The Boy Scouts, a Battle and the Meaning of Faith

from The New York Times

May 22, 1999
by GUSTAV NIEBUHR

For years, national surveys have reported that 19 of 20 Americans say they believe in God. What is missing from those findings is some indication of what people mean when they say that, what concepts of God they hold in a nation with many different views of religious faith.

The question would seem to lie within an on-again, off-again dispute that has flared anew between the Boy Scouts of America and the Unitarian Universalist Association, a theologically diverse organization that has no creed and instead says members may seek spiritual truth in their own ways. Of its members, who number more than 200,000, some describe themselves as humanists, some as Christians, some as pagans and some as agnostics.

A year ago, the Boy Scouts told the association it no longer had the authority to award its own religious emblem to Unitarian Universalist boys in Scout troops.

Religious emblems, worn like merit badges, are given by more than 30 national religious organizations (everyone "from Bahais to Zoroastrians," a Boy Scout official said) to Scouts who have undertaken a course of study about traditions of their own particular faith.

But in the case of the Unitarian Universalists, the Boy Scouts objected to parts of the association's "Religion in Life" manual, which tells Scouts who belong to Unitarian Universalist congregations how to attain the association's emblem.

The problem was that the manual said some Unitarian Universalist boys might have difficulty with the religious reference in the Boy Scout oath, which promises duty to God and country.

In addition, the manual included a copy of a resolution, adopted in 1992 by the association's General Assembly, that criticized the Boy Scouts' policy of barring homosexuals. (The association has been an outspoken supporter of gay rights, including a right to gay marriage.)

After an exchange of letters, the two sides arranged a meeting, at the Unitarian Universalists' Boston headquarters, between Boy Scout officials and the association's president, the Rev. John A. Buehrens, himself a former Scout.

Last month the association pronounced the dispute resolved, saying it had revised its manual to meet the Boy Scouts' objections. But the agreement proved short-lived.

On May 17, a Boy Scout official wrote Buehrens saying the Scouts could not authorize the emblem because the association was planning to provide written materials to Unitarian Universalist Boy Scouts, along with the revised manual, describing the association's stand on bias against homosexuals and on the use of the term "God."

"Unfortunately, this simply reopens the entire issue of using boys as a venue to air your differences with the policies of the Boy Scouts of America," the Scouts' letter said.

On May 18, the association posted the letter on its Internet site, along with a response from Buehrens, who said he had written some of the new material himself, a pamphlet titled, "When Others (or You) Say 'God." It was meant, he said, to "help young people from a pluralistic religious tradition understand some of the multiple ways in which the word 'God' is or can be understood."

Buehrens also said the association had disclosed its plans to provide the materials during the September meeting and the Boy Scouts had agreed to it.

But Gregg Shields, a Boy Scout spokesman, said the decision to provide the additional material ran "contrary to the spirit of the agreement" between the two sides. The material, he said, includes ideas "that we found objectionable in the original booklet."

"The award must be representative of the values of scouting," Shields said. "That's what it amounts to. The additional letter, the additional documents are just inconsistent with our teachings."

Shields said that the disagreement did not affect the right of Unitarian Universalist boys to be Boy Scouts but that they could not wear the association's religious emblem with their uniforms.

He said that the Boy Scouts, with 4.6 million members, had 1,040 boys in 26 troops chartered by Unitarian Universalist-affiliated organizations but that there were most likely Unitarian Universalist boys in other troops as well.

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