{"id":2837,"date":"2013-06-21T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T06:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/?p=2837"},"modified":"2013-06-20T22:05:07","modified_gmt":"2013-06-20T22:05:07","slug":"god-vow-dropped-from-girlguiding-uk-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2013\/06\/21\/god-vow-dropped-from-girlguiding-uk-promise\/","title":{"rendered":"God vow dropped from Girlguiding UK promise"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph and Daily Mail are predictably up in arms about this great news (something I have reported before). The BBC reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Girls will no longer have to pledge their devotion to God when they join the Guides and Brownies in the UK.<\/p>\n

It comes after a consultation found a new Girlguiding UK promise was needed to include “more explicitly” the non-religious and those of other faiths.<\/p>\n

They currently vow to “to love my God, to serve my Queen and my country”.<\/p>\n

The new oath drops the reference for the first time since Guides began in 1910 and will see them promise to “be true to myself and develop my beliefs”.<\/p>\n

The revised wording from September will also see members of the 540,000-strong organisation promise “to serve the Queen and my community”.<\/p>\n

The consultation earlier this year involved nearly 44,000 Girlguiding UK members and non-members.<\/p>\n

Chief Guide Gill Slocombe said: “Guiding has always been somewhere that all girls can develop their beliefs and moral framework, both inside and outside the context of a formal religion.<\/p>\n

“However, we knew that some people found our promise confusing on this point and that it discouraged some girls and volunteers from joining us.<\/p>\n

“Guiding believes in having one promise that is a clear statement of our core values for all our members to commit to. We hope that our new promise will allow all girls – of all faiths and none – to understand and feel proud of their commitment.”<\/p>\n

The promise has been changed 11 times in the organisation’s history, most recently in 1994 when the long-standing phrase duty to God” became “to love my God” and “serve the Queen” was supplemented with “and my country”.<\/p>\n

The British Humanist Association (BHA), which gave a\u00a0response to the consultation<\/a>, welcomed the change, noting it was the first version of the oath to “open guiding up fully to non-religious girls”.<\/p>\n

BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson said: “The new promise is about personal integrity and ongoing and active self-reflection, both of which sit well alongside a sense of responsibility to others and to the community.”<\/p>\n

Stephen Evans, campaigns manager at the National Secular Society said: “By omitting any explicit mention of God or religion the Guide Association has grasped the opportunity to make itself truly inclusive and relevant to the reality of 21st century Britain.”<\/p>\n

The Church of England was among the groups which had urged Girlguiding UK to keep the reference to God in the promise.<\/p>\n

In December last year, the UK Scout Association announced its own consultation to see if its members would support an alternative Scout Promise for atheists, who are unwilling to pledge a “duty to God”.<\/p>\n

And in July 2012, the Girl Guides in Australia dropped their allegiance to both God and the Queen, agreeing to serve their community and be true to themselves instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph and Daily Mail are predictably up in arms about this great news (something I have reported before). The BBC reports:<\/p>\n

Girls will no longer have to pledge their devotion to God when they join the Guides and Brownies in the UK.<\/p>\n

It comes after a consultation found a new Girlguiding UK promise was needed to include “more explicitly” the non-religious and those of other faiths.<\/p>\n

They currently vow to “to love my God, to serve my Queen and my country”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[362],"tags":[777,778,638],"class_list":["post-2837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-and-society","tag-girlguides","tag-oath","tag-secularism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}