EWTC Pro­file: The Sal­va­tion Army

Overview

The Sal­va­tion Army is a denom­i­na­tion cre­at­ed through the sep­a­ra­tion of William and Cather­ine Booth from the Methodist Reform Church in 1865. From its incep­tion, there was a near total empha­sis on char­i­ty and care for the “down and outs,” with William stat­ing that “the three ‘S’s’ best expressed the way in which the Army admin­is­tered to the ‘down and outs’: first, soup; sec­ond, soap; and final­ly, sal­va­tion.” This heavy focus on serv­ing out­side the church lead to The Sal­va­tion Army’s reject­ing bap­tism and com­mu­nion, with William believ­ing that Chris­tians were focus­ing too much on such things, and see­ing them as a hin­drance to sal­va­tion. Booth stat­ed, “There must nev­er be a sacra­men­tal ser­vice at the end of a meet­ing so as to pre­vent the pos­si­bil­i­ty of invit­ing sin­ners to the mer­cy-seat.” Though none of this makes them woke, it is worth not­ing the sim­i­lar­i­ties between the ear­ly Sal­va­tion Army and the social gospel.

The mod­ern Sal­va­tion Army has become syn­ony­mous with Chris­t­ian char­i­ty, and their bell ringers have become a sign of the approach of Christ­mas, stand­ing as hum­ble reminders of giv­ing out­side of retail stores with their over-com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the sacred obser­vance of Christ’s birth. Con­trary to this out­ward appear­ance, The Sal­va­tion Army has replaced humil­i­ty before the Lord with a sub­mis­sion to woke ide­olo­gies.

Inter­na­tion­al Social Jus­tice Com­mis­sion

Unlike many indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions, The Sal­va­tion Army (TSA) does not hes­i­tate to use the term “social jus­tice.” This is most read­i­ly appar­ent through its “Inter­na­tion­al Social Jus­tice Com­mis­sion” (ISJC). The ISJC is “The Sal­va­tion Army’s strate­gic voice to advo­cate for human dig­ni­ty and social jus­tice with the world’s poor and oppressed,” as well as oper­at­ing as The Sal­va­tion Army’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the UN. The ISJC cre­ates posi­tion state­ments, study guides, pod­casts, research papers, and more, through which it advo­cates for social jus­tice in the world and defines TSA’s stance on the issues explored below — issues such as racism, abor­tion, the death penal­ty, car­ing for the envi­ron­ment, and sex­ism.

Is it pos­si­ble that TSA is using the term “social jus­tice” in a way dif­fer­ent from the way the woke would use it? Let us look at a doc­u­ment titled “Social Jus­tice: 5‑Point Bible Study,” where the min­istry defines “mar­gin­al­ized groups” as: chil­dren, women, elder­ly, eth­nic minori­ties, immi­grants, refugees and asy­lum seek­ers, dis­abled, poor, reli­gious minori­ties, LGBT com­mu­ni­ty, indige­nous peo­ple, migrant work­ers, and traf­ficked peo­ple. This list aligns per­fect­ly with woke social jus­tice, and there­fore is of con­cern. The Sal­va­tion Army defines doing social jus­tice in this “5‑Part Bible Study” as “challeng[ing] root caus­es of sys­temic inequity and exploita­tion.” Again, this aligns per­fect­ly with a woke def­i­n­i­tion of the term. To gain clar­i­ty on the ques­tion of The Sal­va­tion Army’s being woke or not, the fol­low­ing sec­tions will exam­ine indi­vid­ual posi­tions held, pro­mot­ed, and taught by the orga­ni­za­tion.

Death Penal­ty

The Sal­va­tion Army takes a firm stand against the death penal­ty on the grounds that “[e]very per­son bears the image of God (Gen­e­sis 1:27) and so human life has intrin­sic val­ue.” As well, “those who have com­mit­ted crimes must face jus­tice, but always in ways that rec­og­nize the invi­o­lable sanc­ti­ty of their lives.” This stance impugns God and His Word, for God com­mands, con­dones, and upholds death as a pun­ish­ment for griev­ous sins. In addi­tion, God has declared that right and just pun­ish­ment for sin is not just phys­i­cal death, but eter­nal death in hell. Thus, the claim that God’s image in man con­tra­dicts the death penal­ty would mean that God vio­lates His own image (His char­ac­ter attrib­ut­es reflect­ed in man). This expos­es that TSA’s view of the image of God in mankind is not root­ed in God, but man. It is sub­jec­tive and can be used to jus­ti­fy what­ev­er the organization’s lead­ers desire. This will become evi­dent in lat­er sec­tions of this pro­file..

Envi­ron­men­tal­ism

The Sal­va­tion Army pro­motes rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ism based on the idea of man­made cli­mate change (glob­al warm­ing). TSA’s mate­r­i­al states that “[c]urrent sci­en­tif­ic opin­ion con­firms increased tem­per­a­tures lead­ing to more extreme and less pre­dictable weath­er pat­terns due to human activ­i­ty.” Con­fus­ing­ly, it makes the fall of man an act of “abuse” of the plan­et: “In oth­er words, the first man­i­fes­ta­tion of sin in the world was for humans to relate to the Earth sim­ply as they desired, with­out account­abil­i­ty to God. Once sin entered the world, the har­mo­ny of Eden was bro­ken.” “Prac­ti­cal respons­es” the orga­ni­za­tion com­mits to and encour­ages mem­bers to take include:

• Rais­ing aware­ness of the inju­ri­ous impact people’s actions are hav­ing on God’s earth and of health­i­er prac­ti­cal alter­na­tives that can be cho­sen.
• Encour­ag­ing Sal­va­tion­ists to con­sid­er a voca­tion in envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence.
• Pro­vid­ing prac­ti­cal care for those who are impact­ed by adverse or dam­ag­ing envi­ron­men­tal sit­u­a­tions and advo­cat­ing with them for pos­i­tive change and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. 

The views The Sal­va­tion Army express­es on “cli­mate issues” are con­cern­ing; yet it’s when its lead­ers begin talk­ing about “envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice” that they slip into woke ter­ri­to­ry. Let us explore the doc­u­ment “Study Guide on Car­ing for the Envi­ron­ment” to help clar­i­fy what “envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice” means to the min­istry and its lead­ers. To them, in part, it is a “jus­tice” issue because “[i]ts effects fall dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on the most vul­ner­a­ble, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of health, liveli­hood, shel­ter and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make choic­es.” Fur­ther, the “Sal­va­tion Army empha­sis in reach­ing out to dis­em­pow­ered and mar­gin­alised peo­ple means that we are direct­ly found where envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion inter­sects with social inequal­i­ty.” Here we find entrenched wokeism: to The Sal­va­tion Army, every­thing is mea­sured on a scale of oppres­sion, with dif­fer­ent inter­sec­tions of oppres­sion defin­ing how mar­gin­al­ized one is. “Cli­mate change,” there­fore, is just anoth­er abuse per­pe­trat­ed by peo­ple with pow­er on those who are “dis­em­pow­ered and mar­gin­al­ized.”

Abor­tion

The Sal­va­tion Army starts off strong on abor­tion, clear­ly stat­ing that “[we believe] that life is a gift from God and we are answer­able to God for the tak­ing of life.” Yet, it quick­ly adds qual­i­fi­ca­tions mak­ing abor­tion accept­able, includ­ing a con­fus­ing asser­tion that it is per­mis­si­ble when “[r]eliable diag­nos­tic pro­ce­dures have iden­ti­fied a foetal abnor­mal­i­ty con­sid­ered incom­pat­i­ble with sur­vival for more than a very brief post natal peri­od.” Beyond the obvi­ous prob­lem­at­ic nature of this asser­tion from a moral per­spec­tive, it is mis­lead­ing. In oth­er words, it is unclear and open to inter­pre­ta­tion, and there­fore open to abuse.

There’s more. TSA also asserts that the val­ue of a baby isn’t inher­ent but depen­dent upon the cir­cum­stance of his or her con­cep­tion. TSA’s per­spec­tive is that a baby con­ceived through rape or incest may very well be a threat to emo­tion­al well­be­ing of the moth­er, so the impli­ca­tion is made that mur­der­ing the child might be less trau­mat­ic:

“[R]ape and incest are bru­tal acts of dom­i­nance vio­lat­ing women phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly. This sit­u­a­tion rep­re­sents a spe­cial case for the con­sid­er­a­tion of ter­mi­na­tion as the vio­la­tion may be com­pound­ed by the con­tin­u­a­tion of the preg­nan­cy.”

Despite TSA’s stance against the death penal­ty, its appeals to the image of God, and its claims that we are answer­able to God for mur­der, the orga­ni­za­tion treats unborn babies as being of less­er val­ue than their already-born coun­ter­parts. Babies do not com­mand the same con­sid­er­a­tion as crim­i­nals; nor do they pos­sess inher­ent ben­e­fits derived from being made in God’s image. Nor is a baby’s life con­sis­tent­ly deemed a “life” that, when tak­en, con­sti­tutes an act of mur­der. Fur­ther, The Sal­va­tion Army con­tin­ues by dis­cussing the “com­plex rea­sons” women seek abor­tion — and these “rea­sons” include dif­fer­ent oppres­sions. Again, babies, who are being oppressed in the worst pos­si­ble way by abor­tion­ists, do not get the same con­sid­er­a­tions.

Con­trary to its claims to be broad­ly against abor­tion, TSA works with the UN to end the “struc­tur­al [issue]” of “deci­sion-mak­ing on sex­u­al and repro­duc­tive issues,” and to “[e]nsure uni­ver­sal access to sex­u­al and repro­duc­tive health and repro­duc­tive rights.” The UN is unashamed­ly pro-abor­tion, and so are its goals on reduc­ing “struc­tur­al issues” on “repro­duc­tive rights.” 

Fem­i­nism

“Gen­der equal­i­ty issues” are a major con­cern for The Sal­va­tion Army and its lead­ers. This is a mat­ter for which the orga­ni­za­tion and its lead­ers part­ner direct­ly with, and take their cues from, the UN: “The Sal­va­tion Army is com­mit­ted to SDG 5, which has served as the North Star for the Gen­der Equi­ty Task­force of The Sal­va­tion Army, guid­ing us upon our jour­ney.” In their posi­tion state­ment on sex­ism, they con­tin­ue to build a woke-informed take on “gen­der equal­i­ty issues,” mak­ing sex­ism an expres­sion of pow­er dynam­ics and a sys­temic issue, and putting all women in a cat­e­go­ry of “oppressed per­son.”:

“Sex­ism often includes a com­bi­na­tion of prej­u­dice plus pow­er. It is expressed through sys­temic, struc­tured prej­u­dice and cul­tur­al dis­crim­i­na­tion and can be present in a fam­i­ly, com­mu­ni­ties of faith, and soci­etal and nation­al cul­tures.”

Through­out the remain­der of the doc­u­ment, TSA con­tin­ues to push ideas that align with rad­i­cal fem­i­nism and that are right at home with­in crit­i­cal gen­der the­o­ry. Women are paint­ed as ful­ly help­less and oppressed by the sys­tem (patri­archy), yet some­times indis­tin­guish­able in all ways from men (decon­struc­tion of the dis­tinc­tive­ness of the sex­es). Fur­ther, they are at points supe­ri­or to men. This is a fur­ther expres­sion of the sub­jec­tivism that appears through­out TSA per­spec­tives on issues. It is a per­spec­tive that con­sis­tent­ly betrays their reliance on man (par­tic­u­lar­ly through appli­ca­tions of crit­i­cal the­o­ries) rather than on the firm and unchang­ing truth of God’s Word.

CRT Pro­mo­tion

In Novem­ber of 2021, The Sal­va­tion Army found itself the sub­ject of con­tro­ver­sy with regard to a “dis­cus­sion guide” on racism it pro­duced. The orga­ni­za­tion and its lead­ers released a good num­ber of videos (like this one) “debunk­ing” claims that they were pro­mot­ing CRT or ask­ing or imply­ing peo­ple should apol­o­gize for being white. While the atti­tude appar­ent in their “clar­i­fi­ca­tions” is one of kind­ness, sin­cer­i­ty, and a desire to serve God; the ques­tion is, did this event real­ly prompt wide­spread mis­un­der­stand­ing of TSA’s posi­tion on CRT. The evi­dence does not agree with TSA’s assess­ment.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Sal­va­tion Army lead­ers defend­ed them­selves by say­ing sim­ply “we don’t pro­mote CRT” with­out pro­vid­ing a cred­i­ble argu­ment against the claims that they did. Nor did they retract their state­ments in the guide. Instead, they removed pub­lic access to it. Com­pound­ing this, they state repeat­ed­ly that they are “not on the left, and not on the right,” a com­mon sen­ti­ment among “Third Way” lib­er­als like Tim Keller and pietists. Does that make them woke? Their fur­ther respons­es and teach­ings will answer that. In a sep­a­rate pub­lic response, they take a more hos­tile, aggres­sive, and even threat­en­ing stance, going as far as to claim that these “attacks” “have the poten­tial to sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact those who are hun­gry, fam­i­lies who are at risk of los­ing their homes, sur­vivors of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and more.” While still pro­vid­ing no evi­dence assuag­ing con­cerns raised, they encour­age peo­ple to “set the record straight,” and to refute these “attacks” on social media.

What is TSA’s cur­rent avail­able posi­tion state­ment on racism? Right off the bat, the state­ment includes the line “‘Racism’ also refers to polit­i­cal or social pro­grammes….” This strong­ly implies that racism is not, or not only, per­pe­trat­ed by racists, but is a sys­tem. Con­tin­u­ing on, it claims that “[r]acism is not only the result of indi­vid­ual atti­tudes, but can also be per­pet­u­at­ed by social struc­tures and sys­tems. Some­times racism is overt and inten­tion­al, but often it is not. “Again, TSA and its lead­ers push the ideas that racism is embed­ded sys­tems and struc­tures, and that racism is not inher­ent­ly born of hate but “often” unin­ten­tion­al or part of a sys­tem. These ideas align with the notion that one can be a racist sim­ply because of the col­or of his or her skin col­or and/or coun­try of ori­gin, aka: If your skin is light enough in Amer­i­ca, you are racist by default. To their cred­it, they do state that “[s]cience has shown, how­ev­er, that there is no evi­dence to sup­port the exis­tence of bio­log­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent human races.” Even so, to them “[r]acism can take many expres­sions, includ­ing open hatred, indif­fer­ence, or lack of care,” echo­ing the BLM claim that “white silence is white vio­lence.” They back the idea of gen­er­a­tional inequity when they claim things such as “decades of racist struc­tures and prej­u­dices have cre­at­ed inter-gen­er­a­tional effects and dis­ad­van­tages.”

This has only been a selec­tive look at TSA’s posi­tion state­ment on racism, yet it is already clear The Sal­va­tion Army buys into the ideas of Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry and Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty.

The claim was that the doc­u­ment titled “Let’s Talk About Racism” sim­ply was “mis­un­der­stood,” or at worst that it con­tains some “unclear” things — but is this real­ly the case? The Sal­va­tion Army’s lead­ers again clar­i­fied, right­ly, that “[r]ace and racism, how­ev­er, were born of sin­ful human design, and have no basis in sci­ence or Bib­li­cal thought.” Yet the rest of the guide assumes race exists. Here are a few def­i­n­i­tions pro­vide:

• Racist: a per­son who belongs to a dom­i­nant or priv­i­leged group…
• Racism: a prej­u­dice against some­one based on race, when those prej­u­dices are rein­forced by sys­tems of pow­er. The prej­u­diced treat­ment, stereo­typ­ing or dis­crim­i­na­tion of Peo­ple Of Col­or on the basis of race. Racism also refers to the sys­tem of social advan­tage and dis­ad­van­tage or priv­i­lege and oppres­sion that is based on race. Racism is a mar­riage of racist poli­cies and racist ideas that pro­duces and nor­mal­izes racial inequities.
• Struc­tur­al racism: is the over­ar­ch­ing sys­tem of racial bias across insti­tu­tions and soci­ety. These sys­tems give priv­i­leges to White peo­ple result­ing in dis­ad­van­tages to Peo­ple Of Col­or.
• White­ness: White­ness is also at the core of under­stand­ing race in Amer­i­ca. White­ness and the nor­mal­iza­tion of White racial iden­ti­ty through­out America’s his­to­ry have cre­at­ed a cul­ture where non-White per­sons are seen as infe­ri­or or abnor­mal.
• Oppres­sion: refers to a com­bi­na­tion of prej­u­dice and insti­tu­tion­al pow­er that cre­ates a sys­tem that reg­u­lar­ly and severe­ly dis­crim­i­nates against some groups and ben­e­fits oth­er groups.
• Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty: the belief that our social jus­tice move­ments must con­sid­er all of the inter­sec­tions of iden­ti­ty, priv­i­lege and oppres­sion that peo­ple face in order to be just and effec­tive. 

It should be clear at this point that yes, as an orga­ni­za­tion, The Sal­va­tion Army does believe “white peo­ple” need to apol­o­gize for their “white­ness” and that Amer­i­ca is a deeply racist coun­try. The orga­ni­za­tion and its lead­ers nev­er pro­mote CRT by name, but they clear­ly uphold all of its ten­ants and rec­om­mend resources that explic­it­ly pro­mote and teach it. In addi­tion, they pro­mote inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty by name. If that weren’t enough, see the quotes below, as well as a selec­tion of the resources they rec­om­mend that open­ly teach CRT.

Addi­tion­al quotes (empha­sis added):

• Hence the inter­sec­tion of race, class and gen­der must be con­sid­ered in any under­tak­ing address­ing social jus­tice.
• What has not changed is that racial groups are placed into a hier­ar­chy, with White or lighter skinned peo­ple at the top; non-Indige­nous Peo­ple Of Col­or (POC) sub­ju­gat­ed beneath lighter skinned peo­ple; Black and Indige­nous peo­ple at the bot­tom of the racial sys­tem.
• We must stop deny­ing the exis­tence of indi­vid­ual and systemic/institutional racism. They exist, and are still at work to keep White Amer­i­cans in pow­er.
• Racism is not an indi­vid­ual act, it is sys­temic and insti­tu­tion­al. Our foun­da­tions were built on racism, and it is still strong­ly felt in every aspect of Amer­i­can life. 

Resources pro­mot­ed in that are open­ly, and unashamed­ly, pro­mot­ing CRT:

• The Cross and the Lynch­ing Tree, James H. Cone
• Woke Church: An Urgent Call for Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca to Con­front Racism and Injus­tice, Eric Mason
• The Col­or of Com­pro­mise: The Truth about the Amer­i­can Church’s Com­plic­i­ty in Racism, Jemar Tis­by
• White Fragili­ty: Why It’s So Hard for White Peo­ple to Talk About Racism, Robin DiAn­ge­lo
• 1619 by The New York Times 

“LGBT” Pro­mo­tion

The Sal­va­tion Army has been putting in a lot of effort over the past few years to dis­pel rumors that it dis­crim­i­nates, includ­ing hir­ing a woke adver­tis­ing agency that main­tains a “Brand Inclu­siv­i­ty Per­for­mance Index.” This ad agency is also respon­si­ble for the “He Gets Us” ads. It goes far beyond PR, though; and in fact also pro­mote the “LGBT com­mu­ni­ty.” As with just about every­thing else, you don’t have to dig to find this, since they are proud to dis­play it bold­ly. On this top­ic, it is most help­ful to see what they have put out in videos on the sub­ject. We have made a video show­cas­ing a good many clips. As men­tioned under “Racism,” TSA open­ly pro­motes the idea of inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty, includ­ing in a video declar­ing how inclu­sive it is, where a female employ­ee states, “…it don’t get no hard­er than being an African-Amer­i­can woman, who’s a les­bian.” It is beyond alarm­ing that TSA would state that “[w]e are very cul­tur­al­ly com­pe­tent around issues of peo­ple who are trans­gen­der. We tai­lor the ser­vices to whichev­er gen­der they iden­ti­fy with,” fol­lowed direct­ly by a self-described gay man say­ing “[n]o one’s try­ing to change me, no one’s tried to con­vert me.”

Sum­ma­ry

If The Sal­va­tion Army and its lead­ers are not try­ing to con­vert sin­ners from a life of sin and rebel­lion against God but are instead embrac­ing people’s devian­cies and delu­sions, then there is no true gospel there. One final point: The Sal­va­tion Army is a denom­i­na­tion, one in which there exists no dis­tinc­tion between its social work and its eccle­si­as­ti­cal or church body. For a church to brag that one can find many “employ­ees who iden­ti­fy as mem­bers of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty,” is to make a mock­ery of God’s Word. Here at Woke­pe­dia, we stand on the Word of God, right­ly con­demn­ing sins such as homo­sex­u­al­i­ty; and we pray that the vic­tims of The Sal­va­tion Army’s pow­er­less gospel might meet Christ. We pray for the day that we might be able to describe every­one used in those videos as Paul does the Corinthi­ans in 1 Corinthi­ans 6:11, where he writes, “and such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanc­ti­fied, you were jus­ti­fied in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spir­it of our God.”