It was bound to happen. Most of the American Church is already utterly irrelevant, having declared that they no longer believe in the infallibility of Scripture, the Deity of Christ, the Trinity, the substitutionary atonement, and other necessary doctrines to be considered relevant and orthodox. After defenestrating doctrine, they picked up parity in income as their raison d’être. In other words, they adopted full orbed Marxism.
The Salvation Army has followed suit.
The Salvation Army wants its white donors to give it more than just money this Christmas season. Its leadership is also demanding they apologize for being racist.
It’s part of a push by the Christian charitable organization to embrace the ideas of Black Lives Matter, an activist group working to, among other things, “dismantle white privilege” and “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”
The Salvation Army’s Alexandria-based leadership has created an “International Social Justice Commission” which has developed and released a “resource” to educate its white donors, volunteers and employees called Let’s Talk about Racism. It asserts Christianity is institutionally racist, calling for white Christians to repent and offer “a sincere apology” to blacks for being “antagonistic.. to black people or the culture, values and interests of the black community.”
“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,” one lesson explains. “There is an urgent need for Christians to evaluate racist attitudes and practices in light of our faith, and to live faithfully in today’s world.”
Here is one response, but it doesn’t go far enough.
Entitled An Open Letter to The Salvation Army, Koukl prefaces the post by informing TSA that he is terminating his monthly donations and directing them to another organization. Koukl is also the founder and president of the Stand to Reason, a non-profit religious organization that “trains Christians to think more clearly about their faith and to make an even-handed defense for classical Christianity.”
“There is a massive number of academics—Black and white, Christian and non-Christian, atheist and theist—who have raised the alarm against the aggressive indoctrination and, frankly, bullying of CRT—not to mention the racial essentialism inherent in the view, the false witness it bears against virtuous people, and the general destruction it continues to wreak on race relations in this country. CRT has set us back 50 years,” he continued.
[ … ]
General Brian Peddle, CEO of The Salvation Army announced the initiative in February through a video in which he said “it examines racism through the lens of scripture, church and world history and guides gracious discussions about overcoming the damage racism has inflicted upon our world and yes, on our Salvation Army.”
“As we anticipate having courageous conversations about race please join me in working toward a world in which all people feel included, valued and loved on Earth just as they are in heaven,” Peddle stated in the one-minute video.
[ … ]
“Repentance solely for the fact that you’re white, we don’t think that’s very productive,” Xu told Newsweek, who also noted that 60 percent of those served by The Salvation Army are from ethnic minority communities. That’s a statistic he told Newsweek he discovered by talking to Commissioner and TSA National Commander Kenneth G. Hodder.
“Here’s the thing with the SA that’s so crazy—these people spend their entire lives serving the poor,” said Xu. “There is absolutely no reason to even suggest or insinuate repentance for their supposed complicity in racism.”
“I have a real problem with that website and the resources that are suggested readings—to my mind they do not accord with what I’ve seen at the SA,” said Theroux, who has spent more than 25 years in a governing role.
“They’re silly notions that are not going to resolve the disparate conditions of people.” Rather, Theroux said there are concerted actions people can take rather than “spending a lot of time and effort in training or gnashing of teeth.”
“I don’t think it advances real solutions and real solutions are needed,” added Theroux. “Jargon like systemic racism and whiteness being a sin is a smokescreen for correctly diagnosing the problems and addressing them in a meaningful way that will resolve them.”
You see? Even responses to the Salvation Army are poor. And note again that the Salvation Army wants people to feel as loved on earth as they are in heaven. This is universalism and it is false doctrine. If a man is not saved by grace, through faith, he is not loved in heaven. He will suffer eternal damnation.
So here is the proper response.
This false doctrine is in vogue everywhere, from unattenuated Marxism (Marx was an atheist and is in hell today), to black liberation theology (James Cone, who was an unbeliever), to it’s disinfected and cleaned up white man version by N. T. Wright. Tom Wright teaches warmed over Wesleyanism, but replaces the doctrine that you can lose your salvation and need to be able to say “I don’t drink, smoke or chew or date girls who do” (thus you partner with God in your salvation) with the doctrine that justification is based on the “life lived” (rather than now through the shed blood and substitutionary atonement of Christ). Rather than chewing tobacco, Tom Wright is concerned with whether you help the poor and erase disparate incomes.
It’s all heresy.
The Gospel isn’t about disparate conditions of people. That has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
The Gospel isn’t about finding what’s productive in your estimation.
The Gospel isn’t about diagnosing what man thinks are his problems.
The Gospel is about teaching man his real problems.
He is lost. He is a sinner because he has violated the laws of a Holy God and thus committed cosmic treason. He cannot save himself. He is dead, and dead men don’t approach God. God redeems His own by sending the Holy Spirit to quicken their hearts and receive Christ. Salvation is of by grace, through faith. Man is justified only through the shed blood of the ultimate substitutionary atonement, the death of Christ. He is assured of the resurrection because of the resurrection of Christ. He is assured of ultimate and final victory because of the ascension of Christ to the Father.
Any further discussion of things he does after salvation is because a man loves his Lord and shows the fruit of faith; works are not the cause of justification. All real problems are so because God says they are, not because man says so. Proper world and life view is based on the Scripture, and only on the Scripture.
Your income, or the income of someone else, has nothing whatsoever to do with whether you’re saved, or how you should treat them. God is no respecter of persons. He is the creator of the universe, and His only begotten Son is truly God and truly man, the only savior and way to the Father.
That is the Gospel.
Nothing that was said by the Salvation Army even approaches that, and thus they have become a sinful organization.
Refrain from giving them your hard earned money. Save it for those in need around you – friends who have lost work, church members, missions, and so forth.
