Salvation Army Trivia
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50 free Salvation Army trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Salvation Army trivia quiz covers the church and charity that began as a mission in London's East End in 1865 and now runs shelters, thrift stores and disaster relief in more than 130 countries. The easier questions cover what most people know: the founder William Booth, the military ranks, the Christmas bell-ringers and their red kettles, the brass bands and the musical in which a mission sergeant falls for a gambler. The harder end goes into the details: how a slip of the pen turned a 'volunteer army' into a salvation army, the Skeleton Army mobs paid by publicans to break up meetings, the sailor turned officer who borrowed Liverpool's 'Simpson's Pot' idea for a crab pot at a San Francisco ferry landing, the women who fried doughnuts in soldiers' helmets in 1917, Booth's book In Darkest England, the family feud that produced Volunteers of America, the High Council that deposed Bramwell Booth in 1929, the first woman General, and the McDonald's heiress whose $1.6 billion bequest built the Kroc Centers. There are also questions on the flag, the motto and the sacraments the Army does not observe. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the organisation, the Booth family and the events involved before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our Christianity, Victorian Britain, charities and Christmas quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A Salvation Army children's home in Liverpool gave its name to which Beatles song?
Strawberry Fields Forever
Strawberry Fields Forever recalls the garden of Strawberry Field, the Army home near John Lennon's house where he played as a boy. The Army opened the site to visitors in 2019.
Q 02The Salvation Army's theology derives from which Christian tradition?
Methodism
Methodism: William Booth spent nine years as a Methodist minister before breaking away to work as a street evangelist, an approach his fellow clergy would not accept.
Q 03William Booth was apprenticed at 13 to what trade?
Pawnbroker
Pawnbroker. His father could no longer pay his school fees, and though Booth came to hate the trade he stayed in it into his twenties, to send money home.
Q 04By Army tradition, Bramwell Booth objected in 1878 to which word his father used for the movement?
Volunteer
Volunteer! 'I'm no volunteer, I'm a regular or nothing', he protested, so the word was struck from the draft, 'salvation' was written in, and the movement had its name.
Q 05William Booth summed up the Army's approach to the 'down and outs' with which three S's?
Soup, soap and salvation
Soup, soap and salvation, strictly in that order: feed people first, Booth said, then get them clean, and only then talk to them about God.
Q 06What is the Salvation Army's motto?
Blood and Fire
Blood and Fire: the blood is Christ's and the fire is the Holy Spirit's, which is why the Army's flag is red and yellow.
Q 07Salvation Army brigades perform drilled display routines with which instrument?
Tambourines
Tambourines. The Army calls them timbrels, the Bible's word for the instrument, and its timbrel brigades move through set patterns in time to the music.
Q 08What is the title of the Salvation Army's international leader?
General
General. William Booth already ran the movement under the title General Superintendent, so when it turned itself into an army in 1878 its top rank was ready-made.
Q 09Salvationists must abstain from alcohol, illegal drugs, gambling and what else?
Smoking
Smoking. Every new soldier signs a covenant on joining, promising to give up tobacco along with drink, drugs and gambling.
Q 10Which two sacraments are absent from Salvation Army worship?
Baptism and Holy Communion
Baptism and Holy Communion. William Booth held that no sacrament was needed to save a soul, and thought too many believers leaned on the outward sign instead of the grace behind it.
Q 11Catherine Booth's 1859 pamphlet Female Ministry argued that women had as much right as men to do what?
Preach
Preach. She wrote it to defend an American woman evangelist whose sermons had caused a stir near the Booths' home, and the Army later built the principle into its rules.
Q 12The Salvation Army's newspaper, first printed in London in December 1879, is called what?
The War Cry
The War Cry is still sold by Salvationists in uniform, famously from pub to pub, with the money going to the Army's social work.
Q 13In which country is the Salvation Army affectionately known as 'the Salvos'?
Australia
Australia. The clipped nickname is so universal there that the Army uses it of itself: its official vision statement speaks of what 'Salvos' will do, and its history pages list 'notable Salvos'.
Q 21Where did George Scott Railton's party hold its first advertised meeting in America in March 1880?
A variety theatre in New York
A variety theatre in New York: Harry Hill's music hall advertised the newcomers on its bill. Their first notable convert was a drunk jailed so often that a judge sentenced him to attend instead.
Q 22The Salvation Army's Christmas kettle began in the 1890s at a ferry landing in which city?
San Francisco
San Francisco. Captain Joseph McFee needed to pay for a Christmas dinner for the city's poor, and borrowed a collecting stunt he remembered from his days as a sailor in Liverpool.
Q 23The very first Salvation Army Christmas kettle, set out by Captain Joseph McFee, was really what?
Q 14What was the Skeleton Army?
Mobs that violently disrupted Salvationist meetings
Mobs that violently disrupted Salvationist meetings: they marched under skull-and-crossbones banners and threw rocks and dead rats, and publicans who feared for their trade were blamed for backing them.
Q 15From 1904 the elderly William Booth toured Britain, speaking to roadside crowds from what?
An open-top motor car
An open-top motor car, still a novelty on British roads. He made seven of these tours by 1911, stopping in towns and villages, the last when he was past eighty.
Q 16The 1882 case Beatty v Gillbanks cleared Salvation Army marchers of blame for what?
Riots started by their opponents
Riots started by their opponents. Three Salvationists had been found guilty for marching despite a local ban; the High Court overturned that, and the case gave its name to a legal principle on peaceful assembly.
Q 17Which kind of musical group became a Salvation Army trademark after the Fry family formed its first in 1878?
Brass bands
Brass bands. Charles Fry and his three sons began playing at open-air meetings; William Booth heard of them and put them to work, and the family gave up its business to join full time.
Q 18In 1891 the Salvation Army opened its own London factory to make a safer kind of what?
Matches
Matches. The usual kind were made with white phosphorus, which rotted workers' jaws; the Army's factory used the safer red kind and paid better wages, though its boxes cost about three times as much.
Q 19William Booth, once mobbed and ridiculed, lived to receive an official invitation to which royal event?
Edward VII's coronation
Edward VII's coronation, in 1902, and at the king's own insistence. Three years later the old man toured England and was received in state by the mayors of town after town.
Q 20The Salvation Army's organised social work in Melbourne began in 1883 with the opening of what?
A home for ex-convicts
A home for ex-convicts, in Melbourne. An officer had watched men leave gaol with nowhere to go and drift back into crime, so his 'Prison-Gate Brigade' met them on the day of release.
A crab pot on a tripod
A crab pot on a tripod, with McFee calling 'Keep the pot boiling!' to passers-by. Within four years some thirty other Army posts had kettles of their own.
Q 24Which NFL team's Thanksgiving halftime show has opened the Salvation Army's kettle campaign since 1997?
Dallas Cowboys
Dallas Cowboys. The team's owners turned their nationally televised halftime over to the charity, and the kettle campaign has raised billions of dollars since that first show.
Q 25What did Salvation Army 'Doughnut Lassies' famously fry doughnuts in during World War I?
Soldiers' helmets
Soldiers' helmets, filled with lard, served as the frying pan when two officers first made doughnuts near the front in 1917. Shell casings and wine bottles did duty as rolling pins.
Q 26National Doughnut Day began as a Salvation Army fundraiser during what?
The Depression
The Depression. The Army's Chicago branch held the first one in 1938 to raise money for people in need, and it honours the women who fried doughnuts for troops in the First World War.
Q 27William Booth's 1890 book on poverty took its title from which explorer's account of Africa?
Henry Morton Stanley
Henry Morton Stanley's In Darkest Africa gave Booth his title, and he turned it round in his first chapter: 'As there is a darkest Africa is there not also a darkest England?'
Q 28The Salvation Army's Hadleigh farm colony in Essex, bought in 1891, hosted which sport at the London 2012 Olympics?
Mountain biking
Mountain biking. William Booth bought the land to give destitute Londoners farm work, and the Army still owns it and runs it as a working farm.
Q 29The Salvation Army's 1885 campaign pushed Parliament to raise what from 13 to 16?
The age of consent
The age of consent. To prove girls were being sold, the campaigners 'bought' a thirteen-year-old for £5; the journalist who printed the story went to prison for it, and the Army founder's son stood trial beside him.
Q 30In which Salvation Army Christmas programme do shoppers pick a paper tag bearing a child's wish and buy the gift?
Angel Tree
Angel Tree. Each paper angel hung on a Christmas tree stands for one child in need, so a stranger who takes the tag home becomes that child's Santa for the year.