In his youth, B-P was quite interested in the outdoors and did rather poorly in school.  Still, he had a successful military career for 30 years in the British calvary, serving around the world, including in India, Afghanistan, and South Africa.  Powell became Inspector- General of the Cavalry before retiring from the Army in 1910 at the age of 53.  His book, Aids to Scouting, was originally written for a military audience, but gained a wider readership and was adopted by leaders interested in instilling good citizenship in young adults.  On the advice of King Edward VII, B-P went onto inspire the Boy Scout Movement, and was appointed "Chief Scout of the World" at the first Jamboree.  In his writings, B-P always strove to encourage a positive, helping, and moral attitude in young men.

     In Chapter 6 of his book Rovering To Success, Powell addressed "irreligion" and atheism.  He clearly opposed the attacks upon religion expressed by many atheists and the divisiveness it caused.  He believed that nature showed evidence of God and that religion was essential for happiness.  He marveled, as so many religionists have, at the amazing workings of the eye.  B-P wrote, "Ask Mr. Atheist who it was who invented and made that wonderful machine?" 

     Curiously, Charles Darwin, whose observations of nature led him to embrace agnosticism, also marveled at the complexity of the eye, though came to believe its development would be explained by natural selection.  Darwin actually acknowledged B-P's father in the introduction to The Origin of the Species and wrote in a letter, (Rev.) "Baden Powell says he never read anything so conclusive as my statement about the eye!"   Indeed, Darwin's theory had been embraced and defended by the senior Baden Powell; yet, the only reference B-P made to Darwin in his writings was to use him as an example to boys that even those who did poorly in school could become successful scientists.

      B-P's view of God was much more inclusive than most.  He always told the scouts that they needed to be tolerant and respectful of others' differing religious beliefs.  God, he said, is "a vast Spirit of Love that overlooks the minor differences of form and creed and denomination and which blesses every man who really tries to do his best, according to his lights, in His service."

     B-P's writings show a broad appreciation of culture and diversity and a deep desire to develop strong, moral character in the world's young men.  He staunchly maintained that chivalry and self-sacrifice were the basis of religion and this was necessary in scouting.

     In contrast to B-P, Ernest Thompson Seton, acknowledged in The Boy Scout Handbook as a pioneer in boy scouting and the first chief scout of the Boy Scouts of America, was not religious in any traditional sense. Seton was a naturalist, illustrator, and animal story writer who prided himself on the biological accuracy of his drawings and writings.  He was ahead of his time in defending the necessity to preserve predatory animals in the wild, in contrast to those who wished to eliminate them to protect deer and livestock.  Seton was also greatly interested in Native Americans and an expert on their religions.  He especially admired the American Indians' appreciation of nature which he wanted to develop in White children. 

     In the early 1900s Seton developed the "Woodcraft Idea," aimed at developing social connectedness and nature appreciation in young boys.  This first took the form of a (1903) novel, Two Little Savages: Being the Adventures of Two Boys Who Lived as Indians and What They Learned.  He helped the Ladies Home Journal establish a "Department of American Woodcraft for Boys," the games and merit badge system of which were later used in the Boy Scouts.  In 1910, Seton was asked to chair the BSA.  The original Boy Scout Handbook included 50 pages from Baden-Powell and 100 pages of Seton's writings and none of their writings mentioned religion. 

     In 1915, Seton left the Scouts over what he saw as their militaristic bent following the take over by lawyer and bureaucrat James E. West.  The Scouts rejected Seton because he hadn't replaced his Canadian citizenship with an American one.  Still, Seton went on to form the Cub Scouts, aimed at socializing younger boys.

     Seton rejected the "red man's" polytheism and spoke of God as "the great spirit."  He once wrote that at a social function with Archbishop Corrigan, the clergyman had asked him "To what church... do you belong?" Seton replied: "I was brought up in the worship of Moloch,"  "...the demon-god of fire -- burn your children -- the more of them you burn alive, the greater your merit and likelihood of favor from the grim fire-god."   Seton states, "For a moment he gazed in astonishment; then his expression changed to one of understanding and  amusement, as he said: ‘I see. You mean Scottish Calvinism.'"  As the conversation progressed, the Archbishop asked Seton, "Will you grant that this universe...must have a first cause?"  Seton replied, "Yes, as a necessity of debate, not as a proven fact."   The Archbishop then asked, "Will you let me go another step, and call that first cause by the name of `God'? "  To which Seton said, "Merely as a polite, but dangerous, concession to one's respect for terminology."  The Archbishop asked, "Since you grant that the first cause is God, will you further concede that God is a personal God?"   "No, I will not, and I see no reason in logic, biology, or dynamics to justify any such assumption."  "‘Oh, brother,' laughed His Grace, ‘let's have another glass of wine.'" 

     Daniel Carter Beard, a naturalist and illustrator who became the National Commissioner of the Boy Scouts of America and father of the Scouting movement in America was also one of the founders.  In addition to being a nature illustrator, he did political cartooning and drew the illustrations for Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, a job that got him blacklisted as an illustrator because of his use of certain powerful individuals' likenesses in these drawings. 

     Through Recreation magazine, Beard helped found an organization for youth called the "Sons of Daniel Boone" composed of local, democratically-run clubs with no central authority.  By 1908, 20,000 boys had become members.  Then, with a different magazine, Beard went on to form a different youth group called the "Young Pioneers."  In February of 1910, the Boy Scouts were formed and incorporated these groups.  It was Beard who introduced Americana into the Boy Scouts via stories and activities related to pioneering and American folk heroes.  He also designed the first Boy Scout uniforms and badges.

     Religiously, Beard was no more conventional than Seton.  He came from a family that had converted to Swedenborgian theology and he idealized fellow convert John Chapman, better known as "Johnny Appleseed."  These three founders, Powell, Seton, and Beard, were fairly liberal in their religious views. 

     In contrast, three other men who helped form the Boy Scouts -- Edgar M. Robinson, John L. Alexander, and James E. West -- embraced a Protestant "muscular Christianity" that linked physical fitness and moral rectitude.  These three men all had previous ties to organizing the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA).  Still, the early Scout Handbooks had only one paragraph mentioning the necessity of religion.  Alexander, who wrote this paragraph, explained that the Boy Scouts leaves religious training to the boy's own religious organizations and that this was not the work of the Boy Scout organization.  It was not until after World War II, with  the fifth edition of the Handbook (1948) that the authors began to expand their explanation of "duty to God" and what the 12th point of the Scout Law, "A Scout is Reverent" religiously implied.

     An important American historical development that began in the late 1940s was merging of religion with patriotism, democracy, and civic duty, to form a new "American civil religion" amalgamation.  The Boy Scouts became a major vehicle for inculcating youth with this view.  In discussing the Scout's duty of Reverence the (1948) Handbook states, "You and all men are made by God to God's own likeness. You and all men are important in the sight of God because God made you. The ‘unalienable rights' in our historic Declaration of Independence, come from God."   Youth were told that all great American leaders were religious.  And while tolerance was still stressed, religion became more and more a concern and requirement.  A "Religious Awards" program was added whereby scouts could gain religious patches via the recommendation of Roman Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Lutheran, or Buddhist clergy.  And a general Protestant medal called the "God and Country Award" was also added.

     The late 1950s and early 60's literally and figuratively marked the "Golden Age" for the Boy Scouts as they became less an organization for inner-city, working class kids and one more for middle-class, white, suburban kids.  Television was manufacturing an illusion of America as it never existed -- an imagined morally-certain reality to which many still want to return.  Membership in churches grew substantially from 1940 to 1960 and religious leaders like Reinhold Niebuhr, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, and Billy Graham became well-known and influential public figures.  Religion served to distinguish America from "godless" Communism.  "Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" was put on paper currency.  In the 1950s. the American flag and patriotism became entwined with civil religion  This nationalistic perspective enjoyed a powerful consensus in the American public, even if people could not agree on the political practices implied.  Martin Luther King even used this civil religion to  advance the Civil Rights movement.

     The Boy Scouts were "nondenominational," which meant only that no one religious denomination could impose its theology and practices upon the organization.  The organization could not include agnostics or atheists who, in the American minds of the 1950s, were inseparable from "communists."   "Boys from all faiths" were free to join the organization, but "faith" was the key.  The 1959 edition of the Handbook added the following: 

"Take a Lincoln penny out of your pocket and look at it. What do you see on it?  Just above Lincoln's head are the words ‘In God We Trust.' Twelve little letters on our humblest coin. Not only as individuals, but as a nation, too, we are committed to live and work in harmony with God and His plan."     Norman Rockwell captured this civil religion in his paintings of and for the Scouts.  His  painting "Our Heritage" combined 'duty to God' and 'duty to country' into a single picture.  For both the 1950 and the 1957 National Jamborees, over 50,000 scouts from all over the United States met at Valley Forge -- where "George Washington had prayed asking God's help for the soldiers huddled in the cold."  This was the baby-boom generation.  These were the boys who became the current Scout leaders.

    Now we jump ahead to 1970 when the BSA started to codify and enforce its religious policy. A policy was formalized: "The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship."  In 1973, a 10 year old was expelled for crossing out "God" from the Cub Scout promise.   In 1977, BSA added a definition of God as "Supreme Being" in its literature.   In 1985, the National BSA Council ruled that  fifteen-year-old Scout, Paul Trout of Charlottesville, Virginia, "should be expelled from the Scouts because he doesn't believe in God."  The ACLU joined in the fight, and the Boy Scouts reversed their ruling, stating that young Trout merely "did not believe in God as a supreme being,"  They then removed all definitions of God from their literature, but  reaffirmed the Scout Oath's declaration of "duty to God."

     By the summer of 1991, the BSA faced two more lawsuits. The families of eight-year-old Mark Walsh of Chicago and of nine-year-old twins Michael and William Randall of Anaheim, California, had taken the Scouts to court for expelling their sons from Cub Scout troops for saying they did not believe in God.  The National Council's stance was that the BSA is "a private group" that can admit and exclude members by criteria particular to the organization. "Also supporting the status quo," explained a New York Times story, "are the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, which formed the first Scouting council in America in 1913 and which remains the largest single Scout sponsor, and the Roman Catholic Church, the fourth-largest Scout sponsor. The two churches, which together support more than a quarter of all Scout troops, contend that the Boy Scouts has every right to keep certain people out, whether as Scouts, volunteers, or staff members."

     Public schools, it seems, have been the largest sponsor of Scouts, fueling the argument that the BSA is a public organization. But noted the New York Times reporter, the public schools "do not speak with the unified voice of the Mormon or Catholic churches.  Officials say the organization was founded for boys who believe in God and should remain true to those principles.  ...while the organization accepts Buddhists, who do not believe in a Supreme Being, and Unitarians, who seek insight from many traditions but pointedly avoid setting a creed, it does not tolerate people who are openly atheist, agnostic, or unwilling to say in that Scout oath they will serve God."

     The Welsh case was lost when the federal court and the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago held that Boy Scouts is not a "place of public accommodation," therefore the Civil Rights Act did not apply.  In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court refused the Welsh appeal.

     The Randalls won their case in the lower court and the California Supreme Court refused to hear the case.  The BSA subsequently appealed and won the right to expel the twins.  Since these cases, many persons without religion have been expelled from the Boy Scouts.  Some were those who testified for the prosecution in these cases.  Others have resigned or surrendered their status as a result of these cases and the Boy Scouts ongoing discrimination.

     Ironically, a similar challenge in the Girl Scouts requirement of a pledge to "serve God" and their "religious test oath" led the GSA to change its policy to permit girls to replace "God" with "words they deem more appropriate". "The group's leaders said the measure... acknowledges growing religious and ethnic diversity among the nation's 2.6 million Girl Scouts," explained a newspaper account of the national convention that voted overwhelmingly for the new policy. "In regions with large Asian and American Indian populations, the group has had trouble recruiting girls whose religious tradition does not include a Judeo-Christian concept of God. . . ."

     So why have the Boy Scouts so firmly refuse to integrate and adapt?  Jay Mechling, author of the (2001) book On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth writes that "part of the answer lies in the historical connection between Christianity and an aggressive version of masculinity."  Mechling states, "The religious conservatives who control the national office of the Boy Scouts see themselves as important troops in the culture wars. If religion, masculinity, and citizenship are as tangled as the rhetoric of the Boy Scouts and others seems to make them and if, as so many historians and social critics have suggested, there is evidence everywhere of a ‘crisis in white masculinity,' a status revolution in which white males feel like the beleaguered class, then it makes sense that the men running the Boy Scouts see the atheists and their ACLU lawyers as agents of an assault upon masculinity and whiteness (symbolized by certain European religions and the very American religion of Mormonism). The link between white masculinity and religion at century's end explained why the Boy Scouts would not make this compromise, while the Girl Scouts would; the Girl Scouts, quite simply, have no stake in the masculinity part of the tangle."

     The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed BSA's right to limit membership to those who believe in God -- making the BSA essentially a private organization with all the appearance of a public one, including a (1916) Congressional Charter, public school access, and the reception of public (e.g., United Way) funding.

     In May 1998, the BSA ordered the Unitarian Universalist Association to stop conferring its "Religion in Life" award to Unitarian Universalist Boy Scouts. The BSA specifically objected to the line in the Unitarian Universalist Association's Religion in Life manual which referred to the "trouble that some Unitarian Universalists may have regarding the duty to God."  Even after UU changed the manual to accommodate  the BSA's objections, they accepted, then reinstated the ban on the Unitarians' Religion in Life award.

     In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the Boy Scouts' right to exclude homosexuals from all levels of participation in Scouting.  Following these rulings, many local groups adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding member's religion and sexual orientation.  But a BSA resolution, dated Feb. 6, 2002 states that "BSA's values cannot be subject to local option choices, but must be the same in every unit."  So much for democratic values and local autonomy.

     Thanks to the actions of concerned individuals and groups, it seems the BSA has been slowly  losing United Way funding and their access to public schools because of their policies.   More opposition to BSA has occurred because of their discrimination against homosexuals than the discrimination against non-religious persons.  The worst, of course, is that scouts learn that gay people and atheists are immoral, unwelcome, and deserve discrimination.  Rather than enhancing the common good by helping boys grow up to be healthy adults, the Boy Scouts of America now works against the common good by sowing the destructive seeds of prejudice. Its official policy of discrimination on the basis of religion and sexual orientation erodes any common good.

   Dorothy = our lost souls, trying to find their way home.

   Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion  =  mankind trying to attain his knowledge, compassion, love and courage by finding and serving...

   The Great & Powerful Oz  =  the Great and Almighty God. 

   Wicked Witch = evil from which mankind must be saved. 

   Toto  =  common sense that is not so easily fooled

   Of course Baum's conclusion shows us that the Great and Powerful Oz, which no one has ever seen, is in reality just an illusion of terror; a feeble little scammer who has presided over Oz by means of threats and fear.  And Dorothy and Company discover that the virtues they sought were not rewards for service to the Wizard, but in fact they possessed them all along.  And of course the real tear jerker -- that if Dorothy wanted reality, she needn't look farther than her own backyard.

How could Baum so closely imitate religion and not do it intentionally?  I realize that there many more additions to the Oz series, but I have not read them.  Do they continue in this type of theme, or am I seeing something that just isn't there?

      In the NEWS: President Bush to Use What's Left of Social Security to Build a National Demon Defense Shield!

      With Bush's budget allocating hundreds of billions of dollars of future Social Security checks to Ed Wood technology designed to blow up flying objects in space, it was only a matter of time before defense companies convinced the President to spend billions more on the obscure, though ultimately more effective, technology that will intercept and neutralize Satanic demons approaching the U.S. atmosphere.  Unlike BMD, in which every test of even the most rudimentary of features has failed, the effectiveness of demon defense has been empirically proven by none other than Christ, Himself, who never lies -- and never charged the Pentagon.