The Ark

The Salvation Army started in Australia 125 years ago when two men held a meeting in Adelaide's Botanic Park.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Rachael Kohn: They've been named the wealthiest charity in Australia, but The Salvation Army is a Christian church with a difference.

Hello, this is The Ark on ABC Radio National and I'm Rachael Kohn.

The Salvos are celebrating two anniversaries: 125 years in Australia and 40 years of the Red Shield Appeal. The great Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, was so fascinated by The Salvation Army's social doctrine and feminism, that he wrote the play Major Barbara, about a female Salvationist who organises street marches with brass instruments, tambourines and some old-fashioned preaching. A bit like how they started I Australia, as Melbourne archivist, Lindsay Cox explains.

Lindsay Cox: Two immigrants from England who'd met up in Australia and found out they'd both been converted at a Christian mission in London, decided that they'd like to carry on the work that they'd been introduced to in England, and they decided to hold a meeting. At that time when they were converted, it was the Christian Mission and by the time they were in Australia, they'd been renamed The Salvation Army.

Rachael Kohn: Right, so they were right there on the bottom floor, as it were.

Lindsay Cox: Yes, so to speak, yes.

Rachael Kohn: Now they were in Adelaide.

Lindsay Cox: Yes. One was an itinerant worker and the other was a builder and stonemason, and they met at the Pirie Street Wesley Methodist Church, and decided to carry on.

Rachael Kohn: Well I understand they held an open-air meeting in the park.

Lindsay Cox: They actually had a couple of attempts to get something going prior to this over the previous few months, but they finally got a bit of a gathering together in the Botanic Park, under a gum tree that no longer exists.

Rachael Kohn: Oh I'm sure it would have a plaque on it if it did.

Lindsay Cox: There's a gum tree there now that's been replanted but it's not quite as stately as the original redgum.

Rachael Kohn: Well would they have had a big noisy gathering there? Would it have been something like a Wesleyan Revivalist meeting?

Lindsay Cox: In a very sort of subdued way I guess, because it was only John Gore and Edward Saunders, Edward on the portable organ and John Gore with a loud voice and a songbook.

Rachael Kohn: Goodness. Well how did the established churches, Adelaide is the City of Churches, how did the established churches react to this method of spreading the gospel?

Lindsay Cox: Once Gore and Saunders had established that the Army should come here, and William Booth back in London sent an officer and officially commenced The Salvation Army in February 1881, the churches reacted I guess in two ways.

A lot of the churches saw that The Salvation Army had something to offer the poor, because it was a mission to the poor, whilst others, more conservatively, saw the noisy antics of The Salvation Army to gain attention, somewhat less than perhaps what they would see their way of promoting the gospel.

Rachael Kohn: Well you mentioned the organ. I remember The Salvation Army coming to my street in Toronto, Canada, with a brass band. When did they start using brass instruments?

Lindsay Cox: In the early 1880s in England bands were put forward. William Booth actually didn't like bands too much, but he saw that it was the popular form of music and the best way to get across to people is to be popular, and the Army started using popular songs, like Champagne Charlie, the tunes from Champagne Charlie and putting religious words. Champagne Charlie became Bless His Name, He Sets Me Free, for example.

Rachael Kohn: Well that would have appealed to some of the people who were in the pubs who The Salvation Army wanted to bring out of the pubs, as it were, because Salvationists are teetotallers.

Lindsay Cox: That's right, yes. We sign something when we decide to become a soldier, a Salvationist, we sign an Articles of War, and one of the things is to abstain from those things that we think will be harmful to our bodies and of course our minds.

Rachael Kohn: Articles of War, gee that sounds pretty formidable.

Lindsay Cox: Well we were an Army and we used these terms. We used to have knee-drill in the mornings. I can remember going to knee-drills. They were at 7.30 on the Sunday morning, you'd get down on your knees and pray for a great day, then go home and have breakfast and come back for the meeting.

Rachael Kohn: Would that kind of terminology, well I imagine that kind of terminology would have been pretty appealing in the early part of the 20th century.

Lindsay Cox: Well yes, putting things in their context, especially in Victorian days, England and the Empire and the might of the Empire, the British soldier and all that. The military theme was a lot more popular than it is today, of course.

Rachael Kohn: In those early years, I gather the churches got pretty stroppy with the Salvationists; didn't they send some of them to jail?

Lindsay Cox: Well that's not so much the churches, that's the local councils. There were by-laws that were actually raised in some councils to prevent The Salvation Army from having their raucous open-airs and from marching boldly down the street. Quite a lot of Salvationists just refused to obey the by-laws, and they were jailed in every city around Australia and in provincial centres and all, Salvationists were locked up.

Rachael Kohn: But The Salvation Army was pretty forward thinking. It was right there, using the most modern technology to promote the gospel.

Lindsay Cox: Yes. One of the most obvious ones was The Salvation Army's entry into pioneer film making. They started a Limelight division back in 1892 showing glass lantern slides, right around Australia.

Joseph Perry was the man in charge, and he travelled some 6,000 kilometres in a year around Australia showing these glass slides. When Herbert Booth, the son of William Booth, came and took over command of the Australasian territory as it was in those days, Perry convinced him that we should get hold of a movie camera and projector, so from 1897 through to 1909, The Salvation Army made nearly 400 films, and the most famous of course is Soldiers of the Cross, which some historians say is the world's first feature film.

Rachael Kohn: Astonishing. So some of the first films that people saw were actually Salvationist films?

Lindsay Cox: That's true. The films that had been around, The Salvation Army didn't introduce film, they grabbed it, as The Salvation Army's been very good in adopting things that are already there, but what The Salvation Army did is it used the film to promote the gospel, and Soldiers of the Cross is very important because it's stated to be the first use of drama, narrative drama, on film. Everything else prior to that was actualities and nice little touristy scenes and such.

Rachael Kohn: Was Soldiers of the Cross about The Salvation Army?

Lindsay Cox: No, it was about the Christian martyrs in the first couple of centuries after the death of Christ. It showed in horrifying detail the death of Stephen being stoned to death, or various other ones thrown to the lions, being drawn and quartered.

It was so horrific, says The Age newspaper in 1901, at the premiere at the Melbourne Town Hall, that women fainted in the aisles. But we get so used to anything on television today, or on the screen with graphics, the way things are done computer-wise. But here, all of a sudden, you had people being attacked by lions on film, and then it would stop, and a picture would come up on the screen, and it would be a hand-coloured glass slide of that woman laying there after the lion had torn her to pieces, so to speak.

Rachael Kohn: Goodness, it sounds like Mel Gibson probably saw Soldiers of the Cross before he made The Passion of the Christ.

Lindsay Cox: Could well be, and we know that Cecil B. DeMille must have been a bit inspired with some of it too.

Rachael Kohn: Indeed. Well Lindsay, can you tell me something about the way the Salvationists are actually organised? Because it does use the analogy of the Army. I understand the Salvationists established corps here. What does that mean?

Lindsay Cox: Right, well The Salvation Army's obviously an Army, and it was called The Salvation Army from out of a pamphlet that William Booth and his son put together where it said 'We're a volunteer Army', and William Booth's son, Bramble said 'No, we're a Salvation Army', and that's where we became The Salvation Army.

The best way to get things done is an autocracy, have a chain of command, have an Army. The worst way is a committee. So The Salvation Army's been effective. It's grown to quite large proportions and influence because of the very structure, the military structure, and everybody knows where they stand, and the chain of command.

The corps of The Salvation Army are the local churches. I go to Brunswick Corps of The Salvation Army for example in Melbourne, well that's the Brunswick Church of The Salvation Army. The leader of The Salvation Army is the General, the General is elected all around the world, and we've had two women Generals. So right from the start we've ordained women as Ministers in The Salvation Army. Officers are the ordained clergy you might say, and the soldiery are the congregation.

Rachael Kohn: Well I guess in the public's mind, The Salvation Army stands for charitable works. I think many people wouldn't even kind of associate it with a church as such. Is that because the charities that The Salvation Army runs are often contributed to by the general public, not necessarily Salvationists.

Lindsay Cox: Yes, to a large extent, but I've been surprised with some polling that's been done recently by Newspoll and others, about the image of The Salvation Army and to a larger extent than I thought, people do realise that The Salvation Army is a Christian denomination.

Rachael Kohn: Just how many Salvationists are there in Australia?

Lindsay Cox: As far as soldiers, that's those who've signed their Articles of War, there's over 230,000 I think all told. But what's growing within The Salvation Army are the adherents. These are people who want to worship The Salvation Army's way, be part of the organisation and contribute. Perhaps they don't want to take on the full signing of the Articles of War, they might like a glass of red with their meat or their steak or something, so therefore they won't fully commit themselves to that. But they're just as equal in the eyes of the Army and of course in the eyes of God.

Rachael Kohn: Well tell me, how do Salvationists worship? Because I know there's a different attitude to the sacraments.

Lindsay Cox: The sacraments are very interesting. The Salvation Army's not against the sacraments, they just don't partake. In fact you're encouraged to partake in the sacraments if you'd like by visiting another church and such.

The main reason we don't is Catherine Booth, the wife of the founder, was very big on the women's role in The Salvation Army, and the sacraments were found to be a little bit divisive, and with some people the sacraments couldn't be administered by a woman, because they found some biblical reference that seemed to assume that rather than have something divisive, that wasn't a really important aspect of worship, The Salvation Army sort of went away from the sacraments.

Rachael Kohn: So the Salvationists are radically egalitarian?

Lindsay Cox: Oh, very much so. As I said you know, right from the very start, women have been ordained. We've had two women Generals. In 1896 we had some 350 Salvation Army corps across Australia, and over 250 of those corps were officered, or ministered, by women.

Rachael Kohn: I understand that The Salvation Army provided Australia's first policewoman as well.

Lindsay Cox: That's not exactly true, but it's pretty close. The first policewoman was actually a woman by the name of Lillian Armfield in New South Wales, in 1915. But down in Melbourne, what happened was the Chief Commissioner of Police contacted The Salvation Army and had seconded to the Victorian Police Force a Captain Frances Gillam, and she was appointed as the prototype policewoman to train others. She didn't have the powers of arrest and stuff like that, but she did court and police work and so on, so in a way, she's the first policewoman.

Rachael Kohn: Now what will The Salvation Army be doing to commemorate its 125 years in Australia?

Lindsay Cox: On 5th September we had a thanksgiving service at our Territorial Headquarters down in Melbourne, and the Territorial Commander presided over a gathering of about 80 or 90 people who came together and sang the original song that was sung by Gore and Saunders, gave thanks to God for what the Army was and is, and will be. And then we had scones and jam and cream at the expense of the Commissioner. So that was pretty good.

We also launched at that a big project right across Australia to keep it alive, that's keeping alive the memories of those Salvationists that have gone before us, of those that are still here to bring alive the terms, like knee-drill that I said before. These terms that our young people don't know today, so we had this massive project that we've got going. And in November there'll be a large Congress in Adelaide where the 2IC of The Salvation Army in the world will be coming out to lead it. That's the Chief of Staff will be leading that meeting.

Rachael Kohn: What was that song that John Gore and Edward Saunders sang at the first meeting?

Lindsay Cox: The song was 'Will you be there?'

We're travelling home to heaven,

Will you come, will you come?

Rachael Kohn: And what instrument do you play?

Lindsay Cox: I play cornet.

SINGING

Rachael Kohn: As Major Barbara says in Shaw's play, 'Many a sinner has played himself into heaven on the trombone, thanks to the Army.' Lindsay Cox, Melbourne archivist for The Salvation Army, was my guest on The Ark. I'm Rachael Kohn.

Guests

Lindsay Cox
is the Australia Southern Terriroty archivist for The Salvation Army.

Further Information

The Salvation Army in Australia
http://www.salvos.org.au/Salvos/new/me.get?SITE.Sitelayouts.body&FFFF441