He’s mad because they are creating competition for his crappy, tasteless wafers.
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In honor of this thread, I am sinning right now (samoas, of course, the ultimate sin!).
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Not necessary, it’s already that high across populations in parts of Europe. What we actually need to do is to get rid of the negative consequences of declared atheism in some societies. The US is particularly bad here, and unfortunately some of its churches have a poor record on exporting intolerance. That separation of church and state thing is a bit of a joke, it only gets invoked when someone like Trump wants to deflect attention, but not for instance when a Republican wants to diss a Democrat.
One of my lecturers at U was doing research into people’s idea of God. He reckoned that most of the people he interviewed who called themselves “Christian” would comfortably fail the doctrinal test of their churches.
He was also an Anglican clergyman, and he told the tale of how a (well qualified) candidate for the post of scoutmaster was interviewed by the parochial council, and was asked by one of them if he believed in God. To which he replied no…
So the person asking the question then asked “Well, do you believe in a supreme being?” At which point, said our lecturer, he intervened by saying “We’re not here to discuss the finer points of 18th century theology”, and moved on to recommend the guy be appointed without further questions.
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I’m betting that got you a long talk with the minister! Kind of like my visit with the Principal when I said I thought Judas had gotten a bad deal - if he hadn’t betrayed Jesus, we wouldn’t be sitting here in this Catholic school, now would we?
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What’s he so worried about - don’t people line up for his wafers every Sunday?
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I’m committing the sin of envy.
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Always vaguely reassuring to see threads like this crop up. I was a scout ( not quite Eagle ) in the 80s / early 90s, loved it - but if the larger organization had the same views that get espoused to prominently now, it wasn’t trickling down to the local level in any way. Have a son, would love to see him off camping / setting …err, ‘building’ fires / and all snark aside learning how to enjoy being in the great outdoors in a gentle and sustainable manner but I can’t get my grown-up brain past the unacceptable shortcomings of the larger organization. Even if I found a troop which was sensible I’d still baulk at the funds raised which go back to the larger organization, and wonder what folks thought who saw him in uniform.
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When I was a scout, it wasn’t like you had to believe in god to be reverent. Like, we talked about that even. Reverence was interpreted as respect for beliefs, which if you didn’t hold or understand, defaulted to tolerance. So atheists weren’t excluded, nor did it encourage trying to convert others one way or another.
Sucks to realize maybe it wasn’t really that way formally. Sure wish it would be.
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I’d have done better with the US one than the UK one.
On my honour, I promise that I will do my best
To do my duty to God and to the Queen,
To help other people
And to keep the Scout Law
There are two on there that are bullshit, not just one.
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Ah, now, that’s a heresy of some of the Orthodox churches - so it’s a really serious offense.
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My own experience was that it was more of a cult than a paramilitary organization. Although my dad was often the one making sure all the religious stuff was at the forefront. We didn’t drill or anything like that. But we did have opening and closing prayers at every meeting, WWJD crap, all that stuff.
We were the largest non-mormon troop in our council, and our leadership was very concerned with making sure we were working twice as hard as the mormons. Because the council leadership is stacked with mormons, and those who aren’t mormon knew where the vast majority of money was coming from, so they fast tracked mormon eagle scouts and all that.
That was probably the only instance of me being in a religious minority until I became an atheist, so that was interesting.
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If you’re sinning anyway, why not skip envy and go straight to gluttony? 
Here’s a cookie depot locator. Thanks Archi B. for finally inspiring me to look it up!
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There are alternatives to scouting. If you’d like your kids to go to summer camps, there’s always Camp Quest, which is totally secular. Unfortunately it’s not year round. It’s just summer camps.
There’s other more secular scouting-like organizations though.
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In the US scout oath, I got a giggle about the “morally straight” line later in my scouting career. After I figured out I’m bisexual.
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In response to all the conversations about the Boy Scouts, one of my childhood friends is a leader with this organization which is pushing for gay rights within the Scouts. He is someone I highly trust and so I recommend this group.
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I’m a Pagan in my practices, but essentially an atheist in my beliefs. What you describe here is pretty much how I “worship” when I feel the need. I take a nice long walk, watch some birds or critters, or take my telescope out into the backyard for the evening. Again as you note, I also clean up after myself.
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Eagle Scout as well. I feel lucky that the troop I grew up with and still is going on pretty much ignored those bigoted directives with impunity and continues to do so with no ill effect. Its sponsorship is from a veterans group and is very demographically mixed. The troop has a record number of Eagle Scouts and one of the lowest for receiving the religious awards in the county.
I can see why the Catholic Church doesn’t like the Girl Scouts. They teach things like:
- Female empowerment
- They actively oppose discrimination based on gender and orientation
- They encourage healthy and sane views of teenage sexuality.
They can’t deal with that sort of thing.
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I’m not surprised it’s St Louis. Local culture shapes religion a lot more than the other way around.
When I worked for the Girl Scouts in Northern Nevada just a few years ago, the local dioceses were very supportive.
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