anti-Salvation Army posts

This is in response to this picture, which a few of my facebook friends shared:

There’s also this article and others very much like it:

Salvation Army says “Gays Need to Be Put to Death”

These things are going around the internets again. They seem to crop up around this time most years lately, in the ridiculously long gearing up for the ridiculously long “holiday season”.

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Okay, as far as I can tell…the claim that the Salvation Army would close soup kitchens rather than offer same sex benefits comes from a unsourced 2004 article in the New York Post (which is basically a tabloid owned by one of Rupert Murdoch’s companies) attributing this unconfirmed position to an unnamed “official”. No soup kitchens were actually closed.

The “gays need to be put to death” stuff is not totally accurate either. One guy in Australia did say some of those things in discussing Bible doctrine. But in those types of “The Salvation Army is anti-gay” articles, that interview is usually edited to make it seem more inflammatory. The Salvation Army does not have an actively anti-gay position; it’s more of a passively anti-gay position.

Now, there are anecdotes out there, which may be true, of people being discriminated against by the Salvation Army. I saw one where a guy and boyfriend were told they’d have to stop seeing each other before the Salvation Army would help them. It’s very possible that someone at a Salvation Army office told them that. But that’s not an official national or international position.

Their actual doctrinal position is more like:

The Salvation Army does not consider same-sex orientation blameworthy in itself. Homosexual conduct, like heterosexual conduct, requires individual responsibility and must be guided by the light of scriptural teaching. Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life.

You can no longer find this position statement on their website.

In researching this response, I found articles calling the Salvation Army a cult, which I totally disagree with, articles and attributing some suspicious things to them, which I doubt. 

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The main thing that most of these anti- Salvation Army articles and such are missing is this: the Salvation Army is a mainstream, Protestant church (“low church” like the Baptists and Methodists, not “high church” like the Anglicans and Lutherans), with all the same sort of organizational structures, all the same sort of activities, and all the same sort of doctrinal beliefs. It is a moderately conservative religious organization which has a huge focus on its social programs helping the poor, etc. That is a result of the conditions under which it was founded.

William Booth had been a Methodist minister in England, but he left that church because he felt called to do more work with the poor. So he went into the East End of London to help and minister to the poor and outcast types. This was in the late 1800s—roughly the same time and area in which Jack the Ripper did his thing, and in which the Elephant Man lived and died. William booth went there because that’s where the poor people were. And there he started the organization that became the Salvation Army. It’s essentially a church that aims for and attracts lower-class to lower-middle class members.

Most people see the obvious stuff that the Salvation Army does, and they seem to think it’s a charity. It is, in the same sense that many other churches are charities. Many churches have programs actively involved in feeding people, helping to clothe and house poor people, disaster relief, missions to third-world countries. With the Salvation Army, those programs are a much bigger emphases. And yes, as the Salvation Army is a church, the whole point of these social programs is to “God’s work” and ultimately attempt to “win souls for Christ”. 

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I realize that those of you who know me would think it very odd that I would be defending a church.

I’m not.

I definitely have my issues with the Salvation Army. It was my “church home” as a kid and teen. My parents were Salvation Army officers, i.e., ministers—they went to seminary, are ordained, the whole thing. There are things about being a preacher’s kid that probably messed me up a bit, and things about being specifically a Salvation Army officers’ kid that messed me up as well. (See my previous blog: “against the rules”) 

BUT…

It pisses me off when people use misleading or exaggerated or just plain incorrect statements to strengthen their argument, or to get people all riled up about something. FOX news isn’t the only one who does it. Also, I hate looking for information about a topic and seeing articles from 20 different websites that say almost the exact same thing, with few or no sources.

People of the world, stop assuming that something is true, just because you can find it online.

Anyway…if you’re staunchly pro-gay and only want to support organizations that will celebrate gay marriage, etc., with you, then don’t donate to the Salvation Army, nor to most any other church. I say find out something about any organization to which you’re donating money. For all you know they could be channeling your money to the alien conspiracy theorists or Republicans or something worse, like…the arts.