Falling Backwards

In the winter of 1981, the Salvation Army Canada and Bermuda Territory took a bold leap into the future with the announcement that it would establish a Bible college in Winnipeg. This announcement was the culmination of the dreams of a generation of Salvationists--officers and soldiers---who thought that the organization had matured to the point where it was essential to cultivate its own theological and ethical perspectives to serve its young people and to strengthen its mission. It appears that now, more than four decades later, the Army has lost its nerve and has withdrawn into the cocoon of a Salvationist ghetto of obscurantism and pious mush.

For decades I have hoped that having an institution of higher education in the Salvation Army would help us to move forward. But over that time I have watched intelligent, committed Salvationists who have ambitions to pursue university education find it necessary to leave the Army because there is a latent, and sometimes vocal, antipathy toward post-secondary education, especially graduate education---and especially in theological disciplines. I can count many who embarked upon theological studies---the field with which I am most familiar---but who received the clear message that there is no place in the Army for such endeavours. I certainly heard that message as a young graduate student. At best, serious theological studies are viewed as a distraction from the real mission of the Army. Most of the aspiring Salvationist theologians left for traditions in which such aspirations are valued.

The fact is that there is a strong and vocal anti-intellectualism within the Army. It shows up in the frequent denigration of academic learning set in opposition to practical (or field-based) learning. There also is a strong and vocal suspicion that rigorous post-secondary education will strip someone of their faith. Yet the evidence from other Christian traditions points to the contrary. Consider the strong and vibrant intellectual traditions and scholarly rigour that characterizes our Calvinist, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Nazarene sisters and brothers---and countless other traditions. In these traditions it is assumed that the renewal of our minds through the disciplines of study and thought is not antithetical to faith, but rather a strong stimulant of even deeper, informed, and passionate faith. We do not seem capable of growing beyond the bias and blindness of our own ignorance.

A clear sign of this is the step-by-step diminishment of Booth University College that has been underway for the past few years---indicated most recently by its physical down-sizing to a much smaller, residence-less facility. This systematic diminishment condemns the institution to fulfilling only a hollow shell of the vision that led to its initial establishment and condemns the Army to perpetuate its own paltry ghetto of thought and faith. It sends the message to Salvationist young people who aspire to be faithful servants through the renewal of their minds and the disciplines of academic study that they are not welcome and that they should probably leave and go to some place where their aspirations are honoured rather than denigrated or suspect. No doubt the Army will continue to lose some of its brightest and best.

But perhaps equally important, the diminishment of Booth University College and the loss of aspiring theologians means that the Army is moving toward relying upon "outside" resources to educate its own future leaders and soldiers in the fundamentals of our faith and mission. We soon will have no educational institution where issues can be discussed or researched. We will have no institution to ground the research and learning necessary to improve what we do and how we do it. We will have no place for reflection and the clear articulation of our mission and faith. Rather than doing the hard, intellectual work within the Army, we will rely on those from other traditions to shape our future. We will be dependent, derivative. We will be unable to speak with the power and conviction that is grounded in the fruits of hard intellectual labour.

In other words, we are choosing to be a toddler in a world that needs mature Christian voices more than ever. Continuing down this path, our words will ring hollow, our witness will diminish, and our influence will fade away. We will parrot the words of others. We will be content with continued band-aid service to the community rather than transformative, cutting-edge engagement. We will maintain the public relations ruse that we are advancing, but behind the scenes, in our heart of hearts, we know that we are falling back.

The bold leap taken in 1981 has been replaced by a stumble backwards as once again our 19th century anti-intellectualism rears its head and our obsession with the practical holds us back from a future that actually engages the challenges of the 21st century with careful Christian thought, vision, and service.