The Last Drop - Catherine Booth

1829–90

As a teenage girl in 1840s England, Catherine Mumford served as secretary of the Juvenile Temperance Society. She used her emerging literary talents to write for a temperance magazine. Alcohol was prevalent in that society, and it was ruining many lives. People of faith, especially Methodists like Catherine, pushed back. Later she got involved with the Band of Hope, an organization promoting total abstinence from alcohol. When she first met William Booth, her husband-to-be, he was reciting a poem about giving up grog.

The Salvation Army, founded by William and Catherine Booth, became known for its opposition to liquor. This was part of its overall outreach to people in poor neighborhoods where drunkenness was common and quite destructive. In England and the United States, the temperance movement grew through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, with the Salvation Army as a key player. (If you’ve ever seen the musical Guys and Dolls, you’ve seen this clash of cultures—the serious-minded Salvationist trying to reform the drinking, carousing gamblers.) The movement’s greatest victory, the United States’ Prohibition amendment in 1919, became its greatest loss. Not only was the amendment repealed in 1933, but the general public seemed to repudiate the whole idea of temperance.

It’s a different world today, but many things remain the same. Substance abuse is rampant—not only alcoholism, but also addiction to other dangerous drugs. Once again we’re seeing lives ruined through intemperate behavior. Self-control is a forgotten virtue.

We might look at Catherine Booth’s commitment to temperance as a quaint relic from the past, but she got one thing very right. There is power in a relationship with Jesus Christ. That power can break a person’s dependence on alcohol or other substances. We’re not ignoring the physical aspects of addiction, but there’s a spiritual component as well. And Jesus still works miracles. The Booths preached this in countless meetings in down-and-out neighborhoods. It’s just as true today in posh suburbs, office buildings, and red-light districts. Whatever your addiction might be, Jesus calls you to bring it before him. Declare your dependence on him, and trust him to help you put your life back together.

Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 7:24-25