The Southern Baptist Convention on Wednesday planned to call for the removal of some of the Boy Scouts’ leadership after the youth organization voted to allow gay youth to join, but would not ask its affiliated churches to pull their sponsorship of Scouting.
The call will be made by a SBC committee, which released a proposed resolution to be voted on at the convention’s annual meeting in Houston.
The committee didn’t name specific Boy Scouts leaders, but noted it believed some in executive and board positions had tried to enact the membership change earlier this year without first getting input from “the full range of the Scouting family” and asked for the BSA to “remove” them.
Allowing openly gay youth in Scouting “has the potential to complicate basic understandings of male friendships, needlessly politicize human sexuality, and heighten sexual tensions within the Boy Scouts,” according to the resolution.
The move by the SBC comes three weeks after the Boy Scouts of America voted in an historic ballot to allow gay youth to join after the issue of LGBT membership had roiled the youth organization for years. Gay adults are still banned, but the Southern Baptists feel their inclusion is just a matter of time – a concern of other conservative religious sponsors of the Boy Scouts.
“We express our well-founded concern that the current executive leadership of the BSA, along with certain board members, may utilize this membership policy change as merely the first step toward future approval of homosexual leaders in the Scouts,” according to the resolution.
The resolution, however, did not go as far as recommending that Southern Baptist-affiliated churches leave the Boy Scouts.
It did affirm the rights of those churches as well as families to assess the issue, and asked those that planned to stay to “work toward the reversal of this new membership policy and to advocate against any future change in leadership and membership policy that normalizes sexual conduct opposed to the biblical standard.”
For those that leave, as some have done, the resolution asked them to explore a faith-based alternative, the Royal Ambassadors.
The impact of the resolution, to be voted on later Wednesday, is not clear. Though Baptist churches sponsor nearly 4,000 units consisting of more than 108,000 youth, the number of SBC-affiliate churches is unknown, according to the BSA, the SBC and the Association of Baptists for Scouting.
The SBC-affiliated churches are autonomous and can handle SBC recommendation however they choose, said Roger Oldham, a spokesman for the convention’s executive committee.
The Boy Scouts have reached out to the religious institutions, which make up more than 70 percent of the organization’s charter partners and play a key role in the viability of Scouting units, to encourage them to stay with one of the nation’s most popular youth programs.
The BSA has maintained that the change, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2014, is consistent with Scouting’s values.
“Scouting’s youth member policy is not about the BSA endorsing homosexuality, or forcing its chartered organizations to do the same. This change allows Scouting to be more compassionate in its response to a young person who expresses a same sex attraction, but is not engaging in sexual activity, by no longer calling for their automatic removal from the program,” BSA spokesman, Deron Smith, said in an email before the vote.
“We believe the BSA policy is fully consistent with how Southern Baptist Churches respond to young people in their congregations and allows them to maintain their beliefs about homosexuality and minister to children who are still learning and developing,” he added.Since the membership change by the BSA’s National Council in late May, religious institutions have formulated their responses to the decision, issuing them over the last few weeks.
Some of the biggest partners, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the United Methodist Men and Catholics (the National Catholic Committee on Scouting), have encouraged their members to stay with the Boy Scouts in statements of support. A statement from the Mormon church was read at religious services last week.
Still, some Baptist families have contacted NBC News, telling them that their church Scouting sponsor would be walking away, such as that for Pack 215 in Harrison, Ark. Others Christian conservative families have sought out faith-based alternatives, which another Boy Scouts charter partner – the Assemblies of God — has urged them to consider.But some in the Baptist family have encouraged churches to stay, too.
A.J. Smith, president of the Baptist Scouting association, said he had received assurances from the Boy Scouts that charter partners could craft their own codes of conduct on the boys, which he believed would be sufficient to keep sexuality – a key issue for a number of Scouting families – out of the program.
“…I believe that it is possible, even desirable, for Baptist churches to continue to utilize Scouting as an outreach ministry of the church. How it is done, however, must change,” he wrote in a statement dated June 7 and posted to the website. “No longer can a church simply give meeting space to the Scouts. Churches must take a proactive approach to Scouting and involve members of the local congregation alongside Scout parents as leaders, set expectations for leaders consistent with the values of the church.
“In this way churches can turn what looks like a negative into a positive, having an influence in shaping the values of another generation, and even reach youth that might not otherwise be reached with the gospel,” he added.
according to nbcnews.com
