The name of the Salvation Army takes seriously that Holiness Christians were neither passive nor undisciplined; they were in fact fighting another fight with other kinds of weapons. The Salvation Army, founded by William Booth, out of Methodist city mission roots, came near to pacifism but couldn’t quite commit. Still, their pacifist exemplars illustrate the conversation that was taking place in Holiness inner city mission circles. In fact, within the Salvation Army the conversation would move even more towards pacifism after World War I.
The Booth-Clibborns
Katherine Booth, daughter of William Booth, was a well-known evangelist in Switzerland, famous for being jailed and overturning laws prohibiting street preaching in Switzerland. She married Arthur Sydney Clibborn, a Quaker and they took the last name of Booth-Clibborn. Arthur Booth-Clibborn had been a Salvation Army evangelist in South Africa during the Boer War and wrote a book, Blood against Blood, as a tract against war in about 1903. The war proved to be the grist for the book and his Quaker roots informed his Biblical foundation for pacifism. The title suggests, in Salvation Army style, the two battles or motifs of war, one an earthly warfare that uses military might, and another kind of laying down of one’s life in ministry and mission. The Booth-Clibborns parted ways with General Booth and became independent Holiness Evangelists over their promotion of Divine Healing, and pacifism, and in conflict over the General’s authoritarian leadership. In time they joined John Alexander Dowie’s Christian Catholic Church (a Holiness sect) in Zion, IL, and moved that group to adopt pacifism. In 1906, when Charles Fox Parham entered Zion, not as a disciple of Dowie, but to found a Pentecostal church, the Booth-Clibborns joined the fledgling Pentecostal movement and brought pacifism with them. See Jay Beaman, Pentecostal Pacifism.
Draft Card Evidence of Salvation Army Conscientious Objection
Ava Baldwin; SA WWI Draft Registration
Morton Reed Cox; SA WWI Draft Registration
Thomas Oliver Woodruff; SA WWI Draft Registration
Daniel Addy; SA WWI Draft Registration