Salvation Army Goes Woke

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the

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Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna talk a little bit today about the Salvation Army and whether or not they are going woke.

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I wanna answer that question because it certainly does affect a lot of us. You see the Santa Claus's ringing the bells.

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That's a Christmas staple. I love that, actually. It reminds me of Christmas, especially when I was younger.

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And occasionally, we wouldn't do this most years, but if we would go down to New York City or something or any major city, we would see that.

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And most of us, or outside of a Walmart in your local community, that's often where I saw them. And most of us would probably give to them at some point during the holiday season,

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I would imagine. And this year's gonna be different, I think, for me, though. And this isn't a boycott, but I just,

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I saw this article that showed that some quotes from one of their documents basically saying that you need to apologize even if you're not guilty of racism for the racism that the church has produced.

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You need to apologize on behalf of the church somehow. And that was it for me. I just thought, I'm not giving to them.

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I give to Salvation Army because I wanna help people, real, tangible people, not a political cause.

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And I think the focus of the organization is changing. And so I don't wanna just give you that bad news without giving you some good news.

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The good news is there are other places that you can give your money. And I would think maybe Samaritan's Purse would be a place you could give some money or just look in your local community and see what organizations are doing charitable work without the social justice emphasis.

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Maybe your local church is engaged in a soup kitchen or something like that. But I would not give to Salvation Army at this point just because of, and then

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I started looking into it and I saw other things that I just thought, you know what, they're in mission drift right now.

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They're losing track of why they exist in the first place. And so, which is, by the way, not just feeding people and engaging in charity.

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Originally, it was supposed to be giving them the gospel of Jesus Christ, which I've heard from workers is becoming more hard depending on where you are because of Salvation Army itself.

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They don't want you being too aggressive. They, you know, that kind of thing. So I want to just give you the information because Salvation Army has made a counter statement and someone actually came on my

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Facebook to tell me when I asked about alternatives to Salvation Army that I was buying into basically a conspiracy theory.

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This just wasn't true. It was slanderous. Look, Salvation Army's responded and I wanna answer that as well. So let's talk about it.

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We'll start here. This is MSN News. Salvation Army, it says what they're known for, put, ask white people to lament, repent, and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed in addition to donating to their spare change according to the

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Daily Wire. They have a document called Let's Talk About Racism and screenshots from it say, here's a quote, but we recognize that it is a profound challenge to sit on the hot seat and listen with an open heart to the hurt and anger of the wounded, yet we all are hardwired to desire justice and fairness so we need to receive a sincere apology is necessary.

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In the section titled, What is Whiteness? A Guide to Discourage Colorblindness and it later suggested a number of books including White Fragility by D 'Angelo,

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How to Be an Antiracist by Kendi. So this is CRT right here and more.

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So let's stop denying the existence. Here's another quote of individual and systemic institutional racism.

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Stop denying that white privilege or let's see. Readers should stop denying that white privilege exists.

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So this is what's going on. Now I thought, let's look at the actual document itself if I can find it here.

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Here it is. And I wanna show you, this is, let's see here.

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Is this where I wanna go? Yeah. Perhaps you don't feel, this is page five. Perhaps you don't feel as if you personally had done anything wrong, but you can spend time repenting on behalf of the church and asking

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God to open hearts and minds to the issue of racism. So much for sins of the sons, sins of the fathers aren't the same and everyone's held accountable for their own sin.

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This is, you're held accountable for whatever your fathers might've done and your skin color and the church itself.

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And I mean, this whole thing is just one big woke document. It's, let's talk about racism is what it's called.

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So you can go online, you can find that pretty easily. It's the whole document, it's actually pretty long.

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It's like a book, it's how many pages, 67 pages. Yeah, 67 pages,

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I guess it looks like, unless it's just a repeat in different, I think it's 67 pages. So when

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I went to the Salvation Army website though, I was looking for this before I was independent of seeing any articles about this issue.

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I was just looking for it. And so I came to this and I really don't wanna click on any of these, I'm kind of scared.

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More resources, this is on the front of their website. You can click on more resources and study

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God on racism, study God on sexism, caring for the environment, refugees and asylum seekers, all these study guides.

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And I'm just wondering what does this have to do?

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I'm afraid, let's just click on it. Let's click on refugees and asylum seekers. Look at the table of contents here.

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They have their statement on it, hunger and horrors, social outcomes, so this whole thing, how many pages is this?

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14 pages just on asylums, asylum seekers. And I'm gonna imagine this is probably gonna be kind of pro, and not that anyone's against in principle, people seeking asylum.

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This is probably gonna be pro bringing people in from countries where it hasn't been vetted and that kind of stuff.

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But I haven't seen that yet, I'm just skimming through it. Hunger and horrors, so talks about from the

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Bible, people who are asylum seekers in their minds. It talks about Ruth, story of Ruth.

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And so it's just some general stuff. Five, listen to this, social outcomes.

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Top five concerns with refugees. They take advantage of our hospitality. They include secret terrorists.

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Helping these people just increases the flood. They take our jobs, they want to change our culture in their own. Now these are all legitimate concerns, but it's not so much about people seeking asylum, it's about the process by which we bring them in and at the rate at which we bring them in.

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So it's that there's legitimate ways to do this, but current policies, are they actually meeting the needs of the people in the

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United States and Europe and wherever else asylum seekers are trying to come? So here's their response to that.

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The trafficking of migrants is a global concern. Organized criminals smuggle vulnerable people. Two of the principles smuggling routes,

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Africa to Europe and South America to North America generates 6 .75

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billion a year for criminals. Counter to public perception, the highest refugee concentrations are actually in some of the poorest countries in the world.

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The presence of refugees and demands on a strained economy, services and infrastructure add to the hardship already endured by the local populations.

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In many instances, refugees become an added burden to the development of the host country, which nevertheless can demonstrate quite remarkable patience and kindness as according to the

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United Nations. So they're quoting the United Nations. The economic impact of refugees on host areas, however, is not necessarily negative.

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An economic stimulus can be generated by the presence of refugees and can lead to development of host regions.

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The presence of refugees also contributes to the creation of employment benefiting the local population directly or indirectly.

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So, and this just goes on. Americans, some Americans believe that refugees are a drain on the economy, but look, economists have said, reached a different conclusion.

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Actually, refugees are really good for your economy. That's this whole thing. All right, so they just wanna take that narrative.

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They're taking the Trump MAGA narrative and they're smashing it. And this is

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Salvation Army. This isn't supposed to be a political organization in their Seeking Justice Together series, their study guide.

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And look, I just clicked this almost at random. I don't really want, I don't wanna click any of these. I'm afraid to,

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I'm afraid of what I'm gonna find, but that's enough for me right there. To see that they're telling people they should apologize on behalf of the church, even if they're not racist, to be telling, to be trying to allay the concerns, the legitimate concerns people have of unvetted mass illegal migration and that kind of thing.

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And then you have, I just was at the front of the website. I just thought this was interesting. It's right there in the front, LGBTQ support.

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You just, what we do, boom, right there, LGBTQ support, and then their commitment to diversity right there.

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And you go down and it just, all the things that they do for the LGBTQ community and how inclusive they are and how, basically

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LGBTQ people have the, they have it rough. And so Salvation Army is gonna come and help them with jobs and employment services and all kinds of other things.

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And then how committed they are to equality. It's always been a part of Salvation Army's missions and values and their commitment, their work.

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So all this stuff, it's all, it's, why is it necessary?

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Why put this here? Why show people that this is what we're about? We're just supposed to be feeding people, no matter who they are.

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Was there ever a time Salvation Army just turned people away because of the color of their skin or something? I mean, not that I'm aware of, but they feel the need to really announce from the top of the rooftops how inclusive, diverse, equitable, pro -LGBTQ, pro -immigrants and refugees, for anti -racism and CRT.

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I mean, it's all that stuff. So here's the response, and this is interesting to me. So they responded on November 25th to these concerns, at least of the anti -racism stuff.

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And they said that, they said, we remain committed to serving everyone in need regardless of their beliefs, lifestyles, et cetera.

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And that, it says those who have criticized them, they have made outrageous claims. Actually, let me start. Recently, some individuals and groups have attempted to mislabel our organization to serve their own agendas.

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They have made outrageous claims that we believe our donors should apologize for their own racism. That Salvation Army believes

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America is inherently racist society and that our organization has abandoned its beliefs for one ideology for another.

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In fact, an online petition is opposing them. Those claims are false and they distort the very goal of our work.

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The truth is Salvation Army believes that racism is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity. And we are called to work towards a world where all people are loved, accepted, and valued.

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So this is gaslighting, right? This is, you did not see what you think you saw.

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You are the one that's lying. You are the one. How is this any different than what Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary does or any institution that goes woke and then you call them on it and then they say, no, we're not doing that.

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You are the one causing division and discord. I'm sorry, no. Salvation Army started that when they put out a document like that.

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Admit the document exists. They quote to this their position on racism paper, which is not the same as the let's talk about racism.

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So they don't even talk about or acknowledge the paper that is being quoted in those articles.

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And this is just sad to me, but it does show one thing. It does show that it is not to the benefit of these organizations who rely on donations and rely on your support to be seen as woke.

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Even though they're going that direction, even though they put money towards it and resources towards it, and they employ people who believe it, and that's part of their mission somehow, they don't want you to know that.

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They don't want you to perceive them as going in that direction because it's bad for them and you might not donate.

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And when they double down though, and they say that it's not actually happening when it clearly is, that's when

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I would say there's a different problem now. It's not about them being woke. It's about them being dishonest at this point.

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Has nothing to do with them being social justice anymore. It's just, you're not honest. And that's enough for me.

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I wanna give my money to honest organizations. So that's where I stand on this. And it might be something, probably the local bell ringers probably don't even know about any of this.

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It would probably be good to just show them if you go up to them. In fact, Nate Fisher had tweeted something out about this and said, why don't you go to the local

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Salvation Army bell ringers and just say, look, I would love to give to you guys, but this is what your organization's doing.

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And you can give them a copy of the article or something, and probably not a bad idea. So that's, I did the research, so you don't have to on Salvation Army and what's happening there.

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Final call, I wanna just say for Cyber Monday to get the books that I have available for sale.

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It's the last day. You can get Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflicts for $10 plus $6 shipping and handling, which is, it's a steal.

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I usually charge 25 bucks. That's an autograph copy. You can go to Christianityandsocialjustice .com. You can also get

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Social Justice Goes to Church. You can get E .D. Robles' book, Social Justice Pharisees, all of these books available at worldviewconversation .com.

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And on Amazon as well, you can go get Christianity and Social Justice for 10 bucks on Amazon, $9 .99

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I think, and then $6 .99 for a Kindle edition. So these are really good deals.

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They're not gonna be around forever. This is the last day, or at least for mine. I don't know how long the Amazon will continue for.

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I don't think long. And I hope you can take advantage of those before Christmas. So God bless, and until next time, bye.