Scouting America’s “Duty to God” Doesn’t Mean a Duty to the Christian God any more than the Girl Scouts’ “Duty to God” does
Scouting America’s “Duty to God” is not a requirement to be a Christian, monotheist, or even a theist at all. The language Scouting America routinely uses is virtually setup for reaching this conclusion, and because it’s plain wrong I want to help correct this very common misperception.
How can I, a bottom-level Scouter in Scouting America, be so sure? Because when I gave my original Scout Promise as a youth, the first line was “A Scout seeks their own beliefs and respects those of others.” My NSO/MO Sveriges Scoutförbund was secular like the rest of mainstream Swedish society. Most of us were regular plain old atheists. There were Christian scouting organizations I’d heard of but knew nobody who was in them and never saw any at camporees. The spiritual undercurrent in Scouterna, as in Swedish society in general, was nature. I lived non-Christian scouting 30 years ago with millions of others. I know first hand that scouting is not a Christian movement. And the World Organization of the Scouting Movement Constitution agrees:
Scouting America cannot require any particular beliefs or membership in any particular religious organization of members without exiting the global scouting movement, like Trail Life and American Heritage Girls have. And Scouting America admits as much in the otherwise very misleading “Declaration of Religious Principle” in the bylaws and in the Guide to Advancement:
Declaration of Religious Principle (2019)
CHARTER AND BYLAWS OF THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA, 100-491, ©2019 Boy Scouts of America, June 2019 revision, 2019 printing, p. 19
BYLAWS—ARTICLE IX, POLICIES, Section 1
Declaration of Religious Principle
Clause 1. (…) The Boy Scouts of America, therefore, recognizes the religious element in the training of the member, but it is absolutely nonsectarian in its attitude toward that religious training. Its policy is that the home and the organization or group with which the member is connected shall give definite attention to religious life.
Activities
Clause 2. The activities of the Boy Scouts of America shall be carried on under conditions which show respect to the convictions of others in matters of custom and religion, as required by the twelfth point of the Scout Law, reading, “Reverent. A Scout is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties. He respects the beliefs of others.”
Guide to Advancement, 33088, ISBN 978-0-8395-3088-6, ©2019 Boy Scouts of America, 2019 Printing, “Special Considerations”, p. 38
5.0.5.0 Religious Principles From time to time, issues related to advancement call for an understanding of the position of the Boy Scouts of America on religious principles. The Boy Scouts of America does not define what constitutes belief in God or practice of religion. Neither does the BSA require membership in a religious organization or association for membership in the movement. If a Scout does not belong to a religious organization or association, then the Scout’s parents) or guardian(s) will be considered responsible for religious training. All that is required is the acknowledgment of belief in God as stated in the Declaration of Religious Principle and the Scout Oath, and the ability to be reverent as stated in the Scout Law. (My bolding)
So, if we plug in the Scouting America means by “God”, we get “Duty to _____”, where you fill in the blank, influenced by your parents and/or any religion that you formally belong to. You are required to acknowledge belief in _____ to be a member of Scouting America, where you determine what ______ is yourself.
That the WOSM Constitution “backs me up” is no coincidence, of course. I grew up in WOSM (and WAGGGS) and therefore was shaped by the movement with this constitution. It would be anathema to exclude someone from the global brotherhood and sisterhood of Scouting because of their organized religion or lack thereof! Absolutely unthinkable in my mind. I knew it would say something like this before I downloaded the current 2021 version, because freedom of religion/spirituality is a core tenet of the movement and has been from the start. Baden-Powell spoke about this as well:
“Take a negative instance. A Mahommedan Guider comes to England and addresses a lot of Girl Guides on religion, in the course of which she quotes Mahomet as the one divine teacher. This in spite of the fact that her audience are believers in Christ. How would you regard her action? As tactless, as insulting, as fanatical? At any rate it wouldn’t be exactly polite or in accordance with our laws of courtesy. Yet I have known Christian Guiders as well as Scouters do exactly the same thing with Jews or Hindoos or people of other beliefs present, and these on their part have sat under it, too polite to raise objections but none the less made uncomfortable by it. Once, at a mixed gathering at a ‘Scout’s Own’ a speaker carefully avoided much reference to Christ and was accused by some there of ‘denying Him’. His defence was that he was rather following Christ in that he was showing Christian deference to the feelings of others who, equally with himself, were sons of one Father, under whatever form they rendered homage to God.”
In particular, it’s clear to me as a Buddhist that very few Scouting America professionals and members understand – truly understand – that Buddhism is nontheistic. As in, we are explicitly countermanded from worshipping deities in order to proceed on the spiritual path. (Worldly favors and appreciation are fine, just don’t expect them to help you get what they themselves don’t have.) We do not worship Buddha as an external entity that can grant or not grant enlightenment, we don’t have faith in Buddha, yidams are self-portraits, and to look for something not-you to come save your bacon is a grave, foundational mistake. Very dangerous. The foundational core of Buddhism is liberating yourself. You have to do the work yourself. We practice, we don’t have faith in the way Christians do. We do not refer to ourselves as a being a faith, or as being faithful. We do not have or attend services, we perform sadhanas – means of accomplishing. The faith we have in the Dharma and our lineage should be earned. Testing gold to make sure it’s genuine and all that. Blind faith is not a virtue in Buddhism.
The Buddhist section in the Wood Badge “interfaith service” is incredibly sectarian (it’s a Vajrayana practice for which an empowerment ceremony is recommended, and is given from a personal Dharma teacher). It’s pretty obvious that whoever chose that to include doesn’t know what it is. Other than potentially offending many Buddhists (some consider the Vajrayana to be a corruption of Dharma), it is complete nonsense to have all the people who aren’t doing ngöndro with a personal teacher do a mandala offering, made further nonsense but that it’s the quick offering to the guru as part of requesting them to teach. To whom are they offering the mandala, their last college professor? There is no guru attending the Wood Badge “service” to give a Dharma talk. They have no samaya with a teacher. It’s just cargo cult Buddhism.
However, Buddhists are part of the Scouting movement, and have been for a long time. There is a World Buddhist Scout Council. There is a Buddhist Sala on the Faith Trail at Gilwell Park. Scouting America has approved Buddhist religious awards. Nontheists in Scouting are not Other, people on the outside of the movement. We’re in it and have been for decades and decades. The atheists are already in, it’s just that the super-Christian Scouters who drive this misconception don’t seem to realize it. It’s a faît accompli.
You cannot wave the difference between nontheist and theist spiritual paths away with using “Lord” instead of “God” in what is obviously a Christian prayer (to a dual deity nonetheless); all you’re doing (hopefully without realizing) is putting us in the position of either raising a potentially hostile discussion with a fellow Scouter or sitting under it, too polite to raise objections but none the less made uncomfortable by it. And I do not want Christians trying to sabotage my Scout’s spiritual instruction, which according to Scouting America I am the definite authority on. It is very difficult to respect other people’s beliefs when they keep trying to force theirs on you. A teaboy situation, I suppose. But in terms of the conventional realm, the only right response to this problem is to stop injecting Christianity on the sly into Scouting America meetings and events.
And for all of these reasons, many (most?) National Scouting Organizations and Member Organizations have gotten rid of the original “Duty to God” phrasing in the Oath/Promise or don’t require people to mention “God”. I already mentioned the Swedish one that doesn’t reference a religion and is specifically broad and open. GSUSA allows members to substitute “God” for whatever they like. Scouts UK offers versions of the Promise for various different formal religions and no formal religion. Insisting on the phrase “Duty to God” with god capitalized is a virtual setup for misunderstanding of this point in the US cultural environment of strong Christian hegemony, and since I don’t sit on whatever national Scouting America committee can revise the language to be clearer about the reality of not being able to force people to be Christians, pointing all this out here is about what I can do on this issue to help the scouting lineage thrive in the US.
Everyone is welcome in the Scouting movement. Scouting America broke off the mainstream of the movement for a long time, but seems to have realized that and is now returning. The main thing separating it from the rest of us is now the religious issue. People absolutely don’t join because they think they need to be Christians – for the good of Scouting in the US (especially for boys that don’t have options), let’s drop the pretense and be honest. They absolutely do not. There is no real religious test (that isn’t playing word games like meaning nothing in particular by “God”) to join Scouting America.
[…] misunderstood aspect of Scouting America’s “Duty to God”, namely that it is not a requirement to be a Christian, monotheist, or even a theist at all. This is fundamentally a Shambhalian and Buddhist Duty to God meeting plan, which I have […]