The Salvation Army began in 1865 when Wililam Booth, a London minister, gave up the comfort of his pulpit and decided to take his message into the streets where it would reach the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and the destitute.
His original aim was to send converts to established churches of the day, but soon he realized that the poor did not feel comfortable or welcome in the pews of the churches and chapels of Victorian England. Regular churchgoers were appalled when these shabbily dressed, unwashed, people came to join them in worship.
Always fundamentally grounded in religious faith, Booth's interest reached out to education, housing, employment, health, and the many problems of poverty. His vision included employment bureaus, vocational training, farm colonies, urban renewal, factories to supply work for the jobless, shelters for women, preventative home for girls in moral danger, legal assistance and bank services for the poor, model suburban villages, a traveling hospital, a missing persons bureau, and even a matrimonial bureau.
When William Booth died in1912, over 65,000 people viewed his body lying in state. For three or four hours traffic in the center of London stood still as the funeral procession passed. Seven thousand Salvationist marched, while hundreds of thousands of the poor thronged the route.
By the time of this death, The Salvation Army spread to 58 countries, preaching the gospel in 34 languages. Today, the Army is in 120 countries around the globe.