Catherine Booth

Laying the Theological Foundations of a Radical Movement

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• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781621895695
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Catherine Booth's achievements--as a revivalist, social reformer, champion of women's rights, and, with her husband William Booth, co-founder of The Salvation Army--were widely recognized in her lifetime. However, Catherine Booth's life and work has since been largely neglected. This neglect has extended to her theological ideas, even though they were critical to the formation of Salvationism, the spirituality of the movement she cofounded. This book examines the implicit theology that undergirds Catherine Booth's Salvationist spirituality and reveals the ethical concerns at the heart of her soteriology and the integral relationship between the social and evangelical aspects of Christian mission in her thought. Catherine Booth emerges as a significant figure from the Victorian era, a British theologian and church leader with a rare if not unique intellectual and theological perspective: that of a woman.

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Introduction

At 4.00pm on Monday 13 October 1890 the turnstiles closed at Olympia. London’s largest indoor arena was accustomed to great crowds, but the staff estimated 38–40,000 people had entered the hall, which seated 25,000, two hours before the 6.00pm start.1 The event was the funeral service of Mrs. Booth, the wife of General Booth of The Salvation Army. The Banner commented: “We suppose that no woman, crowned or uncrowned, has ever before passed to her grave amidst such vast manifestations of sorrow and sympathy.”2 Catherine Booth’s biographer, William Stead, wrote, “It seems probable that the future historian may record that no woman of the Victorian Era—except it be the monarch who gives her name to the epoch—has done more to help in the making of modern England than Catherine Booth.”3 What brought Catherine to this high point of public recognition?

The Significance of Catherine Booth

Catherine Booth was recognized as one of the Victorian era’s pre-eminent evangelists. Stead described her as “the most conspicuous and the most successful preacher of righteousness this generation has heard.”4 The Manchester Guardian praised her eloquence and “unstudied ease and grace,” and concluded, “Mrs. Booth was a keen causist and a subtle dialectician. She had a strong apparatus of logic at her command, and led you into a corner with delightful ease.”5

Catherine Booth was also a powerful advocate of social reform. In alliance with Josephine Butler and W. T. Stead, Catherine was responsible for bringing to the notice of the public the “iniquity of state regulated vice,”6 and for mobilizing the forces of The Salvation Army against sex trafficking and in support of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which raised the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16. Within days of Catherine’s death, William Booth published his book In Darkest England and the Way Out and the Army embarked on a massive program of innovative social action.7 Stead claimed Catherine was “the prophetess of the new movement,”8 and stated, “that the Salvation Army thus entered upon that new development is due more to her than to any other woman, and in its new social work we see the best and most enduring monument to the memory of the saintly woman and her devoted husband.”9

Further, Catherine Booth was an effective campaigner for the rights of women. The Manchester Guardian claimed, “She has probably done more in her own person to establish the right of women to preach the Gospel than anyone else who has ever lived.”10 The Daily News attributed the Army’s “astonishing success” to the “very effective way in which they have testified to their belief in the spiritual and intellectual equality of the sexes. [ . . . ] In all the long history of religion there is not such instance as the Army affords of the absolute sinking of the disqualification of sex.”11

Finally, Catherine Booth was recognized as the co-founder, with her husband William, of The Salvation Army. Stead wrote, “Mrs. Booth’s claim to rank in the forefront among the Makers of Modern England rests, of course, primarily upon her share in moulding and building up The Salvation Army.”12 Catherine was a wise counselor who guided William Booth and his inner circle of leaders in their decision making; she was an apologist for the movement to society’s opinion formers and decision makers; but most of all she was the visionary thinker, the principal architect of the Army’s theology, the one through whom Salvationism was first formed, and the one who gave it coherent and eloquent expression.

The noun “Salvationist” and its concomitant “Salvationism” were coined soon after the birth of the movement.13 Salvationism has been taken to be descriptive not of the Army’s creed or organizational structures, but rather of the pulsating “heart of the Army.”14 According to Shaw Clifton, Salvationism “is the sum total or combination of various distinctive characteristics that are peculiar to the Army. Salvationism is a word that denotes certain attitudes, a particular worldview. It signifies an amalgam of beliefs, stances, commitments, callings that when taken together cannot be found in any other body, religious or secular.”15 David Baxendale suggests that “Salvationism is a spiritual quality that binds together Salvationists of whatever nationality, race, or social status.”16

Ian Randall has argued that “evangelicalism is essentially a strand of spirituality.”17 Similarly Salvationism is best understood as a mode of Christian spirituality. Although Kenneth Leech has suggested that “the word has come to be used in so general and vague a way that its continued usefulness needs to be questioned,”18 it might be argued that in a broad sense spirituality “describes that aspect of humankind that reaches out toward the transcendent and divine, and the practices employed to assist in this quest.”19 In respect ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Salvation
• Chapter 3: The Pursuit of Holiness
• Chapter 4: Doctrine of Holiness
• Chapter 5: The Church
• Chapter 6: Ministry
• Chapter 7: The Sacraments
• Chapter 8: Conclusion
• Bibliography