Is The Salvation Army (SA) going “woke”
on racism? Fox Business observes:
“A Salvation Army guide aimed at ‘courageous conversations about racism’ asks
‘White Americans’ to ‘stop trying to be ‘colorblind.’”
Stop trying to be colorblind? Wasn’t that what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. promoted — to treat people according to the content of their character, not the color of their skin?
There are at least two documents from the Christian denomination (The Salvation Army) that deal with the issue of racism. One of them is “Let’s Talk About Racism.” Joseph Curl quoted from this document in The Daily Wire:
“Many
have come to believe that we live in a post-racial society, but racism is very
real for our brothers and sisters who are refused jobs and housing, denied
basic rights and brutalized and oppressed simply because of the color of their
skin.”
The SA has now pulled this document down
— perhaps because of blowback. They
recently issued this statement: “… the International Social Justice Commission
has now withdrawn the guide for appropriate review.”
Of course, racism is a horrific evil. But some critics are concerned that rather than responding to actual racism, The SA had aligned itself ideologically with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Critical Race Theory movements— which leverages unfalsifiable and amorphous charges of “systemic racism” to drive racial grievances.
Whatever the stated intentions of BLM may be, their stance against the family actually exacerbates poverty— by helping to break down the family. A BLM handout declares:
“We
disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by
supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively
care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers,
parents, and children are comfortable. We
foster a queer-affirming network.”
So much for God’s design for the family.
While the extended family can be helpful, studies show what a major difference it makes in the life of the child to have a mom and a dad. The kind of “disrupting” of the nuclear family BLM advocates has actually done incredible damage to the black community.
There’s another document from The SA. “Study Guide on Racism” is still online. The booklet states:
“Racism
is fundamentally incompatible with the Christian conviction that all people are
made in the image of God and are equal in value. The Salvation Army believes that the world is
enriched by a diversity of cultures and ethnicities.”
They also note:
“The
only race is the human one;” and they add, “Followers of Jesus Christ now find
essential unity in Him, rather than in culture and ethnicity. Such a way of thinking and relating is a
powerful force for good. It embodies the ministry of reconciliation.”
Despite its critics, true Christianity practices real diversity, rather than the race-centered, divisive, skin color-obsessed counterfeit promoted by the left. In Christ, there is no black, there is no white, there is no distinction of socio-economic status.
One of the goals of The SA, inasmuch as they are motivated by the love of Jesus, is to alleviate poverty. This is why they have worked tirelessly since their origin in the slums of London in 1865. They now work in 131 nations around the globe. But anyone that promotes the disintegration of the family inadvertently promotes poverty and the further disintegration of society.
The irony is that government policies tend to create more poor people because they penalize functioning families. Welfare programs in the U.S. subsidize out-of-wedlock births— thus creating more poor people.
The Brookings Institution says that you have a 98% chance of avoiding poverty if you do three things:
1.
Graduate high school.
2.
Work full time.
3.
Marry before you have children.
Only 2% of those who do these things end
up in poverty.
As Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation points out, marriage turns out to be the single greatest weapon in the war on poverty.
It would be quite a shame if The SA went “woke.” This is a lesson all Christian organizations must heed.
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