Catherine Booth
1829-1890 19th century
Faith that goes down into the street and refuses to settle with what it finds there.
Who was Catherine Booth?
Born in Derbyshire and often ill in her youth, she read the Bible and the theologians on her own. In 1859 she published a pamphlet defending women's right to preach, then took the pulpit herself, which no woman around her was doing. With her husband William she founded the East End mission in 1865, which became the Salvation Army; she preached in the poorest quarters of London until cancer stopped her, at sixty-one.
In their own words
When the Church and the world can jog along comfortably together, you may be sure there is something wrong.
God who so loved the world that He gave His only Son to ignominy and death in order to redeem it.
[…] let them realize that you feel their danger, and are in distress for them.
It is of no use to stand up and propound theories that are at variance with things as they are.