials and tribulations to that fight. For the Church Universal shall conquer her enemies in battles today and when Christ comes in final victory. She will conquer the enemies of God because Jesus is our Captain, and He is mighty to save.

Caleb Louden is managing editor for The Salvation Army National Publications.