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Home , Bramwell Booth, Catherine Booth, The Salvation Army, William Bramwell

Fourth and finally, was recognised as the co-founder, with her husband William, of The Army. Catherine was a wise counsellor who guided and his inner circle of leaders in their decision making; she was an apologist for the movement to society’s opinion formers and decision makers; but most of all she was the visionary thinker, the principal architect of the Army’s , and the one who gave it coherent and eloquent expression. Catherine’s son described her contribution to the Army’s development: While [William] had the creative genius, [Catherine] had the analytical mind. […] He inspired the Army […] she thought out the why and wherefore of it all, and in her more cultured sphere justified the Army’s methods to circles which, accustomed to conventional religious expression, were shocked by ours. And further, she enhanced the reasonableness and beauty and value of the work we were doing in our own eyes. She discerned, and helped us to discern, the philosophy behind the roughness and awkwardness and seeming contradictions of the struggle, and strengthened the Founder’s hands in a hundred ways. 6 After her death Bramwell reflected sadly, ‘Her voice is silent now, and her chair in the inner counsels is empty. It is a terrible and irreparable loss.’ 7 The Atonement When I first began my research into Catherine Booth’s theology I had no idea what I would find. My greatest concern was that either I would find nothing at all or else what I found would be second hand and second rate and I would discover that Catherine Booth was as confused and ignorant about doctrine and theology as some people have believed and said she was. It wasn’t too hard to find negative comments. Roger Green, an American Salvationist and theologian, who wrote one of the major books on Catherine said, ‘For all her reading and native intelligence, Catherine did not have Wesley’s comprehensive depth or theological vision […] neither did she deal with many of the finer details of Wesley’s theology […] neither in her writing nor her preaching did Catherine demonstrate a command of these and other detailed and precise theological issues and she could not have been expected to do so.’ 8 Roger Green was very sympathetic towards Catherine and yet he seems to believe she didn’t really have a strong grasp of theology, even the she was brought up in. Krista Valtanen completed a PhD study on Catherine Booth in 2005 at Exeter University, and yet she too, seemed not to have found any strong or distinctive theology at the heart of Catherine’s writings. In fact Valtanen says no polished theology or systematic scheme can be found in Catherine’s writings. She also says that in spite of the claims of many Salvationists that Catherine Booth’s views were foundational for the Army, her influence can not be proved from her writings and therefore they do not show her to be the Mother of in this sense at all. The American scholar Pamela Walker, who is even more sympathetic towards Catherine than Roger Green, simply said that Catherine’s theology was a mixture of and Revivalism.

Page 2 of 14 So right at the beginning I thought it was going to be difficult to show that some distinctive, interesting and important ideas lay behind Catherine Booth’s preaching and teaching. In fact I thought what I might end up doing was to prove, once and for all, that the critics and sceptics were right, and Catherine Booth’s theology, and consequently the theology of the early Salvation Army, was just a vague, wishy washy, and sometimes contradictory mixture of Methodism and American Revivalism. The first clue I found that there was something more than that to be discovered in Catherine Booth’s writings was when I read her views on the Atonement. I discovered she held very strong views about the Atonement and she was very critical of some of the so-called theories of the Atonement. Some, if not most of you will have studied the theories of the Atonement as part of your doctrine course when you were cadets at the training college; but I am absolutely sure that you will never have heard that Catherine Booth and the first Salvationists believed in a particular, or special, way of understanding what the death of meant. Maybe you can remember the titles of some of the theories of the Atonement - Satisfaction, Moral Influence, Ransom, Sacrifice, Christus Victor, Penal Substitution? What these theories attempt to do is to answer the question: ‘Why did Christ die for us?’, and the associated questions such as: ‘Why couldn’t God just forgive us?’, ‘Was this the only possible way we could be saved?’, ‘What difference does it make to us today that this one man was executed by the Romans two thousand years ago?’, ‘How does his death make us one with God, reconciled to God?’, ‘How can his death do anything at all about my sin?’. Discussion Question: Why did Christ die? Although there are quite a few different theories of the Atonement there are usually thought to be two main ones: Substitution theories and Moral Influence theories. Substitution theories say that Jesus died in my place. He bore the penalty of my sin. Because we have sinned we are subject to the wrath of God and eternal damnation. Stuart Townend’s song ‘In Christ Alone’ contains the lines: ‘Till on that cross as Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied - For every sin on Him was laid; Here in the death of Christ I live.’ Substitution theories are sometimes called ‘objective’ theories, because the theory says that the death of Jesus does something objective about the way God sees you and me. Because of the death of Jesus the debt of my sin is completely paid, the penalty and punishment due to me for my sin is completely borne by Jesus, and this means that I no longer have to do anything about it. I am saved from my sin. Very often, those who believe in what is often called the penal substitution theory go on to say that because Jesus bore the penalty not just for my past sin, but for all my sin, they believe in the active imputation of Christ’s righteousness. That is, they believe that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, so that when God the Father looks at us, he doesn’t see our sin and unrighteousness, he only sees Christ’s righteousness. Although our own righteousness, no matter how hard we might try to be good, is just filthy rags, Page 3 of 14 that doesn’t matter because no matter how badly we fail in our efforts to be good, Christ’s righteousness is all that counts, and is all that God cares about. Moral Influence theories are a reaction to this view. These theories say ‘If God wants to forgive us, he can forgive us, all we have to do is truly repent of our sins’. The problem is we don’t want to repent, we hang on to our sin, we don’t think well about God. These theories are often called ‘subjective’ theories because the problem is with us, not with God. God doesn’t have to do anything to himself to make Him love us and wish to save us. The Atonement doesn’t have to change God’s attitude to us, but our attitude to God. God is love and if we turn to Him and love Him in return that’s all that is required. The atonement changes us. The death of Jesus on the cross is a demonstration of how much God loves us. God didn’t send Jesus to earth to show us how much he hated our sin, and to kill his Son as a punishment for our sin. God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, and the Cross proves it, God loves us so much that he would stop at nothing to show that love and that love has the power to change us, to save us. In the words of Isaac Watt’s old song: See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown? And when we truly see this love we can’t help but respond: Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.’ The problem with both sets of theories is that they tend to undermine and contradict each other. The idea of a wrathful Father sacrificing his loving Son undermines the idea that God sent His Son to change us by showing us how much He loves us. And yet this is the plain teaching of the . However the idea that Jesus did not die in our place, as a substitute, for our sins, also seems to contradict the plain teaching of the apostle Paul, as well as the prophecy of Isaiah which declares: ‘But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.’ (Isaiah 53:5) Catherine Booth spoke of ‘false and contradictory theories’ which ‘shocked and insulted’ people’s reason, and she thought they could put people off altogether. And I think she had both sets of theories in mind when she said this. She described the ‘modern representation’ of Christ as a ‘substitutionary Saviour’ as a ‘counterfeit’ portrayal of Christ. 9 She said, ‘[Christ’s] sacrifice is never represented in the Bible as having purchased or begotten the love of the Father, but only as having opened a channel through which that love could flow out to his rebellious and prodigal children. The doctrine of the New Testament on this point is not that ‘God so hated the world that His own Son was compelled to die in order to appease his vengeance,’ as we fear has Page 4 of 14 been too often represented, but that ‘God so LOVED the world, that He gave His only begotten Son’.’ 10 This makes it sound as if she believed in the Moral Influence theory, but Catherine definitely also believed that Christ had done something objective about our sin. She said: The Christ of God offered Himself as a sacrifice for the sin of man. The Divine law had been broken; the interests of the universe demanded that its righteousness should be maintained, therefore its penalty must be endured by the transgressor or, in lieu of this, such compensation must be rendered as would satisfy the claims of justice, and render it expedient for God to pardon the guilty […] Christ made such a sacrifice as rendered it possible for God to be just, and yet to pardon the sinner. 11 How could this be? Catherine Booth’s View 1. God in Trinity – Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – acted as one in the Atonement, and acted in love for our salvation. 2. God did not act as an injured party who was out to get vengeance because he had been wronged, or as a cruel Judge who was meting out punishment on an innocent party. (It wasn’t as if God the Father hated us and God the Son loved us.) 3. Instead God was acting as the Creator of the Universe, as a great King, and Law- Maker. God created a universe that is governed by law, by natural law, like the law of gravity for instance, but also by the great moral law, which is ultimately the law of love. 4. The moral law had been broken by humankind. As the one who had made the law, God could not ignore it, he had to keep it, because He is not only loving but He is also just, and because the moral law is the law of love, God’s love and God’s justice are ultimately one and the same thing. 5. So in order to maintain the law and also save humankind, Jesus, the Son of God, freely bore the penalty of humankind’s sin. 6. But this was an equal sacrifice by Father and by Son; both bore the cost of the Atonement and both paid the price. 7. Consequently the debt has been paid for our sin and we have been saved, but the Atonement, when understood like this, is also a demonstration of the love of God, and so its moral influence remains intact. 8. The atonement doesn’t remove from us the obligation of obedience to the moral law. We have been forgiven for our sins. If we ask for our sins to be forgiven they will be because of the atonement. 9. But we live in a universe governed by the moral law; and people have been created to live according to the moral law. It is written in their hearts in the form of conscience. They can’t be fulfilled or happy unless they live by it. 10. By means of the atonement they have been saved so that they can actually live according to the moral law. So what I discovered was that Catherine Booth had a clear, simple and powerful understanding of the doctrine of the Atonement. I discovered that she understood the

Page 5 of 14 other theories of the Atonement also, their strengths and their weaknesses. I discovered she had a better understanding than me, and she held a view that was sound and convincing and Biblical and which I had never been taught. I also discovered, as we will see, that her view of the atonement fitted perfectly with her understanding of Holiness. I also discovered that her view wasn’t something she had made up out of nothing, but that through Christian history other theologians such as the 17 th century Dutch theologian Hugo Grotius had held similar views, and that Catherine knew all about that also. Salvationism We’ve already thought about why Christ died for us. But I’d like us to think about another big, simple question just now. We are a Salvation Army, but what does that mean? Discussion Question: What does it mean to be saved? At the heart of Catherine Booth’s doctrine of salvation is a single, simple, but very big idea, an idea that is throughly Biblical: that salvation is the restoration of the image of God in fallen humankind. The theologian , who is probably the world expert on , the founder of Methodism, has called this idea ‘the axial theme’ 12 of John Wesley’s doctrine of salvation. This idea is at least as important to Catherine Booth’s view of what salvation is, as it was to John Wesley. Salvation, for Catherine, means being forgiven, justified, ; it means enjoying all the blessings that we usually associate with being saved, but what all of this, taken together, means is that God, through the atonement of Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, is reversing the effects of the Fall, and restoring women and men to their original status, that is recreating them, reforming them, in the image and likeness of God, in Christ. That is why Holiness, which we often think of as Christlikeness, is not for Catherine Booth something extra added on to our experience of salvation; it is at the very heart of it. This is why Catherine described as, ‘ the most important question that can possibly occupy the mind of man’, ‘how much like God we can be […] preparatory to our being perfectly like Him, and living as it were, in His very heart for ever and ever in Heaven’. 13 This is why Catherine Booth rejected all those ideas about the atonement which seemed to forget or ignore this big idea. She wrote: [Christ] never undertook to be true instead of me, but to make me true to the very core of my soul. He never undertook to make me pass for pure, either to God or man, but to enable me to be pure. He never undertook to make me pass for honest or sincere, but to renew me in the spirit of my mind so that I could not help but be both, as the result of the operation of His Spirit within me. He never undertook to love God instead of my doing so with ‘all my heart and mind and soul and strength’, but He came on purpose to empower and inspire me to do this. 14 Although this big idea sums up what salvation is for Catherine Booth, there is more, because this big idea undergirds, what could be called, the logic of Catherine Booth’s Salvationism. Four major themes are linked together in her thought and follow on from one another in a logical progression. Each of these themes is very simple on its own, but together they form a beautifully logical whole.

Page 6 of 14 The first idea, the idea with which the logic of Catherine Booth’s Salvationism begins, is that God, the loving creator of all things, governs the universe by means of the natural law, that is the laws of physics, such as, for instance the law of gravity, but also through the moral law, which means we live in a moral universe. Catherine believed that the human conscience was a faculty within every person which showed that they were attuned to the universal moral law. Catherine found this idea in writers like John Wesley, but also in philosophers such as Joseph Butler. Jesus perfectly summed up the moral law, when he said that it meant loving God with all your heart, soul and mind and your neighbour as yourself. The second idea follows on from this first idea, because if we live in a universe that was intended to be governed by the moral law, then for the world to be as God intends, people must be brought to desire to obey the moral law and be given the power to do so. If this happened, if people loved God and loved people, then they would be restored to their original state, the image and likeness of God, the way God first created them to be; perfectly loving God and their neighbour; and the world would be put right. The third idea, follows on from this, because, of course, this is what God has in fact done, through the atonement that Jesus made on the cross and through the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, people’s sins have been forgiven and they have been given the power to life a live of love. The fourth, and final theme or idea, follows on equally logically. As people come to love God and love one another, the reign of God begins, the Kingdom of God begins to happen on earth. The prayer Jesus taught us to pray every day begins to be answered, ‘Your Kingdom come, you will be done, on earth as in heaven.’ Catherine Booth believed that as harmony was restored to people’s relationships, in families, in churches, in neighbourhoods, in communities, in nations, the Kingdom of God would become more and more real on earth until it would culminate in an event in human history, the Millennium, when every knee would bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Catherine Booth’s Salvationism embraces a full vision of God’s grace and power, unlimited in its capacity to save and restore fallen humanity. Out of this vision emerges hope for the world, universal and personal, relational and individual, a hope for the restoration of harmony to women and men in all their relations – with God, within their own divided selves, with one another and with the wider creation in all its diversity and glory. Women The importance of these big simple ideas to Catherine Booth and their far reaching impact can be seen in her feminism. Catherine expressed her ideas on women’s ministry most fully in her pamphlet Female Teaching .15 Catherine wrote this in 1861 in response to a tract by Arthur Rees, the of the Bethesda Free Chapel, Sunderland, in which he criticised the revivalism of the American evangelists Walter and , and attacked women’s right to preach. 16 Catherine wrote to her mother, ‘I am determined that fellow shall not go unthrashed.’ 17 Catherine’s pamphlet includes all the arguments for women’s ministry that she could possibly make. She argues effectively and convincingly with Rees’s interpretation of those sections of Paul’s letters where Paul appears to forbid women speaking in church. Page 7 of 14 She highlights the account of the Day of Pentecost and the prophecy of Joel that women and men will prophesy, and she lists all the examples she can find in Scripture of women who have been leaders, and teachers of Israel and of the Church. However, her arguments do not rely ultimately on her interpretation of these passages. Instead they stand on the core idea of her Salvationism and because of this her pamphlet is not only an argument for female teaching, or even female ministry, but for the emancipation of women to take up their full role in human society. Salvation, for Catherine, is the restoration of women to the image and likeness of God in Christ, and this restoration restores to women their natural equality with men in respect of nature, status and authority. It creates the possibility of women achieving their potential not only in the sphere of the Church but also in the world. In 1855, in a letter to the Congregationalist minister, David Thomas, Catherine asked, ‘whether you have made the subject of women’s equality as a being the matter of calm investigation and thought’, 18 and declared that what most endeared Christianity to her heart was ‘what it has done, and what it is destined to do, for my sex’. 19 As a consequence of Catherine’s commitment to women’s ministry the 1870 Constitution of the declared, ‘Godly women possessing the necessary gifts and qualifications shall be employed as preachers […] and they shall be eligible for any office, and to speak and vote at all official meetings.’ 20 Similarly the introduction to the 1878 edition of Orders and Regulations for The Salvation Army declared that, ‘the Army refuses to make any difference between men and women as to rank, authority and duties, but opens the highest positions to women as well as to men’. 21 22 The Daily News attributed what it called the Army’s ‘astonishing success’ to the ‘very effective way in which they have testified to their belief in the spiritual and intellectual equality of the sexes […] In all the long history of religion there is not such instance as the Army affords of the absolute sinking of the disqualification of sex.’ 23 Discussion Question: What do you think of Catherine Booth’s big idea as an argument for women’s ministry? The Church The same set of ideas lay behind Catherine Booth’s understanding of what the Church was, and what exactly what was its mission to the world, and this helps to explain how our strange part of the Church ever came to be, and how the first Salvationists understood their mission. Catherine viewed the Church from a four-fold perspective. First of all, for Catherine, the Church is meant to be, what she called, an embodiment, or an incarnational expression of the life and mission of Christ. The Church is nothing less, she said, than ‘Jesus Christ come in the flesh AGAIN IN His people, living out before the world His principles, acting upon His precepts, living for the same objects for which He lived’. 24 The ‘teeming thousands who never cross the threshold of church, chapel, or mission-hall, to whom all connected with religion is as an old song, a byword, and a reproach […] need to be brought into contact with a living Christ in the characters and persons of His people.’ 25 The church is a community in which Christ lives in and through his followers.

Page 8 of 14 This idea is clearly linked to her big idea. Because it is when people get saved that they are restored to the likeness of Christ and become like Christ in the world. This is why The Salvation Army was such a good name for our part of the Church. Although Catherine never referred to her understanding of this aspect of the Church as sacramental, she does hold what might be understood as a sacramental view of the Church; in the power of the Holy Spirit the Church mediates the living Christ to the world. We don’t have time to go into Catherine’s views about the , but this idea is right at the heart of it. She believed God in Christ was present in transforming power in people, not elements like bread, wine and water. Second, Catherine believed the Church was created by Christ to fulfil and complete his mission. Catherine believed two biblical principles emerged out of this perspective. The first was the principle of aggression. Self-evidently this principle is closely associated with the militant character of the movement as an Army. For Catherine, aggression meant going to people, rather than attempting to attract them or merely interest them; it meant persuading people, rather than simply proclaiming truth to them; it meant addressing an embodied and encultured whole person, in whatever way was necessary to speak to their heart, soul and mind. 26 Catherine’s second biblical principal was adaptation. We must, she said, ‘adapt ourselves and our measures to the social and spiritual conditions of those whom we seek to benefit.’ 27 Searching the New Testament Catherine found only one ‘law’ laid down in respect to the modes and measures the Church may legitimately take – adaptation. Catherine quoted Paul, ‘I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.’ 28 She continued, ‘The only law laid down in the New Testament for the prosecution of this aggressive warfare is the law of adaptation.’ 29 This principle explains why the Army took hold of the popular culture of Victorian and used it boldly to proclaim the Gospel – music hall tunes, brass bands, military symbols and forms of organisation, etc. Thirdly, Catherine believed the Church is also shaped and guided by the Holy Spirit. From this perspective, the Spirit works in and through God’s people to fulfil Christ’s mission. the Church was constituted and directed by the Holy Spirit, and only by a pentecostal empowerment could the Church achieve its great purpose. Catherine believed the outpouring of the Spirit in and through The Salvation Army legitimised the new form the mission of the Church had taken through the movement. Indeed the Holy Spirit was responsible for the birth of this startling new form of the Church. The Army grew ‘because of the Divine Life that was in it. We could not help it, even if we had desired to do so.’ 30 Finally, Catherine believed that the Church exists to reveal in space and time and in community the principles, values and laws of the Kingdom of God. The form it takes in history is temporary and provisional because one day Christ’s kingdom will come on earth. Our hope for the future is not a perfect or even a better Church, but the Kingdom of God. Catherine claimed: Jesus Christ came to establish the kingdom of God upon the earth … He intended this kingdom to be a literal kingdom, that is, as truly a kingdom as any of the kingdoms of this world, […] he intended it to be a holy kingdom, a kingdom of righteousness, and consequently separate from, and above, all other kingdoms; Page 9 of 14 […] Christ spoke of his followers as a community, existing in the midst of another kingdom or community, having its own laws and principles and aims entirely distinct and separate from the world. 31 Furthermore, although this kingdom may as yet only be partially realised in the community of the Church, its full realisation as a future historical event is assured. Catherine wrote: If we could bring all men to love each other as brethren, there would be an end of ANIMOSITY , DESPOTISM , CASTE , NATIONAL HATRED , AND WAR ; and peace and good- will would reign over the earth. This is God’s ultimate idea for the world, this is the true millennium which is to come, towards which all real progress tends. 32 These were the ideas which together formed the basis for the emergence of the Church in a radically new form – The Salvation Army. Discussion Question: Do you think we have lost touch with any of these ideas about the Church? Ministry According to Pamela Walker, Catherine Booth: [...] exemplified a new model of Christian womanhood, articulating a new approach to female ministry and creating an influential career as an evangelist. As well as formulating the Salvation Army’s egalitarian policies, she served as an inspiration to thousands of young women who preached under the aegis of the organisation. 33 Catherine modelled a form of ministry that embraced evangelism and social action, and that demonstrated the right of women not only to preach but to lead, not only to serve but to rule. All over the world the Army has a great history of engagement in social justice as well as evangelism. And yet, if you stop to ask, ‘How did this happen? How did this evangelistic movement, born in the revivalism of mid-nineteenth century Britain, with its emphasis on personal conversion and holiness, come to have such an acute social conscience?’, the answer is far from clear, and shrouded in mystery and controversy. For instance, the historian and theologian Norman Murdoch believes that the Darkest England scheme reflected the influence of Christian socialists within the Army like Frank Smith and Suzie Swift, who pushed William to take the Army in a completely new direction. William was ready to try something new, Murdoch argues, because the Army had stopped growing through its evangelism and William, who was at heart an opportunist, was desperate for it to start growing again. The Salvationist historian and theologian Roger Green says that the Darkest England scheme is evidence of a dramatic change in William Booth’s view of salvation. Late in life, according to Green, William came to realise that salvation had a social as well as a personal dimension. Unlike Murdoch, Green does not think William was an opportunist, instead he claims that the Army’s social mission emerged because William’s theology changed. This ‘most important’, ‘dramatic’ change came when his ‘doctrine of salvation took on social dimensions’ and Green dates it precisely to 1889-1890. According to Green, William’s change of heart and mind was made possible because the influence of two Page 10 of 14 important people in his life was decreasing at this time. Catherine died in 1890, and ’s place was being taken over by Bramwell. Other people, like the journalist W T Stead, and the ‘socialist’ Salvationist Frank Smith were influencing William instead. However, both Norman Murdoch and Roger Green’s views are problematic. If Norman Murdoch is right, the Army’s engagement with issues of social justice was an opportunistic change of direction from the Army’s original passionate and evangelistic mission. If Roger Green is right, then the Army’s social mission was a new direction bolted on to its founding mission and a departure from its core purpose of which its most visionary and prophetic early leaders, Catherine and Railton, would have thoroughly disapproved. Can this really be true, that one of the major historical distinctives of the Army’s mission was a later ‘add-on’ only taken up as a desperate measure when its evangelism began to fail? This idea opens up the possibility that the Army’s social action replaced or displaced or undermined its evangelism; that we face a choice between mission as evangelism or social action. It opens up the possibility that its actually impossible to do both; and for a part of the Church to try to do both is a bit like a person trying to pat their head and rub their tummy at the same time. However I think that the ideas at the heart of Catherine Booth’s theology show that social justice has been right at the very heart of the Army’s mission from the very beginning. In 1872, according to Catherine her ‘first public efforts […] were in connection with feeding the hungry and starving poor’. 34 Commenting on the place of evangelism and social action in mission, Catherine criticised the ‘cogent and plausible’ but heartless arguments of social economists who said that if the poor would not work, they should not eat, and that it was wrong to relieve the poverty of the vicious, criminal and idle classes. Against this Catherine set the example of the Father who makes the sun rise on the evil and the good and the rain fall on the just and unjust, and the command of Jesus who said when you give a feast invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. Social action is an expression of God’s indiscriminate love for the world. That is why she believed the Army was carrying out, what she called, ‘the very HIGHEST PRINCIPLES OF MORAL AND SOCIAL REFORM ’.35 We have seen that Roger Green questioned Catherine’s understanding of the relationship between evangelism and social action. 36 However Catherine Booth believed the mission Christians were called to was identical to Christ’s. She quoted from John 20, ‘beautiful words, and yet how much they involve which few understand – “As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so, send I them into the world.”‘ 37 In one of her addresses Catherine shockingly asked, ‘What does it matter if a man dies in the workhouse? If he dies on a doorstep covered with wounds like Lazarus – what does it matter if his soul is saved?’ 38 This rhetorical question has become a notorious soundbite used to question not only Catherine Booth’s commitment to social action but that of the Army and even evangelicals generally. Norman Murdoch and Ann Woodall have concluded from this that Catherine’s commitment to social action was compromised at best. 39 In his novel , Ian Porter gives Catherine’s words to a Page 11 of 14 sarcastic critic who despises the Army ‘because of its […] indifference to the causes of poverty’. 40 These words are even found in Hansard, having been quoted in the House of Lords. However, the context of Catherine’s widely misrepresented words is an attack on that charity ‘which contemplates the earthy part of man in a superior degree to the spiritual part’, as opposed to that which ‘always contemplates man in the entirety of his being, and always gives first importance to the soul’. 41 Catherine pleads, ‘Don’t misrepresent me and say I teach all of the one and none of the other. God forbid […] real Christianity cares for body and soul.’ 42 The dilemma Catherine faces, as an evangelist committed to social action, revolves ‘around that great problem of infinite love, “What is man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”‘ .43 Strong principles undergirded Catherine’s actions, whether in managing the feeding programmes of the Christian Mission, in her alliance with and W.T. Stead in the 1885 crusade against sex-trafficking and in favour of raising the age of consent, or from her death bed participating in the creation of the Darkest England scheme. Her understanding of salvation was ethical and social to the core; salvation leads inexorably to the transformation of society and to the reign of peace and righteousness, the saving of individual souls is but the necessary beginning of the war in which the Army is engaged. 44 Conclusion Discussion Question: What would Catherine Booth make of The Salvation Army today? I think she would have regretted the extent that, for us, Holiness and Social Justice are not at the very heart of what we think God is doing in us and through us, but a peripheral and even optional extra. She would have been saddened at our loss of confidence in the ultimate victory of the Gospel. She would have reminded us we are called to believe that one day the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God, that we were never promised that there would never be a setback, never be a reverse in the Salvation War, and she would have reminded us that salvation is nothing less than the restoration of women and men to the image and likeness of God in Christ, and that this means our restoration to Christlikeness in all our relationships – an idea full of possibilities for the whole wide world.

1 Roy Hattersley, "A Biographer Forever," http://textualities.net/author/roy-hattersley/, Accessed 29 July 2010.

2 Ibid.

3 William T Stead, Mrs Booth of the Salvation Army (: James Nisbet, 1900), 232.

4 Ibid., 230.

5 "Memorial Notices," The Guardian , Tuesday 6 October 1890.

6 William Bramwell Booth, These Fifty Years (London: Cassell, 1929), 22–23.

7 ———, On the Banks of the River: Being a Brief History of the Last Days on Earth of Mrs. General Booth , 2nd ed., Red Hot Library (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, 1900; reprint, 1926), 16.

8 Green, Catherine Booth , 101–102. Page 12 of 14

9 Ibid., 10.

10 PC, 22.

11 PC, 21–22.

12 Outler in John Wesley, Sermons , ed. Albert C. Outler, vol. 1-4, The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984–1987), II:185.n70

13 Catherine Booth, Papers on Godliness (London: Partridge, 1882), 143.

14 Ibid., 11–12.

15 ———, Female Teaching; or, the Rev. A.A. Rees Versus Mrs. Palmer, Being a Reply to a Pamphlet by the above Gentleman on the Sunderland Revival , Second, enlarged ed. (London: G.J. Stevenson, 1861).

16 Arthur Augustus Rees, Reasons for Not Co-Operating in the Alleged 'Sunderland Revivals': In an Address to His Congregation (Sunderland: Wm. Henry Hills, 1859).

17 Catherine Booth, "Letter to Her Parents: 25 December 1859," in Booth Papers (London: British Library).

18 Frederick St George de Latour Booth-Tucker, The Life of Catherine Booth: The Mother of the Salvation Army , 2 vols. (London: The Salvation Army, 1892), I:83.

19 Ibid., I:85.

20 The Christian Mission, "Minutes of the First Conference" (London, June 1870), Section 12.

21 William Booth, Orders and Regulations for the Salvation Army , vol. Part 1 (London: The Salvation Army, 1878), i.

22 "Memorial Notices," The Manchester Guardian , Tuesday 6 October 1890.

23 "Mrs. Booth's Funeral," Daily News , Monday 13 October 1890.

24 Booth, Godliness , 42.

25 ———, Papers on Practical Religion (London: Partridge, 1878), 126-127.

26 ———, Papers on Aggressive Christianity (London: Partridge, 1881), 8–10.

27 Ibid., 196.

28 1 Corinthians 9:22

29 Booth, Practical Religion , 195.

30 ———, Church & State , 34.

31 ———, Popular Christianity: A Series of Lectures (London: Salvation Army Book Depot, 1887), 86.

32 ———, Church & State , 15.

33 Pamela J. Walker, Pulling the Devil's Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain (Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 2001), 8–9.

34 DRC, 126.

35 Ibid., 25.

36 Green, Catherine Booth , 267–272.

37 AC, 123.

38 GS, 29. Page 13 of 14

39 Murdoch, Frank Smith: Salvationist Socialist 8; Woodall, What Price the Poor?: William Booth, Karl Marx and the London Residuum , 165.

40 Ian Porter, Whitechapel (Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2009), 61.

41 GS, 27.

42 Ibid., 28.

43 Ibid., 28-29.

44 Clifford W , ed. Catherine Booth – Her Continuing Relevance (London: The Salvation Army, 1990), 129.; Murdoch, Origins of the Salvation Army , 165.

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