The Salvation Army, with its brass bands, blue uniforms, and Christmas kettles, seems to be everyone’s favorite charity. The $ 1.2 billion that the 121-year-old Army receives yearly in private contributions makes it the nation’s top-grossing philanthropy, dwarfing such rivals as the YMCA, the American Red Cross, and Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities, for instance, spends a bit more — $ 1.9 billion annually to the Salvationists’ $ 1.4 billion — on social programs, but it depends on local government contracts to supply nearly two-thirds of its funding. Government aid represents only a little more than 15 percent of the Army’s spending budget.
It is difficult not to admire the Salvation Army — as even some of its historic detractors, such as the socialistically inclined George Bernard Shaw, grudgingly conceded (Shaw commended the Army’s work with the poor while condemning its practice of financing that work with donations from the capitalist overclass). The Army is the only modern religious movement to have inspired a still-performed highbrow stage play (Shaw’s Major Barbara), a hit Broadway musical and Hollywood movie (Guys and Dolls, based on a Damon Runyon story), and, for a time, the melodic and sartorial style of the world’s most famous rock ‘n’ rollers (the Beatles, on the cover of their 1967 Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band).
