The Salvation Army
She was appointed as Field Commissioner throughout Great Britain from 1888 to 1891, courageously facing riotous crowds. From 1891 until 1896 she was in charge of Officer Training. When in 1896 an American break-away group led by her brother Ballington Booth and his wife Maud Ballington Booth attempted to tempt American Salvationists away from The Salvation Army and into a rival group called Volunteers of America, General Booth sent Evangeline to New York. When she arrived the doors to Army headquarters on 14th Street had been locked against her. However, "she mounted the fire escape and climbed through a rear window. The dissidents hissed and booed until she literally wrapped herself in an available American flag and challenged: "Hiss that, if you dare." In the stunned silence she played her concertina and sang "Over Jordan without Fearing." Ballington's rebellion was quelled."
She was appointed temporary Territorial Commander of the United States, then Territorial Commander of Canada. In 1904 she returned as Commander of the United States, and held this position until 1934. In the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, she led a mass meeting in Union Square, New York, and raised over $12,000 for Salvation Army relief work amongst the victims of the disaster. During this period she became a US citizen.
In August 1917, despite the differences between Commander Evangeline Booth and US General Pershing, the first of 250 Salvationists left New York for the front line of the Great War in France. They soon won the confidence of the troops with their cheerful brand of ‘seven-days-a-week’ Christianity. As tributes poured in, Evangeline protested: ‘The Salvation Army has had no new success; we have only done an old thing in an old way.’ The American people disagreed, and subscribed an unprecedented $13 million to clear debts incurred by The Army, through its provision of canteens, hostels, rest rooms during the war, and afterwards on the provision of care and accommodation for the returning forces.
In 1927 Evangeline visited her brother, General Bramwell Booth, with a memorandum which set to change the way in which The Salvation Army appointed its General. Bramwell was not convinced; he was adamant that he would appoint his successor as his father had done before him.
In January 1929 the first High Council of The Salvation Army decided otherwise, and since then the General has been elected by the High Council, in line with Evangeline Booth’s original proposal.
Read more about this topic: Evangeline Booth
Famous quotes containing the words salvation army, salvation and/or army:
“you who put gum in my coffee cup
and worms in my Jell-O, you who let me pretend
you were daddy of the poets, witchman, you stand
for all, for all the bad dead, a Salvation Army Band
who plays for no one. I am cement. The bird in me is blind
as I knife out your name and all your dead kind.”
—Anne Sexton (19281974)
“I believe in human liberty as I believe in the wine of life. There is no salvation for men in the pitiful condescension of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of freemen.”
—Woodrow Wilson (18561924)
“In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)