Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 22:3 (Summer 2008)
Article: Lest We Lose Our Legacy: Officer Women in The Salvation Army
Author: Paul A. Rader

PP 22:3 (Summer 2008) p. 19

Lest We Lose Our Legacy:
Officer Women in The Salvation Army

Paul A. Rader

Kay F. Rader

General PAUL A. RADER (Ret.) and Commissioner KAY F. RADER are the former international leaders of The Salvation Army. After their retirement, Paul was elected president of their alma mater, Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. Their story is told in If Two Shall Agree by Carroll F. Hunt.

The Salvation Army’s egalitarian roots

Catherine Booth was a formative influence in the founding of The Salvation Army. The movement, in fact, was co-founded by William and Catherine Booth. True, William Booth has been most often referred to as the Founder and Catherine as the Army Mother, but her influence was pervasive. She was his closest confidant and most candid critic. “Thou art to be my guardian watcher!” he once wrote to her during their courtship.1 And so she became. Before he knew her better, William made bold to express the popular understanding of the time that women were less endowed intellectually and spiritually than men. Catherine lost no time in disabusing him of any such notion, insisting that he come to “settled views” on the issue of women’s equality or they had little prospect of a future together. He did.

The Booths raised eight children to maturity, three boys and five girls. All, with the exception of one daughter, who had a limiting condition, proved to be remarkable Salvation Army leaders and gifted preachers. Much is owed to Catherine’s firm hand in the nurture of mind and spirit. She would not allow her sons to look down on their sisters. “I have tried to grind it into my boys that their sisters are just as capable and intelligent as themselves,” she declared.2 William trusted her judgment implicitly and knew she was the more theologically astute. She was his preaching partner in their early campaigns, often providing him with sermon material. During her husband’s illnesses, she preached in his stead with great effect and soon had her own wide-ranging preaching ministry. By the time she preached her last public sermon in the pulpit of Dr. Joseph Parker’s famed City Chapel, London, she had become one of the best-known women preachers of her generation. It is no surprise then that, when preaching stations began multiplying as the Christian Mission gained momentum, the Booths began recruiting women for the ministry, often assigning them in charge.

When the mission took the name of The Salvation Army in 1878, the right of women to preach, and, indeed, to undertake any task in ministry for which they had been gifted, was firmly established in the fledgling movement. Even befor...