Charlotte church refuses to allow Mormans to be leaders

[AlamanceScouter]

A protestant church in Charlotte is refusing to allow a Morman couple to be leaders in the church sponsored pack.

 

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/10/19/1771940/church-mormons-cant-lead-scouts.html

 

imo, The church owns the pack and allow who they want to be leaders. Personally, I think they are being short-sighted. My question is......in practice, do Morman sponsored Packs/Troops allow non-Mormans as leaders?(This message has been edited by AlamanceScouter)

[perdidochas]

A CO can choose who it wants for leaders. If they've got a plentiful supply of volunteers they have the luxury of rejecting people for religious reasons. My CO (a Catholic Parish) is not that way. Only three or so of the 10 or 11 adult volunteers we have are Catholics.

[evmori]

The CO has the right to accept who they want as leaders. Most CO's are in name only so it is nice to see a CO take an actual interest in their unit.

[GernBlansten]

The unanswered question is why doesn't their ward charter their own pack like every ward in my district does?

And why is this news anyway? As a non-Mormon, I would be deemed unfit to be a leader in any ward chartered pack or troop and it would be very unlikely the ward bishop would give me that calling.

 

The author of that piece needs to do a little more background work.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

I'd like to know what she intends to do with those boy scouts...

[Basementdweller]

Just returning the favor I guess.

 

The LDS groups in our area will not allow non-LDS members to be leaders. It is their right after all.

 

 

I too wonder why this is news.

 

 

 

[gcnphkr]

Based on the article their ward does have a pack but, per LDS policy, no Tiger Cub program for their 6 year old.

 

"Mormon Bishop Rowlan, who heads the Stokes' Weddington church, would not say whether he would be open to naming a non-Mormon as a Scouting leader.

 

"'I'd have to take each one on an individual basis,' he said, adding that that is the policy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

 

Come on Bishop, be honest and just say, "Probably not".

 

"What upset the Stokes family most was the church questioning their Christianity."

 

Let's face it, this is the elephant in the room that we all avoid talking about.

[packsaddle]

Just a suspicion, but it could be that it is a sensitive issue for Charlotte because of Charlotte's role in the civil rights struggle. AND Christ Covenant is a member of the Presbyterian Church of America which separated from PCUSA in opposition to what PCA viewed as liberalization of PCUSA (read - support of civil rights). I saw all this first hand as a youth.

Jet, if you go to the archives you'll see that we HAVE talked about it...a lot...in these forums:

 

http://www.scouter.com/forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=175663#id_175818

 

 

[sherminator505]

"I'd like to know what she intends to do with those boy scouts..."

 

Merlyn, I think she wants to lead them. That seems clear from the context of the story (to most of us, anyway).

 

Still, I agree with the consensus on this thread. It's the CO's right and its responsibility to pick and choose the Scouters for its unit.

[NJCubScouter]

Seems like discrimination hurts, especially if you're the one being discriminated against.

[evmori]

Must be a slow news day.

[GernBlansten]

Ed, I think the general public would find it newsworthy and odd that a BSA unit would practice religious discrimination. Even though we find it standard operating procedure and absolutely appropriate.

[BartHumphries]

The 1997 printing (the latest available) of the LDS church's Scouting Handbook says (on p5), "Worthy adults (whether members of the Church or not) may be called to serve as scout leaders."

 

Wards generally have worthy members who could make great scout leaders and so the ward generally recruits from its own members, but it's not unheard of to have non-LDS people as leaders. Like the Bishop said, though, he would have to take each one on an individual basis as they'd have to be living an LDS lifestyle (no smoking, no drinking, no promiscuity, etc.).

[The Blancmange]

This isn't even really a scouting issue. Would the story have been noteworthy (or even run) if the headline had been "Protestant Church Refuses to Accept Mormon as Youth Organization Leader"?

[TNScoutTroop]

Packsaddle's statement about the PCA's division from the PCUS (the PCUSA came some years later) deserves to be corrected, or at least countered.

 

His remarks, suggesting that the formation of the PCA was racist, no doubt accurately reports explanations given after the fact within the PCUSA. His explanations suffer from an ignorance of the actual motivations driving the principal organizers within "Concerned Presbyterians" and the "PEF", the parent organizations that formed the PCA. However, even more obviously, they reflect a basic misunderstanding of the historical and social milieu in which those events took place.

 

He is guilty of an anachronism in supposing that "civil rights" were a denominationally divisive issue at that time. When the PCA was formed, and for a number of years later, virtually ALL churches in the South were segregated regardless of theology. It would never have occurred to most on either side that churches would be "integrated". Schools? Yes. But at that time, integrating churches was an idea that simply didn't occur to most Southerners, as even a theoretical possibility. While it was certainly true that many members and leaders in PCUS churches that moved into the PCA were racist, it is also true that many who remained in the PCUS were racist as well. But, none of that had much to do with the PCA.

 

However, if you want a single precipitating event leading to the PCA's formation, there were probably two. ;-)

 

The first was a decision by one of the key PCUS seminaries to no longer require that its students acknowledge a belief in the deity of Christ and in the virginity of Mary. The second was the adoption of SS materials called "Covenant Life Curriculum", which embedded Bultmannian neo-orthodoxy into instructional materials for elementary age children.

 

It is perhaps an irony that, in our own area today, the only significantly biracial Presbyterian churches are PCA, not PCUSA.

 

TN Scout Troop