Salvation Army recently barred a conservative Christian group from organizing a retreat where fathers could find potential grooms for their underage daughters. The event, known as “Get Them Married”, was supposed to take place in November this year at Camp Hiawatha in Wichita, Kansas but once media reports revealed what was really going to happen there, Salvation Army, which owns the venue, decided to bar it.
Let Them Marry, the Christian ministry in charge of the retreat, was founded by Vaughn Ohlman. Its website currently states that the November event stands cancelled.
Salvation Army in Wichita too confirmed that it had rejected a request from Let Them Marry to organize the religious retreat on its premises.
“Our decision is based upon our long-standing concern for the welfare of children,” the organization said. “At The Salvation Army, we work every single day to provide a safe, caring place for children, many of whom have been left vulnerable due to the actions of adults.”
Ohlman, who got his son, Joshua, married in 2013, reportedly secured his bride without the young man’s knowledge. He apparently connected with the bride’s father, Andrew Camp, a resident of Michigan, via email before both men decided that their children should be married as husband and wife. At a betrothal ceremony that was organized soon after, Joshua and the young girl pledged their vows to each other, thereby becoming a married couple.
“I put their hands together for the first time that they have ever touched,” Camp said after the ceremony. “After the ceremony began a very pleasant time, as the rest of the party got to watch the newly betrothed husband and wife begin to get to know each other… sitting, holding hands, and grinning foolishly… much as every young couple since the world began.”
At the moment, much of the information on ministry’s website seems to have disappeared. Earlier, the page provided information about the ministry, its beliefs and activities.
“Much of the content on our site was written with the discerning Christian in mind and was intended to help get Christians thinking about what the bible has to say about the path to marriage, and was not written to provide bite-sized summaries of what we believe,” a new message now reads as opposed to older an statement, such as, “In much of our materials, we focus primarily on the marriage between a virgin young man to a virgin young woman… We do this not because we believe that this is the only right kind of marriage but because, right now, that is the area where our churches are hurting so badly.”
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