Blood and Fire - William and Catherine Book and their Salvation Army

Booth led boldly with his big bass drum
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
The saints smiled gravely and they said he's come.
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Opening lines of 'General Booth enters heaven' by Vachel Lindsay.

BLOOD AND FIRE: William & Catherine Booth and their Salvation Army
By Roy Hattersley
Little, Brown. 471 pages. £20.00
ISBN 0 316 85161 2

This life of William and Catherine Booth is well-written and an enjoyable read. Who is it for? The author does not say what drew him to this subject, but he feels the Booths are somewhat forgotten and deserve to be thought of as Great Victorians.

His book is extensively researched, particularly from the letters of the Booths still extant. I found myself asking what I personally knew about the Booths and the Salvation Army.

I was born and brought up in a rather depressed Lancashire cotton town. There were not many mills open in the 1930s, but there were still lots of clogs and shawls and mill lasses about. At the bottom of our street the Salvation Army used to play outside Yates Wine Lodge on a Saturday night. At school I learned the poem at the head of this review.

As a student I was moved by Hugh Redwood's book God in the slums. and much later one of the General's granddaughters visited our church, and memorably told us that God had no grandchildren, and we needed to decide about being children of God for ourselves. So I approached Roy Hattersley's book knowing a bit, but no more than that, about the founders of the Army.

The impression left with me now is one of rumbustious strife. The Booths must have been difficult to live with. General Booth does not sound like the delightful house guest that Hudson Taylor was. You are left with the feeling, which the author more or less spells out, that Booth had to found his own church (if it was a church), because he was an impossible subordinate.

Finney and Wesley

I knew that Booth was a very Arminian Wesleyan, but I did not realise how much he was influenced by Charles Finney, or, more directly, by those disciples of Finney who visited Victorian Britain as wandering revivalists. Finney, whose position is set out in more detail in Iain Murray's book Revival and revivalism, thought that if you presented the gospel in a certain set manner then there would be conversions and what he called 'revivals', for certain.

Catherine was the theologian of the family. She tried to get William to study and get some theological training, but she failed. He was a rousing preacher, but the book does not tell us what he actually said. Catherine was important in persuading him of the validity of women's preaching, and she became the more acceptable preacher of the two. Of course, she did not preach to begin with. She just gave some thoughts on the sermon a man had just preached. If she went on for an hour and was rather exciting it was still under his authority. At least, that was the theory. Despite her ill health and raising a family, she seems to have been the one who drew the crowds and provided the family income from the collections that came in.

Awkward squad?

Reading the Booth's lives raises the question in our minds: do founders of great movements have to be awkward non-compromisers? William Booth pressed ahead through dangerous financial expedients. The moment a convert declared for God, he was set to work - with great success, but with enough problems to show the wisdom of Paul's advice in 1 Timothy 3.6 that leaders should not be recent converts. Hattersley uses the terms apostasy and schism rather loosely, but it is plain there were painful splits between many involved in the movement.

Booth's family also suffered. In particular, today's social workers would not have liked a very young Bramwell being beaten. Perhaps Catherine was remembering Susannah Wesley's advice about breaking a child's spirit. Hattersley implies that this discipline caused a lot of trouble later in Bramwell's life.

As the story unfolds we can see how practical help and social reform went together, If converts were to stand, they needed shelter, food, and clothing, and evening classes to advance themselves. Fortunately, there were some rich Methodists who were able to finance the movement.

Much to think about

In the main, Hattersley records the facts without making theological judgments, but we are left with much to think about: William and Catherine achieving perfect sanctification as an experience, for instance. Thanks to Catherine, William accepts an extended role for women. He is drawn increasingly into the abstinence movement and the social attempts to deal with poverty. A book can only tell you so much, but a great lack for me was the fitting of the movement into the general history of the time. What were Dr. Barnado and Spurgeon and Shaftesbury doing when all this was going on?

As I have said, it is a good read. In a good story you always want to know what happens next, and that is true here. How did the Booth dynasty follow on? When was the Denmark Hill training school built? Is the Salvation Army a church? How many times can you come to the penitent seat? How did the enormous worldwide organisation take shape under the next generation? How do we deal with the social problems of poverty and alcohol which are still with us today?

The price may deter a wider readership, but if it does not come out in paperback, the public library may help.

Blood and Fire - William and Catherine Book and their Salvation Army

Finney and Wesley

Awkward squad?

Much to think about

John Marsh

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