Wednesday, August 20, 2025

It is the 20th of August 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

We have a number of shows coming up highlighting some of the biggest names in church history- a series on the “People of the Century” throughout church history as well as a special 4 weeks series on the Reformation and the Reformers (Good and Bad and everything in between) while I lead to tours through Germany and Switzerland with GTItours at GTItours.org.

And as I make my lists, I am checking to see which of the biggest names in church history have yet to be given their own show- and as we hit some of their dates, we will introduce, or reintroduce you to some of the biggest names in the church.

And to my surprise, one of the more eccentric and curious- also extremely successful by some metrics- the man responsible for the red buckets and the dining bells outside the supermarket… yes we’ve talked Salvation Army before but not the man who started it all- William Booth who died on this, the 20th of August in 1912 at the age of 83.

He was an unlikely leader- or perhaps, more unlikely to lead a movement that would become the global phenomenon that the Salvation Army has become.

Booth was born to Mary and Samuel Booth on April 10th, 1829, in the Nottingham suburbs. The family was lower class and not particularly religious. There are some retellings that try to make his early life more stable and religious, but they do no service to his story and motivations. He was baptized as a custom but wasn’t active in church. His father was what one biographer has called “an illiterate speculative builder,” and it seems financial insecurity and poverty haunted young William. He was apprenticed to a Unitarian pawnbroker when his father lost his job (every bio has to make note, for some reason, that this was a Unitarian pawnbroker), but William began attending the Wesleyan Chapel. When his father soon died, he left the pawnbroker and had a conversion experience.

This was followed by visiting revivals from the American James Caughey, who had experience in American Revivals in the burned-over district of upstate New York. 

His 1846 revival led to William becoming an independent evangelist- something he would wrestle with. On the one hand, being a licensed preacher meant you stayed on the right side of the law; it gave one a steady income and a revered title.

Booth would work with the Methodist Connexxion (a loose affiliation of generally Wesleyan churches) and the Congregationalists. He would see the split of the Wesleyan Conexxion and the United Methodist Free Churches… it was a mess. He would attend a seminary, but was not a scholar; teachers recognized his skills in evangelism and suggested that route for him.

One of these men, who served as a mentor, Edward J. Rabbits, would introduce William to Catherine Mumford. The two would marry in 1855 and by the 1860s were in London, where they both would preach in the open air and at the Whitechapel Christian Mission, which would become, in 1878, the Salvation Army.

It was an evangelistic society based on the British military. The “Soldiers” are the individual believers divided into divisions who worship at Salvation Army Corps community centers. To the uninitiated, it sounds militaristic (they sign “Articles of War” or “Soldiers' Covenant” as a statement of faith)- part of this has to do with the state of the West prior to World War I and the history of the church using militant language for its work on earth.

The Salvation Army would spread across the globe, experience schism and the regular stuff that follows denominations- but their single-mindedness on lifting the destitute up and bringing them temporal and eternal help originates with its leader- William Booth who was inspired by a mix of his own insecurities as a young man, his connections to American Revivalism and Methodism and his wife who would encourage the non-bookish William to read more theology (and her influence surely lead to the egalitarianism of the movement).

While reviled at first, by the turn of the century his tireless work on behalf of the downtrodden as well as his book “In Darkest England and the Way Out” on social reform made him something of a hero in his old age as his “Army” became global and one of the largest Christian mission societies in the world, still in existence today- and more than just ringing bells.

He would be invited to pray before the U.S. Senate, was feted by King Edward VII, and awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford and the Freedom of the City of London. Catherine would precede him in death, succumbing to Cancer in 1890. William Booth would be succeeded in the worldwide movement by his son Bramwell after William's death on the 20th of August in 1912. Born in 1829, he was 83 years old.  

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Luke 19:

45 When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. 46 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

47 Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. 48 Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 20th of August 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who would remind you that Sister Aimee started her own “Salvation Navy” and was sued by Booth’s successor- he is in God’s “Space Force”- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who read “Nottingham” and you know where my brain is stuck… ooo de lally… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.