Leadership in The Salvation Army

Download or read book Leadership in The Salvation Army written by Harold Hill and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2006-10-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Leadership in The Salvation Army' is a review and analysis of Salvation Army history, focused on the process of clericalisation. The Army provides a case study of the way in which renewal movements in the church institutionalise. Their leadership roles, initially merely functional and based on the principle of the 'priesthood of all believers', begin to assume greater status. the adoption of the term 'ordination' for the commissioning of The Salvation Army's officers in 1978, a hundred years after its founding, illustrates this tendency. The Salvation Army's ecclesiology has been essentially pragmatic and has developed in comparative isolation from the wider church, perhaps with a greater role being played by sociological processes than by theological reflection in its development. The Army continues to exhibit a tension between its theology, which supports equality of status, and its military structure, which works against equality, and both schools of thought flourish within its ranks.