A Reader’s Guide to Catherine Booth

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 TIMOTHY 2:15

Catherine Booth is easy to read and hard to read at the same time. Easy, because nearly everything she published was preached first, and keeps the directness of the spoken word. Hard, because she does not let the reader sit comfortably, and because the printed addresses keep the capitals, exclamations and repetitions of a speaker in full flight, which can tire a modern eye. Read her aloud, a little at a time, and she comes alive. Everything she wrote is in the public domain.

Begin here

Godliness. Her most rounded book, and the one in the Ochorus library, gathering her sermons on repentance, saving faith, love, prayer and the perfect heart, and her Exeter Hall addresses on holiness. If you read only one book of hers, read this. The four sermons on love are the least known and among the best.

Aggressive Christianity. Her first collection of addresses, published in 1880, and the one that made her name as a writer. Several of her addresses in the Ochorus library, among them the title address itself, first reached readers here. This is the place to meet her on the church’s duty to the world.

The addresses in the Ochorus library. Ten of her sermons are available here individually. For a first evening, read Witnessing for Christ, which contains her own account of her first public words; then Dealing with Anxious Souls, which shows her method with enquirers; then The Training of Children.

On the church and the world

Popular Christianity (1887). Addresses given in the West End of London against the comfortable religion of respectable society. Sharp and uncomfortable, and at times more severe than persuasive, but a searching mirror for any prosperous church.

Life and Death. A further collection of her addresses, largely evangelistic, and a good companion to Aggressive Christianity for those who want to hear her pleading with the unconverted.

Her sermons also circulated under other titles in her lifetime, including Papers on Practical Religion and Papers on Godliness. Readers who find these editions will recognise much of the same material.

On women

Female Ministry; or, Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel (1859, later revised). Short, closely argued, and historically important. Read it with the Scriptures open.

Approach with care

Adaptation of Measures. Essential for understanding the Army’s methods, and full of wisdom about the difference between the gospel and its packaging. But it contains the principle by which she set aside the sacraments, and it should be read alongside Matthew 28:19 and 1 Corinthians 11:23–26.

The Training of Children. Much of it is wise, practical and warm. Her counsel on conquering an infant’s will should be read with Colossians 3:21 beside it, and not followed as written.

The holiness addresses. Read them for their hunger for purity and their confidence in Christ. Where they teach entire sanctification as a single crisis, weigh them against the wider witness of Scripture and the church.

About Catherine Booth

F. de L. Booth-Tucker’s The Life of Catherine Booth, the Mother of The Salvation Army (1892), written by her son-in-law soon after her death, is the standard early life. It is long, admiring and full of her letters. W. T. Stead’s Mrs. Booth of the Salvation Army (1900) is a vivid short portrait by the journalist who fought beside her in 1885. Catherine Bramwell-Booth, her granddaughter, wrote Catherine Booth: The Story of Her Loves (1970), a warm family account. Roger J. Green’s Catherine Booth: A Biography of the Cofounder of The Salvation Army (1996) is the best modern life, and careful about her theology. Roy Hattersley’s Blood and Fire (1999), a life of both Booths by a secular admirer, is readable and more critical. Pamela J. Walker’s Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down (2001) is a scholarly study of the early Army, and illuminating on the women who preached in it.

Read more than one. The early lives were written by people who loved her, and it shows in what they leave out; the modern ones sometimes miss what she cared about most.

Three counsels for reading her

Read her with the Bible open. She argued from texts, constantly, and she would want them checked. Read her for the burden rather than the system. Where she presses a framework further than Scripture goes — on the sacraments, on a second blessing, on total abstinence — take the concern and leave the scaffolding. And read her slowly. An address a week, acted on, will do more than the whole shelf admired.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:21