Core Tenets

The Salvation Army

Denomination·Founded 1865 CE·The Army works in 134 countries by its own count. It publishes country-by-country figures of officers, soldiers, adherents and corps in its annual Year Book rather than a single global membership headline; totals commonly cited run above a million and a half and are not independently audited. The number of people it serves through its social programmes is far larger and is a different thing entirely.

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Part of Belief →

The shared center — held across the tradition

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 →