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Home , Bramwell Booth, Catherine Booth, George Scott Railton, The War Cry, William Booth

The Strategy of a Evangelist: How Shaped the Army’s Earliest Work at Home and Abroad Andrew M. Eason

hen William Booth died, in 1912, a major newspaper this missionary framework, but at least Railton acknowledged Win remarked, “The world has lost its greatest the vital role that Booth had played in this area. missionary evangelist.”1 Although eulogies frequently border The same cannot be said for subsequent treatments of the on hyperbole, there was truth to the paper’s assertion. Few of Army’s founding father, which have paid surprisingly little Booth’s Victorian contemporaries had done more to promote attention to the principles governing Booth’s approach to mis- the cause of around the globe. Most notably, he had sionary work. Non-Salvationist biographers from played the pivotal role in transforming a fledgling East to Frank Prochaska bear some of the blame for this neglect, since missionintoaninternationalreligious they have frequently portrayed Booth empire that, at the time of his death, as an ill-educated man driven more or “promotion to glory,” claimed a by instinct and practicality than by presence in fifty-eight countries and theory or religious doctrine.4 Yet even colonies.2 Consequently, the word academic works written by Salvation- “missionary”wasafittingadjectiveto iststhemselveshavegenerallyfailedto place in front of “evangelist,” captur- articulateBooth’smissionarytenetsor ingthepassionandessenceofBooth’s the sources behind them, as is evident life and ministry within Protestant not only in the valuable books on the evangelical circles. The development Army’s first leader by historian Roger and expansion of the SalvationArmy Green,5 but also in the scholarly stud- may have been a collective affair, ies of Salvationist foreign missions by involving the sacrifices of countless Paul Rader, David Rightmire, Brian male and female Salvationists in Tuck, and Edward McKinley.6 I seek Great Britain and many other lands, to address this shortcoming in the but there can be little doubt that the existing literature by arguing that organization’s founding father was Salvationistworkathomeandabroad its foremost missionary. was shaped profoundly by Booth’s In this capacity, William Booth missiology, which was formulated proved to be an avid student of mis- and expressed with considerable sionary methods. While lacking the consistency between the mid- formal training or extensive knowl- and the late 1880s. edge of a present-day missiologist, he was no unthinking combatant in the Principles of William war against sin and human misery. Booth’s Missiology On the contrary, Booth’s approach to missions reflected principles quite At the heart of William Booth’s evidently mined from the and approachtomissionswerefourimpor- borrowed from others. The Salvation tant principles: , cultural Courtesy of International Heritage Centre, London Army’s first general was not an origi- adaptation, self-support, and self- William Booth departing for Palestine, 1905 nal thinker, but a discernible system propagation. These precepts, which lay behind his missionary activities, the substance of which was clearlyshapedandguidedBooth’searliestpersonalministry,soon passedontohisownfollowers.GeorgeScottRailton,aprominent went on to frame the work of all Salvationists around the globe. early Salvationist, alluded to something of this methodology shortly after his leader’s death: “Each extension of TheArmy into Evangelism. First and foremost, the Army’s founding father foreign lands might be reported as a fresh achievement of the advocated a missionary strategy based solely upon evan- General, for, although he never, of course, himself went as leader, gelism.7 The conversion of the lost was the raison d’être of he invariably chose the leaders, and so wisely directed the . . . Booth’s work, and such a motivation only intensified as his methods which were needed to adapt the work to various races inner-city mission was transformed into an army of salva- and circumstances.”3 Little has been written about the details of tion. As Booth exclaimed in 1879: “We publish what we have heard and seen and handled and experienced of the word of AndrewM.Easonisassistantprofessorofreligionand life and the power of God . . . soul saving is the great purpose director of the Centre for Salvation Army Studies at and business of our lives.”8 In support of this conviction the Booth University College, Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is Army’s leader went on to argue that only those engaged in the author of Women in God’s Army: Gender and the task of rescuing the souls of men and women from the Equality in the Early Salvation Army (Waterloo, fires of hell could be considered real .9 Critical of Ont., 2003) and coeditor of Boundless Salvation: conventional missionary methods that wed the message The Shorter Writings of William Booth (New to various aspects of Western culture, he advocated evange- York, 2012). —[email protected] lism alone in the foreign field. The role of the missionary was

October 2014 183 simply to lead sinners to Christ, to convert people after the and chapels, acculturation was a prominent feature of Booth’s fashion of the apostles. Condemning the civilizing mission as earliest ministry on the British home front. costly, inefficient, destructive, and unbiblical, Booth argued Although accommodation to popular culture invited charges that it was up to converts to “clothe and house and educate ofsacrilegefromecclesiasticalquarters,theArmyleader’sresponse themselves.”10 At this stage in his life and ministry, he held to his Christian critics was typically the claim that “all our teaching stubbornly to the belief that the salvation of the soul was the and operations are continuously justified by direct reference to the only legitimate goal of foreign missions. Scriptures.”16 Above all, Booth considered the principle of cultural Refusing to separate the world into civilized and uncivi- adaptation to be consistent with the central aim of the Bible, the lized regions, Booth urged the church to view the missionary salvation of the lost. Here in particular he invariably turned to the task in more scriptural terms. Drawing inspiration from the words of 1 Corinthians 9:22, instructing his followers to become apostle Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill (Acts 17:22–31) and plea “with the Apostle [Paul] all things to all men in order that you for oneness recorded in Galatians 3:28, the Army’s founding may win them to your Master.”17 For Booth, accommodation was father rejected the notion that a Westerner was fundamentally a legitimate tactic when the end in view was redemption.An army of salvation was called upon to utilize all kinds of aggressive and sensational measures in its efforts to win the world for Christ. So Instead of divisions along long as a practice squared with the authoritative and infallible Word of God, it was viewed as acceptable. the lines of race, wealth, Booth’s understanding of cultural adaptation also owed and education, Booth something to Charles Finney, whose transatlantic revivalist campaigns and influential books inspired many Christians in encouraged Christians theEnglish-speakingworldduringthenineteenthcentury.While to divide the world’s there is no evidence that Booth ever met the famous American, he had taken the time to read Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of inhabitants into the friends Religion (1835) while employed as a pawnbroker’s assistant in and enemies of Christ. .18 InterestinthisrevivalisttextwassharedbyBooth’s wife, Catherine, who declared it to be “the most beautiful and common-sense work on the subject I ever read,” in one early let- different from an Easterner.11 Just as every person was essen- ter to William.19 From Finney the Booths learned that Christians tially “vile and devilish” when alienated from God, each was should not be slavishly bound to traditional forms of revivalism, a brother or sister when joined to Christ. Cutting across the which relied more on divine readiness than on human initiative barriers of ethnicity and culture, this Pauline understanding and planning. Christians should employ innovative strategies to of the world gave no privileged place to the West. Instead of awaken those asleep in their sins, measures that might capture divisions along the lines of race, wealth, and education, Booth the attention of the unsaved.20 Claiming that God had set down encouraged Christians to divide the world’s inhabitants into no prescribed ways of reaching the spiritually lost, Finney urged the friends and enemies of Christ. For this reason he even experimentation and adaptation tailored to the specific audi- toyed with the idea of abandoning the language of heathenism, ences one wished to reach with . This evangelistic which often was used by Victorians to denigrate the peoples and pragmatic mind-set, born of the Arminian desire to see all of non-Western lands. Painfully aware that so-called Christian people won for Christ, not only guided the Booths’ adaptive England had more than its fair share of sin and degradation, efforts at home but also became an equally distinctive part of the he found prevailing discourse about the natives of foreign Salvation Army’s modus operandi as it moved beyond Britain lands to be unfair and unscriptural.12 While never managing in the early 1880s.21 to discard “heathen” terminology altogether, Booth’s pursuit of evangelism alone represented a significant departure from Self-support. Adaptation was aided and abetted by a third aspect the Victorian civilizing mission. of Booth’s missiology: an avowed commitment to self-support. By this he meant that “a large proportion of the money required Cultural adaptation. A second important principle of Booth’s to maintain and carry on the [Army must be] supplied by its own missiology was cultural adaptation. Outstanding Salvationists members.”22 Such a policy, incidentally, had been characteristic from Frederick Tucker in to Gunpei Yamamuro in of the home front even before the organization’s first missionar- added flesh to the bones of this particular practice, but Army ies arrived overseas. Possessing no guaranteed salaries, Booth’s efforts at adaptation originated in Britain rather than in the evangelists(knownasofficers)wererequiredtoraiseasignificant foreign field.13 From the very beginning, Booth’s organization portion of their income from fellow Salvationists and from the (initially called The East London ) made a sale of Army literature to the public. While this arrangement point of tailoring its message to the inhabitants of the inner ensured that mission stations (corps) in Britain were largely city. As The Nonconformist, a religious newspaper, commented self-supporting, it was admittedly a real hardship for the average as early as 1868, “The great bulk of [the movement’s] advocates officer, who typically possessed little in the way of material pos- are working people, the language used is that of the working sessions.23 Despite the challenges accompanying such personal people [and] its habits are made to harmonise with those of the sacrifice, Booth remained firm in the belief that self-support working people.”14 Religious services, for instance, were fash- was critical to the success of the Salvation Army at home and ioned after the format of the Victorian : sacred words abroad. Consequently, even before the first Salvationists set foot were attached to popular secular tunes, and lively interactive in Bombay in 1882, he was informing the Indian people that his theatrics came to define Mission and Salvationist meetings.15 missionaries would “depend for their daily bread upon the God Representing a deliberate attempt to appeal to working-class who sends them.”24 Highly critical of the older missionary socie- men and women who rarely found their way into local churches ties,whichpaidtheirWesternpersonnelfairlygenerousstipends,

184 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 38, No. 4 he instructed officers to live simply in the field, relying on the be numbered among the leading missionary strategists of the native populace for most of their daily needs.25 Victorian age. His principles of missiology not only guided the SalvationArmy’s initial work in Britain but also provided Self-propagation. For many Victorian missionary strategists, a framework for its pioneering efforts overseas during the including Booth, the key to realizing some measure of financial 1880s.30 Inspired by the biblical and revivalist convictions of independence hinged upon the attainment of a fourth mis- their founding father, Salvationist missionaries journeyed siological principle: self-propagation. In many respects this to places as diverse as India and , where they notion had also characterized Booth’s organization from the pursued a program of evangelism and cultural adaptation. Adopting various aspects of indigenous life (e.g., clothing, food, and shelter), they demon- strated, with some success, that the Gospel could be disentangled from its Western cultural packag- ing. Having largely abandoned their European lifestyles, Salva- tionist missionaries also realized a level of self-support in the field, although Booth himself had to concede that the “maintenance and extension of [missionary] work brings ever recurring dif- ficulties of support.”31 Given the poverty of most converts, finan- cial issues constantly burdened the Army’s leader. Even so, the organization managed to train a number of indigenous recruits, who then brought the Gospel

Courtesy of The Salvation Army International Heritage Centre, London message to their own communi- William Booth in South Africa ties. The effectiveness of their collective activity was apparent very beginning.26 New converts to his East London mission in the fact that by the late 1880s, more than a third of the were expected to accept the biblical duty to witness found in Salvation Army’s 8,000 officers had been raised up locally.32 Matthew 28:19–20 by winning one friend, acquaintance, or This characteristic was especially notable in India, leading family member to Christ each year, pursuing what was consid- one historian to suggest recently that the Army was “more ered, rather optimistically, to be “a plan for the world’s speedy anti-racist in practice than other missionary societies.”33 conversion.”27 According to one religious newspaper, it was While never executed perfectly, the principles of self- Booth’s “employment of the poor as missionaries amongst the propagation,self-support,culturaladaptation,andevangelism poor” that helped to explain the success enjoyed by the inner- lay at the center of early Salvationist missions. These ideals city mission, which reported eight mission stations and 1,500 may not have been unique to the organization—they bore the conversions by the end of 1868.28 Native agency was seen to holdgreatpromise,especiallyastheSalvationArmyestablished new bases in distant lands. There was, for instance, the obvi- William Booth deserves ous fact that locally raised personnel were less expensive than foreigners, who incurred enormous costs in traveling from their to be numbered among home countries to a distant mission field. And as Booth fully the leading missionary appreciated, native agents possessed a superior knowledge of local languages and cultures. Consequently, when given the strategists of the Victorian age. opportunity to reflect on the ideal missionary society of the future, he believed that it would “most certainly seek to raise up in every country, from the people among whom she labours, imprint of Scripture and transatlantic revivalism—but few the supplies of men necessary for its conquest.”29 While these used them to greater effect than William Booth. When viewed visionary words were surprising in their failure to mention together, they demonstrate that the Salvation Army’s found- the equal need for supplies of women, who already played an ing father was guided more by theory and religious doctrine influentialroleinthenineteenth-centurymissionarymovement, than by instinct and practicality. Booth’s activities rarely came they did convey the Army leader’s genuine commitment to the at the expense of well-formed thought, which fueled his tire- principle of self-propagation. less drive to do something for the masses around the world. Put simply, his behavior frequently was inspired by biblical Conclusion convictions and theological notions. To miss these important connections between action and motivation is to misrepresent Salvationist missions in their first quarter century clearly the man and to misconstrue the evangelical body that he did owe a considerable debt to William Booth, who deserves to so much to shape at home and abroad.

October 2014 185 Notes 1. The Daily Chronicle, August 21, 1912, cited in , hall, see Peter Bailey, Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian The Authoritative Life of General William Booth: Founder of the Salvation City(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv.Press,1998),80–150,andDagmar Army (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912), 253. Kift, The Victorian Music Hall: Culture, Class, and Conflict (Cambridge: 2. The Salvation Army Year Book for 1913 (London: The Salvation Army Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996). Book Department, 1913), 9. 16. WilliamBooth,“TheSalvationArmy, theBible,andSundaySchools,” 3. George Scott Railton, “A Victorious General,” , August The War Cry, December 8, 1881, p. 2. 31, 1912, p. 4. 17. William Booth, “To the Officers and Soldiers of the Indian Salvation 4. See Harold Begbie, The Life of General William Booth: The Founder of Army [pt. 1],” The War Cry, September 4, 1886, p. 10. See also Wil- the Salvation Army, vol. 1 (: Macmillan, 1920), 69–70, 261; liam Booth, “The Future of Missions and the Mission of the Future St. John Ervine, God’s Soldier: General William Booth, vol. 1 (New [pt. 3],” The War Cry, June 1, 1889, p. 10. York: Macmillan, 1935), 107, 436–37; Roy Hattersley, Blood and Fire: 18. Railton, The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, 17. William and and Their Salvation Army (New York: 19. Cited in Catherine Bramwell-Booth, Catherine Booth: The Story of Her Doubleday, 2000), 2, 4, 20–21, 27, 53, 216; and Frank Prochaska, Loves (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1970), 102. Finney’s Lectures “William Booth,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 6, on Revivals of Religion became a highly regarded and popular book ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford Univ. in Salvationist circles. See “The ‘Four Books,’” The Officer 1 (October Press, 2004), 636. 1893): 306–7. 5. See Roger J. Green, The Life and Ministry of William Booth: Founder of 20. Charles Grandison Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835; the Salvation Army (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005); and Green’s Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1960), 181, 272–73. For scholarly earlier work entitled War on Two Fronts: The Redemptive of introductions to Finney’s life and thought, see Charles Hambrick- William Booth (Atlanta: The Salvation Army Supplies, 1989). While Stowe, Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Green has done much to explore the theology behind Booth’s work, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), and Keith Hardman, Charles he has not addressed the founding father’s contributions to Salva- Grandison Finney, 1792–1875: Revivalist and Reformer (Syracuse, N.Y.: tionist missiology. Syracuse Univ. Press, 1987). 6. Paul A. Rader, “The Salvation Army and Missiology,” Word and 21. William Booth’s general indebtedness to Charles Finney has been Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 3, no. 2 (2001): well acknowledged by historian Norman Murdoch in his Origins 7–21; R. David Rightmire, Salvationist Samurai: Gunpei Yamamuro of the Salvation Army (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1994), and the Rise of the Salvation Army in Japan (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow 12–25.Murdoch,however,doesnotdrawaclearconnectionbetween Press, 1997), xiii, 15–16, 45–62, 135–59; Brian Tuck, Salvation Safari: Finney’s revivalism and the Salvation Army’s program of cultural A Brief History of the Origins of the Salvation Army in Southern Africa, adaptation. 1883–1993 (Johannesburg: The Salvation Army, 1993), 24; and E. H. 22. Cited in “The General at Woolwich,” The War Cry, March 14, 1885, McKinley, “The Salvation Army: A Missionary Crusade,” Christian p. 1. History 9, no. 2 (1990): 18–20. 23. All about the Salvation Army (London: S. W. Partridge, 1882), 7–9. 7. William Booth’s extensive involvement in social reform came only 24. William Booth, cited in “The Salvation Army,” The Times of India, later, especially after the publication of his book In Darkest England September 20, 1882, p. 3. and the Way Out, in late 1890. The extent to which this engagement 25. William Booth, “The Future of Missions and the Mission of the altered the nature of Booth’s original missionary principles lies Future [pt. 4],” The War Cry, June 8, 1889, p. 10. beyond the scope of this short article. 26. Robert Sandall, The History of the Salvation Army, vol. 2 (1950; repr., 8. William Booth, “Our New Name,” The Salvationist 1 (January New York: Salvation Army, 1979), 225. 1879): 3. 27. “TheConversionoftheWorld,”TheEastLondonEvangelist1(October 9. Formore onBooth’sunderstandingoftheword“missionary,”seehis 1869): 199–200. remarks cited in “Eighth French Anniversary,” The War Cry, March 28. “East London People’s Mission Hall,” The Christian World, October 23, 1889, p. 3. 30, 1868, p. 697. See also “Irregular Agencies,” in The Christian 10. WilliamBooth,“TheFutureofMissionsandtheMissionoftheFuture Year Book; Containing a Summary of Christian Work and the Results of [pt. 2],” The War Cry, May 25, 1889, p. 9. Missionary Effort throughout the World (London: Jackson, Walford & 11. “The General’s Letter,” The War Cry, January 31, 1885, p. 1. Hodder, 1868), 38. 12. WilliamBooth,“TheFutureofMissionsandtheMissionoftheFuture 29. Booth, “The Future of Missions and the Mission of the Future [pt. 1],” The War Cry, May 18, 1889, p. 1. [pt. 4],” 10. 13. One of the rare historians to recognize this fact was Albert E. Baggs, 30. For more on these themes see Andrew Mark Eason, “Christianity “Social Evangel as Nationalism: A Study of the Salvation Army in in a Colonial Age: Salvation Army Foreign Missions from Britain to Japan, 1895–1940” (Ph.D. diss., State Univ. of New York at Buffalo, India and South Africa, 1882–1929” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Calgary, 1966), 10. Sadly, however, his dissertation has never appeared in 2005), 92–197. published form. 31. Unpublished letter from William Booth to C. T. Studd, August 22, 14. “Mission Work in East London,” The Nonconformist, November 4, 1888, The Salvation Army International Heritage Centre, London. 1868, p. 1077. Studd was a member of the “Cambridge Seven,” the famous mis- 15. See, for example, “,” The Christian Mission Magazine 9 sionary party that had left England in 1885 to evangelize the Far (April 1877): 100; “Modern Nostrums,” The Church Times, November East under the auspices of the Inland Mission. 25, 1881, p. 808; C. Raleigh Chichester, “The Salvation Army,” The 32. “The Salvation Army,” The Christian, May 10, 1889, p. 21. Month 44 (April 1882): 480; and S. S. B., “The Salvation Army,” The 33. Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (London: Record, June 16, 1882, p. 341. For good introductions to the music Routledge, 2008), 207.

186 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 38, No. 4 “We go beyond the conventional education process, where making a good grade can be the beginining and end of the whole process, to looking at what God is doing in the life of leaders.”

Dr. Russell West Professor of Leadership Development for Mission and Evangelism