by Teya Baram

Created on: June 23, 2009   Last Updated: June 25, 2009

The Salvation Army, ever since it landed in New York City has been a controversial presence in the United States. The first invasion featured a youngish man and several women who immediately went to work in some of the toughest neighborhoods of the growing, and gritty New York City. They lifted folk out of the ash bin, led fervent prayer meetings well into the night, and dubiously to the mainstream Protestants, used tavern tunes to spread the word of salvation among the poor and destitute.

Yet, fast forward one hundred years to the modern Salvation Army in NYC. Occupying prime real estate near Union Square in New York City that just recently received a face-lift, the Salvation Army's biggest campaign of the last few years has been trying to raise money to build a Kroc Center, a multi-use recreation building that would predominately serve the middle class with its theater and gym space. The hostels for young working women, once a friendly Christian place in the city, are gone. The Veteran's Home, where homeless vets took long-term refuse, closed. The homeless hotel in Queen, embroiled in controversy and closed. Youth homes, homeless intake centers and even Salvation Army corps in Manhattan and Brooklyn, closed and the land sold.

A closer look at the workers continuing the Salvation War, also reflects just how far the Salvation Army has emerged from its roots. While Officers (Salvation Army Pastors) hold prominent positions in the Headquarters staff, the Salvation Army's social service and fundraising is largely conducted by non-Salvation Army officers or soldiers. Soldiers (members of the church) now don their uniforms for Sunday meetings (often called church, not Holiness meetings), and then go off to the their secular weekly jobs, leaving the 'work of the church' to employees, whose work is governed more by government contracts and grant opportunities than the focus of the church.

The result is a two-fold tragedy. The Salvation Army as a church, neutered of its strength as a unit of people actively engaged in mission and serving the poor, is simply another evangelical church, albeit one with funny dress and no sacraments. The work of the church, the very thing that called William Booth to action in the slums of England, has taken on the sterile neutrality of government-supported social services. The result of this is that the Salvation Army is neither church first, work (charity) second, but one in which the two are so divorced that their no longer seems to be a conflict. The New Testament warns that a man cannot serve two masters, yet the Salvation Army in the US seems determined to do just that.

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