NationStates Jolt Archive


Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb? (death of a national hero)

Bjornoya
21-05-2006, 09:01
ooc: I was so moved by a poem by Vachel Lindsay, sung to the tune ‘The Blood of the Lamb’ I decided to write this. Booth will be a Bjornoyan citizen since pre-revolution Bjornoya was plagued with the same problems he would have seen. The article is how it would appear in the Bjornoyan papers, and the Patriarch’s thoughts are my own.

Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?

“While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight;
while children go hungry, as they do now I'll fight;
while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight;
while there is a drunkard left,
while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets,
while there remains one dark soul without the light of God,
I'll fight, I'll fight to the very end!”

-William Booth

General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army died today at the age of 83.

William Booth was born in the ancient Bjornoyan city of Necropolis in 1923 to a wealthy family. His father, Samuel Booth was a lost soul who squandered his wealth after marrying William’s mother, Mary Moss. After Samuel died bankrupt William was apprenticed as a pawnbroker. William grew tired of the profession and sought a higher calling.

After finishing his apprenticeship Booth started his career as a rejected lay preacher and later an evangelists, urgently spreading the Word of God and the message of Christ to apathetic Bjornoyan masses. The citizens of the cosmopolitan Necropolis laughed at the anachronistic youth who still believed in the out-dated and highly unscientific Christian doctrines. Disappointed the young Booth migrated to the Bjornoyan city of Agape where he met his wife, Catherine Mumford. With Catherine William had 8 children, four of which continue their father’s mission. Bramwell, his eldest son is expected to take the position of General of the Salvation Army. Kate, Evangeline, and Ballington are all high ranking officers within the ranks of the Bjornoyan Federal Peacekeepers, direct advisors to the Bjornoyan Herrgott Jacksehn Hegel.

William and Catherine would spend the next ten years in Agape where William would join a group of Methodist evangelists called the Reformers. Booth spent 5 years preaching for the Methodist cause until he grew frustrated with the organization’s inefficiency. Since his position hindered him from accomplishing his goal of preaching salvation to the masses Booth retired from his position in the Reformers.

In Agape Booth would set the foundation for the Salvation Army, an organization that would devote itself to selfless acts of kindness to better the health of the most needy both physically and spiritually. The organization would find incredible success where countless other systems failed when it recruited and reformed ex-convicts, alcoholics, and prostitutes successfully into their ranks.

From these humble beginnings the Salvation Army would eventually spread throughout the world including much of Africa, the New World, and parts of Russia and central Asia. The system worked astoundingly well; a Salvation Army member would scout out the darkest places in the world an within months William would send officers of God’s Army and begin preaching the message of Christ to the region.

The Patriarch had this to say upon hearing of the death of General William Booth, “This man was able to accomplish in a lifetime what we as a society have failed to create in centuries. This man created an organization that was capable of turning the lost and degenerate members of our society into saints. And throughout it all our citizens mocked this man; the youth scoffed at his unpleasurable appearance and ways, mocking those of his kind and continuing with their trivial tasks. The scientists came to the conclusion his religion was unfounded and illogical, and without evaluating anything else dismissed him as deluded. Our prior politicians tried to replicate his project via a massive bureaucracy, rejecting the message and the spirit and with it love as they determined it was too corruptive.”

“Love; this man in his life gained a power far beyond anything even I believe I could acquire by that emotion and that act. This man was capable of feeling love for the most lowly and needy members our society produced, and he did so unconditionally.”

“The Kingdom of Heaven which he so strongly believed in does in fact exist despite public opinion. It is not however some transcendental plane of existence of which death is the portal. The Kingdom of Heaven is a state of mind; it is having an infinite love for your fellow humans, feeling absolutely secure and safe despite the horrors of the world, and having a home regardless of location. General William Booth had indeed found the Kingdom of Heaven, a greatness that I doubt I shall ever be able to accomplish. May he rest in peace.”