Pulling the Devil's Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain

by Pamela J. Walker

Those people in uniforms who ring bells and raise money for the poor during the holiday season belong to a religious movement that in 1865 combined early feminism, street preaching, holiness theology, and intentionally outrageous singing into what soon became the Salvation Army. In Pulling the Devil's Kingdom Down, Pamela Walker emphasizes how thoroughly the Army entered into nineteenth-century urban life. She follows the movement from its Methodist roots and East London origins through its struggles with the established denominations of England, problems with the law and the media, and public manifestations that included street brawls with working-class toughs.

The Salvation Army was a neighborhood religion, with a "battle plan" especially suited to urban working-class geography and cultural life. The ability to use popular leisure activities as inspiration was a major factor in the Army's success, since pubs, music halls, sports, and betting were regarded as its principal rivals. Salvationist women claimed the "right to preach" and enjoyed spiritual authority and public visibility more extensively than in virtually any other religious or secular organization. Opposition to the new movement was equally energetic and took many forms, but even as contemporary music hall performers ridiculed the "Hallelujah Lasses," the Salvation Army was spreading across Great Britain and the Continent, and on to North America. The Army offered a distinctive response to the dilemmas facing Victorian Christians, in particular the relationship between what Salvationists believed and the work they did. Walker fills in the social, cultural, and religious contexts that make that relationship come to life.

Genres: European History

360 pages, Hardcover

First published March 3, 2001

Reviews

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down” is the author’s doctoral dissertation presented at Rutgers in 1992. As such it makes several very important points about the Salvation Army in its early years. It also presents the basic problems inherent in the genre. The writing style is tedious. A worse problem is that the author assumes the reader understands the context very well. No effort is made to explain Revivalism or low church theology. There is no effort to explain the temperance, women’s suffrage and labour movements in England which grew in parallel with the Salvation Army and all of which are parts of a broader movement to re-order society during the Victorian.
A final characteristic of “Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down” which limits the appeal to the general reader is that it draws on a very small number of sources primarily archives of the Salvation Army Heritage Centre in London and nineteenth century Salvation Army publications. The work is thus rigorously focussed that it cannot connect to the general reader.
Walker’s narrative begins in 1865 when Catherine Booth and her husband William founded the East London Christian Mission which would later change its name to the Salvation Army. The story finishes in 1890 when William published “In Darkest England and the Way Out” an event that would signal the transformation of the Salvation Army from a revivalist to a social work organization.
Walker’s prime thesis is that the Salvation army represented a synthesis of the Methodists urban missionary activity in England and American revivalism as practiced by Charles Finney, James Caughey, most importantly Phoebe Palmer. The important characteristics of the Salvation Army were female leadership, conversion and enthusiastic street evangelisation.
By allowing women to preach and hold administrative positions, the Salvation Army prepared the way for women’s liberation. It also helped modernize the Christianity as it discovered ways to preach the gospel to people who by their upbringing and personal inclination were unlikely to ever become Church goers. The Salvation Army understood that theology never saves souls. They incited people to convert on the sidewalk and enrol in Christ’s army.
“Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down” is not without its defects. Walker notes but makes no comment on the fact that for the time period of her book, the Salvation Army was a de facto family corporation of the booths. She offers no explanation for why the Salvation Army became a multi-national organization at a time when individual Methodist missions were sprouting through-out the Anglo-Saxon world. Walker also washes her hand of the basic question of how large the organization was. She points out simply that the Salvation Army was composed of missions that opened their doors to all not parishes with membership lists.
Despite its many gaps, “Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down” tells the story of the Salvation Army in admirable fashion and sheds much light on urban revivalism in the Anglo-Saxon world during the Victorian era. It has many rewards for anyone who has some familiarity with American and English Protestantism.

[Josie Seto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dry read