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The equality paradox for women ministers of The Salvation Army

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THE EQUALITY PARADOX FOR WOMEN MINISTERS
OF
THE SALVATION ARMY

by

Christin Davis

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)

May 2012

Copyright 2012 Christin Davis

ii

Table of Contents

Abstract iii
Introduction: The Equality Paradox for Women Ministers of The Salvation Army 1
Chapter One: The Present Tension 10
Chapter Two: Bold Enough 14
Chapter Three: One Facet of Concern 18
Conclusion: The March Forward 22
Bibliography 24

iii

Abstract

The Salvation Army began with a desire to treat women equally, allowing them to teach,
preach and minister just like men. In its first 50 years in the United States, the Army
often had women leaders. Yet that equality had some reservations, which William Booth,
who started the Army with his wife, Catherine, told listeners at a 1888 meeting, “We
have a problem. When two officers marry, by some strange mistake in our organization,
the woman doesn’t count.” Now, some men and women of The Salvation Army are
trying to return the organization to its intended egalitarian roots.

1
Introduction: The Equality Paradox for Women Ministers of The Salvation Army

A sleek campus in a suburban area outside of Chicago once served as the center of
operations for an oil company, but now houses The Salvation Army’s Central Territorial
Headquarters. Each morning, Carol Seiler drives into the underground parking lot and
takes the stairs, passing the women’s ministries department and heading for the floor
reserved for territorial leadership. Her office, a small space once used for traveling
officers, is around the corner from the territorial commander.

Just over 5-feet-tall, Seiler is not an intimidating figure, but has a commanding presence
that fits the self-selected location of her office. As we sit, she straightens the fitted blazer
of her navy polyester pantsuit, her shoulders adorned with maroon velvet epaulets and a
silver Salvation Army crest—designating her of one of 10 commissioners, the rank just
below the General, in the United States. By regulation, the wife of the territorial
commander is appointed to lead the women’s ministries department, but Seiler did what
no Army wife has ever done before—gave it up to create a position of her own: strategic
mission planning to keep the Army agile yet analytical in the Midwest.

"We have inherited a paradox in an organization that cares about empowering women in
our programs, but uses gender and marital status to actually discriminate against officers
who are married women,” Seiler said. “Even if it unintentionally happens, having one

2
spouse be an attachment to the other, even though both complete training college and
hold a rank, devalues the individuals."
1

The Salvation Army began with a desire to treat women equally, allowing them to teach,
preach and minister just like men. In its first 50 years in the United States, the Army
often had women leaders. Yet that equality had some reservations, which William Booth,
who started the Army with his wife, Catherine, told listeners at an 1888 meeting, “We
have a problem. When two officers marry, by some strange mistake in our organization,
the woman doesn’t count.”
2
Now, some men and women of The Salvation Army are
trying to return the organization to its intended egalitarian roots—for all officers, married
and single.

How did The Salvation Army get sidetracked?

“I suspect through organizational aging and cultural influence,” Seiler said. “And I think
when the strong Booth women were not around, that [fundamental egalitarianism] began
to change. Then marriages brought children, the world wars came and issues for women
changed. It then became a spiritual ‘problem’ to put your own needs forward.”
3

1

Carol Seiler, interview by author, Des Plaines, IL, October 27-28, 2011.

2
Harold Hill, Leadership in The Salvation Army: A Case Study in Clericalisation. (New Zealand:
Paternoster, 2006), 249.

3
Seiler, interview.

3
The 1900 edition of Orders and Regulations for Officers—“a manual of operations for
furthering the mission”—named gender equality as "one of the leading principles upon
which the Army is based." This evangelical church ordains women and appoints them
into positions throughout the nonprofit organization—including the April 2011 election
of General Linda Bond as the international leader, but the foundational progressive
perspective was sidestepped along the way. The 1987 edition of officer regulations stated,
"the nature of such service [for an ‘officer-wife’] will depend largely upon her husband's
appointment. In most appointments...an officer-wife should assist her husband. He is of
course, responsible." Not until the 1997 edition did the idea of “individual vocation and
mutual support” recognize instead the distinctive role of each officer.
4

This isn’t the first time Seiler has found a niche to fit her skills and interests in service
with The Salvation Army; it became part of her strategy as a young officer. “I assumed
initially that I actually had a job; that the Army expected me to work,” Seiler said.
“Where it started to connect differently for me was after I finished a master’s degree in
public health. My husband became the finance trainee and I was given corps cadets [a
young adult Bible study program]. My previous work and education weren’t even
factored into my role.” She found a way to put her experience to use in addition to her
assigned role, and is largely responsible for starting Bethesda House, a shelter for
homeless families affected by HIV/AIDS, in the early 1990s. “I found ways to be
fulfilled without fussing about it, but when I became a divisional leader—and the

4

Hill 252-253.

4
divisional commander’s wife—I realized I needed to do more,” she said. “Once you get
into a position of authority, you have to keep being a voice.”
5

Seiler has spoken out since, making it her mission to ensure men and women are valued
equally by the organization. “Humility and submission are part of holiness, but this ideal
can be manipulated and make it hard to speak out about a system of inferiority—to
appear as though you’re being self-serving,” she said. “I continually ask myself: Is this
about pride or arrogance or really about justice?”

In a 2011 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life global survey of evangelical Protestant
leaders, a third of worldwide leaders surveyed (33 percent) say they agree that “women
should stay at home and raise the children in the family;” the number is higher among
U.S. leaders with 44 percent agreeing women should stay at home.
6

The Army—an evangelical Protestant church and international humanitarian organization
currently operating in 124 countries and 175 languages—is rooted in Methodism. The
Christian Mission, later re-named The Salvation Army, originated in England in 1865
with a Methodist minister and his wife—William and Catherine Booth. In the Mission’s
Foundation Deed, the Booths included a provision that women have the same rights to
preach as men, and the organization has ordained women ever since—a remarkable

5
Seiler, interview.

6

“Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders,” The Pew Forum, June 22, 2011,
http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Evangelical-Protestant-Churches/Global-Survey-of-Evangelical-
Protestant-Leaders.aspx

5
advancement even today as just over half of American Protestant denominations ordain
women.

Yet some see the opportunity given to married women officers as less than what is
offered to single women and male officers. “I was basically dismissed when I married,”
said one female officer with roughly 30 years of experience as both a single and a
married officer, who asked that her name not be used. “I’ve had to fight from day one
that it’s not ‘he’s the corps officer’ and ‘she’s the underling who doesn’t know anything.’
As a single officer I was valued and people knew I could think and contribute, but as a
married officer I’m expected to coordinate parties and place uniform orders. I’m an
expansive thinker, and I feel boxed into a role that I don’t fit into.”
7

But it is women officers who are largely essential to the Army’s legacy, starting with its
co-founder, Catherine Booth. Emerging from England’s working class, Catherine
Mumford grew up in a world where all women worked—it was necessity for her mother
after her parents’ separation. Religion, specifically the local Wesleyan Methodist chapel,
was at the center of the family. In Methodism women were restricted, they could not
participate in decision-making bodies nor be ordained, though it did provide women with
experience speaking in public and a theology that supported women’s public ministry,
according to Dr. Pamela Walker, a professor of history at Carleton University in Ottawa

7
Anonymous Source, phone interview by author, December 12, 2011.

6
and the author of Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down on The Salvation Army in Victorian
Britain.
8

“The Army is a patriarchal organization, but it also endorses women’s authority,” Walker
said of the Army at its beginning. “In that tension is the root of women’s position within
the Army over the next hundred years.”
9

In Victorian Britain, most evangelicals understood women to be “domestic, dependent,
and submissive, which necessarily precluded them from preaching or assuming positions
of authority,” Walker said. When the minister of the Bethesda Free Church in
Sunderland, Rev. A. A. Rees, published a pamphlet arguing that Paul specifically and
unequivocally forbade women to speak in church, and because of Eve’s sin women were
“under a denser cloud of suffering and humiliation” and must remain in subjection to
men, Catherine Booth was enraged.
10
She published her own pamphlet, “Female
Teaching,” arguing that God made man and woman together, and subordination occurred
as a punishment for Eve’s transgressions; the subjection was “neither natural nor
eternal.”
11

8
Pamela J. Walker, phone interview by author, September 13, 2011.

9
Ibid.

10
Pamela J. Walker, “Gender, Radicalism, and Female Preaching in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Catherine
Booth’s Female Teaching,” in Strangely Familiar: Protofeminist Interpretations of Patriarchal Biblical
Texts, ed. Nancy Calvert-Koyzis and Heather E. Weir (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 28.

11
Pamela J. Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain
(Berkeley: Los Angeles: London: University of California Press, 2001), 26.

7
She wrote: “Will he inform us why women should be confined exclusively to the kitchen
or the distaff, any more than man to the field and the workshop? Did not God, and has not
nature, assigned to man his sphere of labor, ‘to till the ground, and to dress it?’ And, if
Mr. Rees claims exemption from this kind of toil for one portion of his sex, on the ground
of their possessing ability for intellectual pursuits, he must allow us the same privilege
for women.”
12

Because 19th-century British and American Protestants regarded women as passive and
receptive by nature, Walker said the most innovative and ultimately significant aspect of
Catherine Booth’s thinking was her assertion—radical at the time—that women could
possess spiritual authority as women and could preach as Christian women in their own
voices as a part of the natural order.
13
She wrote to her mother, “I felt quite at home on
the platform—far more than I do in the kitchen.”
14
When William Booth became ill in
1860, Catherine Booth took his place in the Methodist New Connexion preaching circuit.
The minutes contained no reference to her preaching, but the press did, including a
Wesleyan Times article titled “A Minister’s Wife Preaching for Him!”
15
She became well
known as a preacher and received many invitations to do so, often before wealthy crowds
where she gained financial support for the ministry.

12
Catherine Booth, Female Teaching: Rev. A.A. Rees versus Mrs. Palmer, Being a Reply to the Pamphlet
by the above named Gentleman on the Sunderland Revival, 2
nd
ed. (London: G. J. Stevenson, n.d., 1861), 4.

13
Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down, 31.

14
Pamela J. Walker, “A Chaste and Fervid Eloquence: Catherine Booth and the Ministry of Women in the
Salvation Army,” in Women Preachers and Prophets Through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley:
Los Angeles: London: University of California Press, 1998), 294.

15
Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down, 34.

8

When Catherine Booth—the “Army Mother”—died in 1890, 30,000 people lined the
streets of East London to watch her funeral procession. She was called the “most famous
and influential Christian woman of the generation.”
16

Following her example, Maud Booth—who married the Booth’s second son, Ballington,
and shared command of the Army in the U.S. with him from 1887 to 1896—addressed a
crowd of New Yorkers in 1895 on “The New Woman.” At a time when the secular media
depicted Salvationist women as “coarse, uneducated, and morally lax,” writes Diane
Winston in Red Hot & Righteous: The Urban Religion of The Salvation Army, with Maud
“a new model of Salvationist woman-hood began taking shape.”
17
Maud Booth involved
herself, and the Army, in the changing role of women. Her “words and deeds, her Army
persona, challenged the notion that becoming a Salvationist meant an end to a woman’s
respectability,” Winston writes.
18

Emma Booth, the fourth Booth child, led the Army’s first training school for women. She
later married Frederick Tucker, and the two replaced Ballington and Maud Booth to lead
the Army in the United States in 1896.

16
Walker, Women Preachers and Prophets Through Two Millennia of Christianity, 298.

17
Diane Winston, Red Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of The Salvation Army (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1999), 46.

18
Ibid., 76.

9
Succeeding Emma was Evangeline, a powerhouse of Salvation Army leadership with a
unique flair. The seventh Booth child, Evangeline Booth served as commander of the
Army in the U.S. for 30 years until 1934 when she was elected General—the first woman
elected. She is known for emphasizing an action-oriented religion, having initiated strong
Army response following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and sending “lassies” to
serve American troops along the front lines of World War I.

In a pamphlet titled “Woman,” Evangeline Booth “acknowledged the spread of the
women’s movement around the world and celebrated the possibilities it offered, including
the right to choose a fulfilling career over a feckless marriage,” according to Winston.
19
It
is this choice of path—marriage and family or the possibility of furthering vocational
responsibility—that Seiler seeks to break.

19
Ibid., 152.

10
Chapter One: The Present Tension

In the United States today, women account for roughly 53 percent of entry-level
professional employees in the largest industrial corporations, yet they hold only 37
percent of middle-management positions, 28 percent of vice-president and senior-
managerial roles, and 14 percent of seats on executive committees.
20
According to
McKinsey & Company analysis, the chances of women advancing are half of those for
men.

This is further complicated in The Salvation Army because for the most part a wife only
progresses as far as her husband. All officers complete two years of training at one of
four colleges across the nation; each fulfills the requirements, and is ordained and
commissioned individually. Territorial leaders and personnel departments then appoint
officers to positions in Salvation Army corps (churches) and divisional and territorial
headquarters. Once married, officers are always appointed together. The two are also
promoted together—by position and title—after the rank of major, which officers attain
following 15 years of service.

For many married women officers, the dilemma is not found at the corps level but in
headquarters positions, which Captain Lisa Caudill Van Cleef articulated in an issue of
The Officer, an international publication for Salvation Army officers: “So the question
I’ve asked of my leaders is this: Why is it that in a corps setting my husband and I are

20
Joanna Barsh and Lareina Yee, “Changing companies’ minds about women,” McKinsey Quarterly,
September 2011, http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Changing_companies_minds_about_women_2858.

11
partners, but if we are moved to headquarters appointments the woman is typically
subordinate, with the word assistant or associate often placed before her title?”
21

Many headquarters (i.e. leadership) positions for a husband come with a “linked”
appointment for his wife, generally in the women’s ministries department or as his
assistant/associate. Colonel Sharron Hudson is the territorial secretary for women’s
ministries in the West and wife of the chief secretary. “It’s a Catch-22 really, because I
feel valued in my ministry to women and always have; women’s programs have been the
lifeblood of The Salvation Army,” she said. “But after 20 years of working together in a
corps, when my husband was appointed a divisional secretary and the linked appointment
for me was in League of Mercy I had a hard time at first. I joked with him—kind of
joked—about him being in an office with a couch next to the divisional commander and
me being down in a cubby hole.”
22

Ministry to women was a natural progression of Salvation Army service to people that
were marginalized in the organization’s early days, she said. “I’ve never felt like a
second-class citizen as a married woman in the Army, but I have had to make people
realize that I have other skills than table decorating,” said Hudson, who is also currently
working toward a master’s in Christian leadership at Fuller Seminary. “In most other
churches, I would be a ‘pastor’s wife’ but in The Salvation Army I have my own

21
Lisa Caudill Van Cleef, “Partners—or not?,” The Officer, November-December 2010, 30.

22
Sharron Hudson, interview by author, Long Beach, CA, December 21, 2011.

12
appointment and title. Even with its foibles, the Army is still radical in its use of women
in leadership.”
23

Western Territorial Commander Commissioner James Knaggs agreed that in a corps
setting the couple handles its roles however it likes, though in headquarters appointments
the husband is almost always given the dominant role. Knaggs said it’s a male-dominated
way of thinking and something that, he believes, needs to change. He recently appointed
a married woman officer as the property secretary in the West. However, Knaggs said he
has met with at least five couples regarding promoting the wife to divisional commander
and none of them wanted a position over their husbands. “They pleaded, ‘Don’t do this to
our marriage,’” Knaggs said.
24

“The Salvation Army’s early leaders stressed the creation account,” said Dr. Roger
Green, professor and chair of Biblical Studies and Christian Ministries at Gordon College
in Massachusetts and the son of Salvation Army officer parents, referencing Genesis
1:27-28: “…in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God
blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and
subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living
creature that moves on the ground.’”
25

23
Ibid.

24
James Knaggs, interview by author, Long Beach, CA, February 22, 2011.

25
Roger Green, phone interview by author, January 4, 2011.

13
Green said in this account, there is no gender distinction. “There is a oneness of purpose
and jobs,” he said. “Following redemption, in Christ there is no male nor female as we
read in Galatians 3:28. Early Army leaders knew this applied primarily to salvation, but
also to how we are intended to be in life and ministry—without gender hindrances.”
26

William and Catherine Booth believed this equality extended to marriage, an equal
partnership as they discussed in letters to one another before marrying. “If a couple
believes a marriage is to be hierarchical in the home and then when they step out the door
they are to have equality in ministry, we end up with schizophrenic officers,” Green said.
“The Army needs to think through once again what our first principles were. In the
original minutes of the Christian Mission, there is no difference between spiritual
authority and positional equality.”
27

26
Ibid.

27
Ibid.

14
Chapter Two: Bold Enough

Some married women officers don’t see positions and titles as an issue at all. “I
personally wouldn’t want to be in charge,” said Major Sandra Turner, who served as a
single officer in the Southern Territory for nine years before marrying; she is currently
the assistant secretary for program in the Central Territory’s Metropolitan Division under
her husband. “I’m fine with the title of assistant. I had a big office when I was single and
then when I got married I didn’t have an office at all.” When Turner married as a captain,
she took on her husband’s title of lieutenant. “It didn’t bother me; I would much rather be
known as Mrs. Turner,” she said.
28

“I would consider the Army a patriarchal organization, but I wouldn’t say to put a man in
a position because he’s a man,” she said. “It shouldn’t be determined by gender or race,
but by who is the more qualified person.”
29

In The Salvation Army, according to statistics from International Headquarters, women
account for 57 percent of 26,254 active and retired officers around the world.
30
The
international leader (the General) is a single woman (the third single woman of 19
Generals in Salvation Army history). Currently, 9 of 61 territorial/regional commanders
are female—all single and also appointed the territorial president of women’s ministries.

28
Sandra Turner, interview by author, Des Plaines, IL, October 27, 2011.

29
Ibid.

30
Statistics, sent to the author by email from The Salvation Army’s International Headquarters, December
21, 2011.

15
Of the 5,289 officers in the United States, 56 percent are women. The vast majority of
U.S. officers (82 percent) are married, 15 percent are single women and 3 percent are
single men. Just two of 40 divisional commanders in the U.S. are women—both single.
31

Underscoring her lack of interest in reversing leadership role designations solely by
gender, Seiler said, “I’m careful not to try to flip a dysfunctional system.” As a territorial
leader with her husband, Seiler works to find appointments for officers based on
individual skills. “It’s about finding giftedness—who can contribute the best on this and
how do we help people get those skills.” She is quick to add that if women want the
positions, they have to put in the time, effort and initiative. “They need to pursue
education, be on committees, ad hoc task forces, local coalitions, community partnership
groups—to be part of an advisory board meeting rather than only being responsible for
the meal,” she said.
32

William Booth wrote in a letter to Catherine before they were married, “I would not stop
a woman preaching on any account. I would not encourage one to begin.”
33
Seiler says
the same applies now. “[Catherine] was bold enough to take the first step; the boldness to
start had to be hers,” she said. “This is not uncommon today. There are a lot of men who

31
Trevor Howes and Jayne Roberts, ed., The Salvation Army Yearbook 2011 (London: Salvation Books,
2010).

32
Seiler, interview.

33
Hill, Leadership in The Salvation Army, 234.

16
say they wouldn’t stop someone, but they also won’t encourage it. It takes individual
initiative and boldness.”
34

Major Gail Aho is one example. In her first appointment out of training school, Aho was
appointed as secretary of the training college’s office while her husband took a more
prominent role. More than 30 years later, Aho is now territorial youth secretary in the
Central Territory; her husband fulfills an urban ministry role in the program department.
“It’s exciting and fun having my own role,” she said, but adds that she is perceived
differently than others in her position—all men. “I think I can be easily dismissed
because I’m a married woman, but I don’t mind adjusting people’s perceptions.”
35

The organization has recognized the issue of appointments for married women officers,
even reportedly discussing it at the 2011 High Council, the closed-door meeting of
international commissioners that elects the Army’s worldwide leader. It was the largest
ever High Council with 109 members. For the first time, more attendees were women
than men (57 to 52)
36
due to a vote of the Army’s active commissioners to include
officers holding the appointment of territorial president of women’s ministries—
generally the wife of the territorial commander.

34
Seiler, interview.

35
Gail Aho, interview by author, Des Plaines, IL, October 27, 2011.

36
“Women Will Outnumber Men at 2011 High Council,” The Salvation Army, December 1, 2010,
http://www1.salvationarmy.org/ihq/www_sa.nsf/vw-
news/A42EF3F696DB3826802577EC0029A3E2?opendocument.

17
“Some worry about how it would work if the husband was subordinate; it’s curious
though that we don’t even think about it the other way around,” National Commander
Commissioner William Roberts said. “If I can have any influence on [recognizing the
place of married women in Army leadership], I will. We need to explore it further.”
37

In recent history, Salvation Army leadership has explored the issue to some degree,
including a number of task forces and actuarial studies. Most recently, a 2010 women's
commission of the five U.S. women commissioners unanimously recommended
researching and testing models that include education, experience and aptitude to
intentionally develop married and single women officers for increased leadership
appointments.

Identifying the issue is step one, Seiler said, but there are large stereotype barriers to
overcome, which require organizational change, even a generational transition.

37
William Roberts, interview by author, Alexandria, VA, February 4, 2011.

18
Chapter Three: One Facet of Concern

The issue of some married women officers feeling devalued by the organization is
complex and multi-pronged, beginning for some with the method of compensation.

According to Seiler’s monthly statement from the Social Security Administration, she has
no work history; a long list of zeros fills her income record for 30 years with the
organization. The Army utilizes its prerogative as a religious institution to determine how
it will compensate its workers. The officers are not employees but are members of clergy,
and as such fall under Social Security publication 517 that says “if a husband and wife
are both duly ordained, commissioned or licensed ministers of a church and have an
agreement that each will perform specific services for which they are paid jointly or
separately, they must divide the self-employment income according to the agreement.”
38

It is this “ministerial exception” that protects the organization from the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission’s Equal Pay Act that requires men and women in
the same workplace be given equal pay for equal work. This exception protects the Army
from discrimination lawsuits as well, including one in 1972 issued by a disgruntled ex-
officer who claimed she was discriminated against in appointments on the basis of her
sex. The Army won the case on the grounds that relations between a church and its

38
U.S. Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, Publication 517: Social Security and Other
Information for Members of the Clergy and Religious Workers, (Washington, DC: Government Printing
Office, 2009).

19
ministers were exempt from the relevant provisions of the Civil Rights Act.
39
This clause
was affirmed in January 2012 with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hosanna-Tabor
case that ministers may not bring employment discrimination suits against their churches.

In the Army’s case, the agreement for compensation is that the officer allowance be paid
jointly to the husband—the check is written in his name. Officially, the wife is a “worker
without expectation of remuneration,” and her husband receives 25 percent more of an
allowance as a married man than he would as a single man. Social Security benefits
following retirement include a non-worker benefit of 50 percent of the working spouse’s
income. If the Army were to begin paying all officers individually, a couple’s Social
Security benefit would be reduced. Outside analysis determined that to make up the
difference would cost each territory an estimated $4 million annually, resulting in an
increased retired officer assessment of 3 to 5 percent per year—an estimated $40 per
month per officer—for each local unit.

“Do I think my wife should be paid for her work? Absolutely,” said Colonel Dave
Hudson, chief secretary in the Western Territory. “But it’s not as easy to answer when
you explain that it will cost the Army significant dollars a year to get what we are getting
now. We have yet to come up with a format and price tag that is manageable. The people
I have talked to are in favor of separate checks if it’s a cost that we can sustain.”
40

39
Hill, Leadership in The Salvation Army, 242.

40
Dave Hudson, interview by author, Long Beach, CA, December 13, 2011.

20
Some link the issue of allowances to that of expectations. “It is important to take care of
your kids,” Seiler said. “So why not offer the options and have people accept the
consequences of working, for example, part-time instead of full-time. The system now
allows people to do whatever they want and have the same results, which becomes a
morale issue.”
41

Hudson says the Army tries to recognize that people go through different seasons of life.

“The question basically comes down to: is the job getting done,” he said. “A couple is not
audited to determine who did what percentage of the work. I have heard of some married
women that don’t pull their weight, but I know of men officers that don’t. We need to
deal with that individually.
42

“A big responsibility for officers is modeling. Raising a family well requires good
modeling,” Hudson said. “At the same time, we have to be reasonable. If a child has a
cold, both parents don’t need to stay home.”
43

From separate pay to time spent on the job to the titles gained, the value an individual
feels is the core of the issue.

41
Seiler, interview.

42
Dave Hudson, interview.

43
Ibid.

21
“Everything comes down to that, and everybody receives value differently than others,”
Hudson said. “We often show value by giving more responsibility, but the compensation
remains the same. The flip side is if you don’t do a good job, we give you a smaller job
and the same compensation.” He said the Army leadership in the West has started talking
to officers more to determine where the officer sees him or herself and to conversely
share how he or she is seen by those in leadership.
44

“The couple is moved as a team, and we try to look at the couple as a whole,” Hudson
said. “I know of a few people that are in appointments because of the wife’s strengths,
and there are a few moves we’re looking at for next year in which we have to determine
what to do with the guy. The bottom line is no matter what field you’re in, if you choose
to get married you can’t separate that person—their choices, behavior, strengths—from
the impact they will have on your life.
45

“We need to look at what the best needs are for the organization, the individual and the
family and try to meld them all together,” he said. “Every officer should be utilized to the
fullest extent of his or her abilities and skills.”
46

44
Ibid.

45
Ibid.

46
Ibid.

22
Conclusion: The March Forward

“It’s a philosophical issue and then a practical one, and if we want to present ourselves as
an organization with high moral ground then we need to make a change,” Seiler said,
adding that any senior executive not paying attention to the issue of women’s
advancement will ensure that things won’t change. To better value married women
officers in The Salvation Army, she believes the organization should move forward on an
allowance based on equitable participation, intentional development of women just as
men (education, aptitude, interest, demonstrated abilities), individualized appointments
for married officers in leadership, following the international provision for one-spouse
officer couples, options for part-time appointments and leave of absence options that link
to a resulting change in allowance, and perhaps an interview process for leadership
roles.
47

Despite The Salvation Army’s obligations and structures—a maturity that Booth wasn’t
bound by—“We have to think about the issues of today and apply the elements of Booth:
creativity, willingness to take on new things, and care for mission,” Seiler said.
48

Commissioner Nancy Roberts, national president of women’s ministries, agrees. With a
master’s degree in counseling and guidance, she said she has been able to use her
education, strengths and love for people as an officer in The Salvation Army. “I’ll stand

47
Seiler, interview.

48
Ibid.

23
behind women who are speaking up and support and encourage the use of an individual’s
strengths and gifts beyond just the traditional roles,” she said.
49

This is happening internationally, specifically with the first appointment of a married
woman as chief secretary in June 2011. In the Germany and Lithuania Territory, Major
Marsha-Jean Bowles was promoted from the personnel and candidates secretary to chief
secretary with the rank of Lt. Colonel. Her husband remained in his position as territorial
youth secretary but also received the rank of Lt. Colonel.

"Women officers—married or single—should not be 'lost' to the Army, but valued
equally,” Seiler said. “We cannot discriminate.”
50
She plans to present the issue to the
annual Commissioner’s Conference—a meeting of the 10 commissioners in the United
States—in February 2012.

“The Salvation Army was considered radical and progressive in its early years,” Seiler
said. “We’re in the aging stage of an organization now and can affect how the future will
look, but we have to be intentional.”
51

49
Nancy Roberts, interview by author, Alexandria, VA, February 4, 2011.

50
Seiler, interview.

51
Ibid.

24
Bibliography

Aho, Gail. Interview by author. Des Plaines, IL, October 27, 2011.

Anonymous Source. Phone interview by author. December 12, 2011.

Barsh, Joanna and Lareina Yee. “Changing companies’ minds about women.” McKinsey
Quarterly, September 2011.
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Changing_companies_minds_about_women_
2858.

Booth, Catherine. Female Teaching: Rev. A.A. Rees versus Mrs. Palmer, Being a Reply to
the Pamphlet by the above named Gentleman on the Sunderland Revival, 2
nd
ed.
London: G. J. Stevenson, n.d., 1861.

“Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders.” The Pew Forum. June 22, 2011.
http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Evangelical-Protestant-Churches/Global-
Survey-of-Evangelical-Protestant-Leaders.aspx.

Green, Roger. Phone interview by author. January 4, 2011.

Hill, Harold. Leadership in The Salvation Army: A Case Study in Clericalisation. New
Zealand: Paternoster, 2006.

Howes, Trevor and Jayne Roberts, ed., The Salvation Army Yearbook 2011. London:
Salvation Books, 2010.

Hudson, Sharron. Interview by author. Long Beach, CA, December 21, 2011.

Hudson, Dave. Interview by author. Long Beach, CA, December 13, 2011.

Knaggs, James. Interview by author. Long Beach, CA, February 22, 2011.

Roberts, Nancy. Interview by author. Alexandria, VA, February 4, 2011.

Roberts, William. Interview by author. Alexandria, VA, February 4, 2011.

Seiler, Carol. Interview by author. Des Plaines, IL, October 27-28, 2011.

Statistics. Sent to the author by email from The Salvation Army’s International
Headquarters. December 21, 2011.

Turner, Sandra. Interview by author. Des Plaines, IL, October 27, 2011.

25
U.S. Department of the Treasury. Internal Revenue Service. Publication 517: Social
Security and Other Information for Members of the Clergy and Religious
Workers. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2009.

Van Cleef, Lisa Caudill. “Partners—or not?” The Officer, November-December 2010,
30-31.

Walker, Pamela J. “A Chaste and Fervid Eloquence: Catherine Booth and the Ministry of
Women in the Salvation Army.” In Women Preachers and Prophets Through Two
Millennia of Christianity, edited by Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J.
Walker, 288-302. Berkeley: Los Angeles: London: University of California Press,
1998.

Walker, Pamela J. “Gender, Radicalism, and Female Preaching in Nineteenth-Century
Britain: Catherine Booth’s Female Teaching.” In Strangely Familiar:
Protofeminist Interpretations of Patriarchal Biblical Texts, edited by Nancy
Calvert-Koyzis and Heather E. Weir, 171-184. Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, 2009.

Walker, Pamela J. Phone interview by author. September 13, 2011.

Walker, Pamela J. Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian
Britain. Berkeley: Los Angeles: London: University of California Press, 2001.

Winston, Diane. Red Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of The Salvation Army.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

“Women Will Outnumber Men at 2011 High Council.” The Salvation Army. December
1, 2010. http://www1.salvationarmy.org/ihq/www_sa.nsf/vw-
news/A42EF3F696DB3826802577EC0029A3E2?opendocument.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The Salvation Army began with a desire to treat women equally, allowing them to teach, preach and minister just like men. In its first 50 years in the United States, the Army often had women leaders. Yet that equality had some reservations, which William Booth, who started the Army with his wife, Catherine, told listeners at a 1888 meeting, “We have a problem. When two officers marry, by some strange mistake in our organization, the woman doesn’t count.” Now, some men and women of The Salvation Army are trying to return the organization to its intended egalitarian roots.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Davis, Christin (author)

Core Title The equality paradox for women ministers of The Salvation Army

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Publication Date 04/04/2012

Defense Date 03/22/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Catherine Booth,equality,minister,ministry,OAI-PMH Harvest,Salvation Army,William Booth,Women

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Winston, Diane H. (committee chair), Flory, Richard (committee member), Parks, Michael (committee member)

Creator Email christinldavis@gmail.com,davis1@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-1571

Unique identifier UC11288195

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Legacy Identifier etd-DavisChris-564-0.pdf

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Rights Davis, Christin

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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