LIFE of
The GOSPEL TRUTH WILLIAM BOOTH
FOUNDER and FIRST GENERAL
of the SALVATION ARMY
by
Harold Begbie
1920
In Two Volumes
Volume 2
Chapter 2
A VAGUE BUT EPISCOPAL CHARGE OF IMMORALITY 1883
RUMOURS had been spread for some time that the Salvation Army encouraged a form of hysteria which led in many instances to sexual immorality. It was commonly stated that Salvationists held a meeting called "Creeping for Jesus," in which the lights were turned down, and men and women, getting upon their knees, proceeded to crawl upon the floor groping with their hands in the darkness.
These and other rumours, with accounts of blasphemous handbills supposed to be circulated by Salvation Army Officers, tended to inflame respectable opinion. There was a strong feeling among some of those who knew nothing of William Booth and nothing of the frightful condition existing in parts of the great cities, that the Salvation Army was a scandal and an outrage. People said that Salvationists deserved everything they received at the hands of the mob. Newspapers so eminent as The Times pronounced judgment against General Booth. Religious people and irreligious people uttered their disapproval of these noisy, irreverent, and now immoral Salvationists.
It was, on the whole, a good thing that these flying rumours should at last take shape in a more or less definite charge uttered by wholly responsible people. In the Upper House of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, on the 10th of April, I883, the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Mackarness) said:
The point I wish to raise is a very definite one. This Salvation Army professes to be an agency for promoting holiness, upon which it is said by persons whom I have reason to trust that it promotes not holiness, but distinct immorality to a great degree. What I would do is to institute inquiries from those who have seen the work, so as to enable us to say whether they are working with the contrary result to that which the leaders are desirous of obtaining, or whether they are doing a good work. It is not merely to examine tenets, but the results of those tenets in actual life, and what the people who receive their teaching are doing. It is to see what really is the ratio of illegitimate births, and the relation of the Salvation Army to that we would wish to know.
The Bishop of Hereford (Dr. Atlay) confirmed the statement with the remark:
. . . two . . . of my clergy, who are well disposed in the main towards the development of unusual methods even of arousing religious feeling among those who are commonly called the masses, have told me that from their own knowledge very disastrous consequences--I need not further explain what I mean--have followed the teaching of the Army.
General Booth wrote next day both to the Bishop of Oxford and to the Archbishop of Canterbury. In his letter to the Archbishop he said:
I observe with great regret in this morning's Journals a report of proceedings in Convocation yesterday, in the course of which a number of serious accusations against the Army appear to have been made. It seems to me very hard that the outrageous statements constantly made with regard to us should be credited without our having an opportunity to reply to them.
There has been no change whatever in our Orders or methods during the last twelve months, and the only development I know of is in the increase, amounting to more than a doubling of the numbers of those who are doing the work and enduring the sufferings to which attention was called in your Lordship's house twelve months ago.
I am well aware that there have been of late a great many efforts made both in England and in Switzerland to misrepresent both our teachings and our plans; but we have never yet met with a charge that can be maintained against us when fairly examined in daylight.
I enclose a note to his Lordship, the Bishop of Oxford, and trust that some opportunity will at least be given to us to meet the very grave accusations he appears to have brought against us, and which we venture to say cannot be supported by one solitary fact. There can be no doubt that such an accusation made in such a quarter will be used in such a way in the Press as to greatly increase the ill-usage of our poor people in the streets.
Our earnest desire to maintain friendly relationships with the authorities of the Church has not in the least degree changed. We might point with satisfaction to the enormous growth, not merely in the numbers of those connected with us, but of those belonging to all denominations, who in spite of the efforts of our enemies have been won to sympathise with us during the last six months. And we might in presence of these facts resign ourselves with indifference to any hostile expression of opinion.
But what I regret and would fain avert, if not too late, is a growth of a conviction amongst all these, that the scandalous reports circulated against us find ready credence with the authorities of the Church, and that the multitudes of poor labourers whose zealous efforts to diffuse religion cannot at any rate be denied, are looked upon no longer with sympathy, but rather with contempt, by the clergy. I do not hesitate to say that the spread of such a conviction in these days when, as his Lordship the Bishop of Exeter has pointed out, the spiritual state of great masses of the population, especially in large towns, is so unsatisfactory, would be a national calamity.
Is it impossible for us to have an opportunity of meeting and refuting the groundless accusations made against us, which alone can account for the changed attitude of your Lordship's house towards us?--I am, my Lord, yours most respectfully,
(Signed) WILLIAM BOOTH.
The answer he received to this protest is not very easy to understand:
LAMBETH PALACE, S.E.,
April 13, 1883.
MY DEAR SIR--I am directed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 11th inst. respecting the newspaper reports of the late discussion upon the Salvation Army in the Upper House of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury.
His Grace understands you to ask for an opportunity of making a statement respecting your view of the present position and work of the persons under your control.
I am directed to remind you that when enquiry was first set on foot by a Committee of Bishops, nearly a year ago, you were so kind as to offer, for the information of the Committee, to send full answers to the circular of enquiry addressed to clergy and others who had had experience of the working of the Salvation Army.
These papers were placed in your hands on their first issue in order that you might be fully cognizant of the enquiries that were being made, but no answer whatever was received until a few days ago, when a request emanated from your Office for new copies of the questions, the former copies having been lost. New copies were at once sent, but the Archbishop has not, as yet, received from you any reply.
I am directed now to inform you that a Committee of both Houses of the Convocation of Canterbury was on Tuesday last appointed to consider the various methods which in different quarters are now being adopted and suggested for reaching the masses, and to assure you that this Committee hopes that it may be allowed to obtain from yourselves, as well as from other organisations, any such information as you may be kindly able to afford.--I remain, my dear Sir, yours faithfully,
RANDALL J. DAVIDSON, Chaplain.
Mr. W. Booth.
On the 12th of April General Booth addressed a letter of protest to the Bishop of Hereford, and received the following replies:
THE PALACE, HEREFORD,
April 13, 1883.
SIR--Your letter of the 12th instant has come into my hands this morning.
For the remarks which I made in Convocation I believed that I had sufficient authority; but as you challenge this statement, I shall of course make further enquiries, and if I find that I am misinformed I will take an early opportunity of correcting the mistake.--I am, Sir, faithfully yours,
J. HEREFORD.
Gen. Booth.
April 16, 1883.
SIR--Having made the enquiries referred to in my letter of the 13th inst., I regret to say that I am compelled to abide by the language which I used in Convocation last week, as reported in The Guardian Newspaper of the 11th instant.--Faithfully yours,
J. HEREFORD.
Gen. Booth.
On the 19th, General Booth replied to the two Bishops. We give his letter to the still sceptical Bishop of Hereford:
April 19, 1883.
To The Right Hon. The Lord Bishop of Hereford.
MY LORD--I have read both your Lordship's letters, but find to my great regret that neither of them afford even the hope of our being confronted with the particular accusations which are made against us. I am astonished that your Lordship should not, apparently, perceive the unreasonableness of making a charge affecting the morality of 450 congregations of poor people without first giving any one of those congregations an opportunity of clearing themselves from the imputation. It is impossible for us to let the matter rest here; we must give the same opportunity to all which we have given to the two congregations existing in your Lordship's Diocese to meet the accusation, and we are confident of being able to show from every part of the country that whatever cases of immorality may have occurred the impression produced as to the general character of our services and of their moral effect is quite erroneous.--I am, my Lord, yours faithfully, (Signed) WILLIAM BOOTH.
The Bishop of Oxford was more reasonable, and after an interview with Commissioner Railton and two other Salvationists approved of the following statement, which was immediately made public:
He assured us that he had never had any intention of making an accusation against the Army, still less of exciting public hostility to it, and that his words used in the midst of a discussion in Convocation must have been ill-chosen to have conveyed such an impression.
All he had meant to convey was that he strongly disapproved of the gathering together of young people at late and exciting meetings, inasmuch as there was great danger that, however excellent might be the intentions of those who held such meetings, young men and women on leaving them without proper control might fall into immorality, as had doubtless been the case sometimes already. G.S.R.
Although the Salvation Army was able to clear itself of these charges, opposition against it grew rather than diminished with its advancement among the masses. There was nothing at all during the 'eighties of that wonderful popularity among men of all creeds and of no creeds which came in 1890. One may say generally that while the Army was making friends for itself among the saddest sections of democracy it was making enemies among the other classes. The aristocracy, the professional and commercial classes, the better-off working man, and the most degraded elements of the mob were hostile to the movement. William Booth, who had watched, from 1878 to 1883, the development of the extraordinary spirit which he himself had evoked, and who perhaps had wavered on some important matters, was driven more and more to take a definite line of action. He was forced into this position as much by the hostility of the world as by the devotion of his followers. It was a case in which a man must either surrender or fight. If he altered his methods or bowed in any way to popular clamour he not only acknowledged himself to be wrong, but violated his own conscience and surrendered his army into the hands of its enemies. To maintain his position and to lead his followers it was necessary to advance with greater boldness and with more unfaltering determination.
But it is interesting to observe that the conservative character of his disposition still held him back from any violent onslaught. He was not one of those who, in John Morley's phrase, "helped to state the problem, writing up in letters of flame at the brutal feast of kings and the rich that civilization is as yet only a mockery"; on the contrary, he was a monarchist, a constitutionalist, a conservative, and certainly not a lover of radicals and socialists; he kept his eyes averted from the political problem, he never once was temped to make himself the leader of revolution, the captain of an angry and avenging democracy; his whole emphasis was on religion, and the only war he understood, the only war for which he had the smallest inclination, was the war against sin. If he became a bolder leader and a greater general after 1883, it was still in the sphere of practical religion; he advanced more confidently as the head of an increasing international organization, but his whole attack was concentrated upon the forces of iniquity. He may have harboured critical thoughts about the Church, he may have entertained in his heart hard judgments for society, but his public life was entirely circumscribed to a consistent and an undeviating attack upon the moral causes of suffering and poverty.
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