The New Army

Forty-three soul-savers walked amid the soft lawns and chandeliered salons of what had once been a "gentlemen's club of ill repute" not far from London last week, and talked about the good old days. The high command of the Salvation Army was meeting for a 16-day special session at its Sunbury on Thames training center, and the agenda before it was privately described by the commissioners as a "crisis." For sinners are not what they used to be--and the Army is.

One Man's Shuffle. When General William Booth launched a new era in evangelism 80 years ago with his drum-thumping, quasi-military corps, sin was conspicuous and shocking. A prostitute looking for a respectable job ran the risk of being thrown bodily out of her prospective employer's premises, with the chair on which she had been sitting thrown after her as too contaminated for decent people. Skirts were drawn aside from an unmarried mother, and curbstone drunks would crowd the Army's public meetings desperate for hope and help.

In today's city streets--half-deserted at night to television--tarts chat cheerfully about their business to the Army's midnight patrol. Illegitimacy, in the words of one commissioner, "isn't even a tragedy, much less a social stigma." So few derelicts approach the Army's mercy seat these days that the shuffle of one man toward salvation at a recent London meeting has been the talk of the Army ever since. And the welfare state, with its complex of psychiatric and rehabilitation centers, prompts the downtrodden to turn to government instead of God. Said General Wilfred Kitching, son of Founder Booth's secretary and now head of the Army, in his opening address: "Antiquated methods must be set aside, unproductive activities abandoned, and new strategies examined."

More Democracy. Salvationists. Kitching feels, must "get down from the pulpit and in among the sinners. Souls today are saved by reason, not exaltation."

In addition, he feels, the military structure of the Army could stand "a little more democracy." Said Kitching: "In the old days, the individual in the Army was of no account. He was told to go here or there, and he did; but now we must take some notice of a soldier's wishes."

One thing that definitely will not change: the Army's attitude to indiscriminate sex and to spirituous drink. "Every one of the thousands of Salvationists," said General Kitching, "is a total abstainer. We deplore the easy thinking that exists today in the matter of sexual license and impurities."

Decisions. Everything the commissioners heard was not on the debit side. The 50 British Army centers of 80 years ago are now more than 20,000 in 86 countries, and the original band of 57 evangelists is now an army of more than 27,000 fulltime officers with hundreds of thousands of "soldiers" and local officers (the women's groups number 300,000). By the time the meeting closed (with a festive tea), the commissioners were confident that a new Army was on its way. Among decisions taken:

P: Overhaul of the Army's training program, increasing the training period from nine months plus a year's probation to two years' training and a year's probation. P: Revision of criteria for the 600-man teaching staff; in addition to good character, familiarity with the Army and the Bible, teachers will henceforth be required to know how to teach. P: New emphasis on spiritual counseling and instruction in Christianity. P: Modernization of the Salvationists' "religious language" and increased use of the printed word, radio and television.

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