The Salvation Army: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

A church with ranks, a brass band and no sacraments at all.

Founded by William and Catherine Booth in the East End of London in 1865 and reorganised on military lines in 1878, with a General, commissioners, officers, soldiers, uniforms and a flag. It is a Wesleyan holiness church that decided in 1883 to stop practising baptism and communion entirely, on the grounds that the outward sign was being confused with the inward reality. It works in 134 countries and is better known for its social work than for the fact that it is a denomination.

On the record

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse examined The Salvation Army in two case studies. In Case Study 5, on four boys homes in the Eastern Territory — Alkira at Indooroopilly and Riverview in Queensland, and Bexley and Gill Memorial in New South Wales — public hearings were held in January and February 2014 and the report was published in January 2015. The Commissioners found that The Salvation Army had not protected the boys from sexual abuse in each of the four homes, that more than a hundred claims had been received, that boys who reported abuse were in most cases punished, disbelieved or accused of lying, and that the organisation's policies and procedures were inadequate to oversee managers who were in some cases themselves involved in the abuse. Case Study 33 examined children's homes in the Australia Southern Territory. The Salvation Army apologised, participated in the Commission and joined the National Redress Scheme.

Why it is filed this way

The Salvation Army is a church that most of the public experiences as a charity, and it does not correct the impression very hard. Its officers are ordained ministers, its soldiers are church members under a covenant, and a corps is a congregation. It is a member of the World Council of Churches and of national evangelical alliances.

DeitiesThe Trinity, in the eleven doctrines adopted from Methodist New Connexion sources — orthodox Wesleyan theology, unremarkable in content and unusual only in the absence of any sacramental practice attached to it.

Founded1865 CE · Whitechapel, East London

FounderWilliam Booth and Catherine Booth

AfterlifeResurrection, judgment, and the endless happiness of the righteous and endless punishment of the wicked — the eleventh doctrine says so plainly

TextsThe Bible · The eleven Doctrines of The Salvation Army · Orders and Regulations for Soldiers, and the Soldier's Covenant

The map

The Salvation Army’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1517 CE Protestantism 1865 CE The Salvation Army

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

No baptism, no communion — not deferred, not private, simply not practised. The Army stopped in 1883. The reasoning was pastoral rather than theological: that the sign was being mistaken for the thing signified, that the sacraments had become an obstacle to converts who could not get past the water, and that a movement full of recovering alcoholics should not be passing wine. Go deeper — context →

Soup, soap and salvation — in that order, and the order is the doctrine. Booth's position was that you cannot preach to a man who is starving and that saving his soul while leaving him in the rookery is a fraud. In Darkest England, published in 1890, laid out a national scheme of shelters, farm colonies, labour bureaux and a missing persons service, and the Army built most of it. Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

C Catherine Booth — who argued women into the pulpit before there was an Army. In 1859 she published Female Ministry: Woman's Right to Preach the Gospel, answering a preacher who had attacked women speakers, and then began preaching herself. Because of her, women have been officers on the same terms as men since the beginning, and a woman has held the office of General. Domain Female ministry, holiness preaching, the theology behind the movementStanding Called the Army Mother; her 1859 pamphlet is the reason the Army has always had women officers Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

The mercy seat — a bench at the front, and you kneel at it in front of everyone. Every Salvation Army hall has one, and the whole meeting bends toward it: the invitation is to come forward, kneel, and be prayed with by an officer or a soldier. It is the Army's only fixed liturgical object, and it stands where the altar would be in any other church. When Weekly — the holiness meeting on Sunday morning and the salvation meeting in the eveningWho Soldiers, adherents and anyone who comes in Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Christianity — 12 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 12 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 12 shared ideas, a different faith Zoroastrianism — 11 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Salvation Army — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Salvation Army shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been