When it comes to the ongoing crisis facing Scouting — previously the Boy Scouts of America — it’s obvious that the big headline right now is the decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
I get that. However, I would like to ask a question once again about this complex story about an organization that, for decades, was a powerful sign of unity in mainstream American culture.
Has this bankruptcy been caused by waves of child-abuse allegations, alone? See the wording in the headline atop a massive USA Today feature the other day: “Boy Scouts files Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of thousands of child abuse allegations.”
Here’s another basic question: Would Scouting leaders be in better financial shape if their membership totals were way up above 4 million, where they were in the 1970s, as opposed to just under 2 million participants today? Would Scouting be better off if supporters in many large conservative religious groups — think the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and many Southern Baptist congregations — hadn’t hit the exit doors in the past decade or so? Do the math?
Yes, note that there is a religion-news component to this missing part of the story. If Scouting is going to survive, who will host these activities and provide the volunteers (and children) they need to thrive?
There is next to nothing about this side of the story in that long USA Today feature. Here is the overture:
Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy protection … amid declining membership and a drumbeat of child sexual abuse allegations that have illuminated the depth of the problem within the organization and Scouts’ failure to get a handle on it.
After months of speculation and mounting civil litigation, the Chapter 11 filing by the scouting organization’s national body was unprecedented in both scope and complexity. It was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware overnight.
The exact effects on Boy Scouts’ future operations are unknown, leading to speculation about the organization’s odds for survival, the impact on local troops and how bankruptcy could change the dynamic for abuse survivors who have yet to come forward.
The story never focuses on membership trends and some of the changes in Scouting that critics link to the falling numbers.
This is as close as the USA Today team comes to discussing the religion ghost in this big story:
… On Jan. 1, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — which for 100 years was among Boy Scouts’ largest partners — followed through on its plan to pull hundreds of thousands of Mormon youth out of Scouts in favor of its own youth program. That withdrawal caused an 18% drop in membership overnight, to fewer than 2 million.
If you know Scouting (I ended up just short of making Eagle rank), you know that other key players — in terms of hosting troops — were the Southern Baptists and United Methodists. What is the Scouting status of this third flock, which is currently facing its own battles over the Bible, sex and marriage?
Let me stress that I know the sexual-abuse story is hot, right now. I think it’s logical for that angle to get more ink.
My question is why reporters seem so intent on ignoring the religion angles in the Scouting crisis.
A smaller story in The Washington Post did offer this glimpse of the bigger picture:
The filing punctuates a tumultuous time for the 110-year-old organization, which continues to be one of the largest youth groups in the United States and an iconic but fading symbol of American culture.
Youth membership has declined more than 26 percent in the past decade. This dramatic drop in numbers, coupled with the loss of a key partnership with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has left the Boy Scouts struggling to find ways to remain relevant among increasingly busy children and parents. Last year, it began accepting girls into its namesake program, setting off a recruitment war with the Girl Scouts.
What about the impact — on left and right, with churches and corporate sponsors — of back-and-forth Scouting debates about the status of gay volunteers and LGBTQ Scouts? Is that worth a mention? Maybe a sentence or two?
The USA Today feature does a good job noting how long the sexual-abuse crisis has lingered in the background of day-to-day life in Scouting. Note these two passages:
The scouting organization has been mired in civil litigation since a landmark case in 2010 that resulted in $19.9 million in damages, the largest ever for a single individual against the Boy Scouts. That case triggered the release of more than 20,000 confidential documents, which became known as the “perversion files.”
Those records named more than 1,000 banned volunteers, revealing that the 100-year-old organization had kept track of suspected and known abusers and failed to consistently report them to police or inform parents or the public of the extent of the problem.
What about the distant past?
Several civil suits reviewed by USA TODAY, including two filed by Abused in Scouting, allege that Boy Scouts knew it had a rampant child sexual abuse problem as far back as the 1920s but hid the issue to protect its wholesome image.
In a 1935 New York Times article, the chief scout executive detailed a “red flag” system for weeding out volunteers who had been removed from the organization “for various causes, including moral perversion.”
At the heart of that “wholesome image” was a vague approach to faith that worked well in an era when the American population was not as diverse and divided as it is today.
As I wrote in an earlier post on this topic (one of many), Scouting has moved to the cultural left in order to retain the support of some corporations and the goodwill of local and state governments. The question, now, is whether left-of-center religious groups will step forward to build a new Scouting coalition.
As I wrote last year:
In the old days, the vast majority of Scouting units were based in conservative or centrist religious flocks. …
Will liberal Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists and Unitarians step up? But how many young children are there, in America’s aging, shrinking flocks of oldline Protestants? At the very least, journalists need to dig into the status of Scouting units in the divided and warring camps of United Methodists. Have they been caught in the crossfire?
Oh, and then there is this: That whole concept of an American mainstream? What now?
Stay tuned.
What is happening at the local level? If readers have URLs for local coverage, please leave them in our comments pages.
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