Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Medieval times, the monks in the monastery received offerings freely given by church-goers and the monks distributed that money to the poor, called alms.\u00a0 Naturally, the smell of free money brought hordes with their hands out.\u00a0 Monasteries invented a new job title – Almoner –\u00a0for the guy who decided which poor got the money<\/a>.\u00a0 With limited funds to distribute but unlimited demand for funds, the Almoner was charged with separating the Deserving Poor from the Undeserving Poor.<\/p>
In modern times, we’ve lost that distinction.\u00a0 We’ve mostly replaced charity with welfare given regardless of worthiness, effort, or responsibility.\u00a0 “Make bad choices, get free money” provides no incentive to repent, to change, to grow in wisdom and maturity to become a self-sufficient and productive member of society.<\/p>
The Salvation Army is a religion formed 150 years ago in the back streets of London to minister to the wretched poor.\u00a0 Its motto is “Blood and Fire,” recalling the Blood of Christ and the Fire of the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 They’re always one of the first on-scene after a natural disaster, bring comfort to those who have lost everything.\u00a0 I’m not a member of their church but for years, I’ve made a point of donating at the red kettles to the point that I won’t shop Target during the holy days because Target banned the Salvation Army whereas Wal-Mart welcomed them.\u00a0<\/p>
But this year, the Salvation Army is struggling.\u00a0 They’ve insulted their donor base<\/a>.\u00a0 The big-shots forgot my donation was not payment on a debt I owed to them, my donation was a gift freely given.\u00a0 There aren’t as many people ringing bells outside stores and\u00a0I’m not as eager to give money to an outfit that preaches woke liberalism instead of traditional Christianity<\/a>.\u00a0 The leadership blames the misunderstanding on a statement by its Social Justice Committee which right-wing media have blown out of context. I ask: “Why does a Christian religion so fundamental its motto is “Blood and Fire” even HAVE a Social Justice Committee?”\u00a0 They’ve lost their way.\u00a0 They forgot their core mission, their reason for existing, the reason people give them money.<\/p>
Disband the committee, renew your organizational focus on saving souls and alleviating suffering, and the donors will come back.\u00a0 Leave social justice to the politicians.\u00a0<\/p>
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
I interviewed a Salvation Army rep on my show a few weeks ago. He, like a lot of rank and file in the Army, pointed out that the Army is not partisan, and has to deal with social issues as they come to them; that being said, a lot of rank and file in the Salvation Army were un-thrilled by the way the natonal HQ handled things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I still support the Salvation Army, and I hope. you do as well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: In Medieval times, the monks in the monastery received offerings freely given by church-goers and the monks distributed that money to the poor, called alms.\u00a0 Naturally, the smell of free money brought hordes with their hands out.\u00a0 Monasteries invented a new job title – Almoner –\u00a0for the guy who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80335,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80331\/revisions\/80335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}