The Salvation Army’s doctrine of holiness has changed over it’s existence. In this article I will track how that belief has developed.

The tenth doctrine of The Salvation Army says:

We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be wholly sanctified, and that their whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

While the doctrine’s words have remained unchanged for the last 160 years, the interpretation of those words has changed. The Army is a holiness movement, but Holiness has become an increasingly slippery concept to grasp.

My doctoral work has focused on the Army’s theology of holiness, and part of that research has linked the Army’s changing self-understanding to its changing theology of holiness.

To understand the Army, we must understand its theology of holiness. To help us do so, I have sketched out seven phases or movements within the Army’s theology of holiness over the last 160 years.

1 – Revivalist Methodism 1865-1886

In the first period of Army history, the theology of holiness was effectively the mix of Wesleyanism and American Revivalist preaching, which William and Catherine Booth had been influenced by people like James Caughey, Charles Finney, Phoebe Palmer, and John Fletcher.

They brought together John Wesley’s commitment to the possibility of Christian Perfection through the work of the Holy Spirit, the emphasis on altar theology from Phoebe Palmer, the use of carefully planned revivalist methods and the language of spirit baptism from Charles Finney, and a populist style of preaching from James Caughey.

For the Christian Mission and the early Salvation Army, holiness was a matter of personal faith. A believer could claim the gift of sanctification by giving their all on the altar. After that, the Holy Spirit would wondrously transform and regenerate them, leaving them able to resist temptation and overcome sin in their lives. Sanctification was the crowning of justification, the moment when the Holy Spirit finished the work of Christ in the life of the believer and set them free from sin.

Sanctification was a part of revivalist Methodism. The preacher sought to get an unbeliever to make a conviction for Christ in salvation. Then, they sought to get the newly saved sinners sanctified. Sanctification would then preserve the saved-sinner in their salvation by allowing them to overcome sin in their life, otherwise without sanctification they would be likely to fall back into sin.

2 – Salvationist Socialism 1886-1905

The initially individualistic approach to sanctification is expanded when the Army makes reforming society a key part of its mission. It is somewhat chicken and egg to ask which came first.

The underlying theology of the Army’s social work is that sin was the cause of society’s problems, and only salvation and sanctification could reform society. Society was sinful and broken, exacerbating the problems caused by sin in the hearts of individuals. But, if the problems in a broken society could be fixed, it would clear the pathway for people coming to Christ and would save them from the evils of the world, even as preaching would save them from the evils of the world beyond.

The purpose was to bring about the return of Christ. The early Army believed that once everyone in the world was saved and sanctified, then Christ would return to reign and rule for 1000 years of peace.

William Booth wrote about ‘Salvationist Socialism’ as the only sure way that society could be redeemed and transformed because society needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. Changing the political structure would only repurpose old bricks – the corruption of sin remained. You could build a better world with those broken bricks, but it would still eventually collapse just as it had done before. What was needed was new bricks, people who had been saved and sanctified, to make this new world.

Sanctification became the way that the new world would be transformed, poverty would be eradicated, and the rule of Christ would begin. This is why the social reform wing became so important—not as a way of trying to increase numbers or make salvation easier, but as an integral part of saving and sanctifying the world.

3 – The Crisis of Purity 1910-1968

By the early part of the 20th century, the Army had begun to lose its belief that if they could get everyone saved and sanctified, Christ would return to reign for 1000 years. Instead of their early social and spiritual revolutionary zeal, they had settled into a relationship with the state, which created a synergetic union in which the Army helped to reinforce the social control of the Empire, and the Empire provided the Army with the logistics to spread around the world.

Sanctification was no longer understood as part of social transformation; it returned to being an experience that set the individual free from sin. It was natural that the sanctified individual should then serve their neighbour. However, where once social reformation was the intended result of the Army’s work, the social reform wing was renamed the social wing.

Central to the understanding of holiness in this period is the crisis experience. An individual who consecrated themselves to Christ would, through faith, receive the second blessing. The baptism of the Holy Spirit. Total sanctification. The blessing of a pure heart.

In a moment, all at once, the Holy Spirit would fill the heart of the believer and remove the roots of sin and bitterness from their heart so that they could resist temptation. They could be Christianly perfect, filled with perfect love. Total depravity turned into total sanctification.

However, they could lose this blessing if they returned to their sinful ways. To take up sin again would drive the Holy Spirit out of their heart and leave them fallen once again. As such, the sanctified believer had to stay on guard against temptation. They were subject to temptation worse than an unsanctified Christian, and they had to work to resist temptation and maintain their purity.

Having experienced sanctification was everything. It gave you the power to preach, lead, and evangelise. A Salvationist would only be accepted for officer training if they could testify to receiving the blessing of sanctification. But even by the 1930s, reports, letters, and talks bemoaned the decline in people experiencing sanctification. However, the essential theology of crisis and purity remained unchanged until the 1960s.

4 – Growth in Holiness 1968-1990

The 1960s saw the single most significant moment in Salvationist theology. While the end of the Army’s millennial theology fundamentally altered the Army, that took place over a decade. In 1968, the new Handbook of Doctrine was published under the authority of General Coutts.

This publication forever altered the Army’s theology of holiness. And since the Army is a holiness movement, this moment forever altered the Army, altering it in ways that are still being worked out today.

Instead of holiness being understood as the result of a crisis experience, it had become part of the life-long journey of discipleship. The believer was to work throughout their life to become closer to Christ, to become increasingly holy through their faith and the decisions that they make.

The single crisis of sanctification was no longer emphasised. Instead, life became a sequence of crisis moments and intensification, which led the individual to become increasingly holy.

The sanctified believer would still sin and fall short, but over time, through the aid of the Holy Spirit, become more like Christ. Sanctification would be complete only in the resurrection when the person would be made perfect. Before that time, the believer continued in their sin even as they were continually sanctified to Christ. General Larsson described this as a spiritual breakthrough leading to a spiritual awakening.

By and large, this has become the dominant approach to holiness for the Army.

5 – Sacramental Life 1990-2008

The emerging holiness theology in this period led to things like the 24/7 prayer movement, Roots, and whole-life discipleship. It was a deepening of the theology already established by Coutts. Phil Needham’s work was particularly influential.

As the Army became increasingly closely aligned with other denominations and started to work out the implications of ordaining officers and referring to itself as a church, the question of sacraments was brought into union with holiness. For Needham, holiness meant living the Sacramental life.

The Sacramental life became the way of exploring and explaining what it meant to grow into holiness throughout a person’s discipleship. Discipleship meant becoming more like Christ as the Holy Spirit sanctified the believer throughout their life. This meant that the individual became a place where Christ’s grace was ministered to the world, they became a sacramental presence.

But, more importantly, the way the disciple was meant to live was sacramental. Helping people in need, loving the neighbour, feeding the hungry, and caring for the unloved were all sacramental acts. They mediated Christ to the neighbour.

However, by this time there was less interest in holiness or in Army theology. Increasingly people were turning to other denominations and thus other theologies for their reading and for their worship songs. This led to the reactionary force which emerged next.

6 – The Return of Brengle 2008-2015

Reacting to the changing Salvationist culture, this period saw the emergence of neo-salvationism (which disappeared after one collection of essays and a couple of blogs) and primitive Salvationism (which arguably had a much deeper and longer-lasting impact on the Army). Primitive Salvationism, in particular, was grounded in a return to the holiness theology of Booth and Brengle.

Central to this development was General Clifton with the publication of New Love in 2008 and Stephen Court with the Journal of Aggressive Christianity, and the establishment of the War College in Vancouver. Although the War College came to an end it had a lasting impact and the JAC has continued.

Brengle’s writings were re-published, including a reader-friendly version. Books were written about Brengle’s approach to holiness. Conferences and retreats were run called ‘Brengle’ weeks.

The call to return to an earlier Salvationist identity came at a time when the Army was wrestling with its sense of self and offered an alternative to seeking outside sources of theology. However, that confusion in identity would continue as there was no widespread impact of the return to Brengle’s theology amongst grass-roots Salvationists.

7 – A Confusion of Desire 2015-Present

The last ten years have not seen a major movement within the Army which captured the imagination in the same way as whole-life discipleship or primitive Salvationism managed to do. This is particularly true for a Salvationist understanding of holiness.

Since the last Handbook of Doctrine came out in 2010, the official theology of holiness has incorporated both crisis and process theology while emphasising the moral and social nature of holiness as the Sacramental life. Strands of people advocate both positions, and a growing trend is to identify sanctification with gifts of the Spirit.

However, I think that questions about holiness have taken a backseat to questions of corporate identity, sexual morality, and gender identity. Whilst these questions might have been more easily addressed with less harm if they had been framed within questions of holiness, that was not the case.

Holiness has become a subset of discipleship. It is generally not spoken or written about, and when it is, it is almost always wrapped up in the language of personal morality. There are some questions about how much of a holiness movement the Army is today.

What Next?

Where the Army’s theology of holiness will go next is an interesting question.

At one level, it depends on the beliefs of the General in power at the time. The General is ultimately responsible for signing off on the Handbook of Doctrine, deciding which songs go into the Songbook, and authorising positional statements. The general’s personal theology has a significant impact on the Army’s theology.

On another level, there is space for the developing confidence of Salvationist academics to produce Salvationist theology. More people than myself are currently working on the Salvationist understanding of holiness.

Hopefully, several books or papers will be published over the coming decade focused on the Army’s theology of holiness. Whilst such work has a limited readership, the limited amount of Salvationist theology means that each piece has a greater impact than if it were in a different denomination.

There is also the question of whether another populist and popular writer, speaker, and teacher on holiness will emerge over the coming years. If such a person did emerge, they could have a significant impact on the continued development of Salvationist Holiness theology.

This is part of the often underappreciated gap between what the average Salvationist reads or engages with and what many officers or other leaders engage with. There is a theology gap that must be accounted for, and a popular and populist communicator could fill that gap.

At the moment, it seems that a social understanding of holiness, particularly in the context of applied personal discipleship, will continue to be the most generally influential understanding of holiness. However, my instinct is that over the coming years, there will be a push for a stronger understanding of Brengle-type holiness as a reaction to changing social dynamics in the Army’s culture.

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you want to comment or contact me.

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