The LDS Church To End Involvement With Boy Scouts Of America Programs. Here’s Why That’s A Big Deal…

I don’t expect this to get much attention in the national media, but given how much crap the Boy Scouts of America organization has pulled recently, this is HUGE.

According to this, the LDS Church has decided to end their involvement in the Varsity and Venture Scouting programs for boys ages 14-18. They will continue to do Cub Scouts and Boy Scout programs for younger age groups. But as of January 1, 2018, one of the largest and oldest charter members of Scouting is going to drop the program for older teen boys –

“In most congregations in the United States and Canada, young men ages 14-18 are not being served well by the Varsity or Venturing programs, which have historically been difficult to implement within the church,” the statement said. “This change will allow youth and leaders to implement a simplified program that meets local needs while providing activities that balance spiritual, social, physical and intellectual development goals for young men.”

The BSA released a statement on Thursday that said in part, “Although thousands of youth and leaders who participate in Venturing crews nationwide embrace and support the program, we recognize that not all programs are a perfect fit for all partners. We anticipate that many youth from the LDS Church will continue to participate in Scouting beyond the age of 14 as young men work to earn the Eagle Scout rank.”

I’m not at all shocked by this. In light of the Cult of Social Justice forcing the Boy Scouts to bow to their leftist pet projects, it was inevitable the Church leadership would reconsider their involvement in the organization. It kind of started when BSA announced they would let gay men be leaders in Scouts –

Four years ago, when BSA voted to admit openly gay scouts into troops, LDS leaders noted that the church always admitted gay scouts and would continue to do so. However, when BSA voted to allow openly gay scout leaders in July 2015, the church publicly said for the first time that it was re-considering the Scouting program.

“The church has always welcomed all boys to its Scouting units regardless of sexual orientation,” the statement said. “However, the admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the church and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America.”

And even though this is just dropping two programs, I would not be surprised to get news one day that the LDS Church had completely withdrawn from Scouting altogether.

It’s worth noting that with more and more of the LDS Church’s membership being outside the United States, it also doesn’t make sense to make the Boy Scouts of America a key part of the Church’s youth programs. In fact, the Church is more than capable of coming up with their own in-house programs, as we have done for years with achievement programs for girls. And having participated in annual Church-sponsored Girls Camp trips as a teenager, I think our program is much more intensive than anything the boys had to do.

The big loser in all this is the Boy Scouts themselves, quite honestly. By alienating religious organizations – many of which make up the majority of Boy Scout membership, as well as much of their funding – they’ve risked becoming even more irrelevant and useless. Obviously, the LDS Church is on its way to severing ties with the Boy Scouts completely and we’re one of their biggest supporters.

But I guess we’ve outgrown it anyway. And they’ve clearly become too secular and irreligious for us as well. Kind of a shame. The Boy Scouts used to actually stand for something. Now, they just go wherever popular leftist sentiment takes them.

They are certainly free to do what they like. But the rest of us don’t have to participate.