William Booth - pawnbroker's assistant, firebrand preacher, advocate of women's rights, friend of the poor, confidant of statesmen, politicians and royalty, father of eight children, champion of the marginalised, and founder and first General of The Salvation Army. General Booth's courage, oratory and passion changed Victorian Britain. He resolutely ignored his critics - including those who decried him as the Anti-Christ - and reached out to those who considered themselves well outside the concern of Almighty God. Prayer and practicality were his hallmarks: he ridiculed the idea of preaching to a beggar while that beggar was cold and hungry. William Booth worked tirelessly, campaigning, researching, negotiating, adapting music-hall songs - and writing. This book introduces us to his heart and convictions. Here we find the urgency, thought and humanity which drove him on.

Catherine Booth's achievements - as a revivalist, social reformer, champion of women's rights, and, with her husband William Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army - were widely recognized in her lifetime. However, Catherine Booth's life and work has since been largely neglected. This neglect has extended to her theological ideas, even though they were critical to the formation of Salvationism, the spirituality of the movement she cofounded. This book examines the implicit theology that undergirds Catherine Booth's Salvationist spirituality and reveals the ethical concerns at the heart of her soteriology and the integral relationship between the social and evangelical aspects of Christian mission in her thought. Catherine Booth emerges asa significant figure from the Victorian era, a British theologian and church leader with a rare if not unique intellectual and theological perspective: that of a woman.

Official organ of the book trade of the United Kingdom.