Evangelism: Steady As Before

Other churches may simmer with doubts; the Salvation Army serenely lives by its traditional view that Christianity can be spread best by self-sacrificing example, that a strictly disciplined Army is the way to do it, and that the Army should preferably be commanded (despite its worldwide growth) by a General from Great Britain. Last week its 49 territorial commissioners closed their door to all out siders and in four ballots chose Scottish-born Frederick L. Coutts, 64, for the job first held by William Booth (1865-1912), later by Booth’s son Bramwell and his daughter Evangeline, and most recently by General Wilfred Kitching.

As General, Coutts will have the unquestioning obedience of the Army’s 26,000 commissioned officers and about 1,000,000 lads and lassies in the ranks. He is well schooled to command. His parents were Army majors, and all four of his own children have signed up to do the Lord’s military service. Coutts himself entered the Army as a recruit in 1919, spent 15 years in street-corner evangelism, became one of the Army’s best pamphleteers. Since 1957 he has served as territorial commander for the eastern part of Australia.

In November Coutts will be formally installed in the Army’s new $3,500,000 headquarters building on London’s

Queen Victoria Street. The new General aims “to do the job we’ve always done, but better and more efficiently.” He has no intention of dispersing the Army’s hard-puffing brass bands, or of pleasing younger officers by adopting a slightly more chic uniform: “I think the lassies never look prettier than when they’re wearing their bonnets.”

The brasses and the lasses may look the same, but in fact the Army is finding new ways to serve God by serving man. In many of its slum-area chapels, officers still sweeten their fundamental ist, Methodist-derived gospel preaching with soap and soup for half-listening human derelicts. But the Army is rapidly augmenting its brigades in Latin America and Africa, and there finds that the greater need is for cures and classes; today the Army operates 857 schools and 210 medical centers in 86 countries. Affluence has not by any means rendered the Army obsolete. “Even in the welfare state, some people slip through the net,” the General says. “As long as there are human beings, there will be human needs that can only be handled on a person-to-person basis.”