100 Fun Facts About Salvation Army

A Salvation Army children's home in Liverpool gave its name to which Beatles song?

Strawberry Fields Forever recalls the garden of Strawberry Field, the Army home near John Lennon's house where he played as a boy. The Army opened the site to visitors in 2019.

The Salvation Army's theology derives from which Christian tradition?

Methodism: William Booth spent nine years as a Methodist minister before breaking away to work as a street evangelist, an approach his fellow clergy would not accept.

William Booth was apprenticed at 13 to what trade?

Pawnbroker. His father could no longer pay his school fees, and though Booth came to hate the trade he stayed in it into his twenties, to send money home.

By Army tradition, Bramwell Booth objected in 1878 to which word his father used for the movement?

Volunteer! 'I'm no volunteer, I'm a regular or nothing', he protested, so the word was struck from the draft, 'salvation' was written in, and the movement had its name.

William Booth summed up the Army's approach to the 'down and outs' with which three S's?

Soup, soap and salvation, strictly in that order: feed people first, Booth said, then get them clean, and only then talk to them about God.

What is the Salvation Army's motto?

Blood and Fire: the blood is Christ's and the fire is the Holy Spirit's, which is why the Army's flag is red and yellow.

Salvation Army brigades perform drilled display routines with which instrument?

Tambourines. The Army calls them timbrels, the Bible's word for the instrument, and its timbrel brigades move through set patterns in time to the music.

What is the title of the Salvation Army's international leader?

General. William Booth already ran the movement under the title General Superintendent, so when it turned itself into an army in 1878 its top rank was ready-made.

Salvationists must abstain from alcohol, illegal drugs, gambling and what else?

Smoking. Every new soldier signs a covenant on joining, promising to give up tobacco along with drink, drugs and gambling.

Which two sacraments are absent from Salvation Army worship?

Baptism and Holy Communion. William Booth held that no sacrament was needed to save a soul, and thought too many believers leaned on the outward sign instead of the grace behind it.

Catherine Booth's 1859 pamphlet Female Ministry argued that women had as much right as men to do what?

Preach. She wrote it to defend an American woman evangelist whose sermons had caused a stir near the Booths' home, and the Army later built the principle into its rules.

The Salvation Army's newspaper, first printed in London in December 1879, is called what?

The War Cry is still sold by Salvationists in uniform, famously from pub to pub, with the money going to the Army's social work.

In which country is the Salvation Army affectionately known as 'the Salvos'?

Australia. The clipped nickname is so universal there that the Army uses it of itself: its official vision statement speaks of what 'Salvos' will do, and its history pages list 'notable Salvos'.

What was the Skeleton Army?

Mobs that violently disrupted Salvationist meetings: they marched under skull-and-crossbones banners and threw rocks and dead rats, and publicans who feared for their trade were blamed for backing them.

From 1904 the elderly William Booth toured Britain, speaking to roadside crowds from what?

An open-top motor car, still a novelty on British roads. He made seven of these tours by 1911, stopping in towns and villages, the last when he was past eighty.

The 1882 case Beatty v Gillbanks cleared Salvation Army marchers of blame for what?

Riots started by their opponents. Three Salvationists had been found guilty for marching despite a local ban; the High Court overturned that, and the case gave its name to a legal principle on peaceful assembly.

Which kind of musical group became a Salvation Army trademark after the Fry family formed its first in 1878?

Brass bands. Charles Fry and his three sons began playing at open-air meetings; William Booth heard of them and put them to work, and the family gave up its business to join full time.

In 1891 the Salvation Army opened its own London factory to make a safer kind of what?

Matches. The usual kind were made with white phosphorus, which rotted workers' jaws; the Army's factory used the safer red kind and paid better wages, though its boxes cost about three times as much.

William Booth, once mobbed and ridiculed, lived to receive an official invitation to which royal event?

Edward VII's coronation, in 1902, and at the king's own insistence. Three years later the old man toured England and was received in state by the mayors of town after town.

The Salvation Army's organised social work in Melbourne began in 1883 with the opening of what?

A home for ex-convicts, in Melbourne. An officer had watched men leave gaol with nowhere to go and drift back into crime, so his 'Prison-Gate Brigade' met them on the day of release.

Where did George Scott Railton's party hold its first advertised meeting in America in March 1880?

A variety theatre in New York: Harry Hill's music hall advertised the newcomers on its bill. Their first notable convert was a drunk jailed so often that a judge sentenced him to attend instead.

The Salvation Army's Christmas kettle began in the 1890s at a ferry landing in which city?

San Francisco. Captain Joseph McFee needed to pay for a Christmas dinner for the city's poor, and borrowed a collecting stunt he remembered from his days as a sailor in Liverpool.

The very first Salvation Army Christmas kettle, set out by Captain Joseph McFee, was really what?

A crab pot on a tripod, with McFee calling 'Keep the pot boiling!' to passers-by. Within four years some thirty other Army posts had kettles of their own.

Which NFL team's Thanksgiving halftime show has opened the Salvation Army's kettle campaign since 1997?

Dallas Cowboys. The team's owners turned their nationally televised halftime over to the charity, and the kettle campaign has raised billions of dollars since that first show.

What did Salvation Army 'Doughnut Lassies' famously fry doughnuts in during World War I?

Soldiers' helmets, filled with lard, served as the frying pan when two officers first made doughnuts near the front in 1917. Shell casings and wine bottles did duty as rolling pins.

National Doughnut Day began as a Salvation Army fundraiser during what?

The Depression. The Army's Chicago branch held the first one in 1938 to raise money for people in need, and it honours the women who fried doughnuts for troops in the First World War.

William Booth's 1890 book on poverty took its title from which explorer's account of Africa?

Henry Morton Stanley's In Darkest Africa gave Booth his title, and he turned it round in his first chapter: 'As there is a darkest Africa is there not also a darkest England?'

The Salvation Army's Hadleigh farm colony in Essex, bought in 1891, hosted which sport at the London 2012 Olympics?

Mountain biking. William Booth bought the land to give destitute Londoners farm work, and the Army still owns it and runs it as a working farm.

The Salvation Army's 1885 campaign pushed Parliament to raise what from 13 to 16?

The age of consent. To prove girls were being sold, the campaigners 'bought' a thirteen-year-old for £5; the journalist who printed the story went to prison for it, and the Army founder's son stood trial beside him.

In which Salvation Army Christmas programme do shoppers pick a paper tag bearing a child's wish and buy the gift?

Angel Tree. Each paper angel hung on a Christmas tree stands for one child in need, so a stranger who takes the tag home becomes that child's Santa for the year.

Which wartime organisation did the Salvation Army help found in 1941, alongside the YMCA and four other groups?

The USO. President Roosevelt wanted one body to look after servicemen far from home, so six charities pooled their canteens and clubs, a job the Army had been doing since its doughnut days in France.

How did William Booth, who died in 1912, name his successor?

In a sealed envelope, lodged in advance and opened after he died. It named his eldest son, and it was the last time an Army leader was chosen that way.

What ended Bramwell Booth's sixteen years as the Salvation Army's second leader in 1929?

A vote by senior officers: he had refused to retire, so the Army's first High Council judged him unfit through ill health by 52 votes to 5. He died four months later.

Who became the first woman to lead the Salvation Army, in 1934?

Evangeline Booth had already spent thirty years running the Army in the United States, where she sent the doughnut girls to the Western Front, and she kept her American citizenship for life.

Which queen sat almost unrecognised at the back of William Booth's 1912 funeral?

Mary, George V's queen, sat far back among some 40,000 mourners in the Olympia exhibition hall. The king wrote to the family that the nation had lost a great organiser.

In Salvationist parlance, a member who dies is said to have been what?

Promoted to Glory: Salvationists treat a believer's death as a step up in rank, into God's presence, so the Army's flag is draped over the coffin like a soldier's.

William Booth's last public speech, in 1912, is remembered for which repeated vow?

I'll fight. 'While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight; while little children go hungry, I'll fight', he is remembered as telling a packed hall, months before he died at 83.

Shaw's 1905 play about a Salvation Army officer whose father makes munitions is titled what?

Major Barbara quits in disgust when the Army accepts big cheques from a whisky distiller and from her own father, the arms maker. Their money keeps her shelter open.

Which philanthropist left the Salvation Army more than $1.5 billion in 2003, by far the largest gift in its history?

Joan Kroc, widow of the man who built McDonald's, had already paid for a huge Army community centre in San Diego. Her bequest was to build more like it, and 26 Kroc Centers now stand across the country.

The Salvation Army, at work in well over 100 countries, usually groups each country's operations into one what?

Territory. Each has its own commander, the United States being big enough to need four, and all answer to a single international headquarters, so the Army runs as one worldwide body.

What was the Salvation Army's pioneering Melbourne film studio of the 1890s called?

The Limelight Department, run by an officer named Joseph Perry, went on to make about 300 films. Its show Soldiers of the Cross mixed film, lantern slides and music to tell the stories of Christian martyrs.

The Salvation Army dates its American disaster-relief work from which catastrophe?

The Galveston hurricane of 1900. The great California earthquake six years later drew a second big effort, and the Army says it has been at every big American disaster since.

Which emblem marks Salvation Army buildings, shops and vans around the world?

A red shield. It began as the badge of the Army's huts and hostels for troops in wartime, and in Britain it has since replaced the older crest on the outside of Army buildings.

Under what name was the Salvation Army founded in 1865?

It traces its origins to the Blind Beggar Tavern, and William Booth reorganised it with a military structure in 1878.

Salvation Army officers are the equivalent of what in other Protestant churches?

Ordained ministers. Each trains for two years in residence before taking a military rank, and from the Army's Victorian beginnings the job has been open to women on the same terms as men.

In which Asian country did the Salvation Army establish its first outpost, in 1882?

India. Its pioneer, a former colonial magistrate named Frederick Tucker, landed in Bombay, swapped his uniform for a holy man's saffron robes and took the Indian name Fakir Singh.

What does the Salvation Army call each of its local congregations?

A corps. The word came in with the ranks and uniforms when the movement turned itself into an army, and many of its halls took a fortress name as well: citadel.

What must residents of a Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center do during their six-month stay?

Work assignments. The Army calls it work therapy, up to eight hours a day in its warehouses and shops, and treats steady work habits as part of the cure alongside counselling and worship.

What military-sounding name did the Salvation Army long give the pledge every new soldier signs?

Articles of War, known today as the Soldier's Covenant. William Booth modelled his rule book on the British army's, so a convert who joins is enrolled as a soldier.

In which English city was William Booth born in 1829, in a house that is now a museum to him?

Nottingham. He grew up poor in the suburb of Sneinton and was speaking to the city's poor in its streets as a teenager, years before he moved to the capital.

A Salvation Army band renamed Takasa represented which country at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest?

Switzerland sent the band, whose bassist Emil Ramsauer was 95. Eurovision's ban on religious content made them drop their German name, Heilsarmee, and swap their uniforms for other outfits.

Which musical pairs gambler Sky Masterson with Sarah Brown of a Salvation Army-style mission?

Guys and Dolls calls its uniformed street mission Save-a-Soul. In the 1955 film Marlon Brando played Sky and Jean Simmons played Sarah.

Since 1982, anonymous American donors have famously dropped what into Salvation Army kettles?

Gold coins have been slipped in anonymously ever since one turned up in a kettle in Crystal Lake, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

W. T. Stead, the editor jailed after an 1885 exposé with Bramwell Booth, died aboard which liner?

Titanic was carrying Stead to a peace congress at Carnegie Hall in 1912. Booth had been acquitted at the 1885 trial, while Stead served three months in prison.

William Booth's first East End mission meetings in 1865 were held in a tent pitched on what?

A Quaker burial ground in Whitechapel was the site. The mission born in that tent took its military name thirteen years later.

In the Salvation Army's own salute, a raised right index finger points towards what?

Heaven is the point: the salute greets a fellow citizen of heaven and pledges to help others get there. Salvationists also use it to deflect applause from themselves.

Which US president proclaimed the first National Salvation Army Week?

Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed it in November 1954, urging Americans to honour the organisation for seventy-five years of work in the United States.

Canadians and Americans often call Salvation Army thrift stores by which woman's name?

Sally Ann is the nickname in Canada and the United States, while Britons shop at the Sally Army and New Zealanders at Sally's.

William Booth founded which kind of business in 1890, later renamed Reliance?

A bank was Booth's answer when he needed investors to finance mortgages on the movement's buildings. Reliance Bank now also serves other churches, charities and businesses.

A Salvation Army officer being moved to a new posting is said to receive what?

Marching orders usually come every two to five years and can mean moving a great distance. Married officers usually hold the same rank and are posted together.

On the Salvation Army's red, yellow and blue flag, what does the blue stand for?

Purity is the blue's meaning. The flag as a whole stands for the movement's war on sin and social evils, and new members are publicly enrolled beneath it.

Captain Harry Cooper designed which official Salvation Army cloth in 1983, using its flag's colours?

A tartan was created for the centenary of a Perth congregation in Scotland, and it is rarely seen outside that country.

The letter S on a Salvation Army uniform collar is said to carry which three-word meaning?

Saved to Serve is the meaning read into the S, which also stands simply for Salvation. Other letters replace it where the local language calls for one.

Which portable instrument did up to half of British Salvation Army officers once play?

Concertina players could carry both melody and chords and still sing or speak while playing, which no cornet player could manage.

What name does the Salvation Army give the singers in its four-part church choirs?

Songsters sing in groups with the traditional soprano, alto, tenor and bass sections, and the premier group is the International Staff Songsters.

In a Salvation Army hall, what name is given to the bench where anyone may kneel to pray?

Mercy seat is the name, borrowed from the lid of the Ark of the Covenant. It is the focal point of the hall and is open to anyone, member or not.

A Moscow court once ordered the Salvation Army expelled after classing it as what?

A paramilitary organisation was the court's label for the uniformed church. The European Court of Human Rights ruled the decision illegal in 2006.

The Salvation Army's SATERN disaster network, founded in 1988, is run by enthusiasts of which hobby?

Amateur radio operators of every licence class, and of any religious faith or none, can join SATERN, which is based in North America.

Bramwell Booth, the Salvation Army's second leader, wrote a booklet urging readers to adopt which diet?

Vegetarianism ran in the family: William and Catherine Booth ate that way too, and Bramwell believed that meat stimulated drinking.

Kate Booth, the founder's eldest daughter, took the Salvation Army to which country in 1881 as 'la Maréchale'?

France greeted her with almost unanimously hostile newspaper reports. She was later arrested and deported from a neighbouring country for holding a meeting in a forest.

Elijah Cadman, who first proposed Salvation Army uniforms in 1878, had earlier made his living as what?

Chimney sweep was his trade from the age of six, when he was small enough to climb flues. Five feet tall as an adult, he became known as the Converted Sweep.

Salvationists Edward Saunders and John Gore led an 1880 meeting in an Adelaide park from the back of what?

A greengrocer's cart was their platform in Adelaide Botanic Park, and they offered food to anyone who had not eaten.

Which architect of Britain's red telephone box designed the Salvation Army's William Booth College?

Giles Gilbert Scott designed the officer training college on Denmark Hill as a memorial to the founder. Completed in 1932, it is now a listed building.

In which Canadian city is Booth University College, the Salvation Army's liberal arts school, located?

Winnipeg is home to the college, which sits in the city's downtown. Its full name honours both William and Catherine Booth.

The Empress of Ireland, lost in 1914 with a large Salvation Army party aboard, sank near the mouth of which river?

Saint Lawrence fog hid the Norwegian collier that struck the liner. The party of about 170 Salvationists and relatives was heading for an international congress in London.

Which Salvation Army pop group, led by a keyboard-playing officer, twice reached the UK singles chart in 1964?

The Joystrings, led by Joy Webb, were the first Salvation Army pop group to achieve chart success, with two singles that year.

Which member of the royal family opened the Salvation Army's Queen Victoria Street headquarters in London in 2004?

Princess Anne described the Queen Victoria Street offices as a working building but also a worship building. The Salvation Army first made the site its headquarters in 1881.

Samuel Logan Brengle began writing Helps to Holiness while recovering from an attack with what?

A thrown brick, hurled by a drunk in Boston, left him unable to preach for 18 months. The articles he wrote while recovering became the book.

Outside which Whitechapel pub, later notorious for the Kray twins, did William Booth give a sermon in 1865?

The Blind Beggar is where Ronnie Kray murdered George Cornell in front of witnesses a century later. A statue of Booth now stands nearby.

Which university awarded an honorary degree to William Booth, by then also a Freeman of the City of London?

Oxford honoured a man who had spent a year unemployed in his youth. In his later years Booth was received in audience by kings, emperors and presidents.

By which affectionate title was Catherine Booth, co-founder with her husband William, known to Salvationists?

The Army Mother was also one of its most effective speakers: while William worked among the poor, Catherine addressed wealthier audiences and won their financial support.

William Booth's dying wish in 1912 was for the Salvation Army to begin work in which country?

China was the subject of a pledge that Bramwell Booth made to his dying father, promising to see the work established there.

Salvation Army positional statements oppose euthanasia, assisted suicide and which form of punishment?

The death penalty clashes with its belief that any person, however wretched, can become a new one, though it accepts that Salvationists themselves are divided on the question.

Many traditional Salvation Army church buildings are called temples or which fortress-style name?

Citadel suits the military theme, and the buildings work as community centres as well as churches, with some running weekly youth nights.

Which object was added on top of Captain W. H. Ebdon's 1878 design for the Salvation Army crest?

A crown stands for the crown of life promised to the faithful. The crest is the movement's oldest official emblem and also carries a cross and two crossed swords.

William Booth, accused of building a family dynasty, insisted that his daughters' husbands do what?

Take his surname they did, with a hyphen: Frederick Tucker became Booth-Tucker and Arthur Clibborn became Booth-Clibborn.

Which US city hosted the Salvation Army's International Congress in 2000, the first held outside Britain?

Atlanta staged the seventh congress, a gathering open to Salvationists from around the world. The first had met in London in 1886.

In which US city did teenager Eliza Shirley start Salvation Army work before its first official party landed?

Philadelphia was where her parents had emigrated for work. When George Scott Railton's official party landed in 1880, the Shirley family's meetings were already under way.

In which London cemetery, long favoured by nonconformists, are William and Catherine Booth buried?

Abney Park in Stoke Newington holds the couple together, close to their son Bramwell and several of the movement's other early leaders.

Which honour, created by Bramwell Booth in 1917, is the highest the Salvation Army gives its own members?

Order of the Founder awards are made sparingly. The first went to an army private for his Christian witness during military service in the First World War.

The Jerry McAuley, given in 1911 as the first vessel of America's 'Salvation Navy', was what kind of boat?

A yacht with two cabins, it was donated by architect Bradford Gilbert to cruise the Atlantic coast doing missionary work among seamen in port.

Which Salvation Army rank, first held by George Scott Railton, sits directly below its world leader?

Commissioner tops a ladder that climbs from lieutenant through captain and colonel. Railton had lived in the Booth household for years as William Booth's secretary.

What does the Salvation Army call people who make it their church without signing its membership covenant?

Adherents recognise the movement as their church but stop short of the full commitment. Its worship services are open to anyone, enrolled or not.

Which Victorian philanthropist and evangelical peer went so far as to call William Booth the Anti-Christ?

Lord Shaftesbury was not alone: the Church of England was hostile at first, and one main complaint was that Booth raised women to the status of men.

Who led the Salvation Army back into Eastern Europe after communism fell, having won its top post in 1986?

Eva Burrows was the only woman among seven candidates, and she won on the fourth ballot by the slimmest margin in the High Council's history.

Which American poet's 1913 poem in Poetry magazine pictures William Booth arriving in the afterlife?

Vachel Lindsay wrote it soon after Booth's death, and the composer Charles Ives set it to music shortly after it was published.

Which London paper ran 'The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon', the 1885 exposé Bramwell Booth helped arrange?

The Pall Mall Gazette's editor arranged the purchase of a thirteen-year-old girl to prove it could be done, helped by a reformed brothel-keeper.

Which piece of women's Salvation Army uniform, introduced in 1880, earned the nickname 'hallelujah'?

Bonnet wearers were protected from the cold and, in the early days, from objects hurled at their heads by hostile crowds. It began to be phased out from the late 1960s.

In which Yorkshire port did Elijah Cadman's posters announce a 'Hallelujah Army' led by 'Captain Cadman'?

Whitby was where Cadman arrived in 1877 and styled himself a captain, and he was soon giving William Booth a military title too.

Emma Booth-Tucker, the founder's daughter known as 'the Consul', was killed in 1903 by what?

A train crash killed her at 43, while she was travelling from Amity Colony in Colorado to meet her husband in Chicago.