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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 7, 1994                   TAG: 9409090028
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SCOUT'S HONOR

ONE OF the old standards in Girl Scout circles is a little ditty that starts out: "Girl Scouts together, that is our song." How many thousands of girls over the years have sung that while sitting around campfires with their friends in their own little troops?

Well, it's more than a song; it's a promise that the Girl Scout organization says it is determined to live up to. The Girl Scout National Council has voted to allow flexibility in the wording of the scout promise to permit membership to be as inclusive as possible.

In that, it stands in contrast to the Boy Scouts of America, which last year established its legal right to exclude a young agnostic who would not sign the Scout Oath because it included a pledge "to do my duty to God." The scouts are on sound legal ground in maintaining their right to set membership standards without government interference. If they want to exclude agnostics, that is their prerogative.

Whether it is also a wise and good thing, however, especially for an organization drawing as much public and community support as the Boy Scouts do, is another matter. The Girl Scout Promise, too, includes a pledge "to serve God and my country." But the Girl Scouts of the United States of America is allowing girls to remain true to their personal beliefs by letting them choose any word for God that reflects those beliefs. A Muslim Scout may say Allah; a Native American may say the Great Spirit, etc.

Does this flexibility allow room for agnosticism, the doctrine of those who believe the human mind cannot know whether there is a God, or anything beyond the physical world? Yes, as long as the girl seeking membership has some positive system of beliefs, a spokeswoman says. A girl must be willing to make the Girl Scout Promise to be a member, according to the spokeswoman; but if she cannot honestly pledge service to a God she is not sure exists, she can substitute some abstract ideal such as truth or justice: some good larger than herself, in other words.

Religious freedom is one of our most precious freedoms. That is what this policy seeks to promote, by allowing maximum leeway for every girl to make an honest pledge reflecting the beliefs she is taught in her family. Far from implying another fall from grace, another victory for creeping secularism, the Girl Scouts' flexibility suggests a respect for religion that people of faith, above all, should appreciate.

The Girl Scouts have maintained one of the bedrock purposes of youth organizations of this type: to cultivate sound moral grounds in which young people can put down strong roots. But in doing so, the organization has not tried to enforce a religious litmus test, in which girls may have to choose between praying to a God they don't believe in, and being denied membership.

by CNB