Posted on 10/30/2002 3:39:31 AM PST by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - The assistant Scoutmaster of a Pacific Northwest Boy Scout troop is currently faced with the decision of professing his belief in a "supreme being" or facing banishment from the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). However, 19-year-old Darrel Lambert said he's been an atheist since the ninth grade and he's sticking to his convictions.
Lambert's track record with the Seattle-based Troop 1531 is impressive. Throughout his 10-year scouting career he earned 37 merit badges to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout; served as a quartermaster and three-time senior patrol leader; and has dedicated himself to more than 1,000 hours of community service.
But Lambert is also passionate in his rejection of the existence of any supreme being, even though the BSA's regional Chief Seattle Council informed him that expressing a reverence for Mother Earth would be an acceptable form of worship.
Although Lambert admitted to his scout troop's review board that, for years, he had intentionally neglected to demonstrate the principles of faith and reverence to God contained within the Scout Oath and Law, he was awarded the BSA's highest honor last year - Eagle Scout. Coincidentally, his mom is the Scoutmaster of that troop.
Mark Hunter, spokesman for the BSA's regional Chief Seattle Council, said he could not comment or speculate whether Trish Lambert influenced members of the Eagle Scout review board that approved her son's Eagle Scout application, which mandates all applicants must: "Demonstrate that you live by the principles of the Scout Oath and Law in your daily life."
Ironically, Lambert addressed parents Monday night in the basement of a chapel at a retirement home, the Seattle Times reported. He urged those in attendance to look beyond the issue of his atheism and support his proven dedication to the Boy Scouts.
"I think the only power higher than myself is the power of all of us combined," Lambert said.
Additionally, Lambert said he wants to see the 92-year-old BSA repeal its national membership requirements, which includes on its application a Declaration of Religious Principle. He proposed that individual troops be given the right to devise the standards by which they extend their membership to Scouts and adult leaders.
Hunter said Lambert would be permitted to continue his leadership role and interact with members of Troop 1531 while he takes some time to "search out his feelings on this."
"If they're truly what they are," Hunter said, "his membership will be terminated."
Atheism rejected in court
A similar battle erupted in 1991 when twins, Michael and William Randall, refused to recite the Boy Scout Oath's reference to God and faced expulsion from the Orange County, Calif., Boy Scouts Council, said BSA spokesman Gregg Shields.
"At the time, they were eight-years-old ... and they said they were agnostics," Shields noted. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines an agnostic as "a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable."
The Randall twins' father, an attorney, argued a successful seven-year case in an Orange County district court only to have it overturned by the Calif. State Supreme Court in 1998.
Shields said the twins fulfilled all of the requirements to become Eagle Scouts, but since the Calif. Supreme Court ruled that the BSA could legally refuse to accept them as members, they were never awarded with the BSA's highest honor.
Teenage rebellion normal
"We recognize that in your early teenage years you go through a formative period where you question and you prod beliefs and you think about and you explore ideas," Shields said. "That's natural and to be expected."
But Shields said Lambert is now an adult who has chosen to lead a group that requires its young members and adult leaders to believe in a supreme being. He stressed that the organization places a high importance on the spiritual development of scouts to recognize a being greater than themselves.
"We expect an adult has the ability to make their own mind up about a belief," Shields said. "If one doesn't agree with the Boy Scout belief system, then perhaps boy scouting is not for that person."
E-mail a news tip to Michael L. Betsch.
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If someone leaves a glittering knife in front of a baby, we don't blame the baby for the injury it does itself--how much more responsible then is an omniscient, omnipotent god who creates a universe, knowing exactly what will happen.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. As such, we are unable to stand before a Holy God who cannot look upon sin. We therefore need an advocate before God. That Advocate is Jesus Christ who lived a sinless life in your place, shed His blood to pay the penalty of your sin, and provides the sinner justification (paid in full) before God. The choice is only to believe in the finished work of Christ and trust Him (and Him alone) for your salvation.
There you have the choice laid out before you and are now without excuse. U decide.
I made no such assertion or claim to a Christian God.
I stated, "God is that than which there is no greater" with no preference or reference to any sect.
And if you're worried about intellectual honesty, you can start by not putting assumptions that don't exist in an opposing argument. =)
Besides, how can one lie if one doesn't know a truth? You assert that you do not "think" that God exists, then claim that a positive assertion would be a lie - when you have no proof one way or the other. I would tend to call it a statement of rational positioning based upon a logical calculation without any evidence contrary.
I went back to the post to which I replied; you stated no such thing...and now we know your level of intellectual honesty.
tit for tat, isn't this fun?
You didn't reference any particular post (I have a few on this thread), and I did not reference any Christian Diety, but I did define what "God" must be in order to be "God".
Maybe you just don't want to admit that you can't argue with someone who doesn't accept your false assertions.
The fact is that I've seen Scouts develop quite well in units where the Scoutmaster was female. You're saying that this observation is useless. If you deny the usefulness of direct evidence, we have little else to talk about.
Good intentions or hoped for outcomes do not justify the cavalier disregard for absolute values and the embodiment of those truths in ethics established in other ages. It is called tradition and it has meaning to the wise.
To my thinking, you make the case for the current assault on Scouting. That is, what is wrong with gay Scoutmasters if they mean well and are sincere? Further, if one gay Scoutmaster can be found that does a good job and is well liked, isn't that an endorsement for liberalizing Scouting policies?
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Well, WCF, you will be hard pressed to find someone more traditional or observant of traditional values in modern American society than I am.
I’m a Cuban American. The families of the1960’s wave of Cuban refugees had been dealing heavily with “Americans” since the early 1800’s. They were “Americanized”. However, their “Americanization” was from contact with the pre-1960’s America. You know, the “Amerika” that is sooooooo Politically Incorrect nowadays.
What this means is that while a large percentage of Baby Boomer Americans were growing up in the 1960’s as spoiled brats engaging in free love, doing drugs and putting down “Amerika” we were growing up in the traditional values of the America of the 1940’s. While a large percentage of Baby Boomer Americans were burning their draft cards, my uncle, my brother, my sister and myself put in a combined total of 46 years of active duty and Reserve time in the U.S. Armed Forces.....and not one of us was ever drafted. We volunteered.
If a World War One and a World War Two soldier were magically transported by time machine from the battlefields of 1918 and 1944 and transported to America in 2002, that American would fit right in and feel right at home in my “Cuban American” home even though I have had to “train” a Liberal California-born wife.
However, if those two soldiers were transported to the “typical American culture” of my town on the Left Coast, they would be wondering what Planet they had landed on.
In late 1960, at the age of 6, I came to the USA from Cuba as the youngest of 8 first cousins. We came with our parents and the clothes we had in our suitcases. My father used to be a hospital administrator in Cuba. In the U.S., he drove a taxi for many years before he died when I was 16. One of my uncles was a lawyer in Cuba. In the U.S., he pumped gas for many years.
Forty years later, every single one of my first cousins and I each own our own businesses and each one of us is a self-made millionaire. In addition, I’m a retired U.S. Navy Commander having given the Navy 20 years of active and Reserve service while declining retirement benefits.
You don’t get that kind of a family resume without tradition and without traditional values.
That being said, I have lived long enough to know that values are constantly changing. Over the years, some American values have change for the better and others for the worse.
When I was a Cub Scout in the early 1960’s, I lived in an America where Dads were hard working World War Two veterans. Public schools were decent and drug-free. Teenaged pregnancy was not as common as teenaged acne.
On the other hand, when we drove to the beach at Key Biscayne, we would drive by a beach called “Virginia Beach” that was the “Negro beach”. As a naïve child, I never knew why it was that the “Negroes” always kept to themselves and didn’t come to swim where everyone else went to swim.
Twenty years later, that old American “ideal or standard” resurfaced again. By then, I was the Medical Officer on a U.S. Navy nuclear cruiser. A Hollywood film company was filming “Winds of War” at our base and had asked the Navy ships for sailors in dress blue bell-bottoms to use as extras in a scene where FDR was meeting Churchill on a Navy ship. The C.O. gave a day’s liberty to a dozen sailors to participate. However, the Hollywood film company sent a couple of sailors back. They were black. “Could we please send them two more white sailors instead since the U.S. Navy in 1941 did not have black sailors in Honor Guards?”, the film company asked.
The C.O. recalled all of our ship’s white sailors and informed the Hollywood film company that they should hire civilians for their extras.
The U.S. Navy of 1982 did not operate under the “ideals or standards” of 1942 in regards to blacks.
Back in 1942, the role of blacks in U.S. society and in the U.S. Navy was “an absolute value and the embodiment of those truths in ethics established in other ages.”
However, times, values and traditions change.
In today’s U.S. Navy, a black in the Ward Room of a U.S. Navy warship can mean a fellow officer and not just a steward serving lunch.
In some other ways, however, America has changed for the worse.
In far too many cases, the hard working World War Two veterans that I knew as “Dads” that supported stay at home Moms in my old neighborhood during my Cub Scout days in the early 60's have been replaced by slackers or absent Dads.
In far too many homes in America today, there simply aren’t Dads or Dad would rather be off smoking a joint with his buddies or spending time at the tavern rather than volunteering for Scouts. In such homes and in communities with a predominance of such homes, women such as my friend have to step in and assume the role of Scoutmaster if her boys and other boys in town are going to be exposed to the ideals of Scouting.
Those are the boys that need Scouting the most in today’s America so they don’t end up being like their Dads.
Such issues do not affect my son. Not at this time.
I can guarantee you that my son will end up at the top of the societal economic food chain and be brought up with good conservative role models. When the school system in our town offered no acceptable alternative for middle school, I simply hired a top notch, Christian teacher and set up our own private school for my two kids and seven other kids. I have the conservative values and the financial resources to be able to afford to do that for my two kids and be able to financially subsidize the education of some other people’s kids while I’m at it.
However, that does not mean that I afford to not care if the rest of America’s kids from less than ideal family situations flush themselves down the toilet of life.
Conservatives are an endangered species in America. If America is to survive in the future, it needs Conservative values. The Boy Scouts of America is an organization that instills those values…….even to boys and entire communities of boys who are unfortunate enough today to have absent or slacker Dads.
Such issues will affect my son in the future when he will have to try to preserve what is good in America but may find out that hardly any other men share his Conservative American values because they simply were never even exposed to such values when they were boys.
In 1987, even though the BSA had won a U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of the policy excluding females, the BSA National Executive Board removed the "female exclusion" from Scouting totally. Link
I had nothing to do with that decision, WCF. Fifteen years ago, my son who is now about to go for his Second Class Board of Review was not even born yet.
You are criticizing me for accepting the fact that, after a 33 year absence from any involvement in Scouting, the Boy Scouts of America has changed since the 1960’s just as America has changed.
Ron F and I did not change this aspect of Scouting, WCF…….. the BSA National Executive Board did……….fifteen years ago in 1987.
I can see the reasons why this change was made and I agree with them as I have stated above. However, WCF, your beef is not with Ron F nor with me. Your beef is with the BSA National Executive Board decision that was made before most active Boy Scouts today were ever born.
1. Jesus said you are either for Him or against Him.
2. Many reject the Creator and even the concept of their having been created. These typically assume we live in a mechanistic universe in which the creation is in control. They therefore reject the Creator in favor of the creation.
3. God says all have sinned and those who claim to be sinless are liars.
4. The glory of the Lord is His perfection - see the Word of God again.
You're argument isn't with me but with God and the fact that He has already spoken.
The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven." - Hebrews 1:1-3
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