The Red Kettle Brigade

By Neil Earle

One of the highlights of writing for the Plain Truth in the 1990s was being asked to cover the Salvation Army.

I took to this and tried to find a copy for this Personal. No luck. I do remember starting off with the point that growing up in my home town of Carbonear, NL, Canada in the 1950s, no one had a bad word to say about the “Sally Anns” as they were affectionately named, even by those with no use for religion.

The story went around how in the hellholes of WW2 when the medics were often nowhere to be found, SA nurses were usually on the job. In St. John’s during those dark days they ran one of the best shelters for the tens of thousands of servicemen and women passing through to Europe.

As a pastor, whenever we received endowments of clothing we didn’t know what to do with we used to say, Take them to the Salvation Army. The trust they would use it well was ironclad.

“The General Next to God”

The Army was founded in the 1860s in the worst districts of London by William Booth (1829-1912), a Methodist minister disillusioned with the feeble efforts of the churches of his day to give aid and comfort to the poorest of the poor. His daughter Evangeline (1865-1950) took up the same program over here that has now become legendary – food, shelter, clothing and medical assistance, vocational training, elementary schooling and internships in manufacturing and farming, prison ministries including legal aid and even coal for the winter. Their efforts so impressed a young Chicago Cubs baseball player named Billy Sunday that he became the premier evangelist in pre-World War I America.

Their military uniforms, brass bands, their stealing of pop tunes to turn into hymns, and refusals to debate Christian doctrine and embrace the sacraments brought persecution and physical attacks. But good works won out. Booth was praised as the best organizer in England and invited to the coronation of Edward VIII.

Church historian Mark Noll writes: “By 1904 the Army had over nine hundred stations, or corps, in the States. It was (and remains) the most comprehensive Christian outreach to the cities.”

While working at fund-raisers for the Pasadena Rose Parade in the 1990s I noticed the Army band received the warmest ovation every time.

That’s quite a record. When debating the leading atheists in Duarte, California I would frustrate him by looking at my watch and say, “Since we’ve been arguing about God’s existence, the Salvation Army has fed about 10,000 people.”

They’re still at it – don’t delay: visit a red kettle today!