Regarding the Salvation Army
There’s been a bit of stuff going around on Twitter and Tumblr tonight about how the Salvation Army is not an organization you should be giving your money to. As someone who grew up in a family connected to the Salvation Army, and as a former employee of the Salvation Army (three separate positions in two countries over four years), and a volunteer in various capacities all over throughout the years, I thought I’d weigh in.
Before I begin, this is not an appeal for your money. If you do not feel comfortable donating to the Salvation Army, then don’t donate to the Salvation Army (I don’t any longer, for reasons that may become clear below). But I feel like I’m qualified to say a few things which might be interesting to anyone who has been keeping tabs on this, so here it goes.
First off, the Salvation Army is primarily a church. This catches some people by surprise, but it’s true. It was founded in London in by a young Methodist minister named William Booth who started preaching to the down and out of the city’s poorest quarters. The Methodist churches Booth was associated with would not allow drunkards, prostitutes or the homeless into their buildings for various reasons, and so Booth started his own church where they would be welcome (this is a super oversimplification, but bear with me).
A huge part of the Salvation Army’s focus is service work to those same down and out that the church was built around over a century ago. As a result, people are more familiar with the Salvation Army’s homeless shelters and community centers in the USA, or possibly their orphanages in India, or their schools in Haiti, etc. But alongside that aid-structure there exists a church which it is intimately connected to. The social work that the Salvation Army does is probably best understood as the Salvation Army’s primary method of worship and devotion to God.
This church/NGO thing is where a lot of confusion and upset about the Salvation Army originates, and this is where it gets complicated regarding the Salvation Army’s relationship with Homosexuality, and whether they discriminate.
On the aid-work side of things, the Salvation Army’s policy is not to discriminate based on any criteria. Regarding homosexuality specifically, the Salvation Army in Canada (unsure about other territories) has in its positional statements, made it’s non-discriminatory policy explicit, saying:
“The Salvation Army upholds the dignity of all persons. For this reason, and in obedience to the example of Jesus Christ, whose compassionate love is all-embracing, The Salvation Army does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in the delivery of its service”
However, that is only on the service side. Anyone who walks up to the soup truck window will be served, but inside the truck is another matter. Who is allowed inside the truck to ladle out the soup is governed by a different philosophy. As a religious organization it is allowed to discriminate based on religious affiliation in its hiring. This has upset some people who think of the Salvation Army as an NGO, and don’t realize that it is first and foremost a church. If I can inject a measure of opinion, while I think that there should be room for wiggle here, religious discrimination here seems reasonable. I would not be surprised to be denied a job at a Muslim organization based on the fact that I am a Christian.
The Salvation Army gets a lot right. It is filled to the brim with passionate people who want nothing more than to do good in the world. In fact ‘want’ is an understatement. As I mentioned before, offering these services is a matter of religious expression for the Salvation Army. Where one person might take his/her religious conviction and channel it into art, and another group might take his/her conviction and use it to fuel a passion for science, and another might be convicted into a life of quiet contemplation, those who are at home in the Salvation Army take their religious conviction and channel it into serving their communities. They are human, however. Sometimes mistakes are made and efforts end in failure, and the organization (or individuals) is not always on the right side of every issue, but I don’t think you can find a group which have (for the most part) purer intentions.
Despite this, please don’t interpret any of this as an endorsement of the Salvation Army. I grew up in the Salvation Army church, so it twists my gut a little bit when I see fliers circulating like the one that’s been posted on Tumblr. I get a little bit emotional. I get even more upset when I am forced by my conscience to acknowledge that my former church is very much in the wrong. I can’t specifically speak to the Salvation Army’s lobbying history in the USA, or the things I’ve read about happening in New York, where they denied benefits to gay employees. I don’t actually know enough about those issues to speak to them, but from what I’ve read, the Salvation Army is very clearly in the wrong, and deserving of much of the anger that is directed at it.
The Salvation Army is on the wrong side of the fence when it comes to Homosexuality. I know of clergy who were unable to continue in their ministry because they came out as homosexuals, and I know that homosexual members of my own family do not feel comfortable at the church they grew up in. But there are forces within the church who are working to change that. My own father is one, and you cannot imagine how proud I am when he speaks truth to power and other, meeker, church members nod their agreement. I am, unfortunately, not one of those people inside working out. I have left the church based on this divide regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality, and a handfull of other doctrinal and lifestyle issues.
Nonetheless, even though I am one of her wayward sons, and don’t anticipate rejoining the Salvation Army, I am still invested in it all. I want the christian church as a whole to give up it’s “homosexuality is a sin” nonsense, but this specific denomination is the one most in my thoughts.
When they do smarten up (I have to believe they will) I’ll grab a bell and stand on any street encouraging your contribution. But until then, perhaps other organizations are more deserving of your dollars. Shawn Ahmed recommends Save the Children. I’ve worked with the small Nepali NGO called Volunteer Service Nepal, and I can definitely recommend sending your dollars there.
In any case, I hope I’ve facilitated some more complex imagining of the Salvation Army.
Merry Christmas!
~Kenmore
kenmorethompson.com
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PS. I left out a whole bunch about the global structure of the Salvation Army, but different countries (and different regions of countries) fall under different territories and/or divisions. So it is that the Salvation Army in the USA can have the abysmal and insulting “Doing the Most Good” while Canada boasts the far-more-appropriate “Giving Hope Today.”
