Bodies and Souls.

Blood and Fire: William and Catherine Booth and Their Salvation Army, by Roy Hattersley (Doubleday, 471 pp., $26.95)

George W. Bush has made compassionate conservatism, with its emphasis on supporting the antipoverty efforts of churches, synagogues, and mosques, a cornerstone of his campaign. Al Gore also says he's for helping faith-based organizations-as long as they don't take their faith too seriously by engaging in worship and "proselytizing." This significant difference could become a campaign issue unless both candidates decide to gloss it over. It is already a legal sticking point, now that the American Jewish Congress and the Texas Civil Rights Project have jointly sued Bush's Department of Human Services for giving a grant to a faith-based job-training program.

At such a time, the history of the Salvation Army-the biggest fight-poverty-through-evangelism group of the 19th century-has much to teach us: above all, perhaps, that the reduction of poverty Gore wants is inseparable from the proselytizing he fears.

As Roy Hattersley explains in Blood and Fire, the Salvation Army grew out of the vision of William Booth, an evangelist born in 1829, just as the social consequences of Britain's industrial boom were becoming apparent. Booth's father was a failed entrepreneur whose early death in 1842 pushed Booth into an apprenticeship with a pawnbroker, where he witnessed up close the desperation of the poor. In 1848, Marx and Engels responded to this growing desperation by writing the Communist Manifesto; the same year, Booth became a Methodist street preacher, calling for radical change of a different sort.

Like Marx, Booth was fervent in his denunciation of poverty and its attendant miseries, but he focused on individuals rather than economic structures. He would accost men on the street, asking, "Are you going away from here to the public houses to spend money on drink when your wife needs it for food and your children's shoes?" A few years later Booth himself was scrimping to support a growing family: In 1855, he married Catherine Mumford, the daughter of another preacher. Together they had eight children and some tough years, with many moves and upheavals. (Hattersley's chapter describing Booth's family life is aptly entitled "Suffer Little Children.")

Some of these difficulties arose because Booth's methodology did not please the Methodist leadership. A century earlier, John Wesley had taken Christianity out of church buildings and into the fields, but Booth's attempt to employ the language of the music hall to spiritual ends upset the denominational leaders who controlled his finances, and he decided to go his own way. The organization Booth had founded in 1865 to evangelize among the poor grew gradually over the next 15 years. First called simply "Christian Mission," Booth adopted the name "Salvation Army" in 1878, with workers given uniforms (boosting morale and aiding mutual recognition) and military ranks.

Hattersley writes, "William Booth's success was built on single-minded certainty." In his work with the poor, Booth always emphasized personal salvation. Even later, as the Army began a direct battle against poverty, Booth continued to stress religious conversion as the way to build Heaven on earth. "Souls! Souls! Souls!" insisted the movement's magazine War Cry. This strategy won Booth his share of enemies, both those who thought he was "blaming the victim" (to use a later phrase) and those with vested interests in the old order. Thus bar owners who saw their business diminish when Booth and his colleagues preached outside often hired harassers to tear the Army's tracts into shreds and throw them at the speakers.

After one such episode ended in a messy public brawl, journalistic and political elites branded the Salvationists troublemakers. In 1880, the British home secretary declared that, while not strictly illegal, the Army's processions "provoke antagonism and lead to riotous collisions," and recommended that magistrates "by every means in their power, endeavour to prevent them." Accordingly, police sometimes arrested Booth's preachers on the charge of obstruction. Later, when some members of the House of Commons spoke up for the movement, magistrates began providing protection and more people volunteered.

Hattersley stresses Booth's willingness to offend in a righteous cause. He had little inhibition-at one point insisting that Cecil Rhodes kneel down with him to pray in a crowded railway car. The Army also triumphed because of (and despite) the unofficial leadership of Catherine Booth, his partner for 35 years-a scandal to some because of biblical teaching about male spiritual leadership. Another mixed blessing was the Army's "holiness teaching"-that God's redemption was instantly available to all who could be brought to repent of their sins. Many were called, but few were so dramatically transformed. Some gave up in disappointment and returned to their old ways.

By 1890, the year Catherine died, the Army was recruiting thousands of members each year around the world. Soon it gained a presence not only in every English-speaking country, but in France, Germany, and even as far away as Java. The Army had set up its first American outpost in 1880, and by 1900 it had 700 corps and outposts in the U.S., with 2,600 officers or employees and 20,000 volunteers. The Army in the U.S. sponsored 141 social-relief institutions and set up industrial depots and wood-yards in some of the most destitute urban areas. Officers made sure the able-bodied homeless went to work:

The Army's employment bureaus placed about 4,800 persons per month.

Booth traveled great distances throughout Europe and North America to publicize this work. In 1904, at the age of 75, he traveled 1,200 miles by automobile in the course of a month and addressed 164 meetings. The next year he covered 2,250 meetings and spoke in 121 towns, and did much the same the following three years. When he died in 1912, family members he had trained took over the Army's leadership.

Though Hattersley ends with Booth's death, the Salvation Army made major advances during World War I, when its aid to soldiers near the front made "Sally" workers as welcome a sight as the Red Cross-maybe more, because its emphasis was still on "souls" and there were few atheists in foxholes. Most Salvation Army outposts have retained that religious commitment, and many of its officials still emphasize, like Booth, the personal causes of poverty. But in recent years some of the chapters have been largely secularized and turned into government look-alikes.

It is interesting to contemplate the challenges that a modern Booth would face. "Onward, Christian Soldiers" is no longer a popular hymn, and the idea of a Christian "army" seems threatening in an era that exalts individual choice. If government provided any help to Booth's organization today, even something as minor as extra police protection, lawsuits could ensue. The charge against the Texas Department of Human Services is that it made an $8,000 annual grant to a job-training program that used biblical references "to teach subjects such as self-identification, relationships, authority, attitude, integrity, communication, conflict resolution, stewardship of time/money, and excellence in all things."

There is no indication that the program failed to teach such things, which would appear to be useful in helping people out of poverty. But to the Great Society Left, it appears that results don't matter, only that faith-based groups be kept in their place, at the margin of public affairs. In light of Hattersley's account, it seems fair to ask: Is it just coincidence that the most effective poverty-fighting movement in English and American history was one in which the cry of "Souls!" resounded?