Further proof of just how homophobic and bigoted The Salvation Army is not just in the United States but worldwide came apparent in an interview with LGBT journalists Serena Ryan and Pete Dillon, interviewed a senior Salvation Army official Major Andrew Craibe, the Salvation Army’s Territorial Media Relations Director for the Southern Territory in Victoria, Australia who stated in an interview that non-celibate LGBT people should be put to death.
Ryan told Craibe that she prepared for the interview by reading all 170 pages of Salvation Story: Salvationist Handbook of Doctrine, a manual published by the group’s international headquarters in London and available online. Ryan then proceeded to point out chapters that she found disturbing, including a section called “The problem of evil”which cites Romans 1:18-32, the section of the Bible containing an infamous and violent condemnation of homosexuality which included death.
Ryan was shocked that the official Salvation Army handbook cites a scriptural passage which calls for the execution of LGBT people and asked Major Andrew Craibe about it. His answers are unbelievable:
RYAN: . . . that says, according to the Salvation Army, that [they] deserve death. How do you respond to that, as part of your doctrine?
CRAIBE: Well, that’s a part of our belief system.
RYAN (cutting in): So we should die.
CRAIBE: You know, we have an alignment to the Scriptures, but that’s our belief.
RYAN: Wow. So we should die.
They then discussed the handbook’s section on sin which cites the same passage from Romans.
RYAN: It’s going into Romans again . . . I accept that you’re out there wanting to help people . . . I don’t accept that this sexuality that is part of my DNA is a choice. I also don’t accept the support of any religion in a financial sense, and this is what the gay community is up in arms about: that you’re proposing in your religious doctrine and the way that you train — this is partof your training of your soldiers — that because we’re gay, that — we must die. If you go to Romans, book 1, 18-32, it’s all there, mate. I mean, how can you stand by that? How is that Christian?
CRAIBE: Well, well, because that is part of our Christian doctrine –
RYAN (interrupting): But how is that Christian? Shouldn’t it be about love?
CRAIBE: — that’s our understanding of that. Well, the love that we would show is about that: consideration for all human beings to come to know salvation –
RYAN: Or die. . .
CRAIBE: Well, yes.
The article written of this shocking interview by John Becker of Truth Wins Out is truly unbelievable in full and shows just how heinous and anti-gay an organization The Salvation Army really is here and abroad.