Excellent chart.
Posted on 01/02/2019 8:54:39 AM PST by SeekAndFind
What’s left of the Boy Scouts of America (now operating as Scouts BSA) is on the brink of declaring bankruptcy, according to recent news reports. With estimated assets of more than $1 billion, Scouting’s problems go beyond the financial, deep into the problems with America’s civil culture today.
The U.S. Boy Scout movement reached its numerical height in 1969 with 6 million members, in a year with President Richard M. Nixon as honorary head of the Scouts and Eagle Scout astronaut Neil Armstrong stepping out on the moon.
I was a Cub Scout that year, once a week proudly wearing my uniform to Armstrong Elementary School in our Chicago neighborhood, heading to our well-attended den meeting right after school. My liberal Democratic parents signed me up, my dad a World War II veteran supportive of Scouting’s patriotism.
Fast-forward ahead nearly 50 years: Scout membership has dropped toward 2 million. The impending departure of the Latter Day Saints troops this year will drop that total by one-fifth. Our local school district in conservative central Pennsylvania won’t allow promoting Scouting at school. In our college town, many in the woke local elite now despise Scouting as neo-Nazi and white nationalist, despite efforts to change the national movement to please progressives. My son’s local troop closed recently for lack of members, and so did others in the area.
The national organization faces large lawsuits due to alleged cases of sexual abuse as state legislatures change the statute of limitations on such cases. It also faces a lawsuit from the Girl Scouts for poaching on their membership by changing its name recently to Scouts BSA and recruiting girls.
It’s Not Just Financial Bankruptcy The old American Boy Scouts might as well be filing for moral bankruptcy, having lost both its base and elite cultural capital. What used to be an organization designed to help boys become men has now been re-fashioned in line with the new gnosticism of American culture, accepting LGTBQIA ideology, while abandoning its traditional ascetic position about sex and its opposition to atheism.
Next year’s World Scouting Jamboree in West Virginia reportedly will be the first hosted by the former Boy Scouts of America to make condoms available to participants. A 2016 agreement with the Unitarian-Universalists overrode the group’s membership requirement of belief in God by allowing belief in humanism, contrary to the Scout Oath.
The “bowling alone” syndrome of declining civic groups in the United States, over-scheduling of young people, and the weakening of American family models all played a role. In fact, political scientist Paul Kengor of Grove City College has detailed the history of American communists and cultural Marxists’s efforts to target and subvert Scouting in particular, to help undermine American family life.
Yet it was corporate executives and members of the U.S. political establishment (including Scouting leaders such as Rex Tillerson and Robert Gates) on the national board who with progressive staff members agreed to surrender to pressure to sexualize the organization in recent years, despite an earlier hard-fought U.S. Supreme Court victory by the organization to preserve membership rules. In admitting openly gay members and leaders, accepting transgenderism, then admitting girls, Scouting turned its back on a cultural background of Christian teaching on sexuality going back millennia.
The central issue was not admitting openly LGBTQIA-identifying members and leaders, but redefining the group’s value of freedom as self-expression, rather than self-restraint. The latter was the traditional ethos of Scouting, not shaping boys into open heterosexuals or any other type of -sexuals, in the “Mad Men”/Hugh Hefner mold or anything else.
Turning On Historic Christian Morality In Scouting in recent decades, physical edginess and “tough” training requirements also were loosened or removed. The values of a culture dedicated to the human person as totally malleable, based on self-will, took hold. Safety and comfort became increasingly the ultimate values.
Such values, which affected Scouting ultimately more because of changes in in its anchoring mainline Protestant and business cultures than leftist subversion, reject an age-old cultural inheritance of the American republic that regarded virtue and self-restraint as the goals of education of young men, to be leaders of a free society and the families that would continue it.
In the wake of the Neo-Chalcedonianism established by the Fifth Ecumenical Church Council in 553, St. Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century articulated the basis for traditional Christian ascetic approaches to identity as a cosmology, not merely morality. It was a synthesis in part of biblical and Greek philosophical traditions. He wrote of how God created man male and female, but also that there was neither male nor female in Christ.
Maximus’ Christian Byzantine Empire had a performative sense of biological and embodied sexual identity of men and women, with also a third gender or sex, that of both eunuchs and ascetics. Virtuous and holy women could aspire to manliness; men could venerate the Mother of God as the best of saints. Self-restrained and grace-filled chastity, engaged in marriage to the oppose sex or to Christ in monastic community, was seen as leading to the fulfillment of human life in oneness with God’s grace—not essentializing sexual passions by objectifying others.
The complementarity of marriage was a living symbol of the relation of humanity in the universal church to God. Biological sexes of male and female were an embodied sacred iconography to be honored and followed, nurturing trans-generational families in which men could learn to be guardians of peace, husbands who would lay down their lives for their families and country.
That is the deep and complex centuries-old basis for a moral initiation into manhood that dimly still underlay the Boy Scout Oath and Law, a distant cultural inheritance.
Setting Boys Adrift In a Mooring-less Culture Scouts were never a perfect organization. Major problems with sexual abuse and coverups of it show that. They had quasi-Masonic aspects in Order of the Arrow ceremonies and “great Scoutmaster in the sky” language at camp chapel, emerging from an odd crucible of Teddy Roosevelt-style nationalist progressivism and British Empire civics of the early 20th century. Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” also inspired Cub Scout ranks.
But in the lost world of 1969 working-class Chicago neighborhoods, in the heyday of the Boy Scouts of America, I with many other boys before and since learned valuable lessons from Scouting, and however imperfectly kept respect for the virtues of the Scout Oath and Law tucked away with my old copy of the Scout handbook and Scout pocket knife in later years.
Our eldest son found a home in a small rural troop run by dedicated military and law enforcement veterans. I often went along on camping trips as an adult volunteer leader. It was a great experience and a sad day when the troop closed recently due to dwindling membership.
Our family’s relationship with regular Scouting ended around the time our younger son in fifth grade ran to get his copy of Boys Life magazine in the mail only to throw it aside because it was featuring girls, as if photoshopped into Norman Rockwell Scouting art. He lost his enthusiasm, our eldest lost his home troop, and dad didn’t want to send money to a national organization adrift.
Not just the old Boy Scouts but America may need receivership for moral bankruptcy. Either way, the real shame is that it is that much of a harder path today for many American boys without strong male role models to find their way to the freedom of self-restraint in manhood envisioned in that millennia-old tradition.
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Dr. Alfred Kentigern Siewers is the William E. Simon visiting fellow in religion and public life (2018-2019) at the James Madison Program, Princeton University, and associate professor of English at Bucknell University. He is also reader and warden at Holy Protection Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He teaches and writes on Christian literature and ideas of nature, and on public rhetoric related to secularism and faith. His views are his own.
Excellent chart.
Without a doubt, family breakups might be a big factor.
The reason why is that Scouting can be expensive, especially when you have multiple sons.
Scouting involves a time commitment, too, that might not be possible in some cases: for example, if a parent's work schedule interferes with troop meetings. (My youngest had to drop out due to my work schedule.)
When I first got the 'pitch' from BSA, the party line was that a great, untapped potential existed as a result of demographic changes. That is, more and more families are doing things together. Further, there is less and less time for individualized attention: fathers have to split their time between Suzy's basketball game and John's Scout program. If we could open up BSA to girls, then we could alleviate this familial pressure...and maybe even offer girls leadership skills and help in their formation.
It was a sales pitch that was well-received by many male leaders who were in this camp, though I candidly don't know how many of them were divorced etc. Frankly, I thought it was a solution in search of a problem. True, membership has been falling for some time...but as this graph shows...
...there WAS an increase in membership after the 1970s Vietnam-era "make love, not war" retraction.
I suggested that BSA try to examine what "worked" during the Reagan years and try to replicate that vs assume that just because BSA had 100 years of success in forming young men that BSA can simply whip this program on young women and it will ipso facto be a success.
Obviously, they didn't take old DoodleBob's advice.
Again, I don't doubt that times have changed. I also recognize you gotta roll with the changes. In a vacuum, I'm not against permitting girls into BSA insofar as Girl Scouts do a lousy job of forming young women, PROVIDED strong controls and safeguards.
But bringing air into that vacuum, we know some truths are eternal. Girls and boys ARE different (notwithstanding that Tired of Taxes sounds like she'd make an awesome Scout). Further, the fact that senior management never really reached out to the rank and file for feedback/opinions tells me all I need to know about how much my opinion is valued.
However, what I DO see, is that National has not been heavy-handed in this new approach. I see many local Troops embrace the new normal, and many avoiding it like the plague - and so far, nobody has been shunned. Time will tell just how "hands off" senior management will be. For now my view is that many people bemoaning these changes are either divorced from Scouting, chronic complainers, or both. Meanwhile, strong Troops continue to provide strong leadership and direction to the male youths.
Thanks for listening.
In some places, they still had rifle ranges! My Grandson belonged to Boy Scouts, and they still did target shooting when they went to camp! We live in Utah, and they still did a lot of the things scouts always did! They had campouts in the Summer for a week or two. Of course, it was through the local Mormon church. (his mom and step-dad were not Mormon, most of the family were not, or were only nominaly so) He’s not active in in now, though, he lost interest in it after awhile. I don’t know what reason.
“Next year’s World Scouting Jamboree in West Virginia reportedly will be the first hosted by the former Boy Scouts of America to make condoms available to participants. A 2016 agreement with the Unitarian-Universalists overrode the group’s membership requirement of belief in God by allowing belief in humanism, contrary to the Scout Oath.”
Unbelievable!!
I hope some of the others here (especially the scoutmasters) return to this thread and see your last post, DoodleBob.
BTW, sometimes my posts are too brief and not clear enough. So, to make my opinion clear:
I agree with you 100% that BSA should not be co-ed. The parenthetical comment in my last post about some girls needing adventure, too, was only an added remark. The Girl Scouts (or some other organization) should provide those opportunities for girls.
That pitch that you said the BSA gave is interesting. They should’ve listened to your advice, DoodleBob. It sounds as if scoutmasters who have daughters wanted their girls to be involved. I have no daughters, so maybe that’s why I see things differently. When my boys were little, I knew many other mothers of boys. And we all complained to each other about the lack of programs for boys. Plenty of special girls-only programs that excluded boys, and some co-ed programs, but nothing for boys only. Except the Boy Scouts.
For the record, my boys probably wouldn’t have minded the BSA going completely co-ed. They’re out of it now, anyway, two of them grown now. But, as a parent, the way I see it, even if the BSA plans to keep boys and girls in separate troops, and not allow them to camp together, for example, it’s just one less thing boys are allowed to have.
Of course, the BSA has had co-ed programs for a long time. But, if the whole thing becomes co-ed, the BSA will change to accommodate.
For the record, I would’ve been a terrible scout. lol On those boy scout camping trips, my sons told me the troop couldn’t shower for days; they had to use the woods as their toilet; they’d become filthy dirty. One of my boys signed up for wilderness survival training where they had to go deep in the woods where each scout had to build his own shelter using sticks and branches, spending overnight in the dirt with bugs crawling all over him. As a young girl, I enjoyed adventure, but maybe not that much. lol
Well, at least the troops are doing their own thing, for now, and the higher-ups aren’t pushing the issue.
What I CAN say is that many current Scouts are against letting girls 10-14 into Scouting (as you said BSA has a coed program for girls older than 14). Their reasoning against girls isn't sexist, but rather many of them are afraid their sisters would join and bully them at Scouts IN ADDITION TO being bullied at home! As you note, Scouting for them is a refuge, where boys can be boys.
Again, all this could have been avoided had National spoke to a few boots on the ground. We also could have helped with the falling membership - active recruitment and building permanent supply lines is a key element to any Unit's success, and some Troops are better at it than others. Instead, we get the threat of bankruptcy (which is really a financial option and not the end of the world) and gigabytes of articles written by SINO (Scouters In Name Only) quitters like this guy who would cry like a baby if they had to earn Wilderness Survival (the merit badge for which your son signed up).
Btw, behind every successful Scout there is often a mother who deals with dirty socks etc. after a trip. Thank you for your service.
I will say that national does not make it easy to be the leader of a unit - at all.
They should be more worried about program than about membership. Lately they’ve been trying, but not hard enough. That huge camping facility in WV is a money pit. Bechtel? They are so massively in hock out there.
They loosened up the shooting sports program in terms of what’s permissible, but then locked events down to council run events only.
As for girls being in the program. I was doing that a decade ago out of necessity. Little female sibs were showing up to Pack meetings in large numbers. I formed them into dens and put them in the program. Got huge, huge blowback. Now its policy.
National hands its jobs out to politically connected people who are rich. They don’t hand them to people qualified to do the job.
It’s still the best program available.
Genesis 18:20-21
20. Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous
21. that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know."
Genesis 19:4-7
4. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom--both young and old--surrounded the house.
5. They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."
6. Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him
7. and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing.
Leviticus niv
18:22 Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.
20:13 If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Isaiah 3:9 The look on their faces testifies against them; they parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! They have brought disaster upon themselves.
2 Peter 2:13b Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.
Ezekiel 16:49-50
49. "`Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
50. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
1. But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves.
2. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.
3. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
4. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;
5. if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
6. if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;
7. and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men
8. (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)--
9. if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.
10. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority. Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings;
11. yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord.
12. But these men blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish.
13. They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.
But there IS hope!!!
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
9. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
10. nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
If you could NOT change, you would be in most pitiful shape...
I agree with the comments made about the ugliness and immorality of predatory leaders, and how National has "lost its way." But as I also noted, there were about 40,000 rabid rank-and-file Scouts who LOVED Trump's red meat speech to them a few years ago. It is THOSE people who are the heart and soul of Scouting: to wit, did we declare America dead when Obama and his retinue were in command of the Executive Branch?
Scouting is more a mindset and collection of values than it is an organization. Thankfully, many adults and Scouts are ignoring the noise from National and the nattering nabobs of negativism and continue to form tomorrow's leaders in the well-worn path established over a century ago. It ain't easy, but then again the Scout Motto isn't "give up when things look bad."
I, too, have seen and heard of the successful integration of girls in Cubs. Not a Cub leader myself, I can't speak to the problems or non-problems that causes.
Of course, lost in all of this is that BSA explicitly called for separate Troops and quarters on trips in that 10-14 bracket. It's not full integration like the "OMG, THE BSA WANTS THEM SLEEPING IN THE SAME TENT" ignoramus class often pontificating on this topic. Naturally, wariness is prudent since we can see the camel's nose. On that front, I *do* believe the 10-14 age bracket is where lots of physical things happen, and keeping the boys and girls separate can make a lot of sense. But let's cross that bridge when it's built.
Agreed, with apologies to Churchill, BSA remains the worst program for the formation of young men, except for all the others.
I’m an Assistant Mate in a Ship. 14 to 21 is even more challenging, BUT it’s a massive opportunity.
They are getting together anyway. We don’t supply either means or motive for them getting together sexually, but the idea of like-minded teenagers going on an adventure they could never afford on their own is undeniably appealing.
We have kids ending up dating. The 10 to 14 year olds? No problems whatsoever. None. There just isn’t an opportunity for anything to happen if you do it right.
And why not address the notion of ADULT LEADERS getting together? I’m currently single, divorced involuntarily, and am dating the mother of two kids in my unit, who is herself a Girl Scout Leader.
Yep, the Scoutmaster is dating the Girl Scout Leader. Makes sense, though. Scout oath and law, doesn’t have to be explained. Self-reliant, check. Kids-first, check. Character is key, check. Invigorated by giving back to kids in one of the most meaningful ways available, check. Blowback for weekends spent on Scout events, zero.
She’s Obedient, Cheerful, and Kind, unless I don’t want her to be.
Seriously, BSA is insane not to steer into the social aspect of meeting like minded-single people in the program. So short-sighted. Society is handing you a giant lemon: single parent families. Make lemonade out of it and win on every level.
But it’s the camel’s toes that the boys will want to see.
Will that help them with their Wildlife Tracking Merit Badge?
BTW, I need to make a correction:
In my last post, I wrote:
"my boys probably wouldn’t have minded the BSA going completely co-ed"
I was figuring that teenage boys might not mind teenage girls being around.
Well, I was wrong.
I just told a couple of my sons (the youngest is 17) about the new BSA policy admitting girls (they didn't know about it).
And they are NOT in favor of that policy. So, they would've agreed with the current scouts.
Well, thank YOU for your dedication. Scoutmasters and other leaders devote so much time and effort. You're the heart and soul of the organization. Best of luck!
I hope that was meant as a sarcastic joke. Because, oh, no, that's a TERRIBLE IDEA. lol
Please, BSA, don't adopt that idea next. Unless you want to chase away more of both single- and two-parent families. lol
Not a joke. Start a unit and get back to me.
Yes, but when you measure youth membership only, the troop program membership peaked in 1973 and has been declining ever since.
As I wrote elsewhere, I suggested (and was ignored...) that BSA try to examine what "worked" during the Reagan years …
What happened in the '80's was that BSA saw its folly during 1973-1980 when it tried to urbanize Scouting, i.e., "BSA took the 'outing' out of Scouting" during the 1970s. This was the same period when CBS executed its "Great Rural Purge" during the 1970-71 season when it cancelled still-popular rural-themed shows with demographically skewed audiences and the still popular variety shows. BSA re-tooled the troop program and went back to being more "old school", i.e., emphasized camping.
… and try to replicate that vs assume that just because BSA had 100 years of success in forming young men that BSA can simply whip this program on girls with great success.
Actually this is exactly what BSA did in 2018 with the creation of all-girl packs and troops (not co-ed, i.e., boy and girls in the same unit). BSA introduced Learning for Life, Tiger Cubs, Webeloes Dens, Varsity, and Venturing (co-ed) units during the 1980s. So total membership (youth and adult combined) bumped up but then declined again during the late 1990s.
...But as I also noted, there were about 40,000 rabid rank-and-file Scouts who LOVED Trump's red meat speech to them a few years ago. It is THOSE people who are the heart and soul of Scouting: to wit, did we declare America dead when Obama and his retinue were in command of the Executive Branch?
Scouting is more a mindset and collection of values than it is an organization. Thankfully, many adults and Scouts are ignoring the noise from National and the nattering nabobs of negativism and continue to form tomorrow's leaders in the well-worn path established over a century ago. It ain't easy, but then again the Scout Motto isn't "give up when things look bad."
I commend your positive attitude. No doubt there are still many units out there delivering the program. Sadly, the historical decline of Scouting in other countries, particularly Canada and the UK, slightly preceded our own and I don't think it has recovered there either.
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