Listen to the words of William Booth writing in 1890 in his best selling book, In Darkest England and the Way Out:

My only hope for the permanent deliverance of mankind from misery, either in this world or the next, is the regeneration or remaking of the individual by the power of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ. By providing for the relief of temporal misery I reckon that I am only making it easy where it is now difficult, and possible where it is now all but impossible, for men and women to find their way to the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

William Booth was born in 1829 in Nottingham, England, to a family that started with money but soon descended into poverty. By age 13, William Booth was forced to quit school and apprentice to a pawnbroker. At age 15 he was converted to ‘salvation’ and Methodism, becoming a teenage lay preacher.

In 1848, Booth moved to London where he found work and lodging in a pawnbroker’s shop. Booth tried to continue lay preaching, but the small amount of preaching work that came his way frustrated him, and so he took to open-air evangelising in the streets. In 1851, on his 23rd birthday, he left pawnbroking and became a full-time Methodist preacher in Clapham.

Though William Booth became a prominent evangelist, he also knew his call was to the poor. By 1865, he resigned from the Methodist ministry and with his wife Catherine, opened The Christian Revival Society in the East End of London. There they held meetings every evening and on Sundays, offering repentance and the hope of salvation to the poorest and most needy, including alcoholics, criminals and prostitutes.

Booth and his followers were self-sacrificing Christian and innovative in their outreach. He opened “Food for the Millions” soup kitchens, and residential homes for the destitute. In 1878 the name of the organization was changed to The Salvation Army, modeling the ministry after the military, with its own flag and its own music, often with Christian words to popular tunes sung in the pubs. He and the other soldiers in God’s Army wore the Army’s own uniform, ‘putting on the armour,’ for meetings and ministry work. He became the “General” and his other ministers assumed appropriate ranks as “officers”.

Though the early years were financially lean, Booth and The Salvation Army persevered. In the early 1880s, operations were opened in the United States, France, Switzerland, Sweden, and others, and to most of the countries of the British Empire. During his lifetime, William Booth established Army work in 58 countries and colonies, traveling extensively and holding “salvation meetings”.

Opinion of the Salvation Army and William Booth eventually changed for the better. In his later years, he met kings, emperors and presidents, who were among his ardent admirers. Even the mass media began to use his title of ‘General’ with reverence. William Booth died in 1912 in London at age 83. The Salvation Army today has over 2 million soldier Salvationists in 111 countries, and is one of the largest nonprofits in the US.

Stand in the Gap 2007
Washington, D.C.
October 6, 2007