
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 25, 1993                   TAG: 9310250074
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MINNEAPOLIS                                LENGTH: Medium

GIRL SCOUT PLEDGE DECISION SADDENS OUTSIDE GROUPS

Promising to serve the "Creator" instead of "God," or simply to serve, is now OK for Girl Scouts, but the decision to allow the choice was not universally cheered Sunday by people outside the scouts.

"This is one more organization that has become morally relativistic and that's deeply disappointing," Tom Minnery, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, said Sunday. Focus is an evangelical Christian organization based in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The Girl Scouts national convention delegates voted 1,560-375 Saturday to allow girls to pledge service to the spiritual power of their conscience - or none at all.

"I believe that Girl Scouts are an inclusive organization, and the idea is that we are across all lines, not just focusing on one group or religion or race," 18-year-old Angie Greiling, a delegate from Roseville, Minn., said last week.

The measure, which takes effect immediately, keeps the Girl Scout promise's official wording intact, but allows individual girls to substitute for God another word or words they deem more appropriate.

The official wording reads: "On my honor, I will try to serve God and my country, to help people at all times, and to live by the Girl Scout Law."

The group's leaders said the change acknowledges growing religious and ethnic diversity among the nation's 2.6 million Girl Scouts. Regions with large Asian and American Indian populations have had trouble recruiting girls whose religious tradition doesn't include a Judeo-Christian concept of God, said Ellen Christie Ach, a spokeswoman for Girl Scouts of the USA.

However, Dean Gupta, a Hindu board member of Geeta Ashram Church in Brooklyn Park, Minn., said the word "God" is not exclusively Christian.

by CNB