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The story
Founded by Catherine Booth and William Booth on Jul 2, 1865, in London.1
The Salvation Army was founded in London's East End in 1865 by one-time Methodist Reform Church minister William Booth and his wife Catherine Booth as the East London Christian Mission, and this name was used until 1878. The name "The Salvation Army" developed from an incident on 19 and 20 May 1878. William Booth was dictating a letter to his secretary George Scott Railton and said, "We are a volunteer army." Bramwell Booth heard his father and said, "Volunteer! I'm no volunteer, I'm a regular!" Railton was instructed to cross out the word "volunteer" and substitute the word "salvation". The Salvation Army was modelled after the military, with its own flag (or colours) and its own hymns, often with words set to popular and folkloric tunes sung in the pubs. Booth and the other soldiers in "God's Army" would wear the Army's own uniform for meetings and ministry work. He became the "General" and his other ministers were given appropriate ranks as "officers". Other members became "soldiers".
When William Booth became known as the General, Catherine was known as the "Mother of The Salvation Army". William was motivated to convert poor Londoners such as prostitutes, gamblers, and alcoholics to Christianity, while Catherine spoke to wealthier people, gaining financial support for their work. She also acted as a religious minister, which was unusual at the time. The Foundation Deed of the Christian Mission states that women had the same rights to preach as men. William Booth described the organisation's approach: "The three 'S's' best expressed the way in which the Army administered to the 'down and outs': first, soup; second, soap; and finally, salvation."
In 1880, the Salvation Army started work in three other countries: Australia, Ireland, and the United States. Salvationists set out for the U.S. in 1880. George Scott Railton and his team started work in Harry Hill's Variety Theatre on 14 March 1880. The first notable convert was Ashbarrel Jimmie who had so many convictions for drunkenness that the judge sentenced him to attend the Salvation Army. The corps in New York were founded as a result of Jimmys' rehabilitation. It was not always an Officer of The Salvation Army who started the Salvation Army in a new country; sometimes Salvationists emigrated to countries and started operating as "the Salvation Army" on their own authority. When the first official officers arrived in Australia and the United States, they found groups of Salvationists already waiting for them and started working with each other. The Army's organised social work began in Australia on 8 December 1883 with the establishment of a home for ex-convicts. The Army encouraged emigration from 1885, and continued the work until the 1980s; its own resources describe it as the "largest voluntary migration society in the first half of the twentieth century, helping around 250 000 people to emigrate from the British Isles to the British Empire Dominions".
In 1891, William Booth established a farm colony in Hadleigh, Essex, which allowed people to escape the overcrowded slums in London's East End. A fully working farm with its own market-gardens, orchards, and milk production, it provided training in basic building trades and household work.
The Salvation Army's main converts were at first alcoholics, morphine addicts, prostitutes, and other "undesirables" unwelcome in polite Christian society, which helped prompt the Booths to start their own church. The Booths did not include the use of sacraments (mainly baptism and Holy Communion) in the Army's form of worship, believing that many Christians had come to rely on the outward signs of spiritual grace rather than on grace itself. Other beliefs are that its members should completely refrain from drinking alcohol (Holy Communion is not practised), smoking, taking illegal drugs, and gambling.
As the Salvation Army grew rapidly in the late 19th century, it generated opposition in England. Opponents, grouped under the name of the Skeleton Army, disrupted Salvation Army meetings and gatherings with tactics such as throwing rocks, bones, rats, and tar and physical assaults on members of the Salvation Army. Much of this was led by pub owners who were losing business because of the Army's opposition to alcohol and its targeting of the frequenters of saloons and public houses.
In 1882, the Salvation Army was established in Asia with the first outpost in India.
Today, in the U.S. alone, over 25,000 volunteer bell ringers with red kettles are stationed near retail stores during the weeks preceding Christmas for fundraising.
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The Salvation Army was one of the original six organisations that made up the USO, along with the YMCA, YWCA, National Catholic Community Services, National Jewish Welfare Board, and National Travelers Aid Association.
National Salvation Army week was created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on 24 November 1954, encouraging people to honour the Salvation Army for its work in the United States throughout the past seventy-five years.
History of Doughnut Day
In 1917, over 250 Salvation Army volunteers went to soldiers' camps in France during World War I to provide supplies and baked goods, including doughnuts, to soldiers. The women who served doughnuts to the troops fried them in soldiers' helmets. They were known as "Doughnut Lassies" and are credited with popularising doughnuts in the United States. National Doughnut Day is now celebrated in the United States on the first Friday of June every year, a tradition that started in Chicago in 1938, to honour those who served doughnuts to soldiers during World War I.
Salvation Navy
In 1911, New York City architect Bradford Gilbert donated a yacht, The Jerry McAuley, to the Salvation Army. Jerry McAuley was a reformed criminal who founded the McAuley Water Street Mission (now the New York City Rescue Mission) in Lower Manhattan; he was also Mrs. Gilbert's first husband. This 35-foot powerboat with two cabins was the first vessel in the Salvation Navy in America; there were already two or three such vessels in Scandinavia. Its purpose is "to cruise the Atlantic coast, north in the summer and south in the winter, doing missionary work among the seamen of the ports." There was a six person crew; the captain was evangelist Major Nils Erikson.
Safeguarding Work
The involvement of the Salvation Army in work to combat slavery and human trafficking can be traced back to William Booth publishing a letter in The War Cry in 1885. In the same year an escapee from a prostitution house arrived at the door of the Salvation Army headquarters and sought help from Bramwell Booth.
An early precursor to the Salvation Army becoming involved in safeguarding work was Catherine Booth writing to Queen Victoria regarding a Parliamentary bill for the protection of girls. Safeguarding legislation was strengthened by a new act of Parliament, the "Public General Act, an Act to make further provision for the protection of women and girls, the suppression of brothels, and other purposes, (otherwise known as the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885)", which received Royal Assent on 14 August 1885 The Salvation Army was involved in getting this Act passed. Its work included a petition (numbering 340,000 signatures, deposited on the floor of the House of Commons by eight uniformed Salvationists), mass meetings, and an investigation into child prostitution. W.T. Stead of The Pall Mall Gazette launched a campaign in 1885 by writing articles on The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon to expose the extent of child prostitution, which involved procuring a girl, Eliza, for £5.
The newly founded Salvation Army in Japan also encountered child prostitution, derived from a system of debt bondage. An imperial ordinance (written in classical Japanese that few could understand) declared the girls' right to freedom; the pioneer Salvationist Gunpei Yamamuro rewrote it in colloquial speech.
From Wikipedia’s article on Salvation Army, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5