Ring the bells of heaven

William and Catherine Booth, founders of the Salvation Army, launched a world-wide mission from the streets of east London. The Tablet?s cinema critic is one of the millions who have been involved. He recalls his boyhood as a soldier for Christ.

I CANNOT remember when I first realised that our family was unusual. Most people we knew went to church. Most led ordered lives in which routine was paramount. But our routine as members of the Salvation Army was different and more strenuous.

At 10 a.m. every Sunday, our small brass band (a little over a dozen strong at its largest, later much smaller) would assemble in one of the residential streets of our tiny, isolated New Zealand town (Taumarunui, population 3,000; at least 50 miles in every direction from anywhere of comparable size). Children watched with idle curiosity as we conducted a half-hour evangelical open-air meeting under our yellow, red and blue, blood and fire banner. (Some of them, I felt sure, would make some hurtful remark when they saw me at school the following day.) By 11 a.m. we were at the hall (too small to be called a citadel) for the Holiness Meeting, which lasted at least an hour but might overrun lengthily if anyone went forward to the penitent form to renew their commitment to God and the Salvation Army.

After our Sunday roast (I don?t know how my mother managed it), we of Sunday School age learnt our weekly biblical verse and went back to the hall for an hour?s instruction and choruses. Afterwards, sometimes, the band played in the grounds of the local hospital. The evening meal was early and light, because at 6.15 p.m. we had another open-air meeting, this time in Taumarunui?s (usually deserted) main street. At 7 p.m., in the hall, the Salvation Meeting followed; another hour which might be extended should anyone respond to the call.

So much for Sunday. On Tuesday afternoon my mother led the Home League, the Army?s women?s group. Thursday night was band practice in the hall, unless it was too cold, in which case it took place around our dinner table: my chair had a small mark on its varnished seat made by the knob on the bottom of a bass tuba. On Friday at 7 p.m. there was another open-air meeting in the main street, this time thronged with late-night shoppers. (My father, who worked in a furniture shop, would change into his uniform and join us, and then return to work.) Saturdays were usually free, but sometimes a music festival would be mounted. Sometimes another night of the week would be given over to a Cottage Meeting in a Salvationist?s house. Mum also found time to rehearse her junior singing company. Each month Dad attended an administrative meeting, called the census board.

The Salvation Army permeated my parents? lives. My mother was the child of Salvationists who had come to New Zealand via Australia from Devon. My father?s father was a Presbyterian elder, but Dad, his two brothers and sister had switched allegiance, allegedly when they discovered that the Army liked to put religious words to secular tunes such as ?Home on the Range. Their mother went to the Army, to keep an eye on them, no doubt, leaving Grandad to cycle to the Presbyterian church alone, his passage marked by a trail of pipe smoke.

As babies my two brothers and I were dedicated to the Army by our parents (this was the equivalent of christening) and they regarded it as their task in life to protect us from tobacco, alcohol, gambling and all other harmful influences. My mother was haunted by two terrifying fears: that we might get into trouble with the police, or, in the longer term, be condemned to everlasting damnation. This made for a circumscribed life. The cinema was frowned upon. My youngest brother, a talented sportsman, was refused permission to join a representative team because they practised on Sundays. It is surprising, on reflection, that none of us rebelled openly until after we had left home - although as a teenager I frequently felt unwell on Sundays. We were not the only ones affected by this overriding duty to be good Salvationists: when my father thought of buying a farm my mother demurred, supposing that such a move must cut us off from the Army.

I have to say that the Army was often enjoyable and stimulating. I have a theory that it is (generally) saved from the grinding bigotry and navel-gazing of some fundamentalist organisations by two factors: its engagement in social work and its cheery music. I enjoyed playing in the band. (I was given piano lessons first, to enable me to be an accompanist at meetings when needed, and then let loose on the euphonium.) Its internationalism helped, too. We were frequently visited by officers who had served in India, Africa, Indonesia as doctors and teachers, and what they told us gave me a sense of a very big world elsewhere. They were sometimes, nevertheless, narrow-minded: I remember one woman complaining about the ?filthy statues which ?disfigured every building in India.

The Army was also the centre of our social life. When we went on holiday we stayed with other Salvationists. On occasion we would take a 200-mile round trip to join in an Army sports day at the nearest city. Sunday lunch was often given added interest when a stranger with some distant Army connection came to the meeting on his way through town and was invited to eat with us. Some of these people, often visitors from overseas, we never saw again. Others became regulars. Some were distinctly unusual. One drove a curiously shaped car which he had built himself. The police were for ever stopping him, convinced, he supposed, that anyone who drove anything so peculiar must be up to mischief of some sort.

Every December or January, when Army officers received their farewell orders, Mum would spend hours on the telephone to Salvationists nationwide and after several evenings? research had compiled a complete list of who was going where, and had exchanged vigorous comments on the suitability of the appointments. After some years of this I felt that I knew these people, although I had never met most of them, while the towns where the Army maintained corps and social institutions became part of my picture of New Zealand.

It was at a monthly meeting of the census board that my father was, without warning, confronted with an accusation made by a disgruntled colleague that he had been seen drinking beer. Since the Army was fanatically teetotal, the allegation was serious. Despite his denials of any such impropriety, my father?s membership was suspended for six months by the divisional commander - a man who during war service had (as was widely known) broken the Army?s rules about tobacco and alcohol but, because of his musical usefulness, had gone unpunished.

While Dad was still suspended he and Mum moved to another town. He rejoined the Army there when his suspension had run its term. By the time they returned to Taumarunui, the Army there - previously kept running largely by their loyalty and devotion - had closed down. Both of them went on thinking of themselves as Salvationists and behaved accordingly. A few years ago, at the age of eighty-something, Mum dusted off her tenor horn and played a couple of hymn tunes for the senior citizens? club.

As a student I hugely enjoyed playing in the Wellington Citadel Band, which had an international reputation (no thanks to me, I have to add) and I remained a Salvationist until my mid-twenties but, even leaving certain doctrinal matters aside, it grew increasingly difficult. Salvationists are supposed to be ?instant and constant for the Kingdom, ready at any moment to lead others to the truth, and I felt less and less able to do such a thing. After I moved to England I continued under the colours for a time, but when a colleague told me that he would come along to the citadel one Sunday to see me play my trombone, I was horrified. What if he heard our captain talking, as he had done during an open-air meeting, about some ?very strange French people called existentionalists (sic), to which he had added the indignant announcement that ?they don?t even believe in God? It was time to leave.

I felt a similar embarrassment again about 10 years ago when I attended an Army meeting in Moscow. A group of young Americans who had given up their summer holidays to help out there had been teaching a large group of children at a summer music camp. During the meeting the mother of one of these children went to the platform and, in halting English, thanked the Americans very emotionally for what they had done. The young chap running things was disconcerted, and when she had finished blurted out: ?Well, thank you. Let?s not get too morbid, let?s sing. . . and burst into a relentlessly jolly ditty. I hoped that the woman had not understood him. When I think of the culture shock which must have hit the Americans when they arrived in Moscow from Atlanta and of the devotion to an ideal which had brought them there, I can forgive him unreservedly. But this sort of thing, although not typical, is part of the ethos.

There are many very cultivated Salvationists and they include some of the best people I have known. The devotion and quality of service of almost all members of the Army are not lightly to be criticised by those who do not match them. But Salvationism is a demanding life and many fall by the wayside. I have a large collection of Salvation Army CDs, however, which I enjoy as I sip my nightcap.