A sacramental Army

When I worked as a Bible teacher at Jelöy Folk High School in the 1980th we had many interesting talks about the sacraments. Most years we had in the Bible Class students from the Lutheran church who were spokesmen for childrens´ baptism. We had also students from the Pentecostal church who could not accept childrens´ baptism and made their case for adult baptism. Then we had Scandinavian salvationists, most of them baptized, and finally we had Salvationist from other parts of the world who had never ever been close to water.

I have through the years more and more understood how un-understandable it must be for Salvationist from other parts of the world that most Nordic Salvationists are baptized, either as children or as adults. And also how un-understandable it must be that Nordic Salvationist also are members in another church, the Lutheran church. A church with a very different theology concerning salvation, sacraments and many other things.

To explain the Nordic context the Salvation Army in Finland has released a book with the title: “A sacramental Army. The Salvation Army view on sacramental living in a Nordic context.” The book is written by Vibeke Krommenhoek (Denmark), Johnny Kleman (Sweden) and Antero Puotiniemi (Finland).

The book is available in Swedish, Finnish and English and it gives a good insight in the historical development on the Salvation Army view on sacraments, both in the Nordic countries and internationally.