A Scout is reverent.
Here’s a little something that’s been rolling around in my mind for the past week.
Last week was Scout Sunday at church. The day brought back lots of great memories for me since I was very active in Boy Scouts throughout all my childhood and even a couple years into college. I’m an Eagle Scout and also a Vigil Honor member in Order of the Arrow. For those of you who don’t know what any of that means, well, let’s just say I was really into Boy Scouts.
During the service, one of the troop’s scouts came up to talk about the Scout Law.
A Scout is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.
The point he was trying to make was that the final point of the Scout Law was important because being reverent is a central part of being able to have the wisdom to make the right choices in your life. However, as many 14 year old boys might do when going off script, he brought an interpretation to the Law that may not be quite correct. He went on to say that this point of the Scout Law meant that you couldn’t be a Boy Scout without being a Christian.
This rubbed Robin the wrong way. She already doesn’t agree on the Boy Scout stance on homosexuality, and to have the suggestion that the Boy Scouts excluded people of other faiths made her not want to let Nathan be a Boy Scout when he gets older.
Over lunch that day she started asking questions about Scouting and if we were taught those sorts of things and I reassured her that we most certainly weren’t. We did have church services at district camp-outs, we did participate in Scout Sunday, and we were taught to be reverent. But we weren’t taught that being anything other than a Christian was unacceptable. I can also tell you as an aside that I can think of many of my Scout friends that turned out to be gay later in life and they all turned out pretty well.
One of the most vivid images of my Scouting experience was from a book my parents gave me of Norman Rockwell paintings of Boy Scouts. The one that came to mind was called “Breakthrough for Freedom” and it depicted Scouts from all over the world walking arm in arm at a jamboree. An American Scout was right next to a Scout from an Arab nation, who was next to an Asian Scout, and so on. I think that anyone could easily deduce that all of those Scouts were not Christians. There were Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Christians in that painting.
The more I thought about it this week, the more upset I became that moral politics have seeped into an organization that gave me so much benefit over the years. Perhaps those attitudes and politics were always present in my Scouting experience but I just wasn’t aware of them because I was having too much fun camping and trying to earn as many merit badges as I could. I decided to look into the Boy Scouts’ official position and found this on their site:
…We hope that our supporters will continue to value the Boy Scouts of America’s respect for diversity and the positive impact Scouting has on young people’s lives. We realize that not every individual nor organization subscribes to the same beliefs that the BSA does, but we hope that all Americans can be as respectful of our beliefs as we are of theirs and support the overall good Scouting does in American communities.
So, it seems to me that these attitudes come from the individual councils, districts, and troops. I just hope that when Nathan participates in Scouts that we can leave personal politics behind and focus on allowing the boys to grow into leaders using guidance but ultimately following the things that they find right for them.
Sorry, I promise not to get preachy again for a while.