Leadership in The Salvation Army: A Case Study in Clericalisation

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.