Boys' Life Bible Stories?

[Trevorum]

sunsetandshadow, welcome to the forums! We're glad you're here, and we're especially glad that you are providing the Scouting experience to your sons. All of us here are ardent supporters of Scouting.

 

Here you will find many Scouters who believe in God as you do. But you'll also find those who believe differently. The diversity of viewpoints is vibrant. Regardless of how we believe, the fact is that BSA is not a Christian organization. It does not claim to be and does not try to be. Rather, BSA welcomes people of every faith tradition, however they choose to define God. Importantly, "BSA does not define what constitutes belief in God or the practice of religion." (BSA policy statement, June 2000).

[GS-CS_leader]

Getting back to the topic of Bible stories in "Boy's Life":

 

My family chose not to subscribe to the magazine when my son joined Cub Scouts because my husband flipped through a current issue and was uncomfortable with the Christian feel of the Bible stories since our family is Jewish. My husband was a BS back in the 70's and did not remember "Boys Life" being quite as Christian. Interestingly, we may end up with a subscription after all because we are thinking of switching to a pack (our current pack is folding) that automatically provides a subscription as part of the required pack fee. Luckily, we don't feel so strongly about it that this is a problem. I'm probably going to pre-read the magazine when it comes so that I address anything I feel does not agree with my family's religious background.

 

Christians may think that any Old Testament story should be fine for Jews, but they may not realize, because the story is told the way they have are used to seeing it, that the story is being told with a *Christian*, not Jewish emphasis. I personally find it fascinating to see the differences between Christian versions of the Bible and modern Jewish translations.

 

If we get the magazine, and I often need to explain to my son why although the story is from the Hebrew Bible, Jews have a somewhat different way of looking at it, I wonder if my son will begin to feel that the BSA is Christian and therefore that he doesn't really belong in it. I think it would be even more the case for boys who are not Christian or Jewish. Yes, they can "learn" from the stories in the same way that they can learn from Greek myths, but the magazine publishes clearly gives a preference to the particular brand of Christianity expressed in those stories. I'm not sure that I would want the Bible stories to be replaced with a story from a different culture in each magazine issue, but I do know that I am not happy with all the stories being told from the same religious point of view.

 

My son can get religious stories from a wonderful Jewish magazine that his Hebrew school uses as a teaching tool. And I'm sure that there are equivalent religious magazines for other kids of other religions too. I think it would be better for the magazine to concentrate more on those aspects of scouting that are more universal and let families get their religious magazine content from sources that best fits their own beliefs.

[Kahuna]

That's a good point, GS-CS. I hadn't considered that the Jewish telling of the stories would be different from the Christian point of view.

 

When I read the Boys Life magazine I mentioned at the beginning of the thread I was amazed at how little actual scoutcraft was in it. I had a large collection of those magazines from when I was a Scout and used to flip through them sometimes. It's amazing how many good scouting ideas were in there. Green Bar Bill's column always had some good pointers for boy leaders.

 

Seems the mag should concentrate on scoutcraft and leave the religious points for the churces to deal with. I doubt the staff of Boy's Life includes an interfaith religious editor.

[Trevorum]

Agreed.

GS-CS, us folks of minority faiths often just have to grin and bear the majority's blithe presumptions. I am respectful of the dominant faith, but I refuse to be invisible or complicit in religious intolerance.

[upnorthmn]

I'll just leave this here:

 

http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_boyscouts.html

 

[skeptic]

Do I discern a bit of bitterness and animosity in these things? Sorry, this is mostly just a diatribe of someone with a bone to pick. Its also five years old.

 

JMHO

[packsaddle]

Skeptic, a horse that's been dead for five years is still a dead horse. So I say to upnorthmn, Flail away! Just try to be nice to the horse.

The source who put that website up was venting in a way that will get almost no serious attention. Maybe they felt better after?

[shortridge]

That site was so full of ugly anger that I could barely read it. I did enjoy reading the horror story about the kid who GOT A HOOK STUCK IN HIS THUMB -- OH NOES!!!!! Because no kid in the history of the world has ever accidentally gotten a hook stuck in their thumb except on an LDS Scout camping trip!!! The agony!!! And it's all the Scouters' fault because the parents wouldn't give permission to treat!!!!!!!

 

Utter silliness. We should be able to have discussions about differences without it degenerating into attacks.

[drmbear]

Humans have been using stories and storytelling to help explain things, to give meaning to things that they may not even understand. I spent a lot of time studying storytelling, and it amuses me greatly when anyone actually believes Bible stories as truth. Humans are storytelling machines, and the stories in the Bible, ALL of them, come directly out of human storytelling traditions.

 

That being said, there are no shortage of cultural and human stories from around the world, all cultures, all peoples, all religions, and it is fascinating to see the different ways that humans around this globe have explained the same types of phenomena. I really like a book on creation stories that I found by Sophia Fahs, for example. Culturally, the people that created those Bible stories still followed storytelling tradition, but "believability" for that culture did everything they could to connect the stories to real events and people. Kinda reminds me of historical fiction, like things we link to Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln. Take an entirely different cultural tradition, like Native Americans for example, and they have a very full storytelling tradition that conveys virtually ALL the underlying meaning that you find in Bible stories, but with no connection to individuals or events (unimportant in their culture). I see the same differences across cultures around the world. My feeling is that God has a hand in providing the stories needed for different cultures in the way they need it. In some ways, that is what ticks me off about the concept of missionaries that go in to eliminate, change, or replace what was put there for a reason (but that is a whole other topic).

 

In storytelling circles, I learned about an African society that required anyone that wanted to be a parent to master at least 100 stories before they could have children. Passing on a wide range of stories and folklore from all over the planet is an incredible thing for Boys Life to do. Limiting that to a storytelling tradition that was designed and needed for a small culture based in the Middle East is short-sighted. Those stories carry value, just as many other stories do, but in many ways they are not even true to the kinds of storytelling we actually need here in our culture, in our time and place. What are the important messages that we want to pass on, like the twelve core values, the Scout Oath and Law, and our societal concepts of right and wrong? What are the kinds of stories that will connect across our culture, and possibly even globally (considering the possibility of easy transport and communication around the world)? Too often, religion is used to divide people and cultures, not bring them together. Virtually every religious tradition has as a foundational concept, to love one another(in some form or another), but for some reason proponents add on to that "unless you don't believe like we do."

[qwazse]

Here's what amuses me about this thread ...

 

BL does in fact give a lot of ink to stories and legends beyond the Bible Heroes half-page. I learned a lot about other world-views -- including Native Americans -- from reading BL. (I learned a lot more, and far more accurate, info from the writings of Christian missionaries, but that's a different story.)

 

So, what everyone was up-in-arms about is the fact that stories amenable to most Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormans, and a few other sects routinely get a smidgen of ink! Heaven help us if boys from different religions across the country discover they might have something in common with one another!!!!

 

Or, maybe those particular stories are more powerful than folks want to let on ... Maybe there is something to "a storytelling tradition that was designed and needed for a small culture based in the Middle East" THAT PERVADES THE BELIEF SYSTEMS OF 3/4 OF THE WORLD'S POPULATIONS.

 

 

[drmbear]

And to use a Bible story to explain that:

 

...like locusts!

[packsaddle]

This brings to mind what Father Reginald Foster (senior Vatican priest and Latin scholar) said about this, "These are all nice stories, you know..." but "...it's all nonsense." and later, when asked how to convince people of the truth he responded "You don't, forget it...you just have to live and die with their stupid ideas."

I just love that guy.

[BadenP]

Yea Packsaddle

 

And the Vatican still preaches only Roman Catholics in good standing will go to heaven, talk about misinformed and unscholarly nonsense. The Vatican from Benedict on down are little more than hypocrites.

[qwazse]

Pack - Not sure if Fr. Foster's quote referred to any OT passages or just some specific Catholic dogma (e.g. Dec 25th the true date of Christ's birth, the doctrine of Hell, or Church opulence as essential to it's veracity). But anyhow ...

 

BP - Misinformed, unscholarly, or otherwise, many MANY folks have found inspiration in Old Testament stories. Most feel their kids are better off for reading them -- even if it may be one a month in a non-religious setting -- even if they believe they are mythic in nature -- even if they stem from a culture or religion completely alien to them. Thus, they are a regular feature in Boys Life.

 

[OldGreyEagle]

http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a1.htm#VI

 

1260

Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery."62 Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity