jepta 2001 21 - European Pentecostal Theological Association

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The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, Vol. XXI, 2001 Arthur Booth-Clibborn: Pentecostal Patriarch: James Robinson The Gospel Publishing House is now in possession of a powerful book, entitled Blood Against Blood, written by Arthur Booth- Clibborn, an English (sic) Pentecostal brother who has been the means of a glorious ministry in Germany (sic) before the opening of the war ... We recommend that you purchase it and become imbued with the spirit of its contents.' In Britain, by contrast, where conscription was introduced in 1916, the book was banned and all copies were withdrawn from circulation2 - a reflection of the jingoistic fervour with which the war was pursued in its earlier stages. The Established Church was solidly supportive of the war. The Presbyterian theologian, John Oman, obscrved that, in cultivated circles, "the religious official is the most belligerent person present".' The Bishop of London went overboard on the issue and called in the Guardian for the Church, as the headline proclaimed, to "MOBILISE THE NATION FOR A HOLY WAR.' The great majority of the 16,500 conscientious objectors were committed Christians and it was only from Free Church sources that some defence was mustered against their appalling mistreatment. ~ hwhole g pacifist issue became a particularly searching one for Pentecostals in Britain and though there was no official line on conscientious objection among the various assemblies, nevertheless, in Donald Gee's words, conscription "precipitated a personal issue of deep gravity for many young men among Pentecostal believers".' While Boddy and Polhill "manifested a strongly favourable attitude towards active participation in the conflict ... Booth- Clibborn ...p resented his own view in no half-hearted manner, and probably helped to influence many".6 The personal cost involved was commented on by I Ibid, 51. The quotation was taken from Weekly Evangel, (10 July 1915) 1. The Gospel Publishing House is the publishing arm of the American A. 0. G. That Booth-Clibbom regarded himself as Irish comes out in an article he wrote for ConJidence in 1910 when in a piece of mild whimsy he asked "if an Irishman may coin an Irishism". (Confidence, June 1910, 145) Information obtained from Desmond Cartwright. He has a copy of the book inscribed by its owner stating, doubtless as an _expression of his displeasure, that the book was to be confiscated ' Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianiry 1920-1990, SCM: London (1991) 46. ' Ibid, 45. 9. Gee, Wind and Flame, Heath Press: Croydon (1967) 101. Ibid, 101-2. Frank Banleman was the primary chronicler of Pentecostal origins in Los Angles in his How Pentecosf Came to Los Angeles (1925), Between 1912 and 1914, he visited Europe, including England, when it is almost certain he met with Booth-Clibborn. Some of his semons were directed against the "the war spirit in Christians". At a central meeting in London, he met resistance from the Chairman [almost certainly Polhill]. The latter said "if he were a young man he would enlist himself. ..But some thanked me (Bartleman) for (the address) later, especially some of the missionary student young men, members of the P. M. U". (Jay Beaman, op. cif., 56). Gee years later when he spoke of a young married couple who had been conscientious objectors visjting Margaret Cantel ''to seek counsel and comfort in their problems and trials". In his own case, he could recollect "the months and years of continual obloquy and petty persecution (which for him) meant a growth in character and convigtion that would have come much more slowly under peaceful circumstances". Later in life he was to observe as a solemn fact that those who took a strongly patriotic stance in the last War, among our Pentecostal brethren, have mostly gone backwards in spiritual power and influence ever since; while those who put Christ and his Word before all have advanced by divine grace to positions of spiritual leadership. It could hardly be otherwise.' When that was written, the names of Boddy and Polhill must have been in mind. If so, it was not the most judicious of his judgements since their diminishing influence within the British movement does not lend itself to such simplistic analysis. CONCLUSION The one intriguing question surrounding his Pentecostal involvement was whether or not he ever spoke in tongues. In Confidence (June 1911), it was reported that he said he had not yet spoken in tongues, "and would not be satisfied till he did".* In most of the early Pentecostal assemblies in Britain, the absence of glossolalia would have been taken as an indication of his not having received Spirit baptism. For van der Laan this might account for his absence from the International Pentecostal Council that met in the years between 1912 and 1914.' However that question is answered, there is no doubting the salient part Booth-Clibborn played in the early Pentecostal movement. The high public profile of his wife and the contribution of three of their sons to the wider international movement kept the Booth-Clibbom name to the fore in Pentecostal circles and beyond. His family background gave him a cachet unrivalled in the I Redentpfion Tidings (2 January 1939) 6. Jay Beaman, op. cit., 62. ' Ibid, 63-4. In the second group he would no doubt have placed Howard and John Carter, Stanley Frodsham and Margaret Cantel. Bartleman spoke at the Cantel meeting and also at A. E. Saxby's church, "where the leader thanked me warmly" (56). Saxby was the youthful Gee's pastor and was a strong influence on him but later was sidelined in the movement once he started to promulgate the teaching of "ultimate reconciliation". ' Confidence, June 191 1,128. ' C. van der Laan , op. cit., 66.
The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, Vol. XXI, 2001 Arthur Booth-Clibborn: Pentecostal Patriarch: James Robinson movement. In a note scratched round the certificate awarded with the life-saving medal by the President of France, he wrote that it had come through the British ambassador to the French government, Lord Dufferin. Frederick Blackwood, 1st Marquis of Dufferin and Ava (1826-1902), was one of the most distinguished diplomats of Victorian Britain whose roots lay in the family estates at Clandeboye, North Down. Booth-Clibborn in his note remarked, "Lord Dufferin, by the way, knew my standing and that of my family and its various groups throughout all Ireland in some 15 centres".' Above all, he was a benevolent presence at Pentecostal forums and a source of encouragement especially to young leaders. He had wider and more varied experience than any of the other British leaders. As he stated in the original preface of Blood Against Blood, at the time of its publication he was "living at the heart of things".' His pacifism influenced many young men, notably Dowie, but not the Salvation Army which was a source of regret to him. It was his strong belief that acceptance of the pacifist and Pentecostal message by the Army would have returned it to its roots, to the time when it was a spiritual force in the nation before its growing involvement in social work. During the First World War, he was an inspiration for the young conscientious objectors in their personal turmoil and by his advocacy of an ethic with elements of social radicalism was a foil to the instinctive conservatism of the more acknowledged leadership That such an ethic in any expanded version did not transfer to the post-war years left the movement disengaged from the larger affairs of society and unimpressive to the many young men radicalised and disenchanted by their experience in the trenches. Booth-Clibborn's internationalism contrasted with the essentially isolationist posture of the Pentecostal movement in the post-war period. It was he who responded for British Pentecostals to the Berlin Declaration of 1909 that issued from a conference of German evangelical Pietists and damned the Pentecostal movement as demonically infiltrated. It declared that the spirit of Pentecostalism is "not from above but from be lo^".^ It represented an hostility towards the nascent German movement that Hollenweger holds made it "the target of more harsh attacks than any other Pentecostal church in the world".' Booth-Clibbom penned a lengthy article, published in Confidnce, that set out to answer in broad terms the charges made against the movement. The aticle was written while he was visiting the Continent where he had just made contact with ten different centres which afforded him the opportunity to sound out opinion on the Declaration: "From personal enquiry 1 know some of the signatories of that declaration have not ... examined it with the thoroughness which such a declaration req~ired".~ He was the foremost among British Pentecostals to maintain a long-term involvement with the European scene. That made him familiar with events there and, in this case, drew from him a robust, if not an intellectually satisfying, defence of the movement.' There can, on the other hand, be little doubt that the Pentecostal movement did not get the best years of Booth-Clibbom. Those years belonged to his service in the Salvation Army. The culmination of circumstances surrounding the Dowie years threatened to leave him a broken man. A. E. Saxby, an early leader and fellow pacifist in the Pentecostal movement, recalled, ''when I first met him he was a scarred veteran, halting on his thigh ... He was no longer the warrior in the sense that he was in the forefront of the battle but he was still the man who had made the ~arrior."~ One of his daughters observed that as the years passed, her father "seemed to retire more deeply into God and a very rare and lovely spiritual refinement began to take place which was felt by all who came near him. He became strangely removed from the earth, although he still followed with keen interest all the events of the day".' He retreated increasingly to his study, devoting his time to Biblical research and writing, little of which entered mainstream Pentecostal literature. Having weathered two authoritarian regimes, neither Booth-Clibborn parent cared to place themselves in a similar position again. Arthur could never again be an organisation man, cast in a founder or leadership role and, therefore, never able to exercise the authority and power which accrue to such roles. He was content to state in the third edition of Blood Against Blood that "the writer belongs to no particular Denomination of Christians, therefore none shares the ' In the Booth-Clibborn Collection. A. S. Booth-Clibbom, Blood Against Blood, Charles Cook: New York (1914) 3. The title page of the 1914 edition stated: "A second volume, entitled THE MAILED FIST OR THE PIERCED HAND is appearing". According to Professor Peter Brook there is no evidence that this book was ever printed. He expressed his disappointment at the stance of Salvation Army against the pacifist position in no uncertain terms: "I have realised that the more the Army comes into favour with the unconverted wealthy, and with statesmen and politicians, the conservatism which this entails makes it very difficult if not impossible for it to preach the whole Gospel". ' Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide, Hendrickson Publishers: Peabody (1 997) 337. ' Ibid, 337. Confidence, August 1910,183. The word ordering in the sentence has been changed. ' His line of defence was to make play with the charge that the Pentecostal movement was "from below". The following catches his drift: "Brethren, is it not time something did come from below, from the dust, from the nothing; from our uttermost repentance and humiliation, from the midst of an absolute acceptance of despisal and death at the hands of the world" (Confidence, August 1910, 184.) ' Catherine Booth-Clibbom, A Poet of Praise: a Tribute to Arthur Booth-Clibborn, Marshall, Morgan and Scott: London (1939) 30. "bid. The writer was his daughter Evangeline.
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