The Salvation Army: Signalling New Religious Possibilities

Although the Salvation Army formally came into existence in 1878, the movement founded by William and Catherine Booth began life much earlier. The Booths started out as itinerant evangelists in the 1850s, initially with the Methodist New Connexion and then, from 1861, as independents. In 1865, they moved to London and began running the East London Christian Mission. It was here, in London's East End, that the work of The Salvation Army took shape. Alongside the evangelical focus on preaching the Gospel and calling sinners to conversion, the work featured a Methodist-inspired emphasis on holiness teaching and instruction on how one should live a godly life, a concern for those on the margins of society, and an accentuated version of the activism that was a defining characteristic of the wider evangelical movement. Explaining the distinctive hue of The Salvation Army in his preface to In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890), William Booth asked: "what is the use of preaching the Gospel to men whose whole attention is concentrated upon a mad, desperate struggle to keep themselves alive?" (45). Believing their spiritual movement to be engaged in a battle of apocalyptic proportions, the Booths sought to mobilize recruits into a revolutionary and disciplined unit. With the change of title in 1878, William Booth installed himself as general, encouraged followers to wear soldier-like uniforms, and used militaristic vocabulary at every opportunity. Leaders were referred to as officers, members were described as soldiers, and local gathered communities were named corps rather than churches.

There were other factors, too, behind the decision to use militaristic metaphors so heavily. The Booths insisted that their movement was a missionary movement rather than a church. This preference was most apparent in the way that The Salvation Army avoided the practice of baptism and communion, preferring to leave these sacraments and a discussion about how they should be conducted to the wider church. In its early years, members of The Salvation Army frequently attended services run by other denominations. But it was not long before the movement's numerous and demanding activities, fed by an understanding of membership ("soldiership") as something akin to a radical monastic order, made participation in other church services less feasible. The Army increasingly came to resemble yet another Dissenting denomination, albeit one with an underdeveloped ecclesiology and an ongoing emphasis on the practical work of mission.

Helped by their striking appearance and willingness to disturb the status quo, The Salvation Army was a visible part of late nineteenth-century life in a range of British towns and cities, including Barnsley, Barrow, Bristol, London, Hull, Portsmouth, Scarborough, and Sunderland. William Booth told his officers that their first duty was to capture people's attention, and the use of brass bands, rewritten popular songs, unrefined theological language, and public meetings in disreputable urban settings ensured that the movement was at the forefront of people's minds. By the 1880s, The Salvation Army faced criticism from several quarters, for different reasons: causing a commotion, advocating temperance, allowing women to preach, breaking with Calvinist ideas about predestination, and challenging many of the social structures that enabled social deprivation. In some cases, the criticism boiled over into physical assault, with members of The Salvation Army attacked by mobs that referred to themselves parodically as the Skeleton Army. One immediate trigger for these violent assaults was efforts by The Salvation Army to intervene in the lives of those who drank heavily, but the reasons behind the emergence of intense opposition were more complex. They included underlying social tensions and the way in which The Salvation Army positioned itself as an outsider to the status quo. Although the hostile reception brought with it significant acts of violence, there was also a degree to which the highly visible persecution was welcomed by a movement quick to realize that any publicity could be used to galvanize members and to demonstrate the need for a spiritual war on the forces of darkness.

While The Salvation Army positioned itself as a radical movement that stood largely alone in its work with sinners...