I was openly atheist among my friends but generally didn’t talk about it much, so it never occurred to me that it was going to be an issue. But word must have made it to my Eagle review board, so right before they dismissed me they asked me point blank if I believed in a higher power. I was 17, they gave me the choice between lying to their faces or throwing away the previous 7 years of work. That’s pretty offensive.
So, you know, good on them for the progress they’ve made, and I don’t want to ruin the feminist party, but girls who don’t believe in god still don’t have a welcoming home in the BSA and that’s not all right.
Summer camps. Around here and nationwide the GS sold off many campswhich angered many supporters. Including flagship “Eagle Island” off of New York. Why did they do it when the GS camps are some of their best programs? Money. You see years ago the GS executives gave themselves these BIGTIME salary and benefits packages without consideration about how to fund them (see above article for information).
Now the girl scout troops rent out boy scout camps!
Which makes it worse because they find the BS camps to be in many ways better because they have more robust activities than GS camps.
Now this is also a point, their is a major fundamental difference between GS and BS. You see GS sells cookies for fundraising and that’s pretty much it. Whiler a BS troop is free to do any and all kinds of fundraising which can include selling stuff like popcorn but also other funding events like work days (our boys made $600 one day by working at an event) or selling things like Christmas trees.
AND, when their is a fundraiser, its the boys who benefit who actually WORK. You see with GS cookies, a box of cookies sells for about $4. Fifty cents of that goes back to the troop and it doesn’t matter if your daughter sells 20 boxes or 200 boxes, all the money goes back to the troop and the girls decide together how to spend it. Again, doesn’t matter how many each sells.
And a BIG kicker, look at what top GS sellers earn. For cookies they earnlittle pins or tiny teddy bears. For BS selling popcornthey earn really cool prizes like camping equipment(ex. tents and backpacks). Our troop also offer additional prizes like lanterns and fishing poles.
My daughter is a senior in high school and still a Girl Scout. I agree with a lot of what has been said here - its a different organization that brings different things. Not all volunteers are big on camping - if you become a Boy Scout leader, you know you are going to be camping - Girl Scout leaders can focus their troops around different things - and the girls themselves aren’t necessarily interested in camping.
One thing Girl Scouts needs to do better is organize troops by interest rather than location after elementary school.
Both organizations have a huge drop off in participation in middle school. My nephews both dropped at that age. My son wasn’t a Boy Scout, but none of his friends were by fifth grade either.
The Gold Award is harder to get, and it is less recognized. We didn’t bother for both those reasons. And it is the sustainable part of it that makes it difficult to do. You’d have a lot more Gold Awards if you could paint a nonprofit or build a park bench. Those are Bronze Award projects - projects done by sixth graders - not projects done by high school girls. I think you could still get away with a park bench for your Silver.
Families seem to be much less involved in Girl Scouts. And that creates volunteering problems of its own…there is only so much two women who work full time can get done with twelve six year olds and a bunch of parents who think that Girl Scouts is dropping their daughters off while they run to the grocery store.
Camps have been being sold off in our council because they don’t have enough campers to fill all the camp properties. That’s true for Scouting and also YMCA camps and other camps across the country. Sending your kid to camp is becoming less common. My daughter still spent three weeks as a junior counselor (CIT) at camp this Summer though.
My daughter is a senior in high school and still a Girl Scout. I agree with a lot of what has been said here - its a different organization that brings different things. Not all volunteers are big on camping - if you become a Boy Scout leader, you know you are going to be camping - Girl Scout leaders can focus their troops around different things - and the girls themselves aren’t necessarily interested in camping.
One thing Girl Scouts needs to do better is organize troops by interest rather than location after elementary school.
Both organizations have a huge drop off in participation in middle school. My nephews both dropped at that age. My son wasn’t a Boy Scout, but none of his friends were by fifth grade either.
The Gold Award is harder to get, and it is less recognized. We didn’t bother for both those reasons. And it is the sustainable part of it that makes it difficult to do. You’d have a lot more Gold Awards if you could paint a nonprofit or build a park bench. Those are Bronze Award projects - projects done by sixth graders - not projects done by high school girls. I think you could still get away with a park bench for your Silver.
Families seem to be much less involved in Girl Scouts. And that creates volunteering problems of its own…there is only so much two women who work full time can get done with twelve six year olds and a bunch of parents who think that Girl Scouts is dropping their daughters off while they run to the grocery store.
Camps have been being sold off in our council because they don’t have enough campers to fill all the camp properties. That’s true for Scouting and also YMCA camps and other camps across the country. Sending your kid to camp is becoming less common. My daughter still spent three weeks as a junior counselor (CIT) at camp this Summer though.
As for combining groups, I sort of hope it happens, but there is some Liberal/Conservative divide. Girl Scouts have been letting trans girls join for years. They made God optional long ago. They don’t care about anyone’s sexuality, as long as you can pass a background check to work with kids. But Girl Scouts is also likely to die off over the next several decades if they don’t combine.
It depends again upon the troop. BS troops are usually organized by churches and a fundamentalist church might seriously require one to be a Christian. Another for example, one run by a Jewish synagogue, might require one to be a Jew. But for others it might not be so important.
But yes, there is a strong religious element to Boy Scouts and if you disagree, there are other groups.
I do disagree. I disagree to the point when I see a bunch of people on a mostly non-religious message board praising the group, I point out that this group discriminates against atheists and ask why they are praising this shitty organization.
I certainly don’t speak for the national organization, but will say that I agree with you on this. I understand that BSA is a private organization and can make whatever rules it wants, but I personally don’t agree with the requirement that a Scout must believe in God or a “higher power.” I’m hopeful that this policy will change at some point in the future, similar to how the policy on gays has changed.
For what it’s worth, while BSA’s “Declaration of Religious Principle” requires “an obligation to God,” it is also “absolutely nonsectarian.” BSA guidelines state that:
[ol]
[li]The Boy Scouts of America does not define what constitutes belief in God or the practice of religion.[/li][li]The Boy Scouts of America does not require membership in a religious organization or association…[/li][li]The Boy Scouts of America respects the convictions of those who exercise their constitutional freedom to practice religion as individuals without formal membership in organized religious organizations. In a few cases, there are those who, by conviction, do not feel it necessary to formally belong to an organized form of religion and seek to practice religion in accordance with their own personal convictions. Religious organizations have commended the Boy Scouts of America for encouraging youth to participate in organized religious activities. However, these same organizations reject any form of compulsion to enforce conformity to established religious practices.[/li][li]…Throughout life, Scouts are associated with people of different faiths. Scouting believes in religious freedom, respecting others whose religion may differ from theirs, and in the right of all to worship God in their own way. [/li][/ol]
These statements open the door fairly wide to an individual’s own interpretation of what actually constitutes religious belief. In practice, at least in my experience in a number of troops and councils around the nation, no one is conducting an inquisition into whether or not a Scout actually and truly believes in God. At most, there might be a single question at a review board, and you are free to interpret the question however you like.
For example, steronz, you say you were asked in your Eagle review board if you “believed in a higher power.” Do you believe in yourself? If so, there’s your answer.
Well that’s fine and I respect that but to me, if I don’t like a group, I don’t try and change it, I would start or join another. For example Spiral Scouts.
I disagreed with BSA on its former policy against gays, and disagree with its current policy against atheists. However, I made the decision a long time ago that the good aspects of the organization outweighed these bad aspects, and that I would work to change these policies from within the organization instead simply protesting from the outside. And there are a lot of good aspects to BSA, IMHO.
My opinion is that an atheist is free to interpret “God” however he likes. Also, including a reference to “God” in the Boy Scout Oath is no different than the “God” that appears in the Pledge of Allegiance or a courtroom oath. One is also free to simply consider it to be ceremonial deism (i.e. “nominally religious statements and practices deemed to be merely ritual and non-religious through long customary usage.”)
As for the point in the Scout Law that a “Scout is reverent”, one is free to interpret that as indicating that a Scout should respect the rights of others to practice their own religion, and to not denigrate their beliefs or religious practices.
Agree. Urbanredneck, that is a completely false statement. No Scout troop may require membership in any particular church or religion. It would absolutely be a violation of their charter.
For example, the troop I am associated with is sponsored by a Protestant church, whereas my family is nominally Catholic. We also have Scouts in the troop who are Mormon, Jewish, and Buddhist. Many Scouts in the troop aren’t a member of any organized church or religion.
Despite this misguided policy against atheists (which hopefully will eventually be revised or dropped entirely), it’s not a shitty organization. It does a lot of good things for the community and for its youth members.
Because a lot of us who have been/are currently involved know that it’s always really the local organization that matters. The people running National can say whatever they want but the locals don’t have to pay any attention to them. Same if some Mormons in Utah get pissed off due to a change. If you’re in a troop in Pennsylvania, say, what do you care if a bunch of people 2,000 miles away decide to take their ball and go home?
Worst thing that ever happened to BSA was LDS trying to take it over as a youth program.
I’ve seen enough openly atheist troop chaplains in my day that I can’t really care what they officially say about religion.
About Eagle vs. Gold, I don’t know much about Gold, but Eagle requires a lot more than just the service project. You also need at least 21 merit badges, including all of the 13 that are considered essential, and which represent a fairly well-rounded set of skills. And you need to be getting them at a steady pace throughout your time in scouts, because there are minimum time requirements in each rank, and the lower ranks require merit badges, too.
Agreed… pretty much exactly what I was going to post. It seems to me both groups would probably save a lot of time, money, and effort joining forces in the areas where they already do the same thing, and benefit from the additional activities available when they don’t already have the same available.
Baden-Powellalso thought *Mein Kampf *was "A wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc.” and wanted Scouting to have closer ties with the Hitlerjugend.
Let’s just say he wasn’t exactly always right and leave it at that, yeah?
And, from what I see with the kids of my friends, if they go off to camp in the summer, it’s more likely to be a sport-specific camp, or a music camp, rather than a general / traditional “outdoors” camp.
You quoted the Boy Scout oath and said “I don’t get what part of all this would be offensive to an atheist?” And now, when quoting my reply, you say there’s a religious element to Boy Scouts and there are other groups for those who disagree. Which is, of course, the whole point: that is “the part of all this” in question, where they’re told this group isn’t for them if they’re not Swear An Oath To God types.
If you already knew they aren’t welcome in said group, why’d you ask?