Who Are These Salvationists?

An Analysis for the 21^stCentury

• By Shaw Clifton
• 240 pages.
• Published 1999, Crest Books

Drawing on scholarly research and Salvation Army service on give continents, Shaw Clifton has written a seminal study that explores the Army's roots, theology and position in the Body of believers. Who Are These Salvationists? provides a definitive profile of The Salvation Army as an "authentic expression of classical Christianity."

Clifton explores the theological grounding of Salvationists as Protestant Evangelicals, attestant to the verity of the Scriptures and the "essential nature of the personal and experiential dimensions of the Christian faith."

He then turns to the controversial issue of Salvationists sacramentalism. He considers the Army's history and current practices to explain that Salvationist sacramentalism does not hinge upon and outward form or ceremony: "When our hearts are made holy, all of life is a sacrament."

Next, Clifton outlines the Army's relationship to humanity and the secular world: "The pragmatic task in our dealings with the secular world is to first understand it, then to have compassion for it and finally to encourage its laws and institutions to conform as closely as possible to the laws and institutions of the one who signs His name 'I am the Lord.'"

Finally, the author probes the Army's expansion into 124 countries since its inception in 1865. Clifton examines the workings of an international church, addressing such threats to a united, international Army as nationalism, cultural differences andﾡﾪthe ultimate threatﾡﾪwar.

Salvationists and non-Salvationists alike will find in Who Are These Salvationists? a penetrating and illuminating look back at the growth of this branch of Christianity and an optimistic view of the Army's prospects for the twenty-first century.