Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 534 ｜ Et Tu, Salvation Army？｜ Guest： Owen Strachan

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.

00:00:14.860 Yesterday, yesterday I talked about Dobbs, the abortion case before the Supreme Court. So make 0.84

00:00:21.120 sure you go listen to that. I pre-recorded that on Friday because yesterday I was in Nashville

00:00:26.000 for a very quick trip to be on Candace Owens' show, which will be out tonight on The Daily

00:00:33.260 Wire at 9 p.m. Eastern Time tonight, Tuesday. So make sure that you tune in for that. We

00:00:40.520 talk about all kinds of good stuff. Today I am talking to Owen Strand. A lot of you probably

00:00:45.760 follow him. He talks a lot about the dangers of wokeness, of critical race theory. And today

00:00:50.880 we're talking specifically about the tenets of critical race theory, which apparently

00:00:55.240 are being taught and are being pushed within the Salvation Army. And so he's going to talk

00:01:01.500 to us about that story, why what they're pushing is contradictory to the Bible, how biblically

00:01:06.720 we should approach real topics like racial discrimination and oppression, and how we can

00:01:11.600 lovingly and clearly, truthfully, biblically do that. And he will tell us whether he thinks

00:01:18.220 that we should continue to donate to the Salvation Army or not. That is the million-dollar question.

00:01:23.160 So without further ado, here is my friend, Owen Strand.

00:01:28.920 Owen, thank you so much for joining us. For those who may not know, can you tell us who

00:01:33.620 you are and what you do?

00:01:35.080 Yeah, my name is Owen Strand, and I'm a research professor and provost at a small seminary in

00:01:41.540 Arkansas called Grace Bible Theological Seminary. And I'm a senior fellow with Family Research

00:01:47.700 Council. I'm a husband and father of three kids. And I'm a failed pickup basketball player.

00:01:56.020 Oh, gotcha. That last one is most important. But we'll have to save that subject and that part of

00:02:01.480 your testimony for a different day. Because today I want to talk to you about, I want to talk to you

00:02:07.640 about your take on this story about the Salvation Army apparently becoming woke and taking on critical

00:02:14.780 race theory or at least some tenets of critical race theory internally. I came across an article

00:02:21.140 you wrote or a conversation you had for Family Research Council where you talked about this.

00:02:26.540 And per usual, there was some pushback to the things that you had to say, even from some people that

00:02:31.800 maybe I would consider conservative Christians saying, oh my gosh, this is taking it too far. You

00:02:36.100 guys are blowing this out of proportion. It's not critical race theory or it's fine, whatever.

00:02:40.480 Tell us what this is, what's going on in the Salvation Army, and why is it a big deal?

00:02:45.920 The Salvation Army released a document where they talked about structural racism and systemic racism

00:02:55.000 and these kind of problems. And they made clear that in their view, American society really does

00:03:01.480 present these elements to its citizens. So we're all participants in this ongoing system

00:03:07.480 of systemic racism. And in particular, those of course, who are racial majorities, those would be 0.67

00:03:13.680 white people, are the ones who are primarily benefiting from this rigged game. Many people 0.84

00:03:19.220 pushed back against the Salvation Army. And so the Salvation Army issued a fairly defiant statement,

00:03:24.140 frankly, that retracted at least the guidebook they had released on this topic. But here's the deal,

00:03:30.700 Ali, fundamentally in other documents, in their positional statement on racism that they did not

00:03:36.700 retract and is easily findable on the web. They fundamentally articulate all these core tenets

00:03:42.580 of what we would call critical race theory or more broadly, wokeness. So the Salvation Army really has

00:03:48.040 embraced a woke standpoint. And many people rightly responded to that. It's a strange fundraising

00:03:54.540 strategy, Ali, in a Christmas season when we typically know that the bell ringers are outside

00:03:59.200 Target or whatever, you know, to indict people for their racism as they walk past you and you ask for

00:04:04.780 their spare change. An odd strategy that. Right. For people who might not know, although I would guess

00:04:11.560 that most people who listen to this podcast do know, tell us why it's wrong. Why is it wrong to say

00:04:18.300 there is structural racism, there's systemic racism, white people and maybe even white evangelicalism

00:04:24.060 has colluded with, you know, racism and racists in this country to perpetuate those discriminatory

00:04:30.540 systems? Why, why is it bad that the Salvation Army is pushing those kinds of ideas?

00:04:37.000 As Christians, we know that sin can go public. We know per the legacy of slavery, for example,

00:04:43.240 that you can have policies and laws that really are evil and wrong and really do oppress people.

00:04:48.520 The Bible has numerous instances when it calls out oppression, for example. But what we need to

00:04:53.820 recognize is that that is distinct from what the Salvation Army is buying into. The Salvation Army

00:05:00.020 is buying into the tenets of what we would call critical race theory, particularly our wokeness

00:05:04.840 more generally. And it's built off of a neo-Marxist framework where oppression doesn't occur through

00:05:10.300 definite policies that are perpetrated through institutions or individuals and leadership. Oppression

00:05:16.020 instead is really invisible. It's embedded into the fabric of a society. If you are part of the

00:05:22.660 majority group, the racial majority, the group that would be white people in the society, 0.75

00:05:27.440 then you are an oppressor. That's according to a Marxist framing. Marx and Engels applied that

00:05:33.940 framework first and foremost to economic matters. So if you're part of the wealthy group in society,

00:05:40.040 you're basically an oppressor of the poor. What has happened in the last 30 to 40 years is that

00:05:46.060 critical race theory has taken that Marxist framework and it's applied it to the issue of race.

00:05:50.960 And so if you are, as I say, a white person, and then you are part of the majority group and you

00:05:56.260 automatically fundamentally structurally oppress those who are in the minority group, you oppress, 0.97

00:06:03.220 that is, people of color. And just to put a fine point on the matter, the Salvation Army included a

00:06:08.300 whole glossary of terms like systemic racism, white privilege, equity, and others that are right out of

00:06:14.720 the critical race theory playbook, showing us that they really have embraced not a biblical

00:06:19.720 understanding of oppression, which is real. They have embraced instead a neo-Marxist understanding

00:06:25.700 of oppression, which is in many respects imaginary. It's fostered oppression made up to convince people

00:06:32.740 that they are committing sins that they really aren't committing.

00:06:35.600 And tell us what the biblical perspective on oppression is. If you were giving a presentation to

00:06:40.920 the Salvation Army, if they said, okay, Owen, you're right, we're going to do away with this

00:06:45.720 let's talk about racism curriculum or lesson that we have presented to the Salvation Army,

00:06:52.840 and we're going to bring you in to talk about what oppression actually looks like and how we should

00:06:58.060 approach oppression and racial discrimination as Christians. What would you say?

00:07:03.200 I would say, let's understand that when we're talking about oppression in biblical terms,

00:07:09.100 I mean, here it is Christmas season. Merry Christmas, everybody. Think about Herod and Matthew 2.

00:07:14.480 When Herod understands that this Christ child is a rival to him in kingly terms, what does he do?

00:07:20.620 He destroys boys under two because he's trying to wipe out the threat of a coming king. That

00:07:26.780 is a real policy of oppression. That is a definite law or leadership decision

00:07:32.820 that then causes tremendous suffering on the part of the people he is ruling. If you think about

00:07:38.340 slavery, if you think about Jim Crow law, you're recognizing there that those are policies or

00:07:44.540 systems that really are fomenting suffering of people, and those are evil. But that is very distinct

00:07:51.260 from looking at a white person who is not trying to support any racist law or policy or any kind of

00:07:59.080 broader system or framework, but is simply trying to live their life. And you going to them and saying,

00:08:04.280 you, white person, you baking your pumpkin chocolate chip muffins this fall, you are actually 0.95

00:08:09.440 transmitting systemic racism at every moment as a part of the racial power majority in America. 0.99

00:08:15.180 And you need to repent not only of your generic whiteness, but of being a white supremacist more 0.94

00:08:20.280 broadly. That is what wokeness claims. That is the strong end of wokeness. The Salvation Army was 0.96

00:08:25.680 giving us a kind of softer form, a slightly softer form, although if you really read the documents,

00:08:30.500 it's all there. And what I want to say to the army and to anybody else listening to this conversation

00:08:35.820 is this, that's bonkers. That's not true. The person who is trying to be a good citizen or in a

00:08:43.700 Christian sense, trying to follow God, who is not saying racist things and enacting racist policies

00:08:50.440 and supporting racism is not a white supremacist. They are not a racist. And this is really an

00:08:55.800 imaginary neo-Marxist framework of racism that is being used to essentially target and destroy

00:09:03.060 American civilization and also to fundamentally undermine the unity of the Christian church.

00:09:08.020 That's ultimately where I think this system is headed. It's trying to destroy the unity that the

00:09:13.720 church has in Jesus Christ and make people who have different skin color think that they're

00:09:18.800 implacably opposed to one another when in reality, they are not.

00:09:25.140 And I'm curious how you think this starts and organizations like the Salvation Army that has

00:09:30.620 been around for over 150 years has done a lot of good work. I don't think anyone is denying that,

00:09:37.000 but I've been curious because there have been several organizations and several churches that seem to

00:09:43.580 start going this direction and it happens little by little. But I mean, where does this start? Does

00:09:49.500 it start with someone with a good intention to talk about, you know, biblical justice and then somehow

00:09:54.420 they start taking on the vocabulary and principles of secular justice that comes from critical race

00:10:00.980 theory? I mean, how does this happen in your observation?

00:10:07.400 Institutions like the Salvation Army have been a soft target for a long time because the Salvation Army has

00:10:12.860 been prey to the so-called social gospel for a good long while now. Different branches and elements of

00:10:20.980 the Salvation Army have embraced a kind of soft pro-LGBT position. So we need to recognize that the

00:10:28.160 Salvation Army of today is not necessarily the Salvation Army of the 19th century. It has numerous

00:10:33.460 challenges and failings in it. There's some wonky doctrine more broadly with the Salvation Army in terms

00:10:39.240 of how it understands its relation to the church. But if we're getting out of that discussion and

00:10:44.640 talking just about how organizations go woke, we need to recognize that, yes, this often happens

00:10:50.720 through a kind of soft politics position where you're neither left nor right. In fact, Ali, I'm not

00:10:57.700 saying the Army has used that slogan itself, but lots of organizations have either used that phrase I

00:11:03.300 just said, neither left nor right, or at least they've operated by it in recent years. And so

00:11:09.080 what they've done is they've taken politics and they've made it essentially only a conscience issue.

00:11:15.120 So political issues aren't discipleship issues where, in other words, you need to train people to hold a

00:11:20.220 certain position on a matter, being pro-life, being anti-abortion, being pro-religious liberty,

00:11:24.880 being pro-free market, these kinds of biblical realities. No, instead, because lots of people disagree

00:11:31.120 on those matters and Christians want nothing less than disagreement and disunity in smaller churches,

00:11:36.280 then what we need to do is we need to take political issues and we need to not make them

00:11:40.620 discipleship issues. We need to make them conscience issues, jump balls, essentially. You can hold

00:11:44.920 whatever you want to believe about those matters. The church is not political. It's neither left nor

00:11:49.380 right. Now, you and I would say, of course, the church isn't fundamentally political. It's not about

00:11:53.800 getting out the vote. That's not its primary purpose on the earth. But we are those who believe in a

00:12:00.180 biblical worldview. We are those who believe, Matthew 28, that disciples are to be trained in

00:12:04.860 everything and all things that Christ and his apostles have taught. And so we don't reduce

00:12:10.260 Christian discipleship to its smallest possible reality. We are those who are trying to bring

00:12:16.660 people into the glory and fullness of the Christian worldview. A lot of churches in the last 20 years,

00:12:23.060 even reformed churches, conservative evangelical churches, though, laid back and essentially stopped

00:12:29.600 discipling their people on controversial matters. And that has really created a kind of hole in

00:12:36.500 Helm's Deep that has then blown up the wall and allowed all sorts of poisonous leftism, poisonous 0.68

00:12:42.280 leftist ideas to seep into the church. And now we're left with the bitter fruits of that, with a church that

00:12:49.380 has increasingly embraced the latest iteration of leftist ideology, wokeness.

00:12:54.080 What's interesting to me is that, well, one, you see evangelicals or professing evangelicals when they

00:13:02.400 start to embrace secular definitions of justice and social justice, kind of what Thomas Sowell calls

00:13:08.680 cosmic justice. And they start putting all kinds of adjectives in front of the word justice. You

00:13:13.700 typically see that they start to embrace a secular sexual ethic as well. These things go hand in hand.

00:13:19.020 Obviously, we know that it's under this big umbrella of critical theory. There's queer theory. There's

00:13:24.180 feminist theory. It seeks to overthrow traditional hierarchies. And it's different. Obviously, queer 1.00

00:13:31.100 theory and critical race theory are not the same thing. And when I have talked about this and debated

00:13:37.020 this, people have pointed out that critical race theory and queer theory obviously aren't the same

00:13:41.680 thing because racism is actually a sin. And people talking about like a queer theorist who says that saying

00:13:50.460 a man is a man is a bigot would be biblically wrong. And so it's not completely fair to compare those two

00:13:57.140 things, but they are essentially the same in how they see the world and what their goals actually are, how they

00:14:04.120 define things like equity, equality, and liberation and oppression, which are contradictory to how the Bible

00:14:11.680 defines those things. And so we know why when people embrace kind of a secular social justice ethic,

00:14:18.040 they also end up embracing the secular sexual ethic. What's interesting to me, though, is that there

00:14:24.320 are, and you can probably think of some right off the top of your head as well, there are conservative

00:14:29.820 evangelicals who hold to a biblical sexual ethic when it comes to sex and gender and marriage and all of

00:14:35.900 that. And they're pretty forthright about that, who also embrace tenets of critical race theory,

00:14:42.260 even as they say that they don't. And they also say that they embrace biblical inerrancy and that they

00:14:47.140 are just seeking biblical justice. In your analysis, how is that possible? How is it possible that there

00:14:53.120 is a camp of conservative evangelicals that are right on on most issues that, you know, we would agree

00:14:58.740 with. But when it comes to the issue of race, people, for whatever reason, adopt tenets of, you

00:15:05.200 know, of thought groups like critical race theory. Why is that? Yeah, well, I think you've been pushed

00:15:12.940 back too hard against. That was a clumsy sentence. But fundamentally, I would say, yeah, these are just

00:15:19.020 branches of the same tree. Critical theory produces critical race theory. This is all coming out of the

00:15:26.460 poison stream of Marxism, if you trace it back. And so we need to recognize that this is all part and

00:15:34.680 parcel of a broader framework, a broader worldview. Wokeness is not just about racism, so-called

00:15:41.940 countering racism. It is about an entire paradigm. And so you recognize that an organization like Black

00:15:48.060 Lives Matter, for example, had really its strongest words in its former platform that got scrubbed because

00:15:54.760 of public scrutiny a year ago against the nuclear family, so-called the traditional family. So these

00:16:00.700 these birds flock together in taking down the the existing public order. Wokeness really seeks to take

00:16:08.580 down, yes, the racial majority group, but it also seeks very much to take down the nuclear family, as it 0.99

00:16:14.780 calls it. And so we are not at all wrong to see these emphases as really part of one collective push

00:16:23.680 to totally destroy and remake Western civilization. That's really what we're fighting for, Ali. We're 0.96

00:16:29.180 really fighting for Western civilization in our age. And there are few, tragically, who want to defend

00:16:34.860 it, including in the Christian church. Many church leaders have basically told us that we need to simply

00:16:41.280 sit back and listen and have hard conversations and not really say anything declarative in this whole

00:16:47.240 conversation about race. I'm talking about race here because we have a fractured past and slavery in our

00:16:53.320 history and that sort of thing. And so really the the game plan for the last five years on the part of a

00:16:58.820 good number of reformed and conservative evangelical leaders has been be quiet and just listen. And if we

00:17:05.400 just have enough honest conversations where really we give the mic to our friends of color, then that is

00:17:11.060 going to resolve things. And this problem will basically will basically go away. And that is not a

00:17:17.260 sustainable strategy. That is not a biblical strategy. Titus one nine tells us that we have to as elders and

00:17:22.680 teachers of the word, men in the church have to give instruction and sound doctrine, and then they

00:17:26.920 have to rebuke those who contradict it. And there seem to be very few who want to do the second part

00:17:31.580 of that. There are a good number who want to sign up to go proclaim sound doctrine. Praise God for that.

00:17:36.640 But there seem to be very, very few who want to rebuke those. It's not rebuke that or rebuke what?

00:17:43.260 It's rebuke people who contradict sound doctrine. What I discovered in working on my book,

00:17:49.180 Christianity and wokeness is this, this is not a conversation where everybody agrees.

00:17:54.840 This is not a conversation where everybody just says racism is terrible as it is in biblical terms.

00:17:59.640 And then we sit there quietly twiddling our thumbs. No, this is a conversation in which there is this

00:18:05.360 imperial secularist ideology, wokeness, and it is advancing at every turn. It is funding Black Lives 0.93

00:18:11.980 Matter. It is funding Antifa. It is funding the left today. And if Christians do not stand up and 0.98

00:18:17.260 oppose it, we will surely lose our civilization. And we will even see the very nature of the church 0.94

00:18:22.700 in our time imperiled. So you can't just sit there and have hard conversations and honest

00:18:28.920 conversations. You should be quick to listen. You should be slow to speak and slow to anger. But

00:18:34.560 fundamentally, you have to recognize that this is an ideology. This is a lofty opinion. Second

00:18:41.120 Corinthians 10, three to six, that is being raised against the knowledge of God and that is going to 0.96

00:18:45.980 destroy the gospel and you need to destroy it. 0.93

00:18:52.720 I think that two ideas or two words that I hear a lot, especially from female Christians when I talk 1.00

00:18:59.420 about this is nuance and empathy, that these are the two things that we really need to uphold really

00:19:06.020 more than anything else when we're having conversations about race or even when we're having

00:19:09.920 conversations about gender, that we need to be one, empathetic, and two, that we need to seek nuance.

00:19:14.700 Obviously, my pushback to that is that empathy is not always love, especially if it is empathy minus

00:19:21.280 truth, which does not equal love, but is actually a form of hate. And also, I don't think that we

00:19:26.660 should be seeking nuance. We seek the truth, which is sometimes nuanced, but sometimes it's not.

00:19:31.860 What is your thought about that, especially as it pertains to female Christians who I see,

00:19:39.500 at least from my vantage point, like you said about the Salvation Army, are more of soft targets for

00:19:45.380 this kind of ideology because we are naturally nurturing and relational. And of course, no one

00:19:51.280 wants to be seen as a bigot or seen as arrogant or something like that. What's your take on that?

00:19:56.940 Yeah, I'm thankful for the way you've pushed back on these matters in recent days, in particular with

00:20:02.900 your focus on womanhood. I think you're dead right, Ali. I think that's where wokeness has really made 0.73

00:20:09.240 its lunch. That's where it has put hay in the barn. It has played around the edges. It does a lot of

00:20:17.980 its best work in soft focus. What I mean is it doesn't come out and give you the hard edge of its

00:20:25.400 ideology that ultimately, if you really follow the tenets of this godless ideology, white people are 0.98

00:20:31.360 white supremacists. That's where it goes ultimately. And to their credit, a bunch of woke voices and 0.98

00:20:37.020 critical race theorists have come out and said that. They're very clear on that. They're not shy

00:20:41.140 about it. But in Christian circles, and among women in particular, you're not getting a group read

00:20:49.680 of Marx, and that's how the ideology advances. You get this kind of, we should be anti-racist,

00:20:57.540 and we should be pro-nuance, and we should learn from others, and we should be empathetic.

00:21:04.320 That is not the right way to approach the conversation. The right way to approach the

00:21:09.180 conversation is that, yes, we are always seeking to embody and live out the fruits of the spirit by

00:21:15.340 the power of God in us. So yes to that. But we are a people who have to be founded and grounded on the

00:21:23.060 truth. We can only believe something. We can only back something if it is true. We cannot send vague

00:21:31.200 feelings of goodness in the direction of ideologies if they are false, if they are godless, if they are

00:21:38.300 anti-gospel, and ultimately, we're really going in here, anti-Christ. Instead, you stand on the truth,

00:21:46.360 and in a Colossians 2.8 sense, you seek to understand what is taking the church captive

00:21:52.260 ideologically. And then to bring back in that 2 Corinthians 10 passage, when you identify that

00:21:59.080 there is a worldview that is preying on God's people, whether it is in the hard form or whether

00:22:05.580 it is, as it commonly is, in the softer form in terms of language like equity or white privilege

00:22:12.800 or tolerance or fairness or social justice, recognize that that is a worldview that is being

00:22:19.480 advanced that is not the same thing when you look at its roots, when you go to the core texts of the

00:22:25.540 ones who are promoting it. And then you recognize, ah, I should be a loving Christian, of course,

00:22:32.020 but I am in the territory where I need to not accommodate this ideology. I need to, 2 Corinthians 10,

00:22:40.800 destroy it, which means understand it, read about it, study up on it, and then counter it with the

00:22:48.560 truth of God. Allie, that is loving. That is nuanced. That is humble. To stand on God's truth

00:22:55.720 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

00:23:02.980 loved. So if God says something is good and right and true, then the most loving thing that we can do

00:23:07.100 is to agree with Him. And I do see Christians stumble over themselves to try to kind of let 0.97

00:23:12.640 God off the hook when it comes to difficult things, especially when it comes to these matters of

00:23:17.600 identity and these matters of, you know, rightful sensitivity. When you're talking about someone's

00:23:24.020 so-called sexual identity or so-called gender identity, that is very personal. And so people

00:23:30.340 really try to soften what they say so that they can appear more loving. But as I said, if God is

00:23:37.200 love and if He says something clearly, then the most loving thing that we can do is also say something

00:23:42.160 clearly. We don't need to let God off the hook for what He calls good, what He calls evil, what He

00:23:48.260 calls right, what He calls wrong. All we have to do is submit to and agree with Him. Go ahead.

00:23:53.820 Yeah, excuse me. I love what you just said, and it relates to at least two other conversations,

00:23:59.200 as if we don't already have enough on the table here. It relates to transgender pronouns. That was

00:24:04.360 really the test run for be loving and be empathetic. If you're loving and empathetic, right, then you'll

00:24:10.500 use the preferred pronouns of a so-called transgender individual. And now the latest iteration of this 0.57

00:24:15.800 argument in this conversation is do basically whatever the government says to do in terms of

00:24:21.200 COVID and vaccines and these kinds of matters. And there's a whole conversation to have about those

00:24:25.540 things. I know you're having it in your own circles. But if you're loving your neighbor,

00:24:31.280 basically, you just do whatever your neighbor wants you to do. Allie, all of these matters,

00:24:37.400 all these conversations boil down to that core idea. It's a total hijacking of love of neighbor

00:24:44.200 according to the Bible. Love of neighbor according to this soft, smushy consensus today means do what

00:24:51.860 your neighbor wants. Whereas in the Bible, absolutely love your neighbor. Love your

00:24:57.500 neighbor six days a week and twice on Sunday, but love your neighbor out of the overflow of the love

00:25:03.300 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

00:28:31.220 in this fallen world.

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.

00:29:28.360 Thanks for having me.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - December 07, 2021

Ep 534 ｜ Et Tu, Salvation Army？｜ Guest： Owen Strachan

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - December 07, 2021

Ep 534 ｜ Et Tu, Salvation Army？ ｜ Guest： Owen Strachan

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Ep 534 ｜ Et Tu, Salvation Army？｜ Guest： Owen Strachan