The Salvation Army's “Invasion” - Books and Journals

80 A. M. Eason / Mission Studies 28 (2011) 71–90
few days later – his request was flatly turned down. As might be expected, this
decision did not sit well with the leader of the Army’s missionary party, who
was determined to challenge the legality of the ruling. Such a test took place
on Sunday September 24th, when the Salvationists began to march with
instruments in hand to a theatre they had rented for an evening religious service.
Confronted along the way by a senior police officer, who ordered the
group to disperse by authority of the Queen, Tucker responded defiantly with
equally authoritative words: “In the name of His Majesty, King of Kings and
Lord of Lords, I command you to stand aside” (Cited in Smith 1981:6). Such
an appeal may have demonstrated where Salvationists placed their allegiance,
but it carried little weight with the secular authorities, who arrested and jailed
three members of the procession – Tucker, Norman, and Thompson – for
disorderly behaviour and for refusing to obey the orders of the police. Henry
Bullard, meanwhile, managed to get to the theatre, where he boldly told the
assembled crowd that Salvationists were determined to fight any efforts to suppress
their public marches (TI Sept. 25, 1882:2).
This stubborn desire to maintain a public witness made Salvationists unpopular
among the Anglo residents of the subcontinent, who feared that the Salvation
Army’s sensational tactics would bring Christianity into disrepute. As one
British military officer stated bluntly, the Army was “particularly objectionable
in a country like India, degrading as it does the religion of the ruling race”
(Cited in Hatcher 1933:145). This sentiment was shared by the Bombay correspondent
of the London Times, who warned that the organization’s “vulgar
buffoonery,” carried on in plain sight of the Indian population, was bound “to
degrade the solemn character of Christianity” (Times Sept. 25, 1882:3). Sir
Lepel Griffin, Agent to the Governor General in Central India, went even
further by warning Salvationists that their “degrading burlesques of the religion
of the ruling power” would not be tolerated in any jurisdictions under his
authority (Bombay Gazette Feb. 23, 1883:7–8). As far as Griffin was concerned,
the Army’s missionaries “should be treated as inconvenient political
offenders and be deported from India” (Bombay Gazette Apr. 6, 1883:4). From
the perspective of colonial officials, the missionary task in India was to
strengthen “the imperial foundations of British power [by] rais[ing] our
national repute in the eyes of the many millions of people committed to our
charge” (Temple 1883:164). Missionaries were supposed to put a respectable
face on the European presence on the subcontinent, not bruise imperial pride
as the Salvationists had done. The Salvation Army’s noisy processions, led by
missionaries dressed in Oriental fashion, hardly represented the dignity and
superiority of a ruling nation’s religion.