religion as a core component of the BSA

[Trevorum]

While following this thread with interest, I haven't participated, mostly because I've never seen religion as a "core component" of Scouting. Some Scouts are religious, some aren't; and that's OK. Religion is very different from reverence. All Scouts are expected to be reverent; mandating religiosity in any form would be a mistake.

 

I think I agree with Kudu. An awarness of diversity is one thing, but I strongly feel that Scouting is NOT the forum to be teaching anthropology or comparative religion. BSA has this one right. Encourage boys to learn about their faith (and possily others) outside of the Scouting program. Bring the reverence with you into the program.

[Lisabob]

Ok Trev, so if we go that direction (which, actually, I would support too) then shouldn't we push for a removal of the religious advancement requirements in the wolf, bear, and webelos program? Why are these types of requirements ok in one part of the program but not in others?

 

Honestly, my personal view is that the BSA gets itself into more trouble than it is worth trying to be a quasi-religious organization. I'd be happier to see them (us) focus more on other things and just leave religion out of it. But since that's not the case now, then I guess I'd like consistency in terms of the role religion plays across the program.

[packsaddle]

I agree with Trevorum. I don't personally see that BSA should have religion as a core component. However, I do see that some in BSA seem to be on a quest to make religion a core component. And finally, I think I understand what Lisabob is trying to do and that is essentially to 'call the question' on this issue. Or to put it in terms I often hear around here, to 'put up or shut up'. I am trying to stifle the glee I feel when I consider the possibility that BSA would actually try to do something like this.

 

As much as I sometimes minimize the intellect of BSA top brass, I simply don't see them being THAT stupid. (...h'mmm, is that damning them with faint praise or something?)

 

I think BSA does see the morass they would enter if they actually tried to go beyond the current status with formal religious advancement requirements. And the current status is already not very clear. As it is, to quote a line from another thread, anyone who has "the most vague and nebulous belief in any kind of spiritual reality" is allowed in (thanks Hunt, I'm going to enjoy this one for quite a while).

 

BSA has painted themselves into a corner on this issue. They staked out their private club status based on religious mores and now they are faced with the consequent exclusion based on their nebulous standards. The more they specify the standard either during the application process or through the advancement process, the more potential members they exclude. At the same time they really would kind of like to have more money to support their bloated salaries (sorry, couldn't resist) so they compromise by inventing units and, perhaps, including members who don't actually exist (so if they don't exist, they can't believe in God, can they? Just a thought).

 

This entire situation is ridiculous and is a predictable outcome from BSA policy decisions applied to the legal arena. Just like contemporary politics, there are so many levels of deception they are nearly impossible to enumerate.

So Lisabob, I salute you! I wish you success. The show is really going to be a good one.

[Eagledad]

HI All

 

I kind of follow these threads every once in a while to see the angst of the day. I like that we have forum to ponder our thoughts and even challenge us to think in a different direction. This one started off OK, but when it gets to the BSA is bad and if they did it my way, well then.

 

Thank goodness the BSA doesnt change with the mood of the times because I think this subject has gone in the direction of: Scouting is a wonderful program for our youth until the adults get involved.

 

Take religion out? How in the world can any organization agree on any form of moral development without religion? Without a reference to a single source, in this case God, you only end up with compromises of a consortium to what feels good at the moment. My Girl Scout Leader friends tell me this is a huge problem in their program right now and they are afraid the Girls Scouts are close to only being known as a place to just get cookies.

 

What is that saying; If you dont believe in God, you will believe in anything. For the morals of the Scout Law to have integrity, there has to be a single source. Now you may disagree, but that is why we have choices. Take religion out of the BSA and the program becomes purely a camping program. It would then surely fail.

 

You want to ask the BSA to add a program because the Cubs have to do it. Well OK, but either more religion or no religion?

 

Barry

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Ah, the old "religion=morality" canard (and the implied "no religion=no morality").

 

Tell you what; as soon as you can get religions to agree on whether polygamy and eating bacon is moral or not, get back to me. Otherwise, it's just another argument from authority.

[Eagledad]

Tell you what; as soon as you can get religions to agree on whether polygamy and eating bacon is moral or not, get back to me.

 

Hey, the BSA doesn't dictate which religion has the final word, only that a scout will do his best to do his duty to God. God is the one source of morality, choice of religion is how each person gets personal with God and find their moral base. Scouting is just a place to practice.

 

Barry

[Trevorum]

"God is the one source of morality"

 

Barry, I understand that is what your faith teaches, but please dont presume that mine teaches the same thing. I don't acknowledge your god and I rather suspect you wouldn't recognize mine.

 

 

[SSScout]

A Grand Tally Ho to the one that can identify the book from which comes this evocative scene (modern Sci Fi):

 

Our hero has a dream in which he dies and goes to "heaven". At the Pearly Gates, he is met by the Gate Keeper, who tells him that to come to God's throne, he should walk thru the door of his choice in the wall ahead. The wall stretches far into the distance to either side, there are innumerable doors, each with the name of a religion above it, everything from Anglicanism to Zoroastrianism and everything in between. As he walks along, the hero cannot choose which door to walk thru, he can't remember what he did on earth. So he walks thru the first one he comes to. On the other side, he sees ahead of him the blazing bright throne. But when he looks behind him, he sees the infinitely long wall... with one closed unlabeled door.

 

Then he wakes up.

[Eagledad]

>>Barry, I understand that is what your faith teaches, but please dont presume that mine teaches the same thing. I don't acknowledge your god and I rather suspect you wouldn't recognize mine.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

 

So, does this mean the BSA should also exclude anyone whose god(s) are not the source of morality, such as some deists? You seem to be assuming that everyone who believes in god(s) sees those gods as the source of morality, which is not true.

[Jeffrey H]

I understand what Barry is saying and I agree with him.

 

What we consider "moral" is largely based upon our religious beliefs. Our religious beliefs often interpret the Scout Oath and Law. The Oath and Law are not just words on paper but reminders of how we should apply our religious beliefs. You can have "no religion" and be in the BSA, but you still make a promise to obey the Scout Oath & Law.

 

Regardless of our own personal beliefs and moral codes, the BSA does define what is moral and acceptable. Read Youth Protection Guidelines. Those guidelines are there because bad things have been done by leaders who were practicing their own personal moral code. Fortunately, they have been kicked out of the BSA or they are in JAIL.

[scoutldr]

To an outsider witnessing a BSA activity, such as a troop meeting, OA ceremony, Wood Badge training, Roundtable, etc, they might come away with the idea that Scouting IS a religion. There are analogies any where we turn. We even have our own Creed and list of "Commandments" (Oath and Law). To some youth, Scouting is the only exposure to religion that they will experience.

[scoutldr]

To an outsider witnessing a BSA activity, such as a troop meeting, OA ceremony, Wood Badge training, Roundtable, etc, they might come away with the idea that Scouting IS a religion. There are analogies any where we turn. We even have our own Creed and list of "Commandments" (Oath and Law). To some youth, Scouting is the only exposure to religion that they will experience.

[Kudu]

Lisabob writes:

 

your posts tend to be mono-thematic. This thread has nothing to do with Wood Badge and I do tire of your attempt to blame all ills, real and perceived, of the current BSA program on the WB for the 21st Century course syllabus.

 

Training. Training. Training.

 

Wood Badge is bad for Scouting because it replaces the Patrol Method with the so-called "Leadership Development Method." This contradicts the most basic principle of Scouting theory, that Scouting is based on "education" rather than mere "instruction":

 

Here, then, lies the most important object in the Boy Scout training--to educate; not to instruct, mind you, but to educate, that is, to draw out the boy to learn for himself, of his own desire, the things that tend to build up character in him (Baden-Powell, Aids To Scouting).

 

Or put another way:

 

Thirdly, the business of the Scoutmaster--and a very interesting one it is--is to draw out each boy and find out what is in him, and then to catch hold of the good and develop it to the exclusion of the bad. There is five per cent of good even in the worst character. The sport is to find it, and then to develop it on to an 80 or 90 per cent basis. This is education instead of instruction of the young mind (Baden-Powell, Aids To Scouting).

 

If your advanced training had been based on Traditional Wood Badge education (a week of Leadership Training in the Patrol Method by learning Outdoor Skills in a Wood Badge Patrol) rather than a week of instruction in the pop-corporate Leadership Development Method, would you now believe that what Scouting needs is more indoor instruction? You are what you train for.

 

But if we're going to engage in witch hunts and inflammatory rhetoric about religion's role in the BSA - which seems to happen a lot - then I think the BSA should get up its collective gumption and put its money where its mouth is (or at least, where its current policies encourage certain members to go) and add explicit requirements in support of that core component.

 

The Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills (IOLS) course has one of those "explicit requirements in support of that core component:" a religion session. A single weekend is not long enough for even a superficial introduction to outdoor skills, so why is precious time wasted shoving this religion stuff down our throats in an outdoor skills course?

 

I was IOLS course director for a number of years and I was surprised at how quickly a really friendly group of Scouters would start to say ugly things if in the religion session someone brought up the BSA policy on atheists.

 

You may remember that this is the training session that tripped up 19-year-old Darrell Lambert when a District Chairman said that "Anyone that doesn't believe in God isn't a good citizen." Of course we all agreed to that in writing when we signed the Declaration of Religious Principle (DRP), but then he added that if an atheist happened to find a wallet laying on the ground, the atheist would "pick it up (and) plunder the money."

 

Teenagers can be quick to respond to such religious bigotry without thinking about the consequences, and if we add your indoor instruction to what little is left of our outdoor education program we will have many more of such confrontations.

 

Nor do I believe there's any truth to your claim that this is "cub scouting" the boy scout program, which is apparently meant in a derogatory manner.

 

Um, yes. "Cub Scouting the Boy Scout program" means to dumb down the outdoor Boy Scout education program, in this case with indoor Cub Scout instruction.

 

The cub scout program is worthy in its own right (if you don't think so, that's your prerogative but has little to do with the current thread either)

 

It has everything to do with this thread because you refer to Cub Scout requirements in your first two posts, and in your third you seem to agree with Longhaul that Boy Scouts need something along the lines of the Webelos Badge requirements that he quotes.

 

and no one except you is talking about turning boy scouts into cub scouts.

 

Well yes you are, and I notice that even after posting this assertion you did not then take exception to John-in-KC when he proposed the use the Webelos requirements and to make Boy Scouts do "all of them, not do two."

 

I made a comparison in terms of religious requirements to point out to those who may have missed it, that in SOME of its programs, BSA is quite explicit about using religion as an advancement requirement and that it COULD be done in a fairly generic way (as the various cub requirements reflect). So the argument against doing so in the boy scout program should not be "it can't be done" because it IS already being done elsewhere in the BSA family.

 

Yeah, in the same way that Gold Loops from Irving Texas smile approvingly when adult Boy Scout leaders are handed colored construction paper, school paste, and tiny rounded safety scissors by well-meaning but dim-witted Cub Scout ladies at a National "Train the Trainer" course. Sure, scissors & paste is being done elsewhere in the BSA family but that does mean that it should be done in Boy Scouts.

 

And finally - I agree very much with the notion of the religion of the woods. I will say from my personal experience, that's exactly how and where I decided for myself that there must be a higher power and this was not in keeping with my formal religious upbringing, which I had more or less rejected for various reasons.

 

Then why not build from this direct experience that you share with Baden-Powell, rather than to impose religious instruction which he describes as the opposite of Scouting?

 

Religion can only be "caught," not "taught." It is not a dressing donned from outside, put on for Sunday wear. It is a true part of a boy's character, a development of soul, and not a veneer that may peel off. It is a matter of personality, of inner conviction, not of instruction.

 

Speaking from a fairly wide personal experience, having had some thousands of young men through my hands, I have reached the conclusion that the actions of a very large proportion of our men are, at present, very little guided by religious conviction.

 

This may be attributed to a great extent to the fact that often instruction instead of education has been employed in the religious training of the boy.

 

The consequence has been that the best boys in the Bible class or Sunday School have grasped the idea, but in many cases they have, by perfection in the letter, missed the spirit of the teaching and have become zealots with a restricted outlook, while the majority have never really been enthused, and have, as soon as they have left the class or school, lapsed into indifference and irreligion, and there has been no hand to retain them at the critical time of their lives, i.e., sixteen to twenty-four...

 

On the practical side, however, the Scoutmaster can in every case do an immense amount towards helping the religious teacher, just as he can help the schoolmaster by inculcating in his boys, in camp and club, the practical application of what they have been learning in theory in the school.

 

The wonder to me of all wonders is how some teachers have neglected this easy and unfailing means of education and have struggled to impose Biblical instruction as the first step towards getting a restless, full-spirited boy to think of higher things (Baden-Powell, Aids To Scouting).

 

Lisabob writes:

 

I imagine that, if I had been a boy and had been in boy scouts (which, growing up in a scouting family, I almost certainly would have been) then there would have been a point as a teen where I wouldn't have met the membership requirement with regard to religious belief. I don't think we, as an organization, do ourselves or the boys we serve or the public in general much service by telling people in that position that they cannot be members anymore while they sort through their beliefs (or lack thereof). But that's my view, and it is not current BSA policy.

 

Then why waste your energy on the hypocrisy of religious fundamentalists who inflict this policy not only on older Scouts who are "sorting through their beliefs," but on six-year-old boys like Elliot Welsh who have no way to understand why they are being discriminated against? You must know in your heart that it is contrary to the central message of both Jesus Christ and Baden-Powell.

 

You have rendered unto Caesar that which is Caesar's by signing the DRP imposed by the state's religious monopoly on Scouting. That is all the BSA requires.

 

Build on what you know directly from your own experience of the Religion of the Woods. The BSA does not know enough about Baden-Powell to make up a rule against that!

 

Kudu

 

[Hunt]

It is difficult to be totally non-sectarian, but also to claim that you have a defined set of values that are derived from religious beliefs. If you really want to claim that all religions (vs. non-religious ethical systems) share those values, they are going to be pretty general and vague values, and there won't be much to distinguish them form non-religious ethical schemes.

 

The more I think about this, the more I think that BSA should decide on what religious elements should be part of the program, and leave belief out of it. It should let anybody join, but with the understanding that they will be exposed to and expected to participate in certain program elements that are religious in nature. After all, we don't expect every scout to fully live all the elements of the Scout Law when he first joins--the program is supposed to help develop those characteristics in him. Why couldn't "reverent" be the same thing? Parents who don't want their sons to learn to be more reverent or to hear about "duty to God" couold choos not to join.Ithink the effect on actual membership would be negligible, and there would no longer be any reason to exclude people.