MY THOUGHTS OF THE SLOW DEPARTURE FROM BOY SCOUTS
Franklin Graham urges churches to leave Boy Scouts of America
As a former Boy Scout and now Scout leader as well as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the "Mormon Church" I have a lot on my mind about this issue at this time.
First, the facts:
The Church is only doing away with its Varsity and Venture Scout programs, those haven't been successful in many areas where the church is now except maybe Utah and Idaho where there is a large LDS population. The church will continue sponsoring the regular Boy Scout program for those scouts ages 11-13 plus those working on rank advancement past that age will be able to continue to work with the scouts to achieve that advancement. This isn't a major change at all for the LDS church, their policy prior to this was to have all young men ages 11-15 registered as scouts and those 16-17 years old would be registered as scouts if they were pursuing rank advancement. Now the age has been lowered to where all young men ages 11-13 will be registered and those 14-17 will be registered only if perusing rank advancement.
Up till two years ago, the 11 year old scout program was such that those 11 years old could achieve the rank of First Class Scout, now to new scout rules requiring more camp outs than the three previously required and the LDS church desire to keep 11 camp outs limited to 3 per year, 11 year old LDS scouts starting last year could only reach Second Class with a lot of First Class requirements finished. So LDS Scouts will rank up slower than their brothers did a few years ago because of this policy change.
Along with these rule changes, the BSA also first made it so openly gay boys could join boy scouts provided they were not practicing homosexual behavior (with the understanding that regardless of sexual orientation, no scout should be sexually active at scouting age), then came the change to allow openly gay scout leaders. All LDS leaders voted against the change, and the church responded negatively towards the news that the BSA changed the policy (after having gone all the way to the Supreme Court of all places defending their policy of not admitting openly gay men and boys under the idea that such a lifestyle violated the Scout Oath's requirement to be "morally straight") The Church was concerned about the change but announced to the media that "for now" they would stay with the BSA.
Then came the change in BSA policy to allow transgenders into the Boy Scout program, it was a quick change out of nowhere basically.
With all of these policy changes, the church has had other challenges as well. The church likes uniformity. If you are familiar with LDS churches you will know one at quick glance because the church tends to build all of it's buildings the same. A lot of the things in the church are the same worldwide. A person can go to Guatemala, the United States or Tonga and not miss a Sunday School lesson because the curriculum is the same throughout the world. But then there is BSA, it only exist in the United States, the church doesn't sponsor scouting programs outside of the USA and Canada. It creates uniformity where the church that is growing more and more worldwide would like to have a uniform program for its youth world wide.
Also, growing up in Northern California as a youth, I attended the Oakland Temple once a year. Now that there are more temples worldwide many youth groups attend their nearest temple once every three months as opposed to once a year.
The age men and women start their missions has also changed. Men can go at 18 as opposed to age 19 and women can go at age 19 as opposed to age 21
Therefore, with these facts, one can conclude that the BSA is trying to head one direction that appears more secular and less spiritual and the LDS church another direction towards making their youth more spiritual.
Thinking back on my own experiences, our congregation split in two in the early 90's when I was 14 and all the scout leaders were left in the other congregation. We just did the Young Men's program without scouts and we did better. While in scouts we went to scout camp and had some fun but also, a lot of fights took place, another troop snuk into our camp and placed batteries in our campfire for one, and at another time a friend of mine in my troop got into a confrontation with another scout from another troop and pocket knives were pulled.
After we stopped doing scout camps and just did the Young Men's program we did all sorts of fun things that didn't require scout rules. We visited Yosemite one year and did a 275 mile bike ride another year. The program was less focused on merit badges and more focused on us setting our own goals.
So I have to say my time as a youth AFTER scouts was more rewarding to me, both physically and spiritually
As a scout leader these past few years I've been working with the youth and I've had a lot of fun doing it. I do enjoy teaching scout skills to them, but what I hate is hearing from the BSA National Council and every new nanny rule they come up with, such as "No water gun fights with scouts", or "Scouts can't do slip and slide" or Scouts can't do this or that etc.
My biggest hobby if you can call it that with the BSA is to go through their merit badge pamphlets and read into those, they are very informative, the problem is, they are made for adults as opposed to youth.
I do believe that youth need shooting sports as offered by the BSA. The Cub Scouts shoot BB's and the older scouts shoot .22 caliber and shotguns. The Venture Program does offer handgun shooting as well, that'll be missed.
I believe however, from my studying of the Second Amendment and many other reasons, that something better for our youth is needed. Shooting sports in scouts is usually limited to just a rifle and shotgun merit badge, as I said earlier, you can't even do water gun fights. The ROTC programs are superior to the Scouting program in many ways but are aimed at those that would want to have a career in full time military as opposed to a militia type situation. Scouting was a movement created in England and brought to the United States, the BSA is but one organization in the scouting movement. Maybe it is time to rethink the whole thing and come up with something better, something that can promote an idea of scouting but is immune perhaps to beings sued by every offended lefty that comes along. Do we even need a central organization to promote scouting? Most scouting is done at the local level.
Your thoughts are appreciated
As a former Boy Scout and now Scout leader as well as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the "Mormon Church" I have a lot on my mind about this issue at this time.
First, the facts:
The Church is only doing away with its Varsity and Venture Scout programs, those haven't been successful in many areas where the church is now except maybe Utah and Idaho where there is a large LDS population. The church will continue sponsoring the regular Boy Scout program for those scouts ages 11-13 plus those working on rank advancement past that age will be able to continue to work with the scouts to achieve that advancement. This isn't a major change at all for the LDS church, their policy prior to this was to have all young men ages 11-15 registered as scouts and those 16-17 years old would be registered as scouts if they were pursuing rank advancement. Now the age has been lowered to where all young men ages 11-13 will be registered and those 14-17 will be registered only if perusing rank advancement.
Up till two years ago, the 11 year old scout program was such that those 11 years old could achieve the rank of First Class Scout, now to new scout rules requiring more camp outs than the three previously required and the LDS church desire to keep 11 camp outs limited to 3 per year, 11 year old LDS scouts starting last year could only reach Second Class with a lot of First Class requirements finished. So LDS Scouts will rank up slower than their brothers did a few years ago because of this policy change.
Along with these rule changes, the BSA also first made it so openly gay boys could join boy scouts provided they were not practicing homosexual behavior (with the understanding that regardless of sexual orientation, no scout should be sexually active at scouting age), then came the change to allow openly gay scout leaders. All LDS leaders voted against the change, and the church responded negatively towards the news that the BSA changed the policy (after having gone all the way to the Supreme Court of all places defending their policy of not admitting openly gay men and boys under the idea that such a lifestyle violated the Scout Oath's requirement to be "morally straight") The Church was concerned about the change but announced to the media that "for now" they would stay with the BSA.
Then came the change in BSA policy to allow transgenders into the Boy Scout program, it was a quick change out of nowhere basically.
With all of these policy changes, the church has had other challenges as well. The church likes uniformity. If you are familiar with LDS churches you will know one at quick glance because the church tends to build all of it's buildings the same. A lot of the things in the church are the same worldwide. A person can go to Guatemala, the United States or Tonga and not miss a Sunday School lesson because the curriculum is the same throughout the world. But then there is BSA, it only exist in the United States, the church doesn't sponsor scouting programs outside of the USA and Canada. It creates uniformity where the church that is growing more and more worldwide would like to have a uniform program for its youth world wide.
Also, growing up in Northern California as a youth, I attended the Oakland Temple once a year. Now that there are more temples worldwide many youth groups attend their nearest temple once every three months as opposed to once a year.
The age men and women start their missions has also changed. Men can go at 18 as opposed to age 19 and women can go at age 19 as opposed to age 21
Therefore, with these facts, one can conclude that the BSA is trying to head one direction that appears more secular and less spiritual and the LDS church another direction towards making their youth more spiritual.
Thinking back on my own experiences, our congregation split in two in the early 90's when I was 14 and all the scout leaders were left in the other congregation. We just did the Young Men's program without scouts and we did better. While in scouts we went to scout camp and had some fun but also, a lot of fights took place, another troop snuk into our camp and placed batteries in our campfire for one, and at another time a friend of mine in my troop got into a confrontation with another scout from another troop and pocket knives were pulled.
After we stopped doing scout camps and just did the Young Men's program we did all sorts of fun things that didn't require scout rules. We visited Yosemite one year and did a 275 mile bike ride another year. The program was less focused on merit badges and more focused on us setting our own goals.
So I have to say my time as a youth AFTER scouts was more rewarding to me, both physically and spiritually
As a scout leader these past few years I've been working with the youth and I've had a lot of fun doing it. I do enjoy teaching scout skills to them, but what I hate is hearing from the BSA National Council and every new nanny rule they come up with, such as "No water gun fights with scouts", or "Scouts can't do slip and slide" or Scouts can't do this or that etc.
My biggest hobby if you can call it that with the BSA is to go through their merit badge pamphlets and read into those, they are very informative, the problem is, they are made for adults as opposed to youth.
I do believe that youth need shooting sports as offered by the BSA. The Cub Scouts shoot BB's and the older scouts shoot .22 caliber and shotguns. The Venture Program does offer handgun shooting as well, that'll be missed.
I believe however, from my studying of the Second Amendment and many other reasons, that something better for our youth is needed. Shooting sports in scouts is usually limited to just a rifle and shotgun merit badge, as I said earlier, you can't even do water gun fights. The ROTC programs are superior to the Scouting program in many ways but are aimed at those that would want to have a career in full time military as opposed to a militia type situation. Scouting was a movement created in England and brought to the United States, the BSA is but one organization in the scouting movement. Maybe it is time to rethink the whole thing and come up with something better, something that can promote an idea of scouting but is immune perhaps to beings sued by every offended lefty that comes along. Do we even need a central organization to promote scouting? Most scouting is done at the local level.
Your thoughts are appreciated
Comments
Post a Comment