To most people, the Salvation Army conjures up images from Main Street: blue-uniformed men and women, red kettles at Christmas, a chain of thrift stores -- a series of Norman Rockwell posters for the kind of social services provider President Bush says he wants to promote.
So it came as a surprise last week when the group wound up in a position more associated with the Christian Coalition than with the nation's largest charity -- at the center of a Washington uproar. The Salvation Army's appeal to the White House for protection from state and local laws prohibiting discrimination against gay employees stems from an internal tension in the charity: As a church, the Army is intolerant of sin, but at the same time, it chooses to engage with the secular world through its charitable and social work.
What the Army's Rockwellian associations obscured is its evangelical mission, with its long-standing and firm objections to abortion and homosexuality, all of which are clearly laid out in its position papers and on its Web site. At the same time, the Army is the nation's largest service organization, delivering aid to 36 million people through a national network of soup kitchens, drug-treatment centers, hospitals, shelters for battered women, nursing care and day-care centers run by low-paid workers or volunteers.
Unlike some conservative churches, the Salvation Army has actively sought and won government contracts, both federal and local, to run its thousands of drug-treatment centers and homeless shelters. It has also become increasingly enmeshed in political disputes with local governments, which prompted the Army to approach the White House for help this year.
Concern has been mounting within the Salvation Army since the mid-1990s, when many states enacted laws denying contracts to groups that discriminated against gay people in employment. But Salvation Army officials said they decided to break a century-old policy of political neutrality and risk bad publicity because more and more cities -- 103 to date -- were also passing laws requiring domestic partnership benefits, a condition the Army will not meet.
"In the Army's eyes, that raises a nonmarried union to the level of married union, and that directly conflicts with our theology," said spokesman David Fuscus. "It gets in the way of our efforts to help people."
Last week's controversy stemmed from disclosure of an internal Salvation Army document in which Army officials described a "firm commitment" from the White House to shield government-funded religious groups from state laws barring discrimination against gay people. In turn, the Army agreed to use its clout to promote the Bush administration's "faith-based" initiative, which would make it easier for church-runcharities to receive government funds.
In the furor that followed, the administration cut short its consideration of the Salvation Army's request for protection, and the Army seemed to back away from its political engagement. On Friday, the organization dropped a team of lobbyists and strategists it had retained to lead a campaign to promote Bush's faith initiative.
And in an open letter to Salvation Army members and employees, National Commander John Busby wrote on Friday that the hiring of the lobbyists was "a very rare event." He added, "As of this date, we no longer retain that policy team."
Busby's letter said discussions with the White House "have been solely informational. . . . The Salvation Army has not entered into any conditional agreements with the Bush administration, nor have they made any promises or commitments to us."
The letter also said the charity supported the "faith-based initiative" since January and backed the House version of the legislation "because they are designed to help people in need." Busby said the charity doesn't have employment biases in "positions of full-time service, lay leadership, employment, and volunteer service . . . with exceptions dictated only by the religious purposes or moral position of the Salvation Army. Among our 45,000 employees in the USA, I know that there are people of all races, religions and sexual orientation."
The Salvation Army does hire gay people, Fuscus said, although not for its 5,000 ministerial jobs. Mainly, what the Army objects to in the state laws are not the hiring requirements, but the granting of domestic partnership benefits "whether for homosexual or unmarried heterosexual couples."
In 1998, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission ordered the Army to offer domestic partnership benefits or lose a $3.5 million city contract. For a year, the Army provided free meals to AIDS patients, hoping the city would change its mind. But the city never did, and the Army forfeited the contract.
In a position statement, the Army lists homosexuality as one of several examples of "sexual misconduct," along with any extramarital sex. The statement distinguishes between celibate and practicing homosexuals, saying homosexuality is not "blameworthy and should not be allowed to create guilt," and adds, "Some homosexuals achieve happy heterosexual marriage."
In its central mission statement, the Army vows to "meet human needs . . . without discrimination." In fact, the charity has become well known for its AIDS work, and it recently built a $12 million center for families of people with AIDS in Los Angeles.
After Tuesday's news, D.C. Council member David A. Catania (R-At Large) contacted the Salvation Army to inquire about its practices. District law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Catania said he was satisfied that the Salvation Army did not discriminate in hiring, but that if conflicting evidence came up, he would "not hesitate to conduct hearings."
The Salvation Army was brought to the United States in 1880 by its British founder, William Booth, a man "tranced, fanatical," as poet Vachel Lindsay described him. In an era of tame religion, they were considered radicals, with their brass bands, preaching women and street corner pulpits.
After World War I, that image softened as Salvation Army women volunteered to serve troops coffee and doughnuts in France. They were the nation's substitute mothers abroad, and the heroines of movies such as "Salvation Nell."
By mid-century, though, they had lost that glamour. In the 1950 play "Guys and Dolls," the Salvation Army brass band was still as much a part of the urban landscape as the gangsters and molls the Army ministered to -- but its troops seemed outdated and naive, gullible in swallowing the sinners' patently fake testimonials of conversion.
Eventually the Army gave up on street conversions. Like many religious charities, it moved from a policy of explicitly talking about Christ to one of "embodying the Christian witness" -- volunteers would behave in a Christlike way to inspire devotion in others.
From there, the Army's involvement in the nuts and bolts of delivering social services expanded.
As the Army grew as a service organization over the past half-century, it played down its evangelical mission, said Diane Winston, author of "Red-Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army."
"They were never embarrassed about these positions, but they didn't want to call a lot of attention to them," Winston said. "They just kept them hidden in plain sight."