Catherine Booth: Laying the Theological Foundations of a Radical Movement

Description 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 recognised 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. As ‘Mother of The Salvation Army’ she was a British theologian and church leader with a rare if not unique intellectual and theological perspective, not only that of a woman but also as the conduit through whom Salvationist spirituality was first formed.