"The Salvation Army began rather inconspicuously in the East End of London in 1865. William Booth, an itinerant Methodist minister, had moved to London with his wife, Catherine, and their family so that Catherine would be enabled to conduct a preaching mission there. While preferring the provinces rather than London for his ministry, William nevertheless accepted an invitation to minister in London's East End, and there he began a ministry eventually known as The Christian Mission. As the numbers of converts grew, William and Catherine Booth organized that mission into an Army--a Salvation Army, taking advantage of the military imagery so common in nineteenth-century England with all the pageantry that such imagery afforded. The Army grew rapidly in Great Britain, and its ministers (officers) and laypersons (soldiers) became common sights on the streets of cities and towns. By the early 1880s, the Army began to expand as a missionary organization to such places as Canada, America, France, and India..."

CHRISTIANS FOR BIBLICAL EQUALITY
Priscilla Papers
Volume 22:3, Summer 2008
10 pages