Ep 534 ｜ Et Tu, Salvation Army？ ｜ Guest： Owen Strachan
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Summary
Owen Strand talks about the Salvation Army's new stance on critical race theory and why it's a big deal, and why we should continue to give to the organization, even though it seems to be buying into the tenets of Critical Race Theory.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.
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Yesterday, yesterday I talked about Dobbs, the abortion case before the Supreme Court. So make
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sure you go listen to that. I pre-recorded that on Friday because yesterday I was in Nashville
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for a very quick trip to be on Candace Owens' show, which will be out tonight on The Daily
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Wire at 9 p.m. Eastern Time tonight, Tuesday. So make sure that you tune in for that. We
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talk about all kinds of good stuff. Today I am talking to Owen Strand. A lot of you probably
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follow him. He talks a lot about the dangers of wokeness, of critical race theory. And today
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we're talking specifically about the tenets of critical race theory, which apparently
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are being taught and are being pushed within the Salvation Army. And so he's going to talk
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to us about that story, why what they're pushing is contradictory to the Bible, how biblically
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we should approach real topics like racial discrimination and oppression, and how we can
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lovingly and clearly, truthfully, biblically do that. And he will tell us whether he thinks
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that we should continue to donate to the Salvation Army or not. That is the million-dollar question.
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So without further ado, here is my friend, Owen Strand.
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Owen, thank you so much for joining us. For those who may not know, can you tell us who
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Yeah, my name is Owen Strand, and I'm a research professor and provost at a small seminary in
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Arkansas called Grace Bible Theological Seminary. And I'm a senior fellow with Family Research
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Council. I'm a husband and father of three kids. And I'm a failed pickup basketball player.
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Oh, gotcha. That last one is most important. But we'll have to save that subject and that part of
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your testimony for a different day. Because today I want to talk to you about, I want to talk to you
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about your take on this story about the Salvation Army apparently becoming woke and taking on critical
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race theory or at least some tenets of critical race theory internally. I came across an article
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you wrote or a conversation you had for Family Research Council where you talked about this.
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And per usual, there was some pushback to the things that you had to say, even from some people that
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maybe I would consider conservative Christians saying, oh my gosh, this is taking it too far. You
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guys are blowing this out of proportion. It's not critical race theory or it's fine, whatever.
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Tell us what this is, what's going on in the Salvation Army, and why is it a big deal?
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The Salvation Army released a document where they talked about structural racism and systemic racism
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and these kind of problems. And they made clear that in their view, American society really does
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present these elements to its citizens. So we're all participants in this ongoing system
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of systemic racism. And in particular, those of course, who are racial majorities, those would be
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white people, are the ones who are primarily benefiting from this rigged game. Many people
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pushed back against the Salvation Army. And so the Salvation Army issued a fairly defiant statement,
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frankly, that retracted at least the guidebook they had released on this topic. But here's the deal,
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Ali, fundamentally in other documents, in their positional statement on racism that they did not
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retract and is easily findable on the web. They fundamentally articulate all these core tenets
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of what we would call critical race theory or more broadly, wokeness. So the Salvation Army really has
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embraced a woke standpoint. And many people rightly responded to that. It's a strange fundraising
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strategy, Ali, in a Christmas season when we typically know that the bell ringers are outside
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Target or whatever, you know, to indict people for their racism as they walk past you and you ask for
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their spare change. An odd strategy that. Right. For people who might not know, although I would guess
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that most people who listen to this podcast do know, tell us why it's wrong. Why is it wrong to say
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there is structural racism, there's systemic racism, white people and maybe even white evangelicalism
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has colluded with, you know, racism and racists in this country to perpetuate those discriminatory
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systems? Why, why is it bad that the Salvation Army is pushing those kinds of ideas?
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As Christians, we know that sin can go public. We know per the legacy of slavery, for example,
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that you can have policies and laws that really are evil and wrong and really do oppress people.
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The Bible has numerous instances when it calls out oppression, for example. But what we need to
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recognize is that that is distinct from what the Salvation Army is buying into. The Salvation Army
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is buying into the tenets of what we would call critical race theory, particularly our wokeness
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more generally. And it's built off of a neo-Marxist framework where oppression doesn't occur through
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definite policies that are perpetrated through institutions or individuals and leadership. Oppression
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instead is really invisible. It's embedded into the fabric of a society. If you are part of the
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majority group, the racial majority, the group that would be white people in the society,
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then you are an oppressor. That's according to a Marxist framing. Marx and Engels applied that
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framework first and foremost to economic matters. So if you're part of the wealthy group in society,
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you're basically an oppressor of the poor. What has happened in the last 30 to 40 years is that
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critical race theory has taken that Marxist framework and it's applied it to the issue of race.
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And so if you are, as I say, a white person, and then you are part of the majority group and you
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automatically fundamentally structurally oppress those who are in the minority group, you oppress,
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that is, people of color. And just to put a fine point on the matter, the Salvation Army included a
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whole glossary of terms like systemic racism, white privilege, equity, and others that are right out of
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the critical race theory playbook, showing us that they really have embraced not a biblical
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understanding of oppression, which is real. They have embraced instead a neo-Marxist understanding
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of oppression, which is in many respects imaginary. It's fostered oppression made up to convince people
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that they are committing sins that they really aren't committing.
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And tell us what the biblical perspective on oppression is. If you were giving a presentation to
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the Salvation Army, if they said, okay, Owen, you're right, we're going to do away with this
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let's talk about racism curriculum or lesson that we have presented to the Salvation Army,
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and we're going to bring you in to talk about what oppression actually looks like and how we should
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approach oppression and racial discrimination as Christians. What would you say?
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I would say, let's understand that when we're talking about oppression in biblical terms,
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I mean, here it is Christmas season. Merry Christmas, everybody. Think about Herod and Matthew 2.
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When Herod understands that this Christ child is a rival to him in kingly terms, what does he do?
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He destroys boys under two because he's trying to wipe out the threat of a coming king. That
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is a real policy of oppression. That is a definite law or leadership decision
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that then causes tremendous suffering on the part of the people he is ruling. If you think about
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slavery, if you think about Jim Crow law, you're recognizing there that those are policies or
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systems that really are fomenting suffering of people, and those are evil. But that is very distinct
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from looking at a white person who is not trying to support any racist law or policy or any kind of
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broader system or framework, but is simply trying to live their life. And you going to them and saying,
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you, white person, you baking your pumpkin chocolate chip muffins this fall, you are actually
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transmitting systemic racism at every moment as a part of the racial power majority in America.
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And you need to repent not only of your generic whiteness, but of being a white supremacist more
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broadly. That is what wokeness claims. That is the strong end of wokeness. The Salvation Army was
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giving us a kind of softer form, a slightly softer form, although if you really read the documents,
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it's all there. And what I want to say to the army and to anybody else listening to this conversation
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is this, that's bonkers. That's not true. The person who is trying to be a good citizen or in a
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Christian sense, trying to follow God, who is not saying racist things and enacting racist policies
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and supporting racism is not a white supremacist. They are not a racist. And this is really an
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imaginary neo-Marxist framework of racism that is being used to essentially target and destroy
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American civilization and also to fundamentally undermine the unity of the Christian church.
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That's ultimately where I think this system is headed. It's trying to destroy the unity that the
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church has in Jesus Christ and make people who have different skin color think that they're
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implacably opposed to one another when in reality, they are not.
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And I'm curious how you think this starts and organizations like the Salvation Army that has
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been around for over 150 years has done a lot of good work. I don't think anyone is denying that,
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but I've been curious because there have been several organizations and several churches that seem to
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start going this direction and it happens little by little. But I mean, where does this start? Does
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it start with someone with a good intention to talk about, you know, biblical justice and then somehow
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they start taking on the vocabulary and principles of secular justice that comes from critical race
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theory? I mean, how does this happen in your observation?
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Institutions like the Salvation Army have been a soft target for a long time because the Salvation Army has
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been prey to the so-called social gospel for a good long while now. Different branches and elements of
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the Salvation Army have embraced a kind of soft pro-LGBT position. So we need to recognize that the
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Salvation Army of today is not necessarily the Salvation Army of the 19th century. It has numerous
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challenges and failings in it. There's some wonky doctrine more broadly with the Salvation Army in terms
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of how it understands its relation to the church. But if we're getting out of that discussion and
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talking just about how organizations go woke, we need to recognize that, yes, this often happens
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through a kind of soft politics position where you're neither left nor right. In fact, Ali, I'm not
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saying the Army has used that slogan itself, but lots of organizations have either used that phrase I
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just said, neither left nor right, or at least they've operated by it in recent years. And so
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what they've done is they've taken politics and they've made it essentially only a conscience issue.
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So political issues aren't discipleship issues where, in other words, you need to train people to hold a
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certain position on a matter, being pro-life, being anti-abortion, being pro-religious liberty,
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being pro-free market, these kinds of biblical realities. No, instead, because lots of people disagree
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on those matters and Christians want nothing less than disagreement and disunity in smaller churches,
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then what we need to do is we need to take political issues and we need to not make them
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discipleship issues. We need to make them conscience issues, jump balls, essentially. You can hold
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whatever you want to believe about those matters. The church is not political. It's neither left nor
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right. Now, you and I would say, of course, the church isn't fundamentally political. It's not about
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getting out the vote. That's not its primary purpose on the earth. But we are those who believe in a
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biblical worldview. We are those who believe, Matthew 28, that disciples are to be trained in
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everything and all things that Christ and his apostles have taught. And so we don't reduce
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Christian discipleship to its smallest possible reality. We are those who are trying to bring
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people into the glory and fullness of the Christian worldview. A lot of churches in the last 20 years,
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even reformed churches, conservative evangelical churches, though, laid back and essentially stopped
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discipling their people on controversial matters. And that has really created a kind of hole in
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Helm's Deep that has then blown up the wall and allowed all sorts of poisonous leftism, poisonous
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leftist ideas to seep into the church. And now we're left with the bitter fruits of that, with a church that
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has increasingly embraced the latest iteration of leftist ideology, wokeness.
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What's interesting to me is that, well, one, you see evangelicals or professing evangelicals when they
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start to embrace secular definitions of justice and social justice, kind of what Thomas Sowell calls
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cosmic justice. And they start putting all kinds of adjectives in front of the word justice. You
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typically see that they start to embrace a secular sexual ethic as well. These things go hand in hand.
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Obviously, we know that it's under this big umbrella of critical theory. There's queer theory. There's
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feminist theory. It seeks to overthrow traditional hierarchies. And it's different. Obviously, queer
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theory and critical race theory are not the same thing. And when I have talked about this and debated
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this, people have pointed out that critical race theory and queer theory obviously aren't the same
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thing because racism is actually a sin. And people talking about like a queer theorist who says that saying
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a man is a man is a bigot would be biblically wrong. And so it's not completely fair to compare those two
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things, but they are essentially the same in how they see the world and what their goals actually are, how they
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define things like equity, equality, and liberation and oppression, which are contradictory to how the Bible
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defines those things. And so we know why when people embrace kind of a secular social justice ethic,
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they also end up embracing the secular sexual ethic. What's interesting to me, though, is that there
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are, and you can probably think of some right off the top of your head as well, there are conservative
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evangelicals who hold to a biblical sexual ethic when it comes to sex and gender and marriage and all of
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that. And they're pretty forthright about that, who also embrace tenets of critical race theory,
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even as they say that they don't. And they also say that they embrace biblical inerrancy and that they
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are just seeking biblical justice. In your analysis, how is that possible? How is it possible that there
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is a camp of conservative evangelicals that are right on on most issues that, you know, we would agree
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with. But when it comes to the issue of race, people, for whatever reason, adopt tenets of, you
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know, of thought groups like critical race theory. Why is that? Yeah, well, I think you've been pushed
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back too hard against. That was a clumsy sentence. But fundamentally, I would say, yeah, these are just
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branches of the same tree. Critical theory produces critical race theory. This is all coming out of the
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poison stream of Marxism, if you trace it back. And so we need to recognize that this is all part and
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parcel of a broader framework, a broader worldview. Wokeness is not just about racism, so-called
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countering racism. It is about an entire paradigm. And so you recognize that an organization like Black
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Lives Matter, for example, had really its strongest words in its former platform that got scrubbed because
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of public scrutiny a year ago against the nuclear family, so-called the traditional family. So these
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these birds flock together in taking down the the existing public order. Wokeness really seeks to take
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down, yes, the racial majority group, but it also seeks very much to take down the nuclear family, as it
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calls it. And so we are not at all wrong to see these emphases as really part of one collective push
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to totally destroy and remake Western civilization. That's really what we're fighting for, Ali. We're
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really fighting for Western civilization in our age. And there are few, tragically, who want to defend
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it, including in the Christian church. Many church leaders have basically told us that we need to simply
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sit back and listen and have hard conversations and not really say anything declarative in this whole
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conversation about race. I'm talking about race here because we have a fractured past and slavery in our
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history and that sort of thing. And so really the the game plan for the last five years on the part of a
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good number of reformed and conservative evangelical leaders has been be quiet and just listen. And if we
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just have enough honest conversations where really we give the mic to our friends of color, then that is
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going to resolve things. And this problem will basically will basically go away. And that is not a
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sustainable strategy. That is not a biblical strategy. Titus one nine tells us that we have to as elders and
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teachers of the word, men in the church have to give instruction and sound doctrine, and then they
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have to rebuke those who contradict it. And there seem to be very few who want to do the second part
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of that. There are a good number who want to sign up to go proclaim sound doctrine. Praise God for that.
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But there seem to be very, very few who want to rebuke those. It's not rebuke that or rebuke what?
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It's rebuke people who contradict sound doctrine. What I discovered in working on my book,
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Christianity and wokeness is this, this is not a conversation where everybody agrees.
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This is not a conversation where everybody just says racism is terrible as it is in biblical terms.
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And then we sit there quietly twiddling our thumbs. No, this is a conversation in which there is this
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imperial secularist ideology, wokeness, and it is advancing at every turn. It is funding Black Lives
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Matter. It is funding Antifa. It is funding the left today. And if Christians do not stand up and
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oppose it, we will surely lose our civilization. And we will even see the very nature of the church
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in our time imperiled. So you can't just sit there and have hard conversations and honest
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conversations. You should be quick to listen. You should be slow to speak and slow to anger. But
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fundamentally, you have to recognize that this is an ideology. This is a lofty opinion. Second
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Corinthians 10, three to six, that is being raised against the knowledge of God and that is going to
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destroy the gospel and you need to destroy it.
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I think that two ideas or two words that I hear a lot, especially from female Christians when I talk
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about this is nuance and empathy, that these are the two things that we really need to uphold really
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more than anything else when we're having conversations about race or even when we're having
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conversations about gender, that we need to be one, empathetic, and two, that we need to seek nuance.
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Obviously, my pushback to that is that empathy is not always love, especially if it is empathy minus
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truth, which does not equal love, but is actually a form of hate. And also, I don't think that we
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should be seeking nuance. We seek the truth, which is sometimes nuanced, but sometimes it's not.
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What is your thought about that, especially as it pertains to female Christians who I see,
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at least from my vantage point, like you said about the Salvation Army, are more of soft targets for
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this kind of ideology because we are naturally nurturing and relational. And of course, no one
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wants to be seen as a bigot or seen as arrogant or something like that. What's your take on that?
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Yeah, I'm thankful for the way you've pushed back on these matters in recent days, in particular with
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your focus on womanhood. I think you're dead right, Ali. I think that's where wokeness has really made
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its lunch. That's where it has put hay in the barn. It has played around the edges. It does a lot of
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its best work in soft focus. What I mean is it doesn't come out and give you the hard edge of its
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ideology that ultimately, if you really follow the tenets of this godless ideology, white people are
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white supremacists. That's where it goes ultimately. And to their credit, a bunch of woke voices and
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critical race theorists have come out and said that. They're very clear on that. They're not shy
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about it. But in Christian circles, and among women in particular, you're not getting a group read
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of Marx, and that's how the ideology advances. You get this kind of, we should be anti-racist,
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and we should be pro-nuance, and we should learn from others, and we should be empathetic.
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That is not the right way to approach the conversation. The right way to approach the
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conversation is that, yes, we are always seeking to embody and live out the fruits of the spirit by
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the power of God in us. So yes to that. But we are a people who have to be founded and grounded on the
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truth. We can only believe something. We can only back something if it is true. We cannot send vague
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feelings of goodness in the direction of ideologies if they are false, if they are godless, if they are
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anti-gospel, and ultimately, we're really going in here, anti-Christ. Instead, you stand on the truth,
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and in a Colossians 2.8 sense, you seek to understand what is taking the church captive
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ideologically. And then to bring back in that 2 Corinthians 10 passage, when you identify that
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there is a worldview that is preying on God's people, whether it is in the hard form or whether
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it is, as it commonly is, in the softer form in terms of language like equity or white privilege
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or tolerance or fairness or social justice, recognize that that is a worldview that is being
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advanced that is not the same thing when you look at its roots, when you go to the core texts of the
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ones who are promoting it. And then you recognize, ah, I should be a loving Christian, of course,
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but I am in the territory where I need to not accommodate this ideology. I need to, 2 Corinthians 10,
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destroy it, which means understand it, read about it, study up on it, and then counter it with the
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truth of God. Allie, that is loving. That is nuanced. That is humble. To stand on God's truth
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is never proud. Right. I like to say that we can't out-love God. 1 John 4.8, God is love. We are not
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loved. So if God says something is good and right and true, then the most loving thing that we can do
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is to agree with Him. And I do see Christians stumble over themselves to try to kind of let
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God off the hook when it comes to difficult things, especially when it comes to these matters of
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identity and these matters of, you know, rightful sensitivity. When you're talking about someone's
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so-called sexual identity or so-called gender identity, that is very personal. And so people
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really try to soften what they say so that they can appear more loving. But as I said, if God is
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love and if He says something clearly, then the most loving thing that we can do is also say something
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clearly. We don't need to let God off the hook for what He calls good, what He calls evil, what He
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calls right, what He calls wrong. All we have to do is submit to and agree with Him. Go ahead.
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Yeah, excuse me. I love what you just said, and it relates to at least two other conversations,
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as if we don't already have enough on the table here. It relates to transgender pronouns. That was
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really the test run for be loving and be empathetic. If you're loving and empathetic, right, then you'll
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use the preferred pronouns of a so-called transgender individual. And now the latest iteration of this
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argument in this conversation is do basically whatever the government says to do in terms of
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COVID and vaccines and these kinds of matters. And there's a whole conversation to have about those
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things. I know you're having it in your own circles. But if you're loving your neighbor,
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basically, you just do whatever your neighbor wants you to do. Allie, all of these matters,
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all these conversations boil down to that core idea. It's a total hijacking of love of neighbor
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according to the Bible. Love of neighbor according to this soft, smushy consensus today means do what
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your neighbor wants. Whereas in the Bible, absolutely love your neighbor. Love your
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neighbor six days a week and twice on Sunday, but love your neighbor out of the overflow of the love
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of God. You don't break the first commandment, love God with your whole being, in order to keep
00:25:10.260
the second commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. You stand on the first commandment. You keep
00:25:15.680
the first commandment. You love God according to his truth. And then out of the overflow of his truth,
00:25:21.000
never believing a lie, never promoting a lie, you love your neighbor as yourself. I think that helps
00:25:26.700
to reframe things. Yep. If you love me, you will keep my commandment. So the love that we have
00:25:32.200
of God is also not that mushy love that you just spoke of that some people use as an excuse to,
00:25:40.160
you know, tolerate and accept all kinds of sin. But love of God is very clear. We're told what it is.
00:25:45.920
It is keeping God's commandments. And like you said, if we're loving God, keeping his commandments,
00:25:50.240
then we will speak the truth in love with our neighbor.
00:25:57.840
Just to circle back as we kind of close this conversation up to the Salvation Army,
00:26:02.740
there was an open letter at the beginning of November that Greg Kokel wrote, you might have
00:26:07.960
read it, basically saying that he is going to terminate his monthly donations to the Salvation
00:26:11.840
Army. And then he explained that it is, it's because of this critical race theory that he sees being
00:26:19.900
employed at the Salvation Army. Do you think that Christians who donate to the Salvation Army
00:26:25.800
volunteer with the Salvation Army that they should stop doing so even if the Salvation Army is doing
00:26:32.820
some good things? I have real concerns about the Salvation Army in this day and age on this count and
00:26:41.060
also for other reasons that we've touched on briefly. So no, I wouldn't fundamentally drive
00:26:47.280
people toward the work and the outreach of the Salvation Army at this time. I don't say that
00:26:52.840
with glee or with joy. I say it with sadness. Fundamentally, this isn't just somebody at the
00:26:59.520
Salvation Army. An intern somewhere wrote, yeah, less than ideal position paper on racism, and then they
00:27:05.940
released it. If you go back through the documents of the Salvation Army, as I mentioned, the positional
00:27:11.540
statement on racism, for example, you see that this is really embedded in their current belief system.
00:27:17.680
And that shows us that wokeness really is alive and well in the Salvation Army. Wokeness, though,
00:27:25.400
should not be understood in isolation. It is really the latest iteration of what we call the social
00:27:30.880
gospel. The social gospel is totally distinct from the biblical gospel. It says that the gospel
00:27:35.540
is not about personal salvation, trusting the blood of Jesus Christ for your cleansing and
00:27:40.260
the resurrection of Jesus Christ for everlasting life. Instead, the gospel is about making society
00:27:45.420
better. It's about making people's lives more equitable and fair. And so wokeness fits hand in
00:27:51.660
glove into that social gospel framework. I would not encourage people to give to an organization
00:27:58.980
that is promoting such tenets. If the Salvation Army renounces these things and professes once more
00:28:05.000
strong, robust faith in the biblical gospel of salvation in the name of Jesus Christ, then we
00:28:11.180
have a new day before us. But today, sadly, those folks ringing the bell may not even know of these
00:28:17.400
matters, but this is an organization that is drifting. And we have to push our money, our time, our efforts
00:28:24.840
to organizations that are sound and that are promoting the truth and that are representing God rightly
00:28:33.260
I agree with you. Thank you so much, Owen. I really appreciate all of your thoughts.
00:28:37.620
Can you tell everyone how they can follow you, where they can buy your book and all that good stuff?
00:28:42.600
Sure. Thank you. My book is Christianity and Wokeness. It's over, oh, wrong shoulder. It's over that
00:28:47.660
shoulder. You can get that on Amazon. You can get it on Christian book distributors or Barnes and Noble,
00:28:53.100
other outlets like that. And I'm on social media. My Twitter is probably the best place to go.
00:28:58.360
It's at O-S-T-R-A-C-H-A-N. And then my Instagram is at Prof, S-T-R-A-C-H-A-N. Nobody's going to get that
00:29:06.340
last name. It's a Scottish last name with a Gaelic pronunciation. Got it. And it causes me endless
00:29:11.700
headaches, but it's my name. Yes. It's my name. Yes, that's what it is. Well, thank you so much for
00:29:16.800
taking the time. I hope everyone follows you and buys your book if they haven't already. I appreciate
00:29:20.700
you talking to us today. Thank you, Allie. Thanks for having me. Thanks.