De-Colonialism and The Salvation Army

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

This is, as with all my writing, or any guest posts, the personal opinion of the author, and is not in any way an official statement from or by The Salvation Army.

The Salvation Army was created at the height of the Victorian age, in London, the very heart of British Imperial Power. The Army adopted the forms and structures of that Empire, and its initial international expansion was made possible because of the Empire.

In a wider context, the Army has, through its social services, often entered into relationships with State power and authority. There have been times when this has produced good results, and times when this has harmed people.

As we become increasingly aware of the consequences of imperial behaviour, both Political and Cultural imperialism, the Army needs to reflect on its own participation in colonialism, and how that participation has left, and continues to leave its mark.

This article starts to explore what it would be like to address the colonial elements in the Army, and whether we could let them go. I’m not an expert in this subject, so these are only steps towards something that I think needs to be explored properly.

I also recognise my own position in this question. I am a white, male, British, educated, Salvation Army officer. I have grown up in the Army, inherited its culture, and been shaped within British history and culture. This doesn’t prevent my engagement with the topic, but it does position me within it.

Naming The Problem – The Salvation Army and Colonialism

The Salvation Army did not come into existence out of nothing. Its founders and first leaders were all formed by their social, cultural, class, and economic contexts. London in 1865 was dominated by a single behemoth. The British Empire.

London was the greatest city in the world, filled with both poverty and abundance. Its docks brought people from every part of the world, and they formed communities in areas of London that persist to some degree today. It was on these streets that the Army began.

A Complex Relationship Between The Salvation Army and Colonialism

Andrew Eason argues that the early Army demonstrated three imperial characteristics: militarism (seen in its borrowing of imperial military structures), racial othering (seen in its approach to mission and officers from other cultures, and deference to the monarchy.

But Eason points out that this relationship is not straightforward. The relationship between the Army and the British Empire was “remarkably dynamic and complex.” In some places, the Army resisted the Empire’s power, while in others it co-operated with it or became part of it.

Examples of Salvatinist Relationships with Empire

An example can be seen with the Army’s work in India. When the Army first began operations in India, it resisted imperial power, and many of its members were arrested as a result. Those first Army missionaries adopted the dress, names, language, and culture of India. They wanted to be part of that culture, not replace it.

However, within a few decades, the Army was working with the imperial establishment. The  Army collaborated with colonial police to manage settlements for the so-called “criminal tribes.” They received government subsidies for doing so and used them as an opportunity to try to convert people they could not normally reach.

Another example can be seen in the Army’s work with emigration. Between 1900 and 1930, the Army facilitated the transport of over 200,000 people from the UK to the colonies, particularly Australia and Canada. I’ve written more about this here.

The Army has officially recognised that it has not always made the right decision. In the International Position Statement on Racism, it says:

“While many Salvationists have acted firmly and courageously against racism, The Salvation Army acknowledges with regret, that Salvationists have sometimes shared in the sins of racism and conformed to economic, organisational and social pressures that perpetuate racism.”

The time has come to have the conversation about the Army’s colonial heritage as well.

What is De-Colonialism?

We need to start with what colonialism is. Colonialism is the political, cultural, and economic domination of one people by another. This domination is mostly justified and rationalised through racial hierarchies, missionary ideology, and economic imperatives.

De-Colonialism does not mean erasing history or forcing people to feel guilty. It means examining how colonial structures continue to shape institutions and cultural imaginations after the formal end of empires.

De-Colonialism also recognises that we are living in the age of new empires. Empires of corporations, economies, and media cultures. These new empires are really just old imperial tendencies repackaged for the modern era.

The Impact of Willie Jennings and the Theological Reality of Colonialism

In The Christian Imagination, Willie Jennings argued that Christianity has a “diseased social imagination.” This social imagination is unable to form genuine community across racial and community divides (and we might also add class divides). This is because those differences arose from within Christian theology rather than being imposed from outside it.

The problem isn’t just that Christian institutions did bad things during colonialism, or that their beliefs were co-opted by imperial ideologies. It is that the colonial period reshaped how Christians imagine community, land, bodies, and belonging. This was not unique to the imperial ages; it has existed since the Constantinian settlement, but the age of empire gave it institutional power.

The task of decolonialism for the churches is to heal their theological imagination, disentangle practices shaped by colonial experiences, and recover Christological particularity for our neighbours, rather than the racial, cultural, and class abstractions that imperial ideology demands.

The Theological Problem

The point is not that the Army made bad choices or did things we would now consider to be wrong. It is that the colonial period has intrinsically shaped the Army’s structures, governance, theological metaphors, and normative practices.

The Army is now a majority-world church. But its theological grammar, its ecclesial structures, and the cultural context of its mission were formed by the minority world. And, by the minority world in a very specific time and place. This has a theological impact.

The Privilege of Every Believer?

Doctrine 10 teaches us that it is the privilege of every believer to be sanctified. The Army believes in the democratisation of holiness. Sanctification is not limited to only a few. It is freely available to everyone. This poses a key theological point.

Whose theology, whose worship practices, and whose ecclesial assumptions are assumed as normative, is not just an organisational matter. It is a question of how we apply our doctrine of holiness.

Holiness, without reckoning with our colonial legacy, is selective holiness and falls far short of doctrine 10. We see this across Salvationist belief and practice. The difficulty with translation, the consolidation of doctrinal and theological work in English, the location of both IHQ and the ICO in London, and the cultural makeup of senior leadership are all part of the Army’s colonial legacy. These are all questions which must be addressed.

Naming the Powers

Power is never neutral. It is always exercised for the benefit of some and the detriment of others. In the Bible, there is also always a spiritual dimension to power. This is what Walter Wink teaches in his work on the Powers and Principalities.

Systems and structures have a spiritual reality. When those systems and structures are harmful, destructive, and coercive, then they also have a dark and dominating spiritual reality. This is especially true of imperial power, which is the antithesis of the Gospel. The impact of colonialism on the Church is not only structural or cultural, but it is also theological.

This is what Jennings means when he talks about the diseased Christian imagination. The dark spiritual reality of empire and colonialism has an impact on the spiritual reality of the church that must be addressed. In this sense, decolonialism is not only a cultural, historical, and economic issue. It is also a spiritual one.

Where is Christ?

The belief that God has a preferential option for the poor is not only a theological statement. It is an epistemological one.

The poor, the broken, the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, all know God in a way that the powerful and safe cannot. We make a mistake if we think that it is the minority world that gives to the rest of the world. The doctrines and theological documents might well be in English. But it is the majority world that can uniquely be the Army’s teacher.

A way which can only be heard when the Army is willing to wrestle with its colonial heritage.

An Example of Silence

In July 2021, the International Social Justice Centre published a 67-page voluntary discussion guide. It was called “Let’s Talk About Racism”, and it was introduced by General Brian Peddle. This guide was intended to “stimulate gracious discussion” amongst Salvationists.

The significant detail was that it called on members to “lament, repent, and apologise for biases or racist ideologies held, and actions, committed.” This was a brave, bold, and theologically Salvationist document.

However, between October and November 2021, conservative US media groups such as The Daily Signal and the activist group Colour Us United ran a coordinated campaign against this document. They said that it was forcing white donors to apologise for their skin colour.

Donations fell in some US locations, and an online petition gathered over 19,000 signatures. Including over 300 Salvation Army officers.

On the 29th of November 2021, IHQ withdrew the guide and released a statement saying:

“certain aspects of the guide may need to be clarified” and it had “become the focus of controversy.”

The then US National Commander Kenneth Hodder said:

“If that document is getting in the way of the fulfilment of our mission, The Salvation Army is going to remove it.”

The official Salvation Army response to the media claims was that the accusations were “simply false.” The Army acknowledged the claims were false. What the document said was true. Yet the document was withdrawn.

This was not a Theological correction. It appears to have been done for pragmatic reasons.

But this also reveals something of what might happen if the Army started to take the question of decolonialism seriously. There would be pushback. There would be a risk to donations. The question would be, will the Army have that conversation, or would the risk be too great and it back away from it?

What Are We Called To Do?

The Army’s history, founding purpose, and theology call it to open this conversation.

We need to recognise and acknowledge that the colonial legacy is real and not yet fully reckoned with. This isn’t something we can sweep under the carpet and pretend isn’t real, even though engaging in that conversation will be difficult and painful for many people. When working with our recovery church, I often say that we cannot fix the past, but we can heal from it. But we cannot heal unless we are honest about what needs healing.

We need to create space for the conversation to take place. At every level of the Army, from corps to IHQ, and in every territory around the world. The key point is that this needs to be a conversation. It cannot be done to, it can only be done with. If this process is done simply from above, then it only reinforces the consequences of colonialism in the Army’s structures.

We need to listen to the majority of the world’s Salvationists as a gift, not as a challenge to be managed. Recognising that without those voices, we cannot be fully open to the word of God. This is a theological imperative which reminds us that decolonialism is a process which will enable us to hear God more truly and fully. In the same way that the Army needs feminist theology, black theology, neurodivergent theology, and trauma-informed theology, it also needs decolonised theology.

Reflection Space

Scripture: Genesis 16:13 (NRSV)

“So she named the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are El-roi’; for she said, ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?'”

Hagar was a slave, an Egyptian, and a woman. She was an outsider in every way possible. Yet she did something unique. She named God El-Roi. The God who sees. Hagar was seen by God, and she knew and understood God in a way that Abraham and Sarah never could.

The God who sees is not only comforting Hagar. Hagar is revealing God. Theology is being done outside of the expected spaces.

Womanist theologian Delores S. Williams argued that this story is not a footnote. Hagar is a prototype figure whose experience of God from the margins gives us access to something the centre cannot see. The margins have access to God in a way the centre doesn’t because it is on the margins that God chooses to dwell.

A Prayer:

Lord, open our eyes to see where you have already been seen, in places we did not look, by people we did not listen to.

Hagar is an Egyptian woman, a slave, fleeing into the wilderness. She has no covenant. She has no temple. She has no priest. And yet she names God. She is, as far as we can tell, the only person in the Old Testament to name God directly in this way. Not Abraham. Not Moses. Hagar.

What does it mean that God was first named from outside the centre? And what might that mean for who we trust to teach us about God today?

Being The Salvation Army

Who is Christ for us today?

We cannot answer this question from within a single cultural and historical imagination. We need the whole body.

The Salvation Army was formed for the poorest, the oppressed, the abused, and the suffering. Not to do good things to them or for them, but to be made up of those people. They tell us what the Army is meant to be.

This isn’t an easy question, and there are consequences if the conversation were taken up. But if we are going through the truth to our Salvationist DNA, then I think we need to have that conversation sooner rather than later.

Sign Up To The MyTheologyCorner Newsletter

Sign up for the newsletter for free to get a weekly dose of Salvationist theology straight into your inbox. You’ll get a summary of that week’s main article, highlights about the Army’s work around the world, book recommendations, Bible reflections, and some doctrine teaching.

Try These Similar Articles

Common Treasury, Social Salvation, and The Salvation Army — The thread running from the early church through to the Army’s founding: creation as a common treasury, salvation as social transformation, and what that means for how we do mission today.

Trump, the Trickster, and Resisting the Powers — Walter Wink’s Powers and Principalities framework applied to contemporary politics. How do we name, resist, and engage the powers that shape our world?

AI, Pope Leo XIV, The Salvation Army, and the Theology of Solidarity — A theology of solidarity drawing on Gutiérrez, Bonhoeffer, and William Booth — and what it means for how the Army navigates the biggest cultural shifts of our time.

Sources

• Eason, Andrew M. “Religion in an Age of Empire: The Salvation Army and British Imperialism, 1878–1914.” Journal of Religious History 45, no. 1 (2021): 91–114.
• Eason, Andrew M. “Religion versus the Raj: The Salvation Army’s ‘Invasion’ of British India.” Mission Studies 28 (2011): 71–90.
• Berry, Emily A. “From Criminals to Caretakers: The Salvation Army in India, 1882–1914.” PhD diss., Northeastern University, 2008.
• The Salvation Army. International Positional Statement: Racism. London: International Headquarters.
• Jennings, Willie James. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
• Slade, Xianthe. “Time and Subjectivity in Fanon, Bonhoeffer, and Kierkegaard.” Duke University Divinity School.
• Gutiérrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation.
• ISJC “Let’s Talk About Racism” (2021) — Withdrawn document; archive.org copy exists.
• Williams, Delores S. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993.