Who Was Catherine Booth? The Mother of the Salvation Army
Catherine Booth was an English preacher who, with her husband William Booth, founded the Salvation Army. She lived from 1829 to 1890. She raised eight children, defended the right of women to preach the gospel, and became one of the most sought-after preachers in Victorian England, speaking to packed halls in the wealthy West End of London while the Army worked in the slums of the East End. Salvationists still call her the "Army Mother."
Her sermons are blunt, searching and full of fire. She wanted a Christianity that went after sinners instead of waiting for them, that took sin seriously, and that expected God to save people now. Here's the story of her life and where to start with her books.
A serious girl in a Methodist home
Catherine Mumford was born on January 17, 1829, in Ashbourne, Derbyshire. Her father, John Mumford, built carriages and sometimes preached as a Methodist lay preacher. Her mother, Sarah, was strict and deeply devout, and taught Catherine at home. The family later moved to Boston in Lincolnshire and then to London.
She was a serious, sensitive child and a great reader. It's said that she read the Bible through eight times before she was twelve. As a teenager she suffered a curvature of the spine that kept her in bed for long stretches, and she used the time to read theology, church history and the works of John Wesley and Charles Finney. Even as a girl she cared about the damage drink did to families, and she wrote for a temperance magazine.
She grew up among the Wesleyan Methodists, but in the reform quarrels of the 1840s she sided with the reformers and lost her place in the Wesleyan society. Among the reformers in London she met a young preacher named William Booth.
Marriage to William Booth
Catherine and William met in the early 1850s and were married on June 16, 1855. Their long engagement is remembered through her letters, in which she encouraged him, argued theology with him and urged him on in his preaching. William was a gifted evangelist with the Methodist New Connexion, and for some years the couple moved from town to town as he held revival meetings.
They had eight children: Bramwell, Ballington, Catherine (Kate), Emma, Herbert, Marie, Evangeline and Lucy. Every one of them grew up to serve in the Salvation Army. Catherine believed parents must train their children for God from the cradle, and she later set out her counsel in an address to parents in Papers on Practical Religion.
The right of women to preach
In 1859 a minister in the north of England attacked the American holiness preacher Phoebe Palmer for speaking in public. Catherine answered him in a pamphlet defending women's ministry from Scripture. She later expanded it as Female Ministry; or, Woman's Right to Preach the Gospel, which is printed in Papers on Practical Religion. She argued from Joel's prophecy, from Pentecost and from the women who served with Paul that the Spirit had been given to daughters as well as sons:
Surely there must be some mistake somewhere, for the word and the Spirit cannot contradict each other.
Papers on Practical Religion, Female Ministry
Yet for months she did not preach herself. She told the story years later in a sermon on witnessing. One Sunday in 1860, at Bethesda Chapel in Gateshead, she felt the Lord press her to speak, and she walked to the front while William was preaching. He was so surprised he could only tell the people his wife wanted to say a word.
I got up — God only knows how — and if any mortal ever did hang on the arm of Omnipotence, I did.
Aggressive Christianity, Witnessing for Christ
She confessed to the congregation that she had been disobeying God by keeping silent. From that day she preached, and invitations soon came from all over the country. She wrote her sermons in pencil while nursing her babies.
The Christian Mission and the Salvation Army
In 1865 William began preaching in the East End of London, among the poorest people in the city. The work grew into the East London Christian Mission, and in 1878 it took the name the Salvation Army, with ranks, uniforms, flags and brass bands. Catherine helped shape it from the start. She designed the Army's flag, helped write its rules, and insisted that women officers should preach and lead on the same terms as men.
While William worked among the poor, Catherine often preached to the comfortable. Her addresses in the West End were taken down and printed, and they became her books. In them she pleads with church people who had a form of religion without its power. She asked why they were so cool about the one thing that mattered most:
Why should we be enthusiastic in everything but religion?
Godliness, Enthusiasm and Full Salvation
She also took up social causes. She spoke for women and girls caught in the sweated trades and in prostitution, and she supported the campaign of 1885 that pressed Parliament to raise the age of consent.
What she taught
Catherine Booth's preaching comes back to a few plain convictions.
Christians must go after the lost. Her best-known book, Aggressive Christianity, argues that every believer is a witness and must carry the gospel to people who will never come to church on their own. Methods could change to reach them; the message could not.
Real repentance and real faith. She refused a gospel that left people in their sins. Repentance meant seeing sin, hating it and giving it up, and saving faith meant handing your whole self over to Christ, not just agreeing that the gospel was true. She worked these out in Godliness.
Holiness is possible. She was a holiness preacher, convinced that Christ came to deliver His people from the power of sin as well as its guilt:
He never undertook to make me pass for pure, either to God or man, but to enable me to be pure.
Popular Christianity, The Christs of the Nineteenth Century Compared with the Christ of God
The power of the Holy Spirit. She urged believers to seek the fullness of the Spirit for witness and service, and she warned that more truth without the Spirit's power would never save the world.
Her last years
In 1888 Catherine learned she had cancer. She bore two years of severe illness while still writing letters, receiving visitors and sending messages to the Army. She died at Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, on October 4, 1890, at sixty-one. Thousands filed past her coffin in London, and a great crowd came to her funeral.
Why she's still read
Catherine Booth is still read because she's so direct. She doesn't let a comfortable Christian stay comfortable. She presses every reader with the same questions: Are you really saved? Are you living for God or for yourself? What are you doing for the people around you who don't know Christ? Her sermons were preached to Victorian Londoners, but the questions fit any church that has grown cool.
Where to start
TheWay Library has five of her books, all free to read. Start with Aggressive Christianity, her call to an outgoing faith, which includes her own account of how she began to preach. Then read Godliness on repentance, faith, prayer and holiness. If you want her sharpest challenge to easy religion, try Popular Christianity. For her case for women preaching and her counsel to parents, read Papers on Practical Religion, and for her evangelistic sermons, Life and Death.
Our guide to Catherine Booth's books describes each one, and our collection of Catherine Booth quotes gathers her best lines. You'll find all her books on the Catherine Booth author page.