Atheists Want Boy Scout Program to Lose Its Divinity

I am inundated, as I foresaw, by letters on whether the Boy Scouts has the right to exclude atheists from membership.

They are about equally for and against.

Ordinarily I avoid such transcendental questions, but, like the issue of whether imperfect children should be killed at birth, it has been raised, and I feel obliged to follow through.

At the outset I merely characterized as absurd the Orange County Boy Scout Council’s denial of Cub Scout membership to two 9-year-old brothers who declined to sign the required “promise” that they would serve God.

The boys went to court and obtained a Superior Court preliminary injunction against the Scouts, but an appellate court stayed the order, and the Scouts announced that the boys were out. The case remains unresolved.

James Grafton Randall, father of the two boys, applauds my sentiment in their favor, but advises me that they are not atheists--they are agnostics. (An atheist does not believe in God; an agnostic doesn’t know, and doesn’t believe we can know.) Evidently both are an anathema to the Orange County Boy Scout Council.

“None of us are rash enough to say we do not believe in ‘god’,” says Randall, “until someone can provide a rational definition of one, which the Boy Scouts refuse to do.” (Meanwhile Randall, a lawyer, has been fired from his job.)

The debate seems to center on my notion that freedom of religion implies freedom from religion as well.

“No!” writes Rick Hatch of Wilmington. “It absolutely does not and cannot!” He follows this with an extensive argument that this idea has “struck fear into the hearts of religious Christians,” and threatens to make them “the most discriminated-against segment of our society.”

Evidently he fears that freedom from religion would inhibit Christians from expressing and spreading their views. No, it simply means that I don’t have to profess them myself.

“What is absurd, Mr. Smith,” writes W. R. Butler of Bakersfield, “is that anyone not believing in a God would want to join an organization whose very existence is based on the premise that there is a God. . . .”

I imagine they want to get in on all that camping and cooking out and male bonding.

Writes Duke J. Johnson of Anaheim Hills: “You stated, ‘At the outside I must say that I respect the Boy Scouts as a venerable and useful organization that has no peer in the training of boys to be good citizens and honorable men.’ Is it possible, Mr. Smith, that this organization is deserving of such compliments because of its adherence to the belief system which you are attacking?”

No, the Scouts do not give religious instruction. And I did not attack their belief system. I merely objected to their requiring that their tender young recruits already have been indoctrinated in it.

“We find a common thread,” writes Alexander Prairie of Sherman Oaks, “in the comments of those who resist the admission of atheists, gays, and girls to the Scouts. Great emphasis is placed on some ill-defined tradition to justify raising unnecessary barriers against those outside the ‘privileged’ circle.” (That Prairie is president of Atheists United no more invalidates his opinion than the fact that a scoutmaster is a deacon in the Episcopal Church invalidates his.)

“As for honor, loyalty, duty, respect, courtesy, obedience, helpfulness and preparedness,” writes Roy Pomeroy of Alhambra, “I am not willing to give all this up to an aspiring atheist or the gay community either. Let’s just properly characterize them as yuppies.”

Is Pomeroy saying that he would deny yuppies membership in the Scouts? Yuppies are too old for the Scouts, but I imagine that many of them were members in their childhood. That’s probably why, as a class, they’re so honorable.

Several readers note that the Boy Scouts is a private, non-tax supported organization, and can discriminate in its membership policy if it likes. In fact the Scouts is tax exempt, and receives support from United Way, whose charter forbids grants to discriminating organizations.

In an open letter, the Rev. Donald B. Northcutt of All Souls Community Church (Unitarian Universalist), San Juan Capistrano, says: “I believe that requiring Cub Scouts to either pronounce the word ‘God’ or profess belief in a system of divinity is unreasonable and actually undermines the character-building objectives of the worldwide Scouting movement. Such issues of divinity are outside of Scouting’s traditional domain of camping, adventure, and fellowship. . . .”

“Scoutmastership Fundamentals,” a training course for Scout masters and others, including parents, reflects that “It could be questioned if an 11-year-old has sufficient experience to understand the claim of atheism.” It can also be questioned whether an 11-year-old has sufficient experience to understand the claim of divinity.

I went on a Scout outing once but never joined. My feet got cold.