President of UUA "Disappointed" in Boy Scouts' Response

Boy Scouts and Unitarian Universalists

from Sightings
October 13, 1998

During October in Boston, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) and the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) are having a new round of negotiations about the Boy Scout Pledge--about who can take it and who gets ruled out, or self-ruled out.  Kendall Anderson of the Dallas Morning News (September 26) reminds readers that not only do the Scouts require the boys to believe in God and express faith, but they also give "Religion in Life" awards at churches.

There is no doubt that Unitarian Universalism is a religion.  Some members are liberal Christians and others religious humanists--with all the rights and privileges attendant to their commitments.  The current problem that rose earlier "in the Irving [Texas]-based organization" had to do with local troops, when a UUA church insisted it would accept gay members.  No, you can't do that, said headquarters, and for the first time in 88 years the Scouts chopped off a whole religious denomination over religious matters.  Gregg Shields of the BSA said that UUA principles are "directly contradictory to the Boy Scout oath and law and to the goals of scouting." A local UUA pastor, Dennis Hamilton, wants to keep giving out the Religion in Life awards; he calls his scouts "victims."

The gay and the God issues get hopelessly entangled, but the God theme is currently central.  Both sides are looking for an amicable agreement, they say.  Of course, such contentions head for courts, and we can expect to see this one becoming the subject of litigation.  Courts so far have been divided on the issue.  In New Jersey the decision went against the Scouts; in California, for.  In the former the court reasoned that the Scouts offer and rely on "places of accommodation" that "emphasize open membership" and dare not discriminate.  In the latter, the BSA was seen as a private club, a voluntary association that can make up its own rules.

Kendall interviewed troop leader Joe Marsh of the Dallas area, who said, "In duty to God and being anti-homosexual to the basic fiber of my being, I support the Boy Scouts."  Hamilton just wishes we could "get on with letting Boy Scouts be boys."  Meanwhile citizens can ponder another problem with the substance of public religion in America.

Curiously, this argument leads back to old fissures in civil life where Boy Scouts are concerned, fissures caused by people in the
theological right, not the left.  Some conservative and fundamentalist churches have long contended that the BSA generates its own "civil religion," a God-centered, but not necessarily Christ-centered, parallel to orthodox Christianity. They would not allow their church members' sons to do their scouting with religiously generic troops and either insisted on church-based and thus creedily homogeneous troops or invented movements analogous to the Scouts. To them, the Scout oath looked deist and implied the sufficiency of "natural religion."

This was not a problem for most American Christians, since they see enough overlap between their biblical and Christ-focused faith and the Scout religion, ethos, and oath.  But when the Unitarian Universalists come along to test the stretch of the BSA, they do tend to smoke out a realization that the Scout religion is a particular faith.  It may be an expansive and generous one, but it brings with it assumptions about faith and religion that, ironically, the theological left and right both discern as being religiously particularist--and thus in need of being challenged in church and court.  October meetings in Boston are not going to be the last efforts to reconcile parties or to see to the defeat of one of them. --Martin E. Marty--

Unitarian Universalist Association
25 Beacon St. | Boston, MA 02108 | 617-742-2100