A Liberation-Theological Defense of The Salvation Army’s Non-Sacramental Witness

The Salvation Army is not anti-sacramental. It could be argued that the Army is far more sacramental than churches that do sacramental worship. The Army should not start doing communion and baptism. It doesn’t need to. Salvationists need to remember the Sacrament of Liberation.

This is sometimes called the Sacrament of the Good Samaritan. It is the sacrament close to the heart of God. The Sacrament of Liberation is the way of Jesus. It is the only sacrament that The Salvation Army needs. Returning to sacramental ceremonies and rituals means giving up the prophetic stance we have held for over 130 years.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with any Salvationist taking communion or getting baptised if they feel it would be helpful for them. As long as they know that it is not necessary for their salvation. But the Army will not do those ceremonies or allow them to be done on Army property, during Army worship, or presided over by an Army leader. We believe in salvation by grace alone through faith in Jesus. No ritual or ceremony is necessary. The Salvation Army reminds the rest of the churches of that fact.

What is a Sacrament?

For five centuries, the words of the Book of Common Prayer have given us a simple definition of a sacrament.

A sacrament is an outward symbol of the inward act of grace. It is the act, place, or relationship through which we recognise and encounter Christ. The thing itself does not do this. It is the Holy Spirit working in us and through us that mediates Christ to us.

So any place, relationship, or act where we meet Christ, is in that degree a sacrament.

God Takes Sides

We have to start with a simple premise. The God of the Exodus and the Gospels sides decisively with the poor and the oppressed.

Gustavo Gutiérrez famously declared that “the preferential option for the poor” is not an optional add-on to Christian faith. It is its very heart. This provides context for. The Salvation Army’s decision in 1883 to end water baptism and ritual communion. That decision was not a theological mistake. It is a prophetic act of liberation. We should not abandon this position.

By refusing to ritualise grace in ways that have historically been co-opted by the powerful, the Army has kept its focus where God’s has always been. On the streets, in the slums, among the broken and the forgotten.

Formal Sacraments Risk Domesticating Grace

Adopting formal sacraments risks domesticating the Army’s distinctive calling. Instead, it would turn its gaze inward at the very moment when the cry of the poor demands action.

The Army’s founders, William and Catherine Booth, lived and breathed a theology of liberation long before the term existed. They saw the gospel as good news precisely for the least of these (Matthew 25:40). The 1883 decision was Spirit-led and pragmatic.

Rituals can become barriers, distractions, and instruments of exclusion. They place power in the organisation and create space for dominating hierarchies to emerge. For a movement called to “aggressive salvation” of the poor and broken, this is not an acceptable risk.

Instead, the Army acts as a prophetic witness to the rest of the churches that the sacrament of liberation is truer to Christ’s commands than any ceremony or ritual could be. God’s heart is always turned towards the poor, the oppressed, and the broken. That is where Christ will be found, and so it is there that sacramental worship is found. This is what we mean when we say that God has a preferential option for the poor.

What is the Preferential Option for the Poor?

Liberation theology insists that authentic Christian praxis begins with the concrete reality of oppression. As Leonardo Boff writes, “The poor are not just the object of charity; they are the privileged locus of God’s revelation.” When we learn to recognise the needs of our neighbour and love them with all that we are, we learn to find God in the world. You can read more about that here.

The Army has always embodied this principle. Its early “slum sisters,” prison-gate brigades, and food depots were not optional social work. They were the instruments that would herald the coming Kingdom of God. The Army believed that salvation and sanctification would transform the world. The powers of sin could be defeated, and when that happened, then poverty and oppression would also be destroyed. I’ve written about that here.

The Salvation Army and Liberation Theology?

It might come as a surprise that I am integrating Salvationist theology with Liberation theology. But it really shouldn’t. The Salvation Army fits remarkably naturally into the structure of Liberation theology. The Salvation Army grew up as a grassroots organisation; it takes social transformation seriously and believes that the Gospel is not just about getting into heaven but about transformation here and now.

While there have not been any serious attempts to link Salvationist theology to Liberation theology before this point, I think it is a natural fit. In fact, I think that Salvationist theology has something unique to offer to Liberation theology as a discipline.

Salvationist Grace Can’t Be Tamed

The Army refused to tie grace to ceremonies that could be controlled by the clergy or limited to the class. When the Army first began, the poor were made to stand at the back of the church or hidden behind a screen to avoid offending the well-to-do congregation. For the Army, the poor were not a nuisance or hindrance. Instead, the Army declared that God’s liberating presence is available anywhere the poor are met with mercy. It is through our love and attention to people in need that Christ’s grace is mediated into this world.

The Salvation Army Handbook of Doctrine affirms this:

“The Army holds the view that as all of life is sacramental, so is all of worship… The Army’s long-held beliefs that no particular outward observance is necessary to inward grace, and that God’s grace is freely and readily accessible to all people at all times and in all places were unanimously reaffirmed.” p. 271-273

God’s grace cannot be tamed or contained into ceremonies or rituals. No one gets to control it or preside over it. God’s grace is free and wild. It flows where it wills through the Holy Spirit. We meet Christ in the poor, the stranger, the hungry, the lonely, the abused, and the oppressed. They mediate Christ to us, as we mediate Christ to them, in the reciprical loving relationship of neighbourliness.

Liberation and Sanctification Go Together.

The Handbook of Doctrine uses Wesleyan-Holiness language, but it is effectively liberation theology. We need to be clear about this. The Army is out to set people free. Not only from sin, but from the social and economic consequences of humanity’s sins. The Salvation Army is in the business of transformation. Getting people saved, keeping them saved, and seeing them sanctified. This includes transforming their social, political, and economic circumstances.

Liberation theology draws its theoretical power from a Marxist critique of social transformation and revolution from below. As I have written elsewhere, I think this fits with the early Army’s mission of social reform as integral to salvation. But here is where the Army has something to offer to Liberation theology. Rather than using a Marxist framework for social revolution, the Army draws on Wesleyan Holiness theology.

The Sacrament of Liberation is the Visible Promise of Sanctification

Sanctification is not simply about being set free from sin. It is the transformation of the human heart and mind and will to be capable of reflecting Christ’s perfect love. Sanctification makes loving our neighbour possible. Without sanctification, we cannot be set free from sin, and so also from the consequences of sin. Sanctification is the divine power of liberation, because the sanctified believer cannot see a person in need without desiring to help them. Liberation in every sense, what William Booth called “Salvation for both worlds”, is the visible sign of God’s grace at work.

Liberation is a sacrament. It is the distinctively Salvationist sacrament.

For the Army, grace is poured out wherever the oppressed are liberated, the hungry are fed, and the poor are served. Grace is not controlled by a church or a priest. It is an ever-flowing tide of boundless salvation for the whosoever.

Only sanctification will bring an end to poverty and oppression. Sanctification alone can break the chains of the systems of sin and destruction. Only sanctification can actually achieve the dreams of every political revolutionary or social reformer.

New Buildings with Old Bricks

Political and economic reform is like building a new building with old bricks. It may work to begin with, but the same weaknesses that brought down the old building persist in the new. The problems in our societies are not only political and economic. They are also spiritual.

Poverty is a consequence of sin. The sins of society, and the sins of the people who hoard their wealth rather than using it to love their neighbour. The structural injustices and abuses in our world result from human sin and the dark spiritual forces at work beneath the surface. A new system which reduces poverty or creates new housing is good, and we should support it. But we should not make the mistake of thinking the problem has gone away.

Sin still remains, and while sin remains, we will always have the poor with us.

You Will Always Have The Poor

Jesus said that we will always have the poor with us (Matthew 26:11). This wasn’t a reason to stop helping the poor. Nor was it an excuse to stop caring or trying to change the systems we live in. It was a critique of our ongoing sin. Poverty is not inevitable. It does not need to exist. Poverty was not pre-ordained, and God does not determine who will be rich and who will be poor. Wealth is not a divine blessing; it is a trap waiting to pounce and consume the unwary.

Why will we always have the poor with us? Because sin persists in hearts, structures, and systems of economic and political power. There will always be poor people for as long as there is sin. Until the time when all human hearts are turned to God, then poverty, and the systems of oppression and control that create it, will endure. Sin means people will put themselves first, and this creates poverty.

Only sanctification can bring true liberation. It is sanctification that can destroy the power of sin. Until that happens, all reformations and revolutions are temporary. Only the revolution of sanctification is permanent because only sanctification transforms the heart. That is why we need the sacrament of liberation.

The Sacrament of the Good Samaritan

William Booth reframed the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) as the Army’s central “sacrament.” He urged soldiers:

“to observe continually the sacrament of the Good Samaritan.”

This is an ongoing, lived act of crossing every boundary of race, class, and respectability to bind up the wounds of the robbed and the forgotten. The Salvation Army is called to go beyond the petty boundaries we set up to decide which side we are on. We must find the person in need, and then we must help them. That is what God commands us to do. When we do that, we encounter the living Christ. That is the sacrament of the Good Samaritan.

This is not a metaphor. It is sacramental realism. The Sacrament of the Good Samaritan is what the sacraments were always meant to point towards. When Christ said “do this in remembrance of me”, he wasn’t saying eat a wafer and drink some grape juice together. Christ didn’t mean to stand in line and receive a symbolic piece of bread from a priest. God was calling us to join together, to share together, to eat together and stand together in good and bad.

Communion is not found primarily in a church; it is found in feeding the poor and loving the stranger. The ritual is the shadow of the lived reality. If you cannot find Christ in the stranger, in the poor, in the abused, then you will never find Christ at the altar.

The same is true for baptism. John the Baptism reminds us that Christ baptises with fire. In Acts 11, we see the family of the Roman officer being baptised by the Holy Spirit before they were baptised with water. This is the baptism that God gives directly, and no ceremony, no water, can replace that. If Christ has given you the Holy Spirit, then you are baptised into Christ, you are part of God’s body on Earth.

Liberating Sacraments

In liberation theology, the Eucharist is not first a consecrated wafer but the sharing of bread with the hungry; baptism is not first a font, but a plunge into solidarity with the crucified peoples of history. This is what underpins Salvationist theology. The Army has always practised this deeper sacrament. When we practice the Sacrament of Liberation, we find the reality that the rituals only point towards.

The encounter with Christ is the real sacramental experience. It is an experience that can be mediated through all kinds of moments. But it is never dependent on any ceremony or ritual. The grace of God is recognised in the church’s ceremonies. It is never controlled or contained. God’s grace is found first and foremost in the way we love our neighbour.

Why Introducing Rituals Would Undermine The Army’s Mission

To adopt formal baptism and communion today would be a mistake. It is a step away from the margins and toward the institutionalised hierarchy the Army originally left behind. The Army does not need communion or baptism; it needs to get back to its business of bringing the Kingdom of God into the world here and now.

Rituals, however well-intentioned, can easily become clericalised, privatised, and performative. Humans need social rituals, and our spirituality is often naturally expressed through shared performance. Rituals and ceremonies can be helpful. But behind the psychological and social benefits of ritualised worship hides the spiritual dangers. This is true of all rituals, not just sacramental ones. There is just as much danger as roping off the Mercy Seat, or making the worship space separate from the feeding space, or in the almost inevitable but destructive seat-saving that occurs in our churches.

The Handbook warns against exactly this danger. It says we should beware of trusting in “the external rather than the grace it signifies.” (p. 271). Ritual always runs the risk of becoming instrumental. Especially amongst communities that are vulnerable to oppression and spiritual abuse. The ritual becomes a source of power and control for the religious leader. Excommunication is an example of this corrupt power. When God’s grace can be contained to a set of rituals that only a select few can control, then spiritual abuse will not be far behind.

Communion Was Not Meant To Be A Ritual

Jon Sobrino reminds us that the true “memorial of Jesus” is not a repeated rite but continued solidarity with the crucified. Eating bread and wine in church has very little to do with what Jesus asked of us. It often actually distracts us from what Christ commanded us to do. Communion with Christ comes in sharing food together, serving the poor, freeing the oppressed, and loving the unloved. The sacrament of liberation means faithfully and actively loving people in need.

It is no good to take communion at the altar while the hungry go unfed. Being baptised means nothing if you do not love your neighbour as Christ has loved you. To take communion on Sunday and then ignore the suffering during the week becomes little more than idolatry.

The Army’s mission is a far more radically obedient Sacramental act than any ritual or ceremony. In its commitment to the Sacrament of the Good Samaritan, the Army is closer to the original meaning of sacramental worship. Christ calls us to worship Him in Spirit and Truth (John 4:24). That is what we do when we love our neighbour.

The Sacraments Divide, They Do Not Unite

One argument for the Army resuming the sacraments is that they would unify the churches. There is a claim that sacramental worship helps promote ecumenical unity. The reality is that this is a pretty ridiculous argument. Even a brief knowledge of church history shows that the idea that the sacraments unite is false. Tens of thousands have been killed over the centuries because they disagreed on communion and baptism.

Today, the likelihood of death from a sacramental disagreement is very low (but never zero). But the reality is that the sacraments do not unify the churches. They remain a dividing point. The churches do not agree on what happens during the sacramental acts, who can preside over them, where they should be done, who can receive them, or how often they can be performed. How are they unifying?

There are churches that would not accept I’m a Christian because I haven’t been baptised. I know churches where I couldn’t take communion because I’m not confirmed. There are churches that would not recognise Salvation Army officers as ministers of the Gospel because we don’t have sacramental ordination.

Salvationist Sacramental Divisions

Even if the Army decided to resume the sacraments, I do not think this would be an easy process. The international Army is divided enough as it is over questions of inclusion, accountability, the authority of the General, and the role of officers. What kind of sacramental practice should the Army start? Transubstantiation or the real presence or a symbolic remembrance? Child baptism or believer baptism? Baptism as a mark of salvation or baptism as regeneration? Can only officers preside over the sacraments, or can soldiers, or employees, or anyone who wants to?

What happens if different Territories want different forms of sacramental practice? Or if some officers refuse to offer the sacraments? Would you end up with sacramental corps and non-sacramental corps? Will different corps have to put on their profiles whether they are child baptisms or adult baptisms? Whether they want communion or no communion? If left to each territory, what would happen when an officer moved from one territory to another?

Trying to bring back the sacraments would, at a purely pragmatic level, be an absolute organisational disaster. It would further embed clericalism, cause theological division, and damage international relations.

A Call to Renewed Liberationist Faithfulness

The Salvation Army does not lack sacraments. In some ways, it has more sacraments than any other church. Every act of love can meditate Christ and so be a sacrament.

The Army lives the most demanding of all sacraments: the Sacrament of the Good Samaritan. Every time a Salvationist feeds the hungry, houses the homeless, or stands with the addict, they are celebrating communion. They meet Christ in that moment.

As I have written elsewhere on this blog:

“The Sacramental Life is at the heart of how The Salvation Army understands practical holiness… the Army has understood the Bible to point not to rituals and rites, but to a life lived in the constant awareness of Christ’s presence.”

We know who we were called to be. The Army just need to actually live it out in practice.

We Need To Be Confident In Who We Are

To introduce formal sacraments now would risk diluting the Army’s prophetic witness precisely when the world needs it most. In an age of growing inequality, climate injustice, and forced displacement of people in need, the Army’s distinctive stance remains a prophetic call to the churches.

We do not need to do what other churches do.

In feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and proclaiming liberty to the captive, we encounter the living Christ, and the world encounters the liberating power of the gospel.

The Kingdom is among the poor. The Army was raised up to prove it.

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