Hello and welcome to episode 41 of the Giants of the Faith Podcast. My name is Robert Daniels and I'm the host of this show where we take a narrow look at individuals from the age of the church the have made an impact for the Kingdom of God.
Today's episode is focused on William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army isn't just a charitable or relief organization. It's a church that has existed for over 150 years. And while they may not perform baptisms or celebrate the Lord's Supper they are focused on the expansion of the Kingdom - and have been since the very start.
William Booth was born on April 10, 1829, in Nottingham, England. His parents were Samuel and Mary. Samuel Booth, according to William, had been born into poverty and had determined that he would become rich. He bent his will toward it and eventually did become a wealthy man. But when he lost his wealth in 1842 William was withdrawn from school and placed as apprentice to a man named Francis Eames. Eames was a pawnbroker in Nottingham which brought Booth into regular contact with the poorest of the poor. It was here that Booth first became concerned about the plight of the poor. In September of 1842 Booth's father died and Mary was forced to move into a small shop in the poor quarter. Poverty was now an intimate part of Booth's life.
Soon after taking up with Eames Booth began attending services at the Broad Street Wesley Chapel and in 1844 Booth became a Christian. He wrote in his diary at the time, "God shall have all there is of William Booth." He began reading everything he could with the aim of becoming a Methodist preacher.
Then in 1846 American evangelist James Caughey came to town to preach revival services. Booth observed the large numbers of people that rushed to hear Caughey preach and that committed their lives to Christ after his services. Caughey's visit had stirred a religious revival at Broad Street and it had stirred a new spirit in Booth. He realized that preachers could expect better outcomes if they better managed their revival services. This management was called scientific revivalism and had been pioneered by Charles Finney.
This new bent toward evangelism was reinforced by visiting preacher David Greenbury. Greenbury encouraged Booth to join a local group of street evangelists. Booth and his friend, William Sansom, did join up. The group would meet on the streets of Nottingham each night where they would exhort passers-by and invite them to come to worship services in homes and cottages. Their services consisted of catchy, upbeat, and often secular, songs and short sermons calling for conversion. They kept meticulous records of the converted and later visited them in their homes. They also started a hospital ministry to encourage sick converts. These methods foreshadowed ones that Booth would employ years later in the Salvation Army.
In 1848 Boot's apprenticeship at the pawnbroker ended and a year later he moved to London where he got a job at a pawnbroker's shop and took up lay preaching on the side. He was frustrated that he wasn't receiving enough preaching gigs and he hated his job. So on his 23rd birthday, April 10 1852, he decided to do something about it. He quit pawnbroking for good and took a full time job as a preacher with the Methodist Reform Church in Clapham. The Reformers had broken away from the Wesleyan Methodist Church when their leaders were kicked out for circulating anonymous pamphlets criticizing the Methodist leadership and the ungodliness of certain ministers.
While at Clapham Booth met Catherine Mumford. Catherine was a Sunday School teacher with the Reformers and she became interested in Booth when she heard him reciting a teetotaler poem, "The Grog-seller’s Dream". In the poem a barkeeper is visited by visions of murder and mayhem and even a horned devil himself before deciding to give up selling alcohol altogether. Mumford was a committed teetotaler, and a vegetarian, and was drawn to Booth. Only a month later, in May 1852, the two were engaged. Their engagement lasted three years until they were married on June 16, 1855. The couple eventually had eight children.
Booth continued his preaching duties with the Reformers, travelling to churches and giving evangelistic sermons around England. He was assigned to preach in the Halifax and Newcastle areas in northern England. He carried on with these duties for years but he became increasingly unsettled in his work. He longed for the freedom to reach where and when and to whom he wanted. But the leadership refused to allow him to pursue full-time evangelism so in 1861, at their annual conference in Liverpool, he resigned from the Reformers.
William and Catherine took up the life of itinerant evangelists for the next four years - travelling through Cornwall and Wales holding tent meetings, open air meetings, and anywhere they could meet meetings. They'd been banned from preaching in Methodist churches so they made church wherever they could.
This continued until 1865 when the Booths moved to London and setup shop in Whitechapel. They held tent meetings at a Quaker graveyard inviting the poorest of the poor. Whitechapel was a rough place - it was crowded, poor, and full of alcoholics. The gin-shops even had special accommodations so that children could reach the bar and partake. Whitechapel is the place where Jack the Ripper operated in 1888 - so not the best of neighborhoods.
The Booths called their ministry The East London Christian Mission. They sought to convert and care for the poor wretches of east London. They setup soup kitchens. They worked to recover alcoholics and to reform convicts and prostitutes. And they, above all, sought to save souls. William preached to the wretched while Catherine sought out the well-to-do. She sought - and obtained - their support for the charitable work of the Mission.
The work was hard and the results were slow to come. Booth secured the use of a warehouse where he would hold nightly services. They were frequently interrupted by rocks being hurled through the windows. Not just rocks but also firecrackers. Many times Booth would return home after a night's preaching bleeding and bandaged.
By 1867 Booth's Christian Mission had been able to hire 10 full-time evangelists. Sadly, many of the people that the Mission converted were turned away from local churches. They were smelly. They weren't the right kind of people. And they made the pews dirty. Booth saw this and decided to put converts to work volunteering to each others. He sent them into the streets to extend the mission and they would hold services of their own - greatly extending the footprint of the Christian Mission. So much so that by 1874 there were over 40 full-time staffers and over 1000 volunteers in the organization.
Booth ran the Mission as its general superintendent which was eventually shortened to General by the rank-and-file. In 1878 as Booth was dictating a letter he called the Mission a "volunteer army." Booth's son protested that he was no volunteer and that he was a regular soldier. Booth changed the text of the letter to read that the Mission was a "salvation army" and the phrase stuck. From that point forward the Mission became the Salvation Army.
Booth's title of General stuck, too. Other leaders in the organization were given military ranks. The volunteers were renamed to soldiers and a military-type structure was established. Catherine designed a flag and uniforms and military-type anthems were produced. They developed a motto The Blood and the Fire to galvanize the troops. Though often thought to mean the blood of sinners for the fires of hell it actually stood for the Blood of Christ and the Fire of the Holy Spirit.
The Salvation Army took off. The new branding and order struck a cord. Within 10 years there were chapters in the US and Canada as well as throughout Europe.
But there was opposition. The gin industry was not fond of the work of the salvationists, as they were know. They feared the loss of business from their work. They helped organize what would be called Skeleton Armies in London and beyond. These Skeletons were loosely organized ruffians whose mission was to disrupt the Salvation Army. They interrupted Salvation Army meetings using tactics like throwing rocks and dead rats, playing drums and other instruments to drown out the Salvationists sermons, and physical intimidation. There were clashes between the Skeletons and the Salvationists all over England from about 1880 to about 1892. Many Salvationists were injured and some even died during the fighting. The Skeleton armies did everything they could to make the mission of the Salvation Army impossible.
On October 4, 1890, Catherin Booth died of breast cancer. She had been a co-worker with Booth and had been known as the Mother of the Salvation Army. Booth and his Army persevered, however. The group spread to South America, Jamaica, New Zealand, Africa, India. In all it was active in 58 countries by the time William Booth died.
Through it all Booth remained committed to advancing the gospel through charity and social welfare work. His best-selling book, In Darkest England and the Way Out, described his ideas for lifting the poorest Englanders out of living conditions that were no better tan those in what he called Darkest Africa. He wanted to provide homes for the homeless, job skills training, money for the poor, etc. Basically all the kinds of things that modern welfare states try to implement.
There was controversy and criticism of Booth's methods apart from the Skeleton Armies. Booth placed his family in positions of authority that raised the specter of nepotism. Critics seems to have been proved out when Booth appointed his son Bramwell to succeed his upon his death. People questioned what Booth did with all of the money he collected. And some found his leadership style too authoritarian. The press was particularly hard on Booth and the Army. Even three of his own children left the Salvation Army due to conflicts with their father.
Eventually, however, people began to recognize the good works that the organization was accomplishing. People's lives were changed by the volunteers that told them about Christ while lending them a helping hand. Booth began to rub shoulders with royalty and world leaders - he was even invited to the coronation of Edward VII - and with that his profile around the world rose.
In 1904 he took his first of many motor tours. Riding around England in an open-topped automobile; stopping at towns and cities on the way and preaching from the vehicle. He traveled to the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the Holy Land, and more spreading his message. He suffered from eye issues - including temporary blindness at one point, then full blindness in one eye and cataracts in the other - but they did not stop his work.
Finally, on August 20, 1912, he died at his home. He was 83 years old. His body lay in state for three days and upwards of 150,000 people filed past it to pay their respects. His funeral was held at the Olympia Exhibition Hall in London and was attended by over 40,000 - including Queen Alexandra who came to the event incognito. When his body was conducted to the cemetery he was accompanied by 10,000 Salvationists and 40 Salvation Army bands playing a death march. His son Bramwell gave a final graveside service where he said of his father "I think I could say that the happiest man I ever knew was the General. He was a glad spirit. He rose up on the crest of the stormy billows, and praised God, and laughed at the Devil's rage, and went on with his work with joy."
Before I sign off I feel the need to mention just how much Booth looks like Balin from the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies. It's really uncanny how similar the two look. Do a Google image search and check it out for yourself. Well, that concludes this episode of the Giants of the Faith podcast. Thank you very much for listening. Until next time, God Bless.
RESOURCES
Christianity Today: https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/activists/william-booth.html
Inspirational Christians: http://www.inspirationalchristians.org/biography/william-booth/
UK Salvation Army: http://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/history-william-booth
US Salvation Army: https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/history-of-the-salvation-army/
Central US Salvation Army: https://centralusa.salvationarmy.org/northern/speech-recording-of-founder-william-booth/
New Frontier Chronicle: https://www.newfrontierchronicle.org/how-william-and-catherine-booth-started-the-salvation-army/