The Salvation Army is known for its position on women’s equality in ministry. The Early Salvation Army’s Understanding of Masculinity was even more radical in its day. Equality? From the very beginning, women were given positions of authority and were appointed to be church leaders. They preached, taught, and evangelised just as any man, and…
There are no priests needed in The Salvation Army. That time has gone. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ has changed that. But still the language of priesthood has clung on in Christian churches and ideas of ministry. No Priests Needed – Everyone Is a Priest When the Army first began, it pushed back…
At times like these, when it can feel that everything is getting darker and harder, joy is an act of resistance. Our choice to claim joy for our lives stands in opposition to the kind of dark and sinister powers and principalities which seek to corrupt and destroy us. Choosing Joy as an Act of…
Understanding Theopoetics simply means using poetic forms to practice theology, and I have been reflecting on this a lot lately. Poetic Theology – When Prose Fails Sometimes we don’t have the right words to explain what we believe. Sometimes we are confronted with the infinitely unknowable, uncontainable person of God, and find our response utterly…
The story of how The Salvation Army became conservative is a complicated one, but one which needs to be understood. It is the story of how one of the world’s biggest social service providers left behind its radical roots. Setting the Scene The Salvation Army began with a radical commitment to evangelising the people who…
You, I, and everyone else in the world have a vocation. But what is a vocation? I’m not talking about some kind of preordained task that everyone has to fulfil. Instead, what I mean is that everyone has something they can do. Each person has a way they can be human that uniquely participates in…
This is the excerpt for your very first post.
Bees and Honey are a theme for salvation which run throughout the Bible. There are over 60 references to them. At times they symbolise the bounty and blessing of God, at other times they are a warning of God’s judgement. Ultimately, they are a reminder of the sweetness of God’s kingdom. Judgemental Wasps The first…
I think we sometimes understand our Christian faith as a battle rather than a relationship. Our language and songs often emphasise our ongoing battle against temptation, to overcome sin, and to fight onwards to reach our destination. But sometimes, we emphasise the combative elements of our faith at the expense of the roots of our…
The Bible as we know it today was not written by the original authors. The words are the same, subject to translation and transmission, but the way we read them is very different. When the Bible was written, it was not collected into one book. The individual books of the Bible did not have chapters…