The Boy Scouts of America is a Christian organization.

Although, as I was a scout myself that shit never came into play other than the occasional group prayer at big, national events. The individual stuff in our troop was agnostic af and my troop leader was Jewish.

BSA has everything to do with religion. It’s a part of their oath, and advancement requirements (duty to God).

The Scout Law - “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and REVERANT.”

Also the scout oath: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;…”

In the US they never dropped the mandatory overtures to religiosity. In fact, there was a period in the 90s-early 2000s where one sizable religious group who had replaced their prior youth organization with the BSA got pretty involved at the national level to the detriment of the program as a whole. While it’s not really required in any real sense at the troop level, you do have to affirm a belief in some “higher power” as an adult volunteer. (I’m an Eagle Scout and now atheist)

In Sweden, the Svenska Scoutförbundet was an outgrowth from the original UK scouting movement, but I don’t know how big it was/is.

What? Sweden don’t have scouts? My daughter was on a scout camp there last year and I believe there were swedish scouts also.

Regardless, in Denmark we have a few scout organizations. One of them KFUM (which would translate to the same as YMCA) which is the christian boy’s scouting org, that also allows girls, and the similar one for girls that don’t allow boys. Both of them has Christianity as a pretty foundational thing and most of the clubhouses are in or near churches and they have church services on camps and shit. Then there’s DDS (dark blue uniforms) and they’re not connected to any faith, but are still committed to the “spiritual development” of the scout. However this can be done in other ways than inflicting religion on children. In 1973 they merged the boy and girl scouts, so it’s just one thing now. The yellow scouts branched from DDS in the 80’s, with a mission to go back to more traditional scouting values. Not sure what that means, but they’re a also non-religious and non-political organization.

Finally there’s some Danish Baptist scouts but I don’t know much about them other than they’re likely a more religious variant of KFUM, attached to another christian flavor.

Because the US is never more than a couple of steps from a Christian fascist theocracy.

Norwegian who was in “Speider’n”. Nobody here cared about the religious parts of it.

Same reason Alcoholics Anonymous requires you to put faith in a higher power.

Vi har eller har haft (jag är inte uppdaterad) PMU Scout, KFUM/KFUK-Scouter, NSF-scouter och Svenska Scoutförbundet på rak arm, så scouterna har ganska många förbund i Sverige dock

The three core principles of scouting are:

• Duty to God (adherence to spiritual principles, loyalty to the religion that expresses them and acceptance of the duties resulting therefrom)
• Duty to others
• Duty to self

When asked where religion came into Scouting and Guiding, Baden-Powell replied “It does not come in at all. It is already there. It is a fundamental factor underlying Scouting and Guiding”. Source

So unfortunately removing religion from the scouting would remove one of the core principle of the movement, I don’t think it would anytime soon.

Which is a shame because I really enjoyed my time scouting, I think it was a great balance of fun, education and learning responsibilities. But the religion aspect of it make me seriously reconsider to send my kids to do it or not.

Because 'Merica!

if you dont want to DIY it the Satanic Temple, Discordianism, Secular Paganism and The Flying Spaghetti monster all “exist.”

Where can I read lore?

What are the tenets of Cabra? How do you know its real? (I know its not but I love invented faiths)

Would they have accepted The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Probably. Scouting America has been openly Deist for a long time and there is an official “Event” for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. So at least at the national level they don’t seem to care what Deity you jam too as long as you have one.

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Spiritual and meditated would fall into that some kind of belief thing for me. Saying I was spiritual in any facet would still be me lying to them, and I was just as stubborn then as I am now haha

I know people who have been kicked out for being an atheist, they didn’t really care to ask any of the questions you’re suggesting at the time. All they asked was if he believed in any higher powers and he said no. I wouldn’t say he was wrong, I don’t think science is a “higher power”.

In theory, maybe. Many troops have meetings at church facilities where the local church beliefs are treated as superior to others. The second troop I was in had meetings at a Methodist church and there was bullying from two scouts working on their service projects for Eagle toward a Roman Catholic kid, for “worshipping saints.” Bringing it up to the Scoutmaster, who was the father of one of them, responded with the “don’t be a snitch” lecture. Eagle is supposed to be the point where you’re a pillar of your community, and both of those kids became Eagle scouts. “Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind,” just 1/3 of the scout laws right out the window with no repercussions.

Lol care to elaborate

That might work in your country, but there isn’t some non-religious version here that’s popular. They also don’t advertise as religious at all, just the nature aspects. Religion wasn’t mentioned in the organization a single time until I was already in for… 6 or 7 years maybe?

not gay, not trans… not even vegetarian.

how unfortunate

They have but the stigma sticks. For good reasons.

Good on them for cutting down on the pedophilia, it’s always hard to kick a habit

Yes. I do not see any contradiction. My view of spirituality is a broad and subjective concept that relates to my search for meaning, purpose, and connection to something greater than myself—my role in the universe, and the universe’s role in my existence. Religion has nothing to do with that.

I practice meditation, mindfulness, and self-reflection in a way that does not require attachment to belief of supernatural phenomena.

Can an atheist be “spiritual” ?

I think probably yes.

Who doesn’t believe in liquor (spirits)? Liquor provably exists.

Imagine if they merged

We’d be getting the cookies and the popcorn buckets from the same smarmy little shit who set their table up in front of a dispensary like we don’t know they know exactly what they’re doing.

I’d say this explanation is as good. The posted article mentions girl scouts at one time suing the boy scouts.

If it was supposed to be gender neutral then why have separate girl scouts anymore

They have to care about the kids and also have the time, capacity, and energy to put into making scouting enjoyable. If they don’t have the support of other volunteers it makes it exponentially harder too.

But there’s this perfectly good organization already built that the girl scouts was meant to emulate in the first place. Why not just… Allow girls?

Also, this is the boy scouts of America’s decision to make. This is a positive change they can make in their organization. They can’t do anything to fix the girl scouts because that’s someone else

There is a risk of abuse in life. Most children are abused by family or family friends. Unfortunately we can’t stop all of the monsters, but at least Scouts tries, and has some of the most proactive child protection policies in the country. I had abusive teachers when I was a kid that physically assaulted me, that doesn’t mean we condemn all elementary schools. School was still a vibrant part of my childhood. I’m not trying to diminish the suffering of children who suffered abuse in a place that was supposed to provide them safety, but we don’t need to bring it up literally every single time scouting is mentioned. Most of the people on this comment chain are doing it because they get some sort of sadistic pleasure from diminishing the merits of helpful institutions like this, not because they have any sort of real concern for the children.

New policies do as much as they can to protect the kids at least. Not an excuse for the past, but something.

Scouting has a dark history, but I also made lifelong friendships and learned a lot of cool stuff through Scouting. I only learned of the history more recently… No abuse locally or in any of the troops we associated with when I was younger.

It’d be great if humanity would get better at collectively making group decisions and deciding on leadership. Turns out that we all hop on the Nash equilibrium of pursuing individual desires instead.

If they are both gender neutral then it seems a bit silly to have two

Not only separate tents, but the boys’ tents are grouped together and girl tents are grouped together with the adult tents in between those two groups. There also must be at least 1 adult of each sex.

More accurate is more better.

The Girl Scouts absolutely do not accept cis boys.

In what universe are prepubescent children having sex?

Why would they have sex?

Because men aren’t allowed to exclude women. Just wanna let you all know how that feels.

Ask yourself why some people get so upset if men try to exclude women. The answer is mostly the same.

I thought we weren’t supposed to do stuff like that anymore

Women can join the misogynist club but men aren’t allowed to join the misanderist club. Because all men are sexual deviants or something.

Right. Why can’t they all love sexism?

The members of the organization decide how changes will be implemented. The members (citizens) of the US decided to remove the references. The members of scouting decided to keep the vague concept of religion, and leave it to the individual to determine specifics.

It is not “mockery” to understand that the religious aspects of scouting are defined by the scout and the scout’s family, rather than BSA or a church.

I am a Satanist; although it’s religious, it’s also explicitly atheistic. Per your blog, “By signing the membership application, each leader has already acknowledged the Declaration of Religious Principle which affirms a belief in God […]”. While I could quite truthfully say that I acknowledge myself as my own god, I do not believe in God, and I can not honestly affirm that I believe a belief in any external god to be necessary in order to be a good person and citizen.

“A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent”; I can’t be trustworthy without also being wholly honest, including that I don’t believe in an external god. “On my honor, I will do my best, to god and my country, to uphold the Scout law, and to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight”; how could I say this without being deceptive? I know that the ‘god’ they’re referring to is a deity outside of myself, and it wouldn’t be moral for me to swear to this without also believing in some form of external deity.

I had no idea this was a thing. Thanks for sharing…

Did you say Nort?

With the abbreviation of SA. Idk how they overlooked this.

I know I did it. There are a lot more badges about camping and birdhouses and derby cars and engineering than cooking and sewing and crochet. I mean yeah there’s some there, but zi het that’s a victory from this same discussion 50 years ago.