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WOMEN IN THE SALVATION ARMY l 407 Church of God and Women Ministers” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1997). The best archival collection is the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center (FPHC) in Springfield, Missouri. Its Web site at http://www.agheritage.org/ offers an introduction to the holdings. Its quarterly publication, Assemblies of God Heritage, includes articles about women in Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism’s early publications allow the researcher to glimpse the hopes that fueled the movement. Some are available on the FPHC Web site; more can be purchased from FPHC on CD-ROM. The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), the Latter Rain Evangel, The Promise, Triumphs of Faith, and The Bridal Call are typical of dozens of similar occasional publications that helped transform a popular movement into an ongoing American religious presence. Women edited some of these and contributed generously to all of them. Pentecostals have diligently produced pamphlets and books brimming with testimonies and exhortations. Few were more prolific than Frank Bartleman, whose undated pamphlet “Flapper Evangelism , Fashion’s Fools Headed for Hell” and How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles (1925) and Around the World by Faith (n.d.) are cited in the text. Carrie Judd Montgomery’s autobiographical “Under His Wings”: The Story of My Life (1936); Ethel Goss’s, Winds of God (1977), and Aimee Semple McPherson’s This Is That (1919) offer accounts of Anglo American Pentecostalism’s formative years through women’s eyes. Also see the following references: A. J. Gordon, “The Ministry of Women,” Missionary Review of the World (December 1894); Ellen Hebden, “How Pentecost Came,” The Promise (May 1907); Ellen Hebden, “Pentecostal Work,” The Promise (October 1909); A. L. Worth, Pentecostal Messenger (April 15, 1933): 4; Frederick L. Chapell, Eleventh-Hour Laborers (1898); Virginia Lieson Brereton, Training God’s Army (1990); Warren Fay Carothers, Church Government (1909); Mary Campbell Wilson, The Obedience of Faith (1993); and Elmer Louis Moon, The Pentecostal Church (1996). WOMEN IN THE SALVATION ARMY Diane Winston Hallelujah Lasses FROM THE START, the Salvation Army’s full-scale deployment of women as preachers and pastors was singular among nineteenth-century Protestant groups. While women in some revivalist sects initially held such roles, they usually lost the right once early enthusiasms hardened into denominational lines. Those denominations that did ordain women had few churches that would accept them since conventional feminine activities , such as teaching children, visiting the poor, and tending the sick, were considered more appropriate for a woman’s religious calling. But equality between the sexes was built into the Army, mirroring the relationship between its founders, William and Catherine Booth. The Booths were British evangelicals whose spiritual sensibilities leaned to lively praise services focused on saving souls. The Salvation Army began in London in 1865 as the Christian Mission , a religious outreach to the unchurched masses. William and Catherine, an ardent proponent of women’s right to preach, delivered the gospel message to poor and working-class people wherever they were found. In 1878, when Booth changed the name of his organization to the Salvation Army, he was already called “The General ,” and his new “army” rapidly adopted a military look and language. Its newspaper was the War Cry, ministers were “officers,” and members were “soldiers.” At first, the Army’s female shock troops, dubbed “Hallelujah lasses” by detractors, provided musical accompaniment for male evangelists. But when William saw the lasses’ success at attracting crowds, he encouraged them to preach. In 1880, when the Booths bade farewell to the first official Army invasion of America, the landing party was made up of one man and seven women. The man, George Scott Railton, was a protégé of the Booths and an early supporter of women’s equality . Writing to Catherine Booth from the United States, he noted, “Those English may stick to their men as hard as they like, but I am certain it is the women who are going to burst up the world, especially the American women” (Watson, 61). Women Warriors William Booth allegedly said, “Some of my best men are women,” and nowhere was that more true than in the United States. Many of the Army’s earliest American recruits were women, and its initial leadership, from 1886 to 1934, included three exemplary females. Feminine mettle was displayed from the outset. After landing in New York and staging a succession of headlinegrabbing events (from appearing at a notorious concert saloon to challenging City Hall’s restrictions on outdoor preaching), Railton left his female...

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