Blood and Fire
William and Catherine Booth and the Salvation Army
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
An uneducated youth, William Booth left home in 1849 at the age of twenty to preach the gospel for the New Methodist Connexion. Six years later he founded a new religious movement which succeeded to such a degree that the Salvation Army (which it became) is now a worldwide operation with massive membership.
But that is only part of Booth's importance and heritage. In many ways his story is also that of the Victorian poor, as he and his wife Catherine made it their lives' work to battle against the poverty and deprivation which were endemic in the mid- to late 1800s. Indeed, it was Catherine who, although a chronic invalid, inspired the Army's social policy and attitude to female authority. Her campaign against child prostitution resulted in the age of consent being raised and it was Catherine who, dying of cancer, encouraged William to clear the slums -- In Darkest England, The Way Out. Roy Hattersley's masterful dual biography is not just the story of two fascinating lives but a portrait of an integral part of our history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former British Member of Parliament Hattersley offers a skillful, well-executed joint biography of William and Catherine Booth. William founded the Salvation Army, that boisterous, brazen band of evangelists determined to save the world from sin. Hattersley's account of William's career is lively--William was a colorful, publicity-seeking fellow who preached in the streets and warbled hymns that sounded like drinking songs; he wanted not only to introduce men and women to Christ but to clean up the slums, stamp out Demon Rum and tend to the physical as well as spiritual needs of the poor. But Hattersley's more notable accomplishment is his portrait of Catherine, William's wife: he manages to show how extensively Catherine, who spent much of her adult life desperately ill, contributed to the Salvation Army without anachronistically turning her into a modern feminist. Catherine did have feminist leanings--she claimed that to oppose female ministry was to thwart the will of God--yet Hattersley suggests that her importance was less as a preacher than as the driving moral and spiritual force behind the Salvation Army. When William began to crusade against prostitution, for example, Catherine convinced him that men were partly to blame for the sex trade, since it was they who drove women to the streets. This history is a delightful and nuanced study of two fascinating characters and the religious movement they spawned.
