Churches that break ties with the Boy Scouts of America are choosing “the only option to avoid compromising biblical truth regarding homosexuality,” according to the chairman of the South Carolina Baptist Convention’s Christian Life and Public Affairs Committee.
Hal Lane, pastor of West Side Baptist Church in Greenwood, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the May 23 vote by BSA’s National Council to reverse its policy of excluding gay members and to begin admitting openly homosexual youth.
The decision “represents a de facto change in the definition of ‘morally straight’ and contradicts the pledge ‘to do my duty to God’ in the Scout Oath,” said Lane, a former SCBC president and past chairman of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
His comments echo those of SBC leaders. Former Taylors First Baptist Church senior pastor and current SBC Executive Commitee president Frank Page met with Scouting leaders in the weeks before the vote and urged them not to overturn their membership standards. Page said the revision “ushers in a sea change in the credibility of the Boy Scouts of America as a viable boys’ organization for millions of Americans who believe strongly in the principles of biblical morality.”
“To claim that the Boy Scouts is the nation’s foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training suddenly rings hollow,” Page said.
Russell Moore, who on June 1 assumed the role of president of the SCBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said in a May 24 statement that the Boy Scouts’ policy revision “highlights how important it is for churches to speak clearly of both our love for all people, including our gay and lesbian neighbors, and the importance of God’s design for human sexuality for human flourishing.”
“Few, if any, are suggesting the Boy Scouts kick out boys based on their particular temptations. We don’t, and shouldn’t, do that in our churches, much less in Scouts,” Moore said. “But this change is more than this. It doesn’t speak in terms of temptations but in terms of the claiming of a sexually politicized identity as morally neutral.
“The culture around us is confused, as it always is in a fallen world. Our voluntary associations, even the most venerable of them, are increasingly ambiguous about what it means to live a good life rooted in the permanent things. Our churches cannot, and will not, share that ambiguity.”
Lane said he is confident that “existing and new organizations” will give young people an alternative to Boy Scouts. Barrett Duke, ERLC vice president for public policy and research, said he hopes a new, national boys movement will spring up to fill an expected void as many churches choose to disassociate themselves from BSA. In the meantime, he said, Southern Baptists should “look to [their] church” to find an alternative to Boy Scouts: the Royal Ambassadors program.
Jim Austin, executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, told the Courier that South Carolina Baptists would be “well served to rediscover the biblically based, relevant and viable ministry of Royal Ambassadors … during these dramatic, comfort-shifting times.”
Austin said Royal Ambassadors equips young men for discovering and fulfilling God’s purpose for their lives “within an urgently needed and masculinity-developing environment” that includes camping, exploring and sports activities.
McCall RA Camp in Pickens County is a unique blessing for South Carolina Baptists, Austin said. “It exists as a place of spiritual birth and commitment.”
Camp director Eddie Pettit said Royal Ambassadors offers boys “an opportunity to experience a program led by godly men whose goal is to reach boys for Christ, disciple them, lead them to become involved in the lives of people through missions involvement, and help them develop a Christlike character.”
Todd Deaton, former managing editor of the Bpatist Courier and now editor of the Western Recorder, the Baptist newspaper of Kentucky, grew up in South Carolina and credits Royal Ambassadors with shaping his call to the ministry.
“Attending [Camp McCall] as a boy and then working at that camp while I was a college student was a life-impacting experience that led me to respond to God’s call to ministry,” Deaton said in a May 24 Baptist Press story.
Richard Bodenhamer, a marking specialist at Woman’s Missionary Union, said Royal Ambassadors “espouses many of the same virtues and character-building activities that are found in Boy Scouts, but with the added benefit for Southern Baptists that our primary goal is developing boys into men who understand the mission of God and carry the gospel with them into the world.”
About 1,400 delegates to the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America on May 23 approved the change in membership standards by a margin of 61-39 percent. Changes to the adult leadership policy of the organization, which forbids homosexual Scout leaders, was not up for vote and remains in place. Rules on sexual misconduct — heterosexual and homosexual — also remain in place for Scouts and Scout leaders.
— With reporting from Baptist Press.