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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Gotta run....too many pearls in the sty here!
Thank you.
Even so, you feelings and the BSA's policy do not constitute a coherent whole. You are both infected with a related disorder. You both drink Kool-Aid from the same cup. You both have severed your connection to legitimate decendance.
As I noted before in my earlier post:
"Ron F and I did not change this aspect of Scouting, WCF…….. the BSA National Executive Board did……….fifteen years ago in 1987.
Your beef is with the BSA National Executive Board decision that was made before most active Boy Scouts today were ever born."
It is obvious that you strongly disagree with that BSA National Executive Board decision. What have you done to officially request that the BSA National Executive Board revisit it's 1987 decision and reverse it?
I went back to the post to which I replied...That strikes me as a reference to a particular post.
"You didn't reference any particular post . . . of the many that I have posted in this thread."
Let me ask, since you seem rather dense . . . "TO WHICH OF MY POSTS (number) DID YOU REPLY?"
To get back to the possible initial confusion: I was admittedly using the informal American English "you" as a generic or indefinite personal pronoun (see dictionary.com, the second entry), rather than the more proper, but somewhat twee, British sounding "one." If that's the cause of this whole brouhaha, I apologize.
To get back to the topic of the thread: the Boy Scouts, as a private organization, have every right to constrain membership in any way that they wish. As an atheist, I think that Mr. Lambert's deceit through omission dishonorable and damaging to atheists in general.
I have no idea how Scouting was in 1982. I was serving overseas with the U.S.Navy at the time. All I know is that today, in 2002, apart from having Conservative Moms helping out when Dads don't, Scouting is pretty much the same as I remember it from when I was a Boy Scout in 1966. Liberal families don't have their kids in Scouting.
In any event, the erosion that incrementalism causes is evident here. Sorry to say, I think you have boughten into it hook, line and sinker. I am sure that you are doing good things and being a good person. Its just that you have surrendered any crediblity in linking to a great tradition. You really ought to find other venues for your laudable humanitarian efforts.
So, the solution to life's dilemmas is, "If things aren’t perfect…….Quit.”?
When my son went from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts last year, I was surprised, after a 30+ year absence from Scouting, to see a Mom (Conservative, religious, home-schooling) in an adult Scouting uniform with an Assistant Scoutmaster badge.
So, Scouting had changed. And Scouting hadn’t even tracked me down to ask my opinion about the proposed changes. So what should I do about it?
Take my son out of Scouting and quit?
That Mom has moved out of town so she is no longer in the Troop. When the Troop now asks me to volunteer to be an Assistant Scoutmaster because no other men are stepping forward, you propose that I decline because I accepted the fact that the National Council sets BSA policy on women Scouters?
By your standards, nobody should be in Scouting today. If you don’t accept the BSA National Council decision on women, you should quit Scouting. If you accept the BSA National Council decision on women, you should quit Scouting. It’s a Catch 22.
As a descendant of Cuban immigrants, how do you feel about gay priests and liberation theology?
Coming to the USA from Cuba when I was 6, I am an immigrant myself. I went to a Jesuit high school whose faculty transferred, en masse, from Cuba to Miami when Castro took over power. These were Jesuits of the old school Cuban and Spanish mold. Many had survived the Communist bloodbaths during the Spanish Civil War and now had to flee Communism again. A more anti-Communist crowd you will never meet.
To us, “liberation theology” is simply Communism by another name and it is simply a sham and the enemy.
In regards to gay priests, that was never an issue but then, again, those priest came from another time and another place.
I believe you have to pick and choose your battles in life and put things in perspective.
Would I put my boy in Scouting if Scouting allowed gay Scoutmaster? No.
Would I put my boy in Scouting if feminist women were the Scoutmaster and Assistant Scoutmaster of my son’s Troop? No.
Let’s assume that your wife is Conservative just as you are. Would I put my boy in Scouting if WorkingClassFilth’s wife had volunteered to be an Assistant Scoutmaster because Dads in the Troop did not step forward? Yes.
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