I have just sent this letter to the Girl Guides Association:
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to express my concern about the “Promise” required by Girl Guides.
I am a parent in a secular family and have two young daughters, one of whom has just been offered a place in the local Rainbows group, about which she is very excited. However, I read that she has to make a promise as follows: “I promise that I will do my best to love my God and to be kind and helpful”. I read that alterations are possible for this text in the form of replacing the word “God” with specific deity names such as “Allah” where appropriate. However, there appears to be no provision for children from secular families who object, as a matter of conscience, to theistic beliefs.
This lack of provision for people of a non-religious disposition (65% of UK citizens according to a recent YouGov poll http://www.humanism.org.uk/campaigns/religion-and-belief-surveys-statistics) surprises me in an organization that clearly goes out of its way to be inclusive towards people of non-Christian theistic backgrounds. It puts parents like me (and according to statistics like those above there must be a lot of us) in a difficult trilemma:
a) We could decide to not participate in Girl Guiding. This would be a great disappointment to my daughters and would make them feel excluded from activities from which their theistic friends are not excluded. It would also, by the way, make their parents feel excluded. I am sure that exclusion is undesirable to the Guide Association too.
b) We could change our cosmological viewpoints. As these are matters of conscience, this is not something we can just do at the flip of a switch. Nor is it something I desire to do. As a parent, I have always deemed it important to teach my children to seek truth through reason and evidence, and I find that theistic beliefs are contrary to that ethos. In any case, it strikes me that the whole “my God” part of the Promise is essentially meaningless: there is no decent evidence for any of the deities that have ever been proposed through human history. People who promise to love their God are therefore making promises about things that are not known to exist with any certainty. It seems contradictory to make promises about things that may not exist at all, nor could you actually expect young children to make informed opinions on them.
c) We could ask our children to lie when they make the promise. This is probably the thing we are going to recommend to our children, as it seems the lesser of three evils, but we do it with a heavy heart. Children ought to be taught that promises mean something, and I feel that in recommending this action, we are not setting a good example.
A fourth solution is of course possible if in future the Guide Association were to recommend a change to their Promises that excluded mention of “God” altogether. If in fact the important thing about the promise is to encourage love (love for God amongst theists if they wish, and love for other people amongst atheists), then a text that would not exclude non-religious people might read “to love others” instead of “to love my God”.
I hope that you will take note of my difficulties in this matter, and I ask, if it is not already being done, that due consideration be made to make the Girl Guides inclusive to a large fraction of the UK population which are currently excluded on matters of conscience, or forced into other undesirable decisions.
I am now off to tutor my daughter on how to make a promise without meaning it, incidentally one of the most difficult tasks I have ever faced as a parent (and I’ve faced a few). I just hope she understands. .
Yours faithfully,
Peter Mayhew
6 responses to “The Girl Guides Promise and discriminating against secular families.”
DZUL
July 12th, 2011 at 11:43
THE ANSWER OF THE QUESTION IS SO SIMPLE
YOUR SECULAR GOVERNMENT NEVER CREATED YOU
THEY NEVER CREATED
FRUITS & ANIMALS FOR FOOD WITH WATER AS YOU CAN DRINK WHEN THIRSTY
THEY NEVER CREATED
MOON ( PLANETS ) &
SUN ( STARS ) LET ALONE EARTH THAT WE ALL LIVE IN
ALLAH or God you talked about was the greatest creator of all which granted & determined life/death for everything
under skies
included
all seen/unseen creatures & creations
of ALLAH
so what more in the name of ALLAH
etc
etc
read in AL’QURAN
if you want to know more about ALLAH
okay
peterjmayhew
July 12th, 2011 at 11:58
Dear Dzul,
Thanks but no thanks. Creation stories, such as that told in the Qur’an or the Bible or any other holy text are not based on credible evidence. If I were to accept that fruits and animals and water were created only for human benefit, that would contradict a great deal of scientific evidence. My rational side will not allow me to do it.
Peter
Brian
July 12th, 2011 at 12:18
It seems that The Supreme Being also created the Caps Lock key.
Barb
July 13th, 2011 at 08:49
Hi Peter,
Sorry I didn’t see the full letter was there before – but it is as I would have expected, clear, concise and polite. I guess I was more thinking of your time and whether this is a battle worth fighting. Maybe I’m too lazy about these things.
I don’t remember if we had to make a statement about god or not when I joined the girl guides – probably. I do remember leaving after disagreeing with the girl guide leader regarding their very sexist notions of who could and could not walk across the rope swing bridge in the ceiling of the Scout/Girl Guides hall.
barb
p.s. I have every confidence any daughter of yours will cope with the complexity
Peter Mayhew
July 13th, 2011 at 08:53
Oh, stop being so apologetic. I’m Ok with it. I’M not fighting a battle at all…..having written the letter, and conscience being
satisfied, I’m now going to forget about it and let Lara enjoy it.
peterjmayhew
July 19th, 2011 at 10:07
Just to follow up on this, I received yesterday a very polite letter in response from the PA to the Girlguiding UK recruitment officer, saying that they were sorry I felt that way; that the “God” word is there to encourage children to develop spiritually; that chilldren can take part in rainbows activities without making the Promise, and that if and when my children felt ready to make the Promise, they could. What I find so naive about the Promise is the implication that people can only find meaning in life, or act ethically, if they have theistic beliefs. It’s the same attitude you find in the BBC (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/regulatory_framework/service_licences/service_reviews/radio_347/org_responses/british_humanist_assoc.pdf): As an example, non-religious people are not allowed to present on BBC Radio 4’s Thought For The Day, and on the popular programme Desert Island Disks, Muslims are allowed to replace the Bible with the Koran as one of their “free books”, but for atheists, a non-religious equivalent text is not allowed as a replacement. Atheists can apparently just take the Bible or suck it! Incidentally, Channel Four is much better in it’s 4Thought programme (http://www.4thought.tv/); and I just love the contrast between the rationalists and the religious nutcases that present there. If they want to embarrass themselves, I’ll laugh for as long as they let me. The same attitude, that good ethical people or society is only possible in a religious context, is a major subtext of the present government’s “Big Society” initiative. Honestly, you’d think that these people had never thought, read or investigated outside of the theistic box, which is probably about right. This, despite the evidence to the contrary; that less religious states or countries have lower crime rates and higher standards of living; in countries with a largely Christian culture, non-religious people act more in accordance with the ethical teachings of Jesus than Chrsitians do; and in the UK voluntary and charitable contributions are no different between religious and non-religious people. There is no place on Earth that ever suffered because its people became too rational.