The Salvation Army is often and rightly recognized as an early egalitarian ministry. In 1860, a year before William and Catherine Booth broke away from the Methodist New Connexion and five years before they started The Salvation Army in 1865, Catherine Booth preached her first sermon at Bethesda Chapel in Gateshead. From its inception, The Salvation Army has utilized women in a host of positions. The Army’s utilization of women in ministry is rooted in its commitment to global evangelism and an eschatological perspective that seeks to bring “salvation to the world.” This historical reality of egalitarianism in public ministry has led some to think that the early Army was on the leading edge in the feminist movement. Yet, William and Catherine Booth held a complementarian position as it related to the domestic and subordinate roles of women in the home. This paper will argue that the Salvation Army’s historiography has neglected the complementarian aspects of their hermeneutics and ecclesiology.
Leading Booth scholars have anachronistically labelled Catherine Booth as “co-founder” of The Salvation Army. Catherine Booth resisted this title and was never given the title “founder” in her lifetime nor in the fifty years that followed her “Promotion to Glory.” Instead, Catherine Booth was called “The Army Mother.” Both William and Catherine Booth rigorously argued for what would today be classified as complementarian perspectives on gender roles. The structure of The Salvation Army and its military system embodied some of these perspectives which saw the roles of married women being primarily connected to nurturing roles. The contemporary Army has ignored this hermeneutical perspective and often “repented” of its sinful disposition toward women. This paper will first provide a nuanced picture of William and Catherine Booth’s view on the role of women in the church and the home. Secondarily, this paper will analyze the contemporary Army’s repositioning of its history and its claims to full egalitarianism to the neglect of its complementarian history. This neglect has prevented the contemporary Army from presenting a hermeneutic that manages the tension between complementarian and egalitarian polarities.