JOHN COUTTS: THE SALVATIONISTS (published 1977)

- Book on the Salvation Army; however, it's also (c) The Salvation Army, and no doubt light on criticism as a result. At the time I noted this, before 2000, I did not know that Jews often founded religions. I've made no attempt to survey literature on the Salvation Army, or to find out who Coutts was - RW
- Unindexed
- Photos collected together midway (mainly oldish looking scenes, horse-drawn 'fort', people in Africa, Asia, parts of Britain regarded as slums, Booth House Whitechapel, Missing persons interview etc] including poster for meeting in Princes Hall, Piccadilly, on Protection of Young Girls, and another [Note: use of force:] dated 1881 in Salisbury announcing the formation of a group to 'forcibly break the ranks of the Salvation Army when in Procession through the Streets..'

- CONTENTS:

PART ONE: WHAT THEY BELIEVE
1 THE CREED THEY PROFESS
2 THE ARMY AND THE CHURCHES
3 THE RULES THEY LIVE BY
4 THEIR INWARD FAITH
5 THEIR WAY IN WORSHIP
6 THEIR SOCIAL CONSCIENCE

PART TWO: THE ARMY WORLD WIDE
7 IN EUROPE
8 IN AMERICA
9 IN AFRICA
10 IN ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA

- viii: 'Anthony is five years old. As a baby he was dedicated under the Salvation Army flag. ..'
- ix: 'Affiong John is a Nigerian, and a widow. She can read Efik and she speaks a little English. Since she cannot read English her book knowledge is largely limited to the vernacular Bible, of which, like any 17th C puritan, she knows a great deal. her social life in centred on the local Salvation Army community, and especially the women's organization - the Home League. .. her work is seasonal, with hard labour in January when the bush is cut down and fired. .. she has to live in two eccentric cycles: for religion.. follows the Western seven-day week, but markets keep to the ancient African eight-day week: ..
Affiong John is a Christian animist - that is to say her world-view is largely pre-scientific. She does not worship the primeval spirits that haunt the river, the stream, the great forest tree; but she believes in their existence..
She only got angry when her son tried to explain to her how bigoted Christian missionaries had helped to destroy traditional culture, condemning palm wine and new yam festival and colourful masquerades. What did he know - she asked - about traditional culture? Had he ever seen a suspected wife put to the poison ordeal? Did he know what it was like when the all-male secret societies terrorized the women of the village, or when the girls were out in the fattening house and forbidden to 'learn book'? Affiong can remember from childhood how the Christians marched singing into the forest to cut down the Evil Bush where people abandoned twin babies and smallpox victims and the unhallowed dead. ..'
- xi: 'Hazel is 17. Her father and brothers are fishermen. .. [she] is going to break with her boy-friend. .. Jim is an alcoholic. He was brought up in The Salvation Army.. began to play the cornet.. By the time he was sixteen .. a solo performer..'
- 4: The 'Articles of War' with 11 articles of faith, which apparently are Methodist
/5: Tom Jones, Parson Thwackum says when he means religion, he means the Church of England.
/1878 the Christian Mission turned into The Salvation Army: 'We believe in the old-fashioned Salvation. We have not developed or improved into Universalism, Unitarianism, or Nothingarianism.. taught in the Bible, preached by Luther and Wesley and Whitfield
/6: Booth took sides with Wesley.. Whitfield had followed John Calvin and opted for.. predestination. .. the Methodists, in agreement with the Dutchman, Arminius, had maintained that God had foreknowledge.. Christ therefore died for all, not for the elect..'
/7: 1873.. Conference of the Christian Mission directed an anathema against those who denied freewill: 'Resolved that no person shall be allowed to teach.. the doctrine of final perseverance..'
/7: 1876.. George Scott Railton.. convinced that the Methodists were losing the fire as the Quakers had done before them. .. For creeds are like ancient and abandoned fortifications, monuments to intellectual conflicts of a bygone age.
/8: In 1846 George Eliot.. published her translation of Life of Jesus by David Strauss. .. Darwin.. T H Huxley.. Wilberforce.. Marx.. Charles Bradlaugh.. excluded from the British Parliament for refusing to swear by almighty God.
/8: '.. the chief corner-stone.. the inspiration of the Bible. .. traditional Christian doctrine of a totally reliable Bible, graciously given by God and free from mistakes. They saw no need to define the matter further, .. left room.. for 'liberals' and 'conservatives', 'fundamentalists' and 'modernists', to coexist.. in the Army
/Catherine Both.. 1886.. condemned 'Christian freethinkers.. The inspiration of the Bible is to them on a level with that of Homer or Shakespeare, and for anything they do not like they have a free rendering, or a cool excision. ..'
/9: `1919 liberal commentary by A S Peake'
/10: 'Methodistic articles'
/10: 'No general assembly meets.. The administration controls the press, which rarely airs controversial issues.. The would-be officer does not have a choice of Colleges.. one looks in vain for fair play on the intellectual field
/10: 1905 Bible correspondence course on Genesis and geology, Noah's flood
/10: 1905 Bramwell Booth, eldest son, wrote on 'the Higher Criticism'; circular argument on reliability of the Bible
/12: Bramwell Booth in 1927 on evolution and Sir Arthur Keith
/13: 1923 Handbook of Doctrine
/13: Cunningham's articles only in Staff Review, a journal restricted to Lieutenant-Colonels and above. .. not made available to the rank and file in book form till 1961. ..'
/14: labels 'fundamentalist' and 'modernist'
/15: T H Huxley, and Engels, on the Salvation Army; Engels thought it revived the propaganda of early Christianity
/15: Freud says in 'Two Short Accounts of Psychoanalysis' that a band of dedicated spirits as lay assistants was needed
/16: late 1920s 'articles by such heavy-weights as Samuel Brengle, upholding the importance of the preaching of hell.'
/16: 'Eternal death disappeared from the young people's song book .. in 1963'
- 20: 'There were many cross-currents in the evangelical movement in 19th C Britain. The 'old dissenters' (Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Quakers) who had parted company from the Established Church in the 17th C, had been reawakened by the appearance of Methodism in the 18th. Led with zeal and authority by John wesley.. part[ed] company with the Church of England.. in 1784, when Wesley, frustrated by the refusal of the Anglican bishops to provide spiritual care for Methodists in North America, decided to do so himself. But Thomas Coke, the American 'Superintendent', had ideas of his own. Across the ocean superintendents became bishops, and the American Methodist Episcopal Church was born.

Meanwhile, back in Britain.. The constitution bequeathed by John Wesley was far from democratic, and etc etc [More on groupings - New Connexion, primitive Methodists, Bible Christian Societies, East London Christian Mission, until 22: in 1875 William Booth seems to have appointed himself General Superintendent, and be unremovable.
- 23: name 'Salvation Army' more or less an accident, derived from a slogan. .. Absolute autocracy modified in 1904 under advice from Gladstone and others.
- 24: 'General Bramwell Booth guided the Army through the First World War.'
- 25: 'Students of the one-party state will recognize the symptoms: adulation.. reports of progress on all fronts.. total absence of any criticism..'
- 25-26: 'High Council' in 1929 deposes Bramwell Booth [whose sickbed was at Southwold]
- 26: Salvation Army Act of 1931 [not clear whether this was Parliament - I presume not] .. self-perpetuating oligarchy..'
- 29: Railton agreed with Fox [i.e. his views] about Oxbridge. 'condescending curate'.
- 40: Prohibition in US, and repeal
- 41-42: They don't drink alcohol. '.. the Army's anti-alcoholism programme is usually carried out by small groups of specialists: the rank and file .. knows little or nothing about it.'
- 42: Smoking
- 42: Sex; 1899 Orders and regulations forbad kissing, 'unless a relative or some person to whom he is engaged.'/ purity/ Hollywood/ SA stood for sex appeal
- 45-6: Gambling [except that in Sweden they raise money by raffles]
- 46: Make-up
- 47: Sport
- 49: Story about 'ex-débutante Mildred Duff who went to work in London slums.. everyday thing for British boys and girls to be sent hungry to school..'
- 68: [More on 19th C revivalism, with a 'sympathetic account of Salvationist worship in the early 1880s'
- 79: 190 'Staff Review' asked [note: psychology:] 'Is prayer autosuggestion?' - 79: 1922 R S Thouless studied some of the [Salvation] Army's classical methods from the psychological point of view: '.. end of .. service.. invited to come up to the Mercy Seat on stage.. confident tones.. monotonous singing.. the word "Come" .. hypnoidal [i.e. hypnosis-like]..'
- 81: ['organized social work began.. in Australia']
- 83: 'The Army was born amid the great outburst of Victorian philanthropy and voluntary effort.. Barnardo.. Josephine Butler.. William Booth declared that the London poor should be treated at least as well as a cab horse which had shelter, food and work..'
- 127: 'In darkest Africa.. reaching South Africa by 1883, Rhodesia in 1891; in the 1920s, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia). In the 1930s.. Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire (then the Belgian Congo) and across the river to French Congo as well..'
- 126-7: 'When Railton reached Zululand, the impis had been defeated and white power had been imposed. .. In his opinion Zulu sinners differed little from British sinners, And the Zulu dandy closely resembled the English dandy.. beginning of urbanization.. 'Natives.. sent to what is called a "location".. overcrowding.. hovels.. moral degradation.. mine compounds .. simply large squares or sheds.. do not contain a scrap of furniture.. drunkenness.. Boer War.. 'Amidst all the tons of paper.. how many square inches have been used to plead the interests of the peoples of Africa? ..'
- 128: [Quote from H A L Fisher on conversion of Goths etc]
- 129: POLYGAMY: 'All Christian churches have.. found it necessary to provide a half-way house for the polygamous Christian. ..'
- 130: [ANTHROPOLOGY; RELIGION OF THE OPPRESSED: Account of 'Simon Kimbangu in Leopoldville, an African Bunyan in a ravaged land, with no book but the Kikongo Bible, sentenced to .. death.. then reprieved to a living death in Elizabethville jail by the Belgian colonial regime.' S on the collar, shaking hands with a whited and not suffering mishap, touching the 'red cord round the Penitent-form': .. emerged.. syncretistic movement with an odd variety of officials such as 'Pasteur', 'Capitaine', and 'L'Etat'; legalised in 1958. -132: [Rhodesia and Mashona and early history: Jameson of the Raid assigned 3000 acres to the Salvation Army..]
- 133: ZAMBIA: Kenneth Kaunda helped by Salvation Army doctor
- 133-4: TONGA: 9 per cent active Christians.. Every time we have damaged or destroyed a traditional custom like girls' initiation or village beerdrink, without integrating a visible alternative, we have contributed to the destruction of the very fabric of society..'