General William Booth: A life of practical goodness
James 2: 15 & 16 "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?".
As I shop in the fine stores of downtown San Francisco, I spy a man slouching on the pavement. His clothes are dirty and a few coins rest in his plastic cup. I choose not to look at his face. I pick up my pace and walk briskly by as if the man does not exist. I turn the corner and pass a woman pushing a cart full of plastic bags. She is shaking her head, muttering something to herself. I make sure that there is no eye contact by purposely gazing into a shop window. I walk on. May God forgive me! These are two human beings just like me, a man and a woman for whom Christ died. One hundred and fifty years ago, a righteous man walked the mean streets of East London in an area so blighted that the stench alone would drive away most people. This evangelist did not shun the off-scouring of the earth, instead he embraced them. This man of God was William Booth and he became founder and General of the Salvation Army.
The story of William Booth is a study in practical goodness, a window into love in action. We can sketch General Booth's life in four stages: his early years (1829 to 1865), his building years (1866 to 1881), his summit years (1882-1896) and finally, his declining years (1897-1912). William Booth was born is 1829 near Nottingham, England. As a boy he was apprenticed to a local pawnbroker. Working in a pawn shop, he not only learned of pawn tickets, but also of poverty and ruined lives. As a teenager, young William became a Methodist and soon began preaching to any who would listen. He met Catherine in 1852 and the next year they were married. His first evangelist position was with a Methodist group called "New Connexion". He was hired as a traveling campaigner receiving a stipend of two pounds per week. Throughout the 1850s this circuit evangelist was converting on average twenty-three people a day. When Catherine began to preach along side of him in 1859, the Methodist establishment was outraged. William Booth continued to identify with the poor and marginalized. He broke with the propriety of Victorian England, constantly battling the committee of New Connexion who wanted to reign in his excesses.
Finally he resigned from that organization and left Methodism altogether. In the East End of London, he preached his first service as an independent evangelist on July 2, 1865. William Booth had discovered his destiny: preaching to and serving the urban poor. In London in the 1860s, the streets were filled with un-churched and wretched masses. Booth would later retell an incident of this time: A Methodist parson approached a beggar in the East End. He offered the beggar a pamphlet, but the beggar replied, "I cannot read". The parson then said "well, then come to my church and listen to my sermon". To that the beggar replied, "but sir these rags are the only clothes I own". The parson looked him over once and replied, "then may God be with you." This does not describe William Booth. As James says in his Epistle, "What does it profit to say depart in peace"? William's son, Bramwell Booth, would recall the first time his father led him into an East End pub: "gas-jets playing eerily on men's inflamed faces, drunken disheveled women openly suckling tiny children, the reek of gin and shag tobacco and acrid bodies. After a moment, seeing the appalled look on his son's face, he said quietly: 'there are our people. These are the people I want you to live for and bring to Christ' (Collier, p 44)."
In 1867, Booth founded a society called the "Christian Mission". Most of his committed co-workers were members of some denomination in the Christian Church. Working with his society meant no cancellation of existing connection with churches. It was an extra dimension of commitment, providing evangelically minded Christians with an outlet for soul-saving work they could not find within their own circles. They were invited to give one, two or three days a week to the work of the society. His original intention to send converts to the churches was never realized. As Booth said "First, they would not go when sent. Second, they were not wanted. And third, we wanted some of them at least to help us in the business of saving others. We were drawn to providing for the converts ourselves (The War Cry, p. 6) ." During an evangelistic campaign in Whitby, society workers posted signs that read "War! In Whitby! The Hallelujah Army fighting for God". A few weeks later Booth visited Whitby. His advanced billing announced Booth as "General of the Hallelujah Army." In 1878 William Booth changed the word "Hallelujah" to "Salvation" and the Salvation Army was born. There were exactly eighty-eight members. The Salvation Army was an "army" in the sense that all authority flowed down from General Booth. There were no committees to confine ingenuity. Using methods that bordered on P.T. Barnum in street theater and William Randolph Hearst in newspaper publicity, early activities of the Salvation Army commanded the attention of all England. There were uniforms; there were marching bands; there were parades through city streets. Millions flocked to see these "sideshows", tens of thousands remained to hear the preaching, and thousands were won to Jesus Christ. Booth would comment that "Any publicity that kept the Army's purpose before the public was good publicity".
The first volume of the Orders and Regulations for the Salvation Army was issued in 1878. Some accused Booth of being a Jesuit. His rules were strict. Obedience was expected, but all soldiers had equal standing. From the beginning men and women were given equality in rank and people of all races and status were welcome to join the ranks. In 1881 the Salvation Army moved its headquarters to Queen Victoria Street and William Booth became ensconced in England. During the 1880s and 1890s the Salvation Army became a worldwide organization. The Army worked among the urban poor in New York City, among the gold seekers in the Klondike, inside the prison camps of Australia, and along side of the untouchables in India. Wherever sin abounded, there the Salvation Army would abound. There were setbacks along the way. In 1885 Bromwell was involved in a scandalous trial after investigating a brothel-keeper. For several years parading Salvationists battled an anti-Army group called the Skeletons. During these clashes several Salvationists were kicked to death. In 1889, William Booth was dealt a personal blow. His wife of 37 years, Catherine (the Army Mother), died of breast cancer.
After the death of Catherine, General Booth felt freer to travel. He preached in Japan and across America. In 1904 he appointed his daughter, Eva, as Salvation Army General in the United States. In 1905, the newly invented motor car inspired General Booth to launch a twenty-nine day car tour of Britain. He covered 1224 miles and addressed 164 meetings. In 1910, at the age of 81, General Booth was preaching in Germany. He felt dizzy and collapsed. He survived a few more years and in 1912 he died. A sign outside of Army Headquarters read "The General has laid down his sword." His renown was such that at his funeral Queen Mary sat quietly - unrecognized - in a front pew. Next to the queen sat a former prostitute won to the Lord by the Salvation Army. She whispered to the Queen the most fitting epitaph for William Booth: "He cared for the likes of us."
The life of William Booth and the Salvation Army that he founded are inextricably intertwined. During his lifetime, to speak of Booth was to speak of the Army and to speak of the Army was to speak of Booth. Allow me to highlight five aspects that demonstrate the practical goodness found in the Salvation Army and embodied in its founder, General William Booth: first his purely evangelical effort, second his rules for personal integrity, third his religious doctrine, fourth his efforts to care for the poor, and fifth his efforts to positively effect change in governmental social policy.
William Booth was a soul-winner first and foremost. He took seriously his call to go into the world and proclaim the Gospel. Booth recognized all of God's children as worthy of respect and evangelistic effort. As a circuit preacher in the 1850s, he led thousands to Christ. Sixty years later during his famed motorcar tour he converted thousands more. Most of these neglected souls were not won over by words, but by the perception that "he cared for the likes of us". Of the hundreds of thousands of new converts, most went on to attend more mainstream Methodist and Baptist churches, but some stayed with the Salvation Army carrying on its work. During his lifetime, the Salvation Army expanded its presence from one to twenty-two nations, spreading the Gospel across the world.
William Booth kept high moral standards. His personal conduct was always above reproach. His Orders and Regulations for the Salvation Army were also strict. Adherence to Army rules required fervor and commitment. Booth commanded all his officers to lead simple and pure lives, lives that would never allow for malicious gossip. Dating and marriage was strictly managed. Although his officers were guaranteed modest salaries, no man or woman submitted to this iron discipline for financial gain. Some critics of Booth accused him of being overly harsh and they left his organization. Indeed, two of his own children parted ways with his Army, mostly over issues of orders and regulations.
William Booth's religious doctrine was simple. He was a Methodist at heart and accepted all the doctrines of Charles Wesley. The ten Articles of Faith of the Salvation Army are mainline Protestant. However, Booth rebelled against anything that smacked of ritual, sacrament, or "high church". He intended his Salvation Army to be as "low" a church as possible. To Methodism, Booth added the trappings of uniforms, banners, kettles, and bands. From Methodism he removed anything that might prove an obstacle to reaching the poor. To the unease of fellow Christians, this removal included baptism and communion. Baptism was difficult in wretched environments, because suitable water was scarce. Communion included the drinking of an alcoholic beverage. Many of his converts were recovering alcoholics.
William Booth took seriously the command of Jesus "Give ye them to eat (Matthew 24:16)". As early as 1868 he personally opened soup kitchens in London. His son Bramwell would beg discarded vegetables, buy a few sacks of bones, and boil them in huge pots. William would tell his son "no one gets a blessing if they have cold feet, and nobody ever got saved while they had a toothache (Collier p. 49)." In 1869, William and Bramwell passed out 300 Christmas dinners to the urban poor, most of the meals cooked by Catherine. Decades ahead of his time General Booth set up shelters for the homeless on cold London nights. He established a self-help program for alcoholics fifty years before the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous. A full century before government provided disaster aid, the Salvation was at the scene of floods, fires, and other disasters. Feeding and sheltering, counseling and assisting, this has always been the hallmark of the Salvation Army.
William Booth also clamored for social change through lawmakers. He wrote a best-selling book just after Catherine's death. With the publication of Darkest England the public saw for the first time Booth's plan for what it was: a literal attempt to apply the Christian ethic to industrial civilization. If the state neglected the poor, it was the Christian duty to step in where the state had failed. Many of Booth's social efforts paid off. For example, in 1881 Booth learned of the plight of match-manufacturers in London. Young children were compelled to work sixteen hours a day dipping small sticks into deadly yellow phosphorus. Scores of poor women and children were dying from necrosis of the bone caused by breathing in phosphorus fumes. The Salvation Army opened its own breezy well-lit match-factory. Booth demonstrated that matches dipped in harmless red phosphorus were profitable. Booth lobbied Parliament for change and Victorians for the first time moved toward modified state intervention. By 1901, English law prohibited yellow phosphorus in match factories.
General Booth also demonstrated far-sighted social policy in his own organization. From the beginning, his wife Catherine Booth was a co-pastor. She preached as well and as often as he did. His daughter, Evangeline (or Eva), was General of the Salvation Army from 1934 to 1939. Such genuine gender equality was liberating, especially when compared to some denominations that seem headed toward greater gender inequality.
How can we evaluate a life like that of William Booth? In the modern times I do not think that there is his equal. Has there ever been a more "fully integrated" Christian than General William Booth? He embodied the Army's slogan "Heart to God / Hand to Man". We can probably point to better evangelists. Charles Spurgeon, Dwight Moody, and Billy Graham come to mind. We can also point to statesmen who set in motion greater social good like Franklin Roosevelt in America and Otto von Bismarck in Germany. But who else can we point to as both a preeminent evangelist and a preeminent social activist? Who else can we point to as a humble Christian who with his right hand won thousands to Jesus while at the same time with his left hand fed thousands of poor? William Booth is unique in the annals of modern evangelism because he practiced a life of practical goodness, exhibiting a passionate concern for both the both the spiritual well-being and physical well-being of all humanity. Taking a page from the Gospel, he first fed the multitudes with bread and then fed their hearts with truth. He was love in action. Nowadays when I see beggars and homeless, I do not avert my eyes. I think of William Booth and say to myself: "This is someone for whom Christ died. Show compassion through your action."
My evaluation of William Booth is not important. What more can I say about this man of practical goodness who fed the hungry with soup kitchens in London, established homeless shelters in New York City, organized leper colonies in Java, and staffed prisons in Australia. Let the final words be those of Jesus who spoke clearly of this righteous man:
Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?' And the King will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me. (Matthew 25: 37-40)'
Bibliography
Booth, Eva. My Father . "The Saturday Evening Post", December 8, 1928.
Collier, Richard. The General Next to God: The Story of William Booth an the Salvation Army . (Glasgow, William Collins & Sons , 1965)
Railton, G.S. The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army . (NY, Hodder & Stoughton, 1912)
Robinson, Earl. The Origin and Development of Salvation Army Doctrine . "War Cry", February 17, 2001.