Researcher Rings In Holiday Season With Study Of Salvation Army’s Social Structure

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - As shoppers surrender their small change to the Salvation Army’s bell-ringers this year, a University of Arkansas sociologist assures that it may be one of the soundest investments they can make.

"The Salvation Army is extremely frugal with the money people contribute," said Dr. Steven Worden, associate professor of sociology. "Virtually all of it goes directly toward helping people in need."

For the past 6 years, Worden has conducted an in-depth sociological study of the Salvation Army, examining the social forces that comprise its community and that drive its mission. Over the past year and a half he has extended his project to include a needs assessment, performed in cooperation with the Salvation Army and graduate students Kimberly Gross and Robert Mortensen.

Worden’s interest in the social structure of the Salvation Army has led him to facilities in Atlanta, Washington D.C. and London. However, most of Worden’s research has focused on Salvation Army complexes located throughout Arkansas and Oklahoma. His work is among the first to describe the social dynamics that develop in more rural homeless shelters of moderate size.

Through years of observation, personal interviews, group discussions, needs assessment surveys and social counseling, Worden has discerned that Salvation Army shelters represent a zone where two distinct and often contradictory social groups meet and mingle.

Historically, the interaction of two such societies often results in violent conflict. But at the Salvation Army, the different groups have cultivated a symbiosis - a mutually agreeable, if not always beneficial, coexistence.

"This all goes back to the origins of the Salvation Army," said Worden. "William Booth founded the organization in England in the 1860s. He hoped to gain converts to the Christian religion by aiming at the most disadvantaged, the most desperate, the most outcast members of society."

Booth’s vision built an organization through which devout Christian workers could extend social services and religious ministry to people of few resources and little faith. Over the past 130 years, that mission has not changed. This fact may surprise many modern-day donors who know of the organization’s efforts to help people but not of its mission to convert them, said Worden.

Even today, the Salvation Army requires that its officers also be ordained ministers. This religious emphasis has generated a unique social atmosphere that affects the way officers approach their jobs and the way they interact with residents at the shelter.

According to Worden, the Salvation Army contains no structured hierarchy of pay. The organization provides housing and cars for its officers, but salaries remain remarkably low - approximately $250 per week - regardless of the officer’s status or duration of employment. Such scanty financial compensation has led Worden to believe that other factors must influence people to join the Salvation Army as officers.

Through his research, Worden has identified two strong incentives that may entice people to become officers - kinship and religious doctrine.

Over 50 percent of officers at the Salvation Army are related to other officers. Often, children follow their parents into the profession, so that the organization becomes a link between generations. Worden says it is not uncommon to find three or four generations of a family working as officers, devoting both their lives and their families to the effort of helping others.

Worden also reports that employees who have no relations in the Salvation Army often feel that the organization adopted them into its own "family." This idea of kinship bonds officers to the organization and promotes a commitment to their mission that could not be sustained by mere financial incentive.

In addition, the officers’ religious devotion has inspired a kind of "supernatural economy" that makes money often seem superfluous, said Worden. They believe that the spiritual rewards of helping people in need outweigh any possible financial gain.

The officers’ faith also enables them to remain patient and compassionate when dealing with the shelter residents. No matter how the residents act, officers invariably try to treat each individual with respect and forbearance. Each officer considers it his or her job to exemplify the goodness and compassion of Christianity through their actions, explains Worden.

Such behavior smoothes the friction between these contradictory social groups and enables their coexistence. Homeless and destitute people can approach the Salvation Army for help without fear of judgement, and officers of the organization can follow their religious doctrine by serving people who truly need them.

"At these shelters, officers work with people who are often neither polite nor thankful for what they receive," said Worden. "The fact that these officers continue to sacrifice so much for people who sometimes don’t appreciate their work or their beliefs is a testament to the idealism of the organization and the spiritual motivation of the officers."

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