Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 22:3 (Summer 2008)
Article: Catherine Booth, The Salvation Army, and the Purity Crusade of 1885
Author: Roger J. Green

PP 22:3 (Summer 2008) p. 9

Catherine Booth, The Salvation Army,
and the Purity Crusade of 1885

Roger J. Green

ROGER J. GREEN, Ph.D., D.D., is Professor and Chair of Biblical and Theological Studies at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. He also holds the Terrelle B. Crum Chair of Humanities. He is a layperson in The Salvation Army and has written extensively on The Salvation Army, including a biography of Catherine Booth (Baker, 1996) and a biography of William Booth (Abingdon, 2005).

Introduction

The Salvation Army began rather inconspicuously in the East End of London in 1865. William Booth, an itinerant Methodist minister, had moved to London with his wife, Catherine, and their family so that Catherine would be enabled to conduct a preaching mission there. While preferring the provinces rather than London for his ministry, William nevertheless accepted an invitation to minister in London’s East End, and there he began a ministry eventually known as The Christian Mission. As the numbers of converts grew, William and Catherine Booth organized that mission into an Army—a Salvation Army, taking advantage of the military imagery so common in nineteenth-century England with all the pageantry that such imagery afforded. The Army grew rapidly in Great Britain, and its ministers (officers) and laypersons (soldiers) became common sights on the streets of cities and towns. By the early 1880s, the Army began to expand as a missionary organization to such places as Canada, America, France, and India.

Although the Army eventually evolved to include an extensive social ministry throughout the world, by the time of the Purity Crusade in 1885, the organized social ministry of The Salvation Army had not yet begun. The Christian Mission was marked by various local ministries, but the only organized ministry was a “Food for the Millions” program established in each Christian Mission station. This program, however, lasted only from 1870 to 1874.

Catherine Mumford Booth was not reared in poverty, but became well acquainted with the plight and conditions of the poor as she ministered with her husband during his time as a minister with New Connexion Methodism. She first began to minister to alcoholics and their families during William’s appointment at Gateshead and continued that ministry on a large scale after the founding of The Christian Mission and The Salvation Army. After the establishment of the Army, many officers and soldiers of the corps (Salvation Army churches) found themselves attending to the physical as well as the spiritual needs of the people. Such work was understood as being a natural consequence of their salvation in Christ, their involvement in every aspect of the lives of people, and their faithful witness to such biblical passages as