By Larry A. Taylor copyright 1994. Included here by permission of Larry A. Taylor. No further copies may be made or new work derived without the explicit permission of Larry A. Taylor.
I just received my new Boy Scout Handbook, all shiny and glossy, with shiny and glossy people in all the pictures. There is much useful here.
In Chapter 19, Democracy, on p. 463, under the heading, "Know our Country's Greats," are 22 names. Several of the individuals here are unsound on religious grounds. I would like to draw your attention to Susan Brownell Anthony, who is also quoted on p. 465 on women's rights (and nothing less).
When Susan B. Anthony, president of the National-American Women's Suffrage Association, addressed the WCTU, many women walked out "because she (Anthony) did not believe in God" (_Susan B. Anthony: a Biography_, by Kathleen Barry, New York University Press, 1988, p. 294).
In response to factions within her association, she replied, "I tell them I have worked 40 years to make the W.S. platform broad enough for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight the next 40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox religionist to speak or pray and count her beads upon."
In convention, a proposal was made that would have condemned Elizabeth Cady Stanton, author of the "Women's Bible." She addressed them angrily, "What you should say to outsiders that a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our Association than an atheist. When our platform becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself shall not stand upon it" (p. 310).
Would that the Boy Scouts of America would adopt similar wise policies to that of Susan B. Anthony, one of "Our Country's Greats."
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You may recognize some of the following names as people whose religious opinions have been questioned. The Boy Scout's list of our Country's Greats include Thomas Alva Edison, John Muir, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin.
On the next pages, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lincoln Twain, Washington, Franklin and Thoreau are quoted.
Henry David Thoreau: "If a man does not keep pace with companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away." _The Boy Scout Handbook_, p. 465.