The Salvation Army: London to Edmonton: 1865-2005 -by R. Gordon Moyles
“The Salvation Army.” For most people those words conjure up images of thrift stores, downtown hostels, and rehabilitation centres for alcoholics. Perhaps, for some who are older, they might evoke memories of doughnut girls in war-time canteens. For the truth is that the Army is best-known as a social-welfare agency, a Christian organization relentlessly attempting to alleviate social evils in towns, cities and countries all over the world. Its hospitals, schools for the blind, rehab centres, seniors’ residences, emergency services and so forth are what most people believe The Salvation Army is all about.
But, for approximately one-million people in more than one hundred countries throughout the world, The Salvation Army is a church -their ‘church home.’ For the Army is, first and foremost, an evangelical church, in the Wesleyan-Methodist tradition. And it began as such in 1865 when William and Catherine Booth, having been thwarted in their efforts to evangelize the poor under Methodist auspices, decided to start their own Mission in the East End of London. This they did for more than a decade, until they realized that something different, something sensational was needed to attract the lower classes. Thus, in 1878, the Booths’ mission was transformed into a kind of military unit, a ‘Salvation Army’, with officers and soldiers, uniforms and ranks, flags and banners. They took to the streets, marching, singing and playing martial music, and preaching to whomever they would meet. It was an immensely successful venture.
Finding the military style attractive, the Army’s ‘Hallelujah Lasses” unusual, and the gospel message more simply put than in the churches, thousands of people joined the Army. By the mid 1880s more than 250,000 people in England were attending Salvation Army meetings. It was then the fastest-growing evangelical organization in England. William Booth was also beginning to understand that it was useless to preach to people with empty stomachs -he must do something about their poverty before he could hope to convince them of salvation. In 1891 he launched his ‘Darkest England’ campaign, a social-reclamation scheme that would, eventually, see the Army establish rescue homes, prison services, a safety-match factory, hostels for men and women, farm colonies and many other social institutions. This transformed the Army into what it is today, an evangelical church with a dual mission -to “save and to serve.”
In the late 1880s, when the Army was flourishing, its message and methods were transplanted around the world -in India, the United States, Australia and in Canada in 1882. By 1886 its drums and tambourines could be heard across this country, from Victoria, British Columbia to St. John’s, Newfoundland. And, in 1893, after it was already firmly rooted in Calgary, the fur-trade town of Edmonton was invaded by two ‘Hallelujah Lasses’ whose open-air meetings, War Cry witness, and later social outreach soon made the Army a respected institution in the town. In fact, one might say that the Army literally grew up with the city; it was here before incorporation, even before Alberta became a province, and is, though many Edmontonians do not know it, one of the oldest religious institutions in the capital.
