Here is a noteworthy addition to Studies in Christian History and Thought. Harold Hill's book (with a foreword by Ian Breward) should command the attention of scholars of religion broadly and not only of those who are intrigued by the course which the Salvation Army has taken since its origins in the 1860s and especially since its formal adoption of the now familiar name in 1878. The author brings an ideal combination of qualifications to bear on the subject, dual degrees in history and theology together with an insider's feel as a serving officer (in Zimbabwe and latterly in New Zealand) for the past thirty-five years. He also writes snappily. The argument is driven along at a fine pace, sharply and succinctly, and crackling with wit. The central theme of its complex story is the tension between that aboriginal anticlerical theology of a ‘priesthood of all believers’ and the quasi-military structure which in practice has operated against equality and promoted distinctions akin to the difference in established Churches between clergy and lay people. Since 1978 the Army's officers, previously ‘commissioned’, have become ‘ordained’ as well, a step that Harold Hill regrets in a postlogue in which he spells out his own sympathies. These

Hill plainly wishes his book to influence the Army's current debates and future course, but he has also written a considerable work of history. One strong trend was identified early enough by Bernard Shaw in his preface to Major Barbara (1905), when he prophesied with his usual pugnacity that the Army's ‘present staff of enthusiast-commanders shall be succeeded by a bureaucracy of men of business, who will be no better than bishops, and perhaps a good deal more unscrupulous’. It is to the credit of officers such as Major Hill himself that a countervailing tendency has always flourished and that Shaw's bleak vision has not materialised.