JAC Online

Stillborn or Still Glorious?
by Andrew Bale

The following quote from Samuel Brengle will be familiar to most readers of JAC.

“The Army is so thoroughly organized and disciplined, so wrought into the life of nations, so fortified with valuable properties, and on such a sound financial basis, that it is not likely to perish as an organization, but it will become a spiritually dead thing if love leaks out. Love is the life of The Army. 'If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.' But if love leaks out we shall lose our crown, we shall have a name to live and yet be dead. We may still house the homeless, dole out food to the hungry, punctiliously perform our routine work, but the mighty ministry of the Spirit will no longer be our glory. Our musicians will play meticulously, our Songsters will revel in the artistry of song that tickles the ear, but leaves the heart cold and hard. Our Officers will make broad their phylacteries and hob-nob with mayors and councilmen and be greeted in the market-place, but God will not be among us. We shall still recruit our ranks and supply our Training Garrisons with Cadets from among our own Young People, but we shall cease to be saviours of the lost sheep that have no shepherd.” ^[1]

These words, seen by some as prophetic, in my opinion have more to do with observation than foresight.  Perhaps it was kindness to his contemporaries or maybe understandable denial that prevented Brengle from placing his comments in the present rather than the future tense. The truth is that as early as 1900 there was clear evidence that the ‘love’ was starting to ‘leak out’ of The Salvation Army and by the 1920’s the evidence for someone with Brengle’s discernment was irrefutable.

I have broken the Commissioner’s concerns into the following four main bullet points.

• Soup and soap but little salvation

• Music for the mind and not the masses

• Rotarians instead of radicals

• Empty training colleges

Soup and soap but little salvation

“We may still house the homeless, dole out food to the hungry, punctiliously perform our routine work, but the mighty ministry of the Spirit will no longer be our glory.”

Under the heading “We must Go” on 31 January 1880 the London War Cry reported:

“Mr Railton, must for a time, postpone his North Wales expedition, in order to take command of a force with which he hopes to sail about the 13^th February for New York, and the United States must, throughout their length and breadth,  be overrun by Salvation desperadoes”

Six weeks later on March 10, 1880, Railton and his seven ‘hallelujah lasses’ arrived in New York and began to ‘overrun’ the country! The methods used by these pioneers were the same as those which had proved so successful in the UK. Their first meeting was in the ‘open air’, they carried out ‘pub raids’, they marched, they sang and caused affront wherever they went. They were laughed at, arrested, assaulted and generally persecuted. Indeed over the next few years some became literal martyrs in the cause.

However, by 1883 Corps had been opened in California, Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  Later, only six years after their ignominious arrival in America, the President himself received a delegation of these ‘desperadoes’ and gave The Salvation Army his personal seal of approval.

The most miraculous thing about Railton’s assault on the USA wasn’t its success, nor was it the high price paid by those involved - what made their methods truly marvellous was their absolute appropriateness for the time. The success of these pioneers borrowed nothing from their own ingenuity but owed everything to their total surrender to God. Their will and purpose was so closely intertwined with God’s that this expeditionary force was led by no less an Officer than Christ himself. Railton did not need a strategy or a plan; he simply did what he did under the influence of the Spirit.

The value of any method of evangelism can only be properly quantified by the amount of fruit it produces. Evangelism is only ever successful when we fish out of the right side of the boat at the right time (John 21:4-6). Brengle understood that Salvationists gave out ‘soup and soap’ first and foremost as a means to and end – the end being the preaching of Salvation, look at the following two quotes from William Booth.

“I must assert in the most unqualified way that it is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation of the body.”[2]

And again,

“To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education. These things are all outside a man, and if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labor. You must in some way or other graft upon the man's nature a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine.”[3]

As Brengle sat at his desk in the 1920s writing ‘Ancient Prophets’ he could already see that in some areas of work  Salvationists had begun to carry out their functions by rote and no longer by divine inspiration. Booth’s initial instruction to Bramwell to “Go and do something” (upon discovering that men “sleep out all night on the bridges”) had by 1929 grown into an industry of social service. Like any well run factory the gears turned, the pistons pumped and the engine moved independently and no longer required the priming fuel of absolute surrender.

Brengle knew, indeed he could see that ‘punctilious duty’ can ‘house the homeless’ and ‘dole out food to the hungry’ just as efficiently as ‘love’. Evangelism without love is not impossible but it is however an abhorrence to God and an extremely dangerous pastime for the practitioner (Matthew 7:21). If The Salvation Army of today wants to start plugging the holes identified by Brengle then it needs to look to its roots. Not in a navel-contemplating self-indulgent way. Nor in a way that seeks to indiscriminately mirror and ape yesterday’s methods. We need to look to our spiritual roots. We need to return to that absolute surrender whereby our motives are so in tune with God that everything we do is blessed with success.  Or to quote Booth again we need to remind ourselves that “The greatness of a man's” (evangelical) “power is the measure of his surrender.”

The Salvation Army in the UK remains the biggest provider of social welfare after the government. This fact is printed on our literature and paraded before potential donors with an understandable air of pride. But what about Salvation? Are we the biggest winner of souls bar none? Are we the most effective evangelistic force within the modern church? Let us be honest, The Salvation Army in the western territories is no longer the cutting edge of the militant church – is  this because the love has leaked out?

Music for the mind and not the masses.

“Our musicians will play meticulously, our Songsters will revel in the artistry of song that tickles the ear, but leaves the heart cold and hard.”

The initial priority of the very first Salvation Army brass band was not music-making at all. Indeed in Salisbury in the autumn of 1878 Charles Fry and his three sons, Fred, Ernest and Bert, initially responded to a request from their local fledgling Salvation Army for extra protection. Together with, two cornets, a valve trombone and a euphonium the family provided marching Salvationists with a bit of extra muscle as well as musical accompaniment.

The main role of the very first Army bands was to provide a protective barrier between vulnerable members of the group and the mob. Indeed the traditional seeker-unfriendly ring (still formed by some bands today) in an open air meeting was a practical security measure. Like covered wagons in the Wild West bandsmen ‘armed’ with their various instruments protected the preachers from the hostile natives. Later as bands became more musically proficient they found a secondary function – they attracted a crowd (and still do today!). Eventually this naturally outdoor medium moved inside but what they played and their reasons for playing it were quite different from today.

When it came to equipment and music these primitive bands used what was to hand. Often made up of violins, accordions, saxophones and trumpets all playing together, the resulting cacophony must have seemed, to the cultivated ear, nothing more than a ‘joyful noise’. With only secular music available to them they were forced (by default not by strategic thinking) into hijacking worldly melodies. Sometimes we forget that Booth’s quote about the devil having all the best tunes was in fact a defensive reaction to what was naturally happening around him and not a predetermined positional statement. As a result some publishers quickly jumped on the band-wagon and advertised their products as 'just the thing for Salvation Army bands'[4] These early  bandsmen simply commandeered what was popular and forced it to fit their purposes even when the result was not to their own 'saved'  tastes. In short they didn’t sing “Bless his name he sets me free” to the tune of “Champagne Charlie” because it was considered soul saving music but because they were natural evangelists making the best of what they had.

However, history shows that the metamorphosis of Army bands from improvised ‘music hall’ to well rehearsed ‘festival hall’ was rapid. Very soon important things like musical ability and deportment became essential whilst essentials like evangelical effectiveness were demoted to the mere rank of important.

The following quote from the official history of Enfield Citadel Band (UK) shows the incredible speed at which banding outgrew its ignoble birth.

“The ‘Tottenham I’ Band was formed soon after the opening of the Corps in 1891 and like most 'Army' bands had a very humble beginning. Bandmaster Pemberton was its first leader and, after a short period of service, was succeeded by Jeff Sell. Other bandmasters in the early years were W. Brand, Will Devoto, Albert Jakeway, Arthur Dry and 'Titch' Dockray. These early-day leaders ensured that the band, by now known as Tottenham Citadel, gained recognition not only for its high standard of playing, but also for its marching and deportment, in its own locality and through frequent campaigns up and down the country. These early years included a number of appearances at national Salvation Army events and, in 1933, the band's first overseas tour, to Denmark and Sweden.”

In a matter of decades bands had gone from playing ghetto music to performing classical music arranged by composers like Abert Jakeway (Ave Verum) and George Marshall (1st Movement of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony). Oddly a Salvationist who read a novel (even a literary classic) was frowned upon for their association with the world yet somehow the same rules did not apply to music. Indeed in 1905 to everyone’s surprise The Chief of The Staff offered cash prizes for the best original march and the best original tune composed by Salvationists[5]. It seems almost beyond belief that in a world where Officers were still required to ‘live by faith’ with no guarantee of financial remuneration that composers could ‘win’ money by writing original music. In a pre-welfare-state Salvationists justified raising funds to buy expensive instruments and publish their own music when the people they sought to serve still struggled below the poverty line. I am certain that had a younger more energetic Founder been around he would have tugged the reins sharply in response to such an erring from the way.

This development is well illustrated by a recently released double CD called “Spiritual Origins” which consists entirely of concert, or what officially used to be called ‘Festival’ music. The justification for the rather strange title was that the purpose of the album was to “acknowledge the Salvationist origins of many composers whose work has been chosen for major brass band contests.” Many of the composers featured on this album were composing in a Salvation Army that still had Bramwell as its General and some undoubtedly had their own personal memories of the Founder.

It is not my aim to subjectively criticise Army music makers, be they composers, singers or players – indeed I have known (and know) some wonderful musical saints with exemplary personal holiness! However, it is important that, in the light of Brengle’s concern, we do regularly review the aims and objectives of music making within The Salvation Army. There are questions that need to be constantly asked - Does our music retain any evangelical objective? Does our music appeal to a mass audience or only a select few? Have our music ‘festivals’ become exclusive events only accessible to those with the knowledge to understand them? Can we justify charging £25 ($50) for a ticket to what is nothing more than a Salvation Army classical concert? Do we prefer to curl up listening to Mozart for our ‘blessings’ rather than settle down with the word which not only ‘blesses’ us but also ‘instructs’ and ‘chastises’ us? In an organisation that once insisted on appeals to the mercy seat at the end of Weddings is it right to invest so much time, talent and money in events whose evangelical credentials are hard to identify?

Brengle accurately saw that, unchecked, the evolution of our music making would ultimately ‘leave the heart cold and hard’. In truth he could see it already happening in the Army in which he served. If we continue to allow music making to become an end in itself then the devil will happily pick off Bandsmen and Songsters as if he were shooting fish in a barrel. We need to take the sentiment of the psalmist who said “sing a new song unto the Lord” but place the emphasis not on ‘new song’ but on ‘unto the Lord’!  Salvationist musicians, who are totally surrendered to God, will always give more time to Bible study than rehearsal, more time to prayer than to polishing instruments, more time to fighting social injustice than pushing the boundaries of musical expertise. A modern Salvation Army doesn’t so much need ‘soul-saving music’ as ‘soul-saving’ musicians anything less is evidence that the love is leaking out.

Rotarians instead of radicals

“Our Officers will make broad their phylacteries and hob-nob with mayors and councilmen and be greeted in the market-place, but God will not be among us”

“The main objective of The Rotary Club is service — in the community, in the workplace, and throughout the world. Rotarians develop community service projects that address many of today's most critical issues, such as children at risk, poverty and hunger, the environment, illiteracy, and violence. They also support programs for youth, educational opportunities and international exchanges for students, teachers, and other professionals, and vocational and career development. The Rotary motto is “Service Above Self.” (Rotary International)

Now I have no problem with The Rotary Club whatsoever; it is a noble organisation and one deserving of praise. However it is a humanitarian organisation and not a Christian organisation. My concern is that it has over the years become incredibly popular with Salvation Army Officers. I have even known some Officers who have accepted positions within the organisation such as ‘president’ or ‘secretary’. Now if ‘all my days and all my hours, all my will and all my powers’ belong to God and The Salvation Army what time do I have to spare for The Rotary Club? No matter how noble the project is to which I am lending my time how can it be more pressing than one that has God at its heart?  Attending a lunch once a month with well-to-do business men may seem like a good way of securing financial support for the Army – but is it the best use of my time? If I am totally honest with myself is my attendance really motivated by fund raising or by the promotion and well being of my own self importance? Indeed if I find myself willing to wear  the ‘Inner Wheel’ on my lapel but shrink from displaying a Crest or a Cross is that not evidence of serious inner betrayal?

My purpose is not to knock Rotarians (be they Salvationists or otherwise), nor I am saying that to be a Rotarian is a sin – far from it! My purpose is simply to ask whether there is any risk to our commitment if we give in to the temptation to divide our loyalties. In addition, is association with such groups likely to lead us into materialism? Are we more likely to judge ourselves according to the world’s standard rather than God’s?

There is however a much more serious threat posed to Officers through links with humanitarian groups such as Rotary. Over familiarity with the world can lead us into deeper and more dangerous associations.  Like a man who smokes ‘pot’ for recreational use it is easy to slip into ‘hard drugs’, just so, these innocent memberships can lead us into the clutches of secretive and more devious societies. History – albeit largely unwritten history – shows that The Salvation Army has always struggled to maintain its independence and its impartiality when courting commerce.

Brengle’s concern that Officers of the future might be tempted to “make broad their phylacteries and hob-nob with mayors and councilmen and be greeted in the market-place” is not just a reality today; it was a reality at the time the words where penned.  In the space of forty years Brengle could see that The Salvation Army had gone from total social isolation to being embraced by the establishment.  Passionate critical letters in ‘The Times’ and lampooning cartoons in ‘Punch’ had given way to audiences with Kings and Presidents. No doubt the words of Paul to Timothy would have rung in Brengle’s ears– “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” (2 Timothy 3:12)

It was understandably difficult for William, who had suffered a life of conflict and deprivation, not to enjoy the world’s favour in his autumn years, how much more so for Bramwell whose mind was to be ultimately soiled by the ‘absolute power’ that he inherited[6]. Yet there were some, like Railton, who were brave enough to challenge the status quo. It was Railton who in protest to these subtle changes of direction turned up at Queens’s Hall (this was the largest capacity public hall in London!) barefoot and dressed in sackcloth and ashes. In front of Both William and Bramwell, Railton trampled on an official document which he referred to as a ‘dirty piece of paper’[7]. William was embarrassed and the Army’s official line was that Railton was ‘mental’ a condition brought on my by overwork and worry’[8]. But by the time Brengle wrote ‘Ancient Prophets’ Railton had been dead for nearly 20 years and Bramwell had been deposed by the first High Council but the damage had been done, the infection had struck and the love had begun to leak out.

What had happened to the ‘Desperadoes’ who invaded America? Where were the Booth Tuckers living among the outcasts? By the 1920’s the radical nature of Salvation Army Officership had begun to disappear. The person specification and the essential requirements for the post had been watered down. With its own well established aristocracy The Salvation Army became susceptible to pride and snobbery, the rank system began to provide avenues whereby the spirits of ambition and oppression could enter our ranks.  Officers in Corps appointments saw themselves as superior to those in social work and Staff Officers saw themselves as superior to all.

The Army still produced some wonderful saints and pioneering work continued around the world but the system itself became prone to weakness and it allowed the love to leak out. Even luminaries like Albert Osborn allowed themselves to be caught up in the race for status. Indeed his song ‘all my work is for the master’ was written out of an experience where as a Divisional Commander a reorganisation reduced the size of his Division. Running for a bus he slipped and fell and ended up in a nursing home. While convalescing he overheard some Salvationists singing ‘nothing from his altar I withhold’ and began to weep tears of repentance[9].. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the Holy Spirit came alongside him and prompted him to write;

“Have I worked for hireling wages,

Or as one with vows to keep,

With a heart whose love engages

Life or death, to save the sheep?

All is known to thee, my Master,

All is known, and that is why

I can work and wait the verdict

Of thy kind but searching eye.”

Brengle’s concern wasn’t so much that Salvation Army Officers would ‘hob-nob’ with the very society from which it has always distanced itself but that as a result “God will not be among us”. This should be our main concern today – is God among us? Is he among our co dalliances with ‘Caesar’?  Is he with us as we feast at the table of the ‘Babylonians’? Is the decline in both the quality and quantity of Officers and soldiers evidence of his presence? Is the lack of revival an indication of his hand upon us? Has God left us? Are we as a movement slipping away from him and as a result are his blessings being withheld?

The love we have for the influential, attractive and talented may well remain strong but as for the ‘least of these my brethren’ the love is leaking out.

Empty Training Colleges

“We shall still recruit our ranks and supply our Training Garrisons with Cadets from among our own Young People, but we shall cease to be saviours of the lost sheep that have no shepherd.”

This final concern of Brengle’s is my proof that his comments were observational rather than prophetic. If this paragraph were truly prophetic then Brengle would have seen the empty Training Colleges of the future, he would have seen the lack of Officers, Cadets and Candidates, he would have seen the shameful number of our own young people sacrificed on the altars of Molech[10]. Yet not even Brengle in the somber mood in which he wrote these words could contemplate an Army without Officers and Soldiers! What Brengle described was what he saw.  In the 1920s The Salvation Army was well fuelled by its own young people; second and third generation Officers were still keen to rush to the front. Sadly this is not true in the western territories today.

In the UK the decline in Officers has become a serious concern and featured in a rather dramatic front page in the 26^th February 2006 edition of ‘Salvationist’. A blank page containing nothing but worrying statistics, printed in large contrasting  fonts, effectively drew attention to the serious decline in those responding to ‘the call’. If things stay as they are and nothing changes then by 2016, in the UK, just under 600 Officer ‘units’[11] will be trying to oversee 800 corps[12] appointments.

In a world that is crying out for militant Christian warriors to take torches in to the darkest sections of contemporary society how can such a state of affairs be tolerated? The need is still there, God is still there, the call is still clear – so what is that we have put into our kids ears that prevents them from hearing? In a world as desperate as ever for full-time officers is this decline further evidence that love has leaked out?

Still born or still glorious?

So what is our response to the truth fired upon us by Brengle? How do we react to the fact that the rot had set in even before the Founder had died? How do we plug the holes and ensure that no more love leaks out? How do we make sure that the despised baby God generously adopted in Ezekiel 16:4-5 doesn’t turn into the brazen and shameless prostitute depicted in the rest of that chapter?  Or is it too late? (Thank God for verse 42!)

Like so many quotable quotes, the one which opened this article is incomplete; Brengle has more to say on the subject…

“If the future of The Salvation Army is to still be glorious, we must heed the exhortation: 'Let brotherly love continue.' We must remember that all we are brethren and beware lest through leakage of love we become like the wicked of whom the Psalmist wrote: 'Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son’ (Psalm l. 20), and find our hearts full of strife and bitter envying where the love that suffereth long and is kind should reign supreme.

Salvationists, let us own up to the truth, let us tear the bandages from our own eyes, let’s force ourselves to look! Let us stop hiding from the truth and face up to the reality that love has been leaking out for over a century and the love we often try to pass off today is no more brotherly than that of the Pharisees and Sadducees that mocked Jesus.

It is not an act of brotherly love to let your neighbour burn to death because you fear that raising the alarm might disturb his sleep! It is not an act of brotherly love to become so aware of the cultural sensitivities around us that our compromised gospel bears no resemblance to that delivered by Jesus. It is not brotherly love to so tolerate the sins of those around use that we completely fail to be true to our commission as watchmen – putting not only their eternal safety at risk but our own as well.

The brotherly love that Brengle spoke of is the brotherly love that identifies us as Christ’s disciples (John 13:35). It is the brotherly love that lays down its life for its enemies (John 15:13). It is an uncompromisingly aggressive brotherly love, a love expressed in a totally surrendered life, a love that knows no will or motive but God’s. It is this love that the Psalmist predicted would bring about God’s blessing (Psalm 133); it is this love that preempted Pentecost (Acts 2:1); it is this love that has leaked out and will continue to leak out unless we plug the holes. Where will we get this love? Where can we find this love? How can it become ours once more? We will get it in the same place that the song 813 says we will get victory – “on our knees!”

“On to the conflict, soldiers, for the right,

Arm you with the Spirit's sword and march to fight;

Truth be your watchword, sound the ringing cry:

Victory, victory, victory!”

Ever is the war cry,

Victory, victory!

Ever is the war cry,

Victory!

Write it on your banners,

Get it on your knees,

Victory, victory, victory![13]

Stillborn or still glorious?   JAC Submission - Andrew Bale (abale@ntlworld.com)