BSA uses its Declaration of Religious Principle (DRP) to bar atheists and agnostics. This graceless, bigoted policy is offensive to the core of Christianity.
Jesus’s words and deeds command Christians to radical grace, compassion, and inclusion. Those are the opposite of BSA’s Declaration. Those who follow Jesus cannot support a policy of excluding those who are different.
(This article speaks to what I know, a Christian perspective. If you have a different faith perspective that leads to inclusion and tolerance, leave a comment!)
The Declaration’s contemporary point: bigotry
Religious observance, faith exploration, and tolerance have been encouraged since 1911 by the “Reverent” Scout Law (source, see page 10). That law gives full justification to features like the Religious Emblems Program or the Scouts’ Own concept.
Supplemental language that largely resembles today’s DRP was created around the same time. In its context–the tail end of the Third Great Awakening–the DRP was almost certainly intended as a magnanimous statement reflecting then-contemporary norms.
Religious extremists have warped the DRP into a statement of religious bigotry. This was affirmed by BSA’s litigation team.
The point of this article is that today’s religious-extremist interpretation of the DRP forces Christians to contradict Jesus’s words and deeds. Christians who prefer not to slap Jesus cannot align with the extremists’ interpretation of the DRP. That is the focus of this article.
The Greatest Commandment and Golden Rule: core to Christianity
Crucial to Christian faith are the Greatest Commandment and the Golden Rule:
- The Greatest Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
- The Golden Rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Source: Matthew 22:35-40. (The added boldface will be relevant later.)
These ground Jesus’s mission as a radical message of loving God and our neighbor. Any Christian belief or practice that contradicts this is heretical.
The next sections explain why Christians who value Jesus’s “main point” message cannot support the DRP.
We must love the despised
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is Jesus’s first commentary on the Golden Rule.
In this parable, someone is severely injured by robbers. He is left lying on the side of the road.
A priest and Levite pass the injured man, leaving him for dead. In those days, priests and Levites believed they would be defiled if they touched a corpse. By moving to the other side of the road before passing the injured man, these two avoided becoming unclean.
Then comes a Samaritan, the Good Samaritan. He rendered aid and paid for the victim to convalesce at an inn.
The Jews violently hated the Samaritans. The Jews believed The Samaritans had corrupted their worship of God and added false gods into the mix. The Jews felt they would be contaminated by Samaritans even with indirect contact, such as by using a dish once touched by a Samaritan. The hatred was worse than the worst modern societal conflict that crosses Americans’ minds. Like BSA’s DRP, maximal separation from a hated group was the goal.
Yet Jesus illustrated his Great Commandment with a story featuring a Samaritan as the good guy! The Samaritan was not to be hated. The Samaritan was worthy of grace and love! A dreg of humanity acted better than the the priests and Levites, holiest of society!
If we take Jesus’s words seriously, we can’t act as if atheists’ and agnostics’ presence defiles us. But we play that childish game when we support the DRP.
When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re copying the sins of those who Jesus condemned.
We must not harm children
The Declaration of Religious Principle is kin punishment, punishing children for a grievance against the parents.
Civilized societies have long moved past it. BSA’s DRP sends us back centuries, punishing innocent children over an alleged sin of the parent.
Belief systems of youth are mainly their parents’ beliefs:
- Minors generally reflect the religious beliefs of their parents.
- Parents have a general right to educate their children according to their own religious conviction, and children generally lack a right to resist reasonable religious practices (or non-practices!) ordained by their parents. (While beyond the scope of this article, I encourage a read of Children as Believers: Minors’ Free Exercise Rights and the Psychology of Religious Development, Harvard Law Review, June 2022.)
Therefore, BSA’s Declaration slaps innocent children.
Contrast BSA’s approach to Jesus’s: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)
Jesus was not barbaric. He did not impose a religious test. He ministered to all. BSA could learn from Jesus.
When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re harming children.
We must not be rulemongers
Jesus’s Great Commandment was in response to a question from a Pharisaic “expert in the law” (a lawyer). Notable about the Pharisees was their obsession with rules, especially ones concerning purity.
Jesus’s responses to Pharisaical interrogations often illustrate how their rulemongering distracts them from what’s important. Tragically, the Woes of the Pharisees align with the woes that underly BSA’s Declaration, an obsession with outward appearance and superficiality.
Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan in response to questioning of another “expert in the law”. Jesus was once again addressing someone obsessed with rules.
And in that parable, the priest and Levite were examples of people who were so rulebound, they missed opportunities to minister.
If Christians take Jesus seriously, we need to avoid the Woes of the Pharisees. We need to avoid allowing an obsession over rules to cause us to miss opportunities to grace and ministry. Essentially a Pharisaical document, BSA’s Declaration can’t be reconciled with Jesus’s own teachings.
When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re missing opportunities to minister due to our rulemongering, a trap Jesus warned us about.
We must show grace towards the vulnerable
People are complex. Simple decisions can mask difficult circumstances leading to them.
Many atheists or agnostics are recovering from harms caused by past church experience. Avoiding the institution that caused harm could be a crucial part of that person’s recovery.
As an example, let’s use United Methodist Minister Teresa MacBain. In the nine years of her ministry, spiritual malpractice she experienced in her childhood–problematic biblical teachings from a different denomination–haunted her, creating questions so immense, the only reasonable path forward for her was to renounce religion entirely, becoming an atheist.
But Teresa’s story does not end there. A few years later, she came back to faith.
And who demonstrated the same gracelessness as BSA’s Declaration? The prominent atheist, former-clergy group she was in.
In addition to slapping Jesus and innocent children, BSA’s Declaration slaps adults who may simply be doing their best to overcome spiritual malpractice.
When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re contravening the Golden Rule, which Jesus said is one of two most important commandments.
We must not compel faith tests outside of church
In the Greatest Commandment and the Golden Rule, Jesus used second-person pronouns, “your” and “yourself”. It’s hard to miss what it emphasizes: Your faith expression is your own private, personal, and core matter. Jesus’s key concern is your own faith, not how you coerced your neighbor.
This doesn’t mean your can’t share your faith. For example, a mainstream Christian practice is corporate worship experiences. You know, going to church. Regularly attending a church conveys to that congregation, and anyone who sees you walking in the door, your alignment with that church’s beliefs.
But how about outside of a voluntary, religious setting? That is where we find secular organizations, like BSA. In Matthew 6, Jesus cautions against demonstrations of religiosity in the secular world:
- Don’t practice righteousness in front of others.
- Gifts to the needy are to be done in secret.
- Don’t be like the “hypocrites” who visibly pray. Instead, pray in secret, behind closed doors.
- Don’t pray loudly by “babbling like pagans”.
- Don’t put on a show of somberness while fasting.
He follows with the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer again emphasizes the individual’s own relationship with God: individual reflection and individual acts. Corporate petitions (“our”) are on behalf of the voluntarily aligned in a religious community.
There’s much more to unpack from Matthew 6. But further exegesis won’t change Jesus’s strong preference for private religiosity and a focus on one’s own faith life. Jesus was deeply skeptical, sometimes condemnatory, of open demonstrations of religiosity, especially when one uses public religiosity to seek affirmation of others.
Let’s recap. Jesus exhorts us to a faith that focuses on the individual’s private relationship with God.
Religious tests in a secular organization oppose this. These tests are one party compelling a demonstration of religiosity out of another party. This isn’t the same as respectfully participating in a prayer at a Scout event. It is a test of an individual’s private matter.
It is difficult to reconcile a zeal for Jesus’s words and deeds with support of compelled religious tests in a secular organization.
When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re disrespecting those who prefer to obey Jesus’s expectations for how individuals are to conduct faith practices and relate to others of faith.
We must offer immense grace
Another parable on grace is a cautionary tale. Jesus’s Parable of the Unmerciful Servant describes a servant who had received unexpected, undeserved grace in the form of cancellation of a massive debt. Shortly after that debt cancellation, the servant demanded payback from a peer who owned him money. Due to his lack of grace, the servant’s debt was un-canceled, and he was thrown in jail until he could pay it back.
Part of Christian theology includes a Christian’s receipt of wholly unmerited salvation. That is a profound act of grace given to us. We are expected to emit at least that much grace: “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” (source)
We are to show unimaginably vast grace to our fellow man. That starkly contrasts seeking to exclude others from a secular organization over a mere lack of outward religious signs.
Christians who use the Declaration to exclude others are not showing 77x grace or even 7x grace; they are sucking grace out of the room!
Part of grace is setting aside one’s pride and compassionately engaging with people unlike you. That includes theists doing the opposite of BSA’s Declaration: engaging with with and ministering to atheists and agnostics.
When we use the Declaration for its main purpose–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–instead of loving God and others, we’re declining to show grace, contravening Jesus’s expectation of us to show 77 times as much grace as we receive!
We must serve society
Religiously unaffiliated people are already a large plurality that will keep growing:
Religiously unaffiliated are a mix of beliefs, occupying a spectrum from atheist to non-participating traditionalist. But 37% of religious “nones” are identify as atheist or agnostic (source):
Also, for 67% of religious “nones”, “disbelief/doubt/skepticism” is an “extremely or very important reason” for why they are a none (source).
By banning a large and growing percent of society, the DRP’s bigotry and gracelessness cause BSA’s irrelevance.
If society shifts, relevant organizations must shift with it. BSA has already shown the folly of trying to change society: costly, harmful, and stupid membership controversies that still sully BSA’s reputation.
BSA can be relevant by deleting the DRP and instead promoting tolerance and understanding in the world it inhabits. Or BSA can cling to the bigoted, harmful, backwards DRP and accelerate its decline.
A note about bigotry
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines bigotry as “blindly devoted to some creed, opinion, or practice” along with “having or showing an attitude of hatred or intolerance toward the members of a particular group…”
Just like BSA’s old gay ban and its “separate but equal” regime for girls, the Declaration of Religious Principle is bigotry.
“Legal” and “morally straight” are different
Private, secular, membership organizations, like BSA, have a Constitutional right to slap Jesus. BSA squandered enormous funds and goodwill to preserve this right, taking it all the way to the Supreme Court with BSA v. Dale.
But “legally permitted” and “morally straight” are different. A mentally awake and morally straight Christian cannot support a secular organization’s Jesus-slapping religious test.
Summary for Christians
When we use the Declaration for what religious extremists want–to discriminate against atheists and agnostics–we’re rejecting what Jesus said is the most important of all: loving God and others.
How we solve this
While the DRP was originally a magnanimous statement, religious extremists have warped it to suit their agenda. It is now poisonous, warped beyond recovery.
We don’t need the DRP! We already have the “Reverent” Scout law. That alone is sufficient to justify appropriate, voluntary observations of faith in BSA’s programs.
The DRP must go. Just delete it.
Families must be entrusted to define “Reverent” in the way that makes sense for them. And BSA must stop compelling Christians to behave in ways that contravene Jesus’s words and example.
Finally, BSA’s own mission statement calls it to “prepare young people … by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law”. BSA’s bigotry countermand this, limiting access to those who have already reached some preferred answer. If we’re serious about the instilling part, we have to be open to all, even to those with whom we disagree, with those whose answer is different than our preferences. Otherwise, we’re failing our mission.
Acknowledging my bias
I am a practicing Christian, a lifelong United Methodist. My view of the DRP is expressed through that lens.
As Christianity is the dominant religion in the USA, and certainly of BSA members, it has pervasive influence. I therefore find it helpful to review this Declaration through a Christian lens.
This is not out of disrespect to other religious traditions. It is me expressing myself authentically and avoiding speaking for others.
If you have a different faith perspective that leads you to grace and inclusion, I’d love to hear it! Share your vision for overcoming the DRP’s bigotry in a comment.
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