A fool for Christ rather than a tool for the devil

A young female officer, standing on a crate, leads an open-air meeting in Newtown, Sydney, in 1942.

BY BARRY GITTINS

If you were a Salvationist 90 years ago, you wouldn’t necessarily be seen as a respectable or even a rational person.

Writing in the 21 September 1935 issue of the War Cry, Envoy L. McWhinney suggested that Salvos were sometimes perceived by members of the general public as making fools of themselves, “prancing across the platform, jumping seats, or doing other outlandish things ... Nobody desires to act the senseless clown, yet some folk confuse abandonment to Christ with vain buffoonery,” the envoy conceded.

“Yet,” he insisted, “it is certainly better to be a fool for Christ’s sake than to be a tool of the devil, for in abandonment to Jesus there is not only overflowing joy of heart, but a compelling force to be doing something for Him.”

A case in point for the envoy was ‘doing something’ by publicly witnessing in the great outdoors: the envoy cited a group of Salvationists witnessing “at Bowral recently, during some very severe weather [on a ] Sunday night ... holding forth in the freezing open-air”.

“‘Nobody was listening’, a newspaper confrere informed me. ‘But there must be something which I do not understand, to make people do that.’”

“We are never shining to greater effect,” the envoy wrote, “than when we are witnessing.”

Our worship became more sophisticated, less robust. As generations progressed, society and leisure activities evolved, and open-air meetings – once a useful recruitment option – declined in both practice and efficacy.

Some 43 years later, in 1978, British singer Cliff Richard paid tribute to “the Sally Army” and their outdoor, spiritual busking. Yet, he “wondered why they do it, when no one’s ever there ...”

The things we do, the words we share and the actions we take reflect our beliefs and motivations. Are we still prepared to look silly, or a vain buffoon, for our faith?

By today’s standards, we might think it strange if Salvos were to hold an open-air meeting in freezing cold weather, playing to no one. We’d certainly feel uncomfortable if we saw them running around the hall shouting excitedly, or lying “prostrate on the floor”, or “being instantly dropped on the pavement”, or weeping, clapping hands and dancing, or groaning aloud, or taking part in a Christian conga-line (hallelujah wind-ups were referred to as ‘old-time’ as early as 1915).

Yet such examples of enthusiasm (enthusiasm, literally, means being ‘possessed by the god’) were a characteristic of Salvationists, from the early days of the Christian Mission and reaching as we have seen into the 1930s.

Perhaps, we could still benefit from such enthusiasm, or “shining”, while witnessing to God’s love.