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Soldiers of Mercy

The Salvation Army and the religion of compassion.

Dec 14, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 13 • By MARK TOOLEY
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Christianity in Action

The History of the International Salvation Army

by Henry Gariepy

Eerdmans, 308 pp., $25

Many Americans know nothing of the Salvation Army beyond its Christmas red kettles and bell-ringers in shopping malls. Or they may recall the 1955 musical Guys and Dolls, where gangster Marlon Brando pursues pious Jean Simmons, a "sergeant" at the Save a Soul Mission. But the Army, founded in mid-19th-century Great Britain as a splinter from Methodism, is a lively international denomination in 117 countries with a rich history and expansive cultural and charitable impact.

In the United States alone, it raises $1.2 billion annually (not including the $1.6 billion bequest of McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc in 2003), eclipsing the annual receipts of many major denominations. Internationally, it has 17,000 "officers," over a million "soldiers," and many more volunteers. Its schools employ 16,000 teachers and teach a half-million students. Every year the Army's missions feed, clothe, or otherwise assist millions of poor or displaced persons and victims of natural disasters.

Salvationists are a strange church. They don't have clergy but uniformed officers with military ranks, headed by a London-based general. They are evangelical and Wesleyan, with typical low-church moral strenuousness. Officers must forswear liquor, gambling, smoking, and profanity, among other vices. But like Quakers, they don't have sacraments; there is no baptism or eucharist. And unlike many conservative churches, women have always served in leadership and preached.

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