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The Salvation Army Invades America

Dr. Roger S. Greenway herewith presents the fifth in a series of articles on “When Cities and Churches First Met in America,” Dr. Greenway is Area Secretary for Latin America, Board of Foreign Missions of the Christian Reformed Church.

As momentum increased in many quarters to reach the urban masses in a way which did justice to both their spiritual and material needs, there appeared on American shores in 1880 the London-born Salvation Army, product of the urban anguish of England and the burning heart of William Booth. The Army was destined to become the foremost representative of revivalistic slum work in America and its consistent balancing of soul-winning evangelism with social welfare work was destined to effect some monumental changes in Protestant mission work in American cities.

How the Army Began – The Salvation Army began in the slums of East London where William Booth was engaged in evangelism. It was as blighted an urban area as the western world knew. One night in 1865, after a long day of itinerant preaching, Booth returned to his home and announced to his wife, “Kate, I have found my destiny! These are the people for whose salvation I have longed a1l these years. I have offered up myself and you and the children to this great work.” And as Booth himself said later, the Salvation Army was born that night. It was dedicated to winning urban masses to Christ and serving their manifold needs.

Booth’s previous experience served to highlight the tragic situation which then existed between the London churches and the people of the slums. For more than a decade Booth had been ministering to these people and he had ruH1ed the feathers of many a church member by bringing them into the churches. Itinerating as a Methodist preacher, Booth began to attract larger and larger crowds. During his campaign in Cornwall in 1861-62, he claimed more than 1,000 converts in four months. (Norris Alden Magnuson, Salvation in the Slums, p. 4. ) Evangelism in the neediest urban areas was his first love, and when the Wesleyan group to which he belonged insisted that he confine his ministry to a regular parish, Booth resigned. With his wife, the former Catherine Mumford, he entered the independent ministry which in a few decades would make his name a household word in many parts of the world and bring blessing and relief to countless thousands of poor people.

The name “Salvation Army” was not adopted until 1878. During the intervening years, Booth was working as an independent evangelist in charge of what he called the East London Christian Mission. By 1868, Booth and his workers were holding nearly 150 street services every week and had thirteen “preaching stations” in London with a capacity of 8,000 persons. The work continued to advance during the 1870s with thousands being converted and new stations opened. Along with this growth there developed a trend toward military discipline in organization and methods which led gradually to the concept of the “Army” under the direction of “General” Booth and his staff officers. Female workers were Army “lassies,” and were identifiable everywhere by their distinctive uniforms.

American Protestants Recoil at the Army’s Invasion – In February, 1880, George Railton and seven young Army lassies arrived in America. They were the first contingent of the missionary bands which during succeeding months and years planted the standard of the Salvation Anny in many countries of the world. (Ibid. , p. 6.) The arrival of the Salvationists displeased many Protestant denominational leaders. They did not like their theology, nor their methods, nor their authoritative system of organization. It was contrary to the American democratic spirit, said many, and the Army was likened to the Catholic Society of Jesus. When Railton began services in a New York saloon, many Protestants were horrified and a prominent minister called the place “the most disreputable den in the United Stales, in the worst slum of the city!” (Abell, op. cit., p. 120.) This, of course, did not deter the Army. The slums were their chosen habitat. That is what they were here for, slander notwithstanding.

A worse obstacle, however, was the move to keep the Army’s services off the streets. Legal sanctions which forbade noisy marches and outdoor services were used against them. This hurt, for the big brass bands of the Army were designed for public places. Only as respect for the Army gradually increased in America did they gain “the liberty of every city” with freedom to operate as they felt they should.

Leadership over the Army was largely in the hands of the Booth family. A serious breach occurred in the United States early in 1896 when Ballington Booth, the General’s son, resigned from his leadership of the American branch and formed his own, more “democratic” organization, the Volunteers of America. Having arrived in America in 1896, Ballington Booth and his wife, Maud B. Booth, had worked untiringly to improve the Army’s image among the churches. “Our movement,” he insisted “is especially raised to help those who are the lowest fallen, the most depraved and the most neglected. In carrying out this aggressive mission we do not, as has been said, create evil in the world, nor do we curb any man’s freedom, nor do we interfere with any man’s social happiness. On the contrary, we restore all these to those who through moral slavedom have lost them” (War Cry, August 13, 1887, p. 8. Cited by Abell, op. cit., p. 122).

Booth urged converts to join the middle class Protestant churches and he invited Protestant church people to join the Army. Many did and relations improved. This policy continued even after Ballington Booth had left the Army and had formed his own organization. The Volunteers of America closely resembled the Army in the combination of evangelistic fervor and social outreach as well as in military dress and organization.

Prison work became the specialty of the Volunteers, though on the whole its program was as diversified as the Army’s. Ballington and Maud Booth, along with a number of their original company of officers, maintained continuity of command and purpose right up to the outbreak of the Second World War.

Opposition Overcome, Slums Occupied, and Souls Saved – By the beginning of the last decade of the century, Protestant churches in America had come to recognize that the Army was doing something which the churches themselves should have been doing. Its foreign origin, strange ways, and military organization no longer seemed so irksome, and glowing praise and admiration were expressed for what the Army had undertaken. Stories of the Army officers’ personal dedication to helping the poor, such as Railton’s sleeping in a chair in the dark basement of his headquarters so that a drunk could have his cot, won the respect of multitudes. Not a few made embarrassing comparisons between the love and self-sacrifice of the Army’s slum workers with the comfort-loving ways of many leaders of established churches.

As the slum-dwellers most urgent needs became clear and experience indicated what should be done, the Army developed various specialized forms of social work such as shelters for the homeless, prison work and the rehabilitation of ex-converts, and rescue homes for women. General Booth’s book, In Darkest England and the Way Out, published in 1890, set the tone for later developments of the Army’s urban program.

Capitalizing on the current popularity of Stanley’s Darkest Africa and making good use of the literary talents of the reform journalist William T. Stead, Booth’s volume graphically portrayed “The Darkness” of England’s urban masses. The book proved to be a pivotal event for the Army’s social efforts, systematizing and giving official endorsement to the scattered beginnings of the social work (Magnuson, op. cit., p. 93).

“Slum Work” was expanded everywhere the Army went. Army lassies, working in pairs and known as “Slum Sisters,” lived in the depressed areas themselves, their clothes and lodgings differing from those of their neighbors only in cleanliness and neatness. They bathed babies, nursed sick mothers, counselled wayward girls, cleaned dirty homes, and by their presence, love, and words they cultivated peace and temperance in the slums. And all the while they were “ceaselessly preaching the religion of Jesus Christ to the outcasts of society” (Booth, Darkest England, p.159).

“Souls! Souls! Souls!” read the headlines of one issue of the War Cry (December 31, 1898, Cited by Magnuson, op. cit., p. 14). And souls remained the Army’s principal concern. With all of their involvement in social uplift on behalf of the poor, the Salvation Army continued to be above all else a “soul-saving agency.” Crowds everywhere followed the sound of the drum to the meeting halls and auditoriums where revivals were conducted.

“Probably during no hundred years in the history of the world,” wrote Josiah Strong, “have there been saved so many thieves, gamblers, drunkards, and prostitutes as during the past quarter of a century through the . . . Salvation.” (Strong, New Era, pp. 351–352. Cited by Magnuson, ibid., p. 18.) The secret of this harmonious blending of evangelism and welfare my in the vision and single-mindedness of William Booth whose lifelong conviction was that the healing of men’s bodies was only one part, though it was an important part, of the world’s ills, and if you left a man rehabilitated socially but unconverted spiritually, you had done him no lasting good.

That burning insistence upon evangelism characterized the Army throughout the century and it provided the drive and motivation that were needed to keep the social program moving forward. Booth realized that only highly motivated religious people would do the things that needed doing in the slums; and only a spiritually oriented kind of relief would really give the slum people what they needed. The genius of the Salvation Army lay in its consistent maintaining of both approaches to men’s needs in one integrated program.