Girl Guides membership - our daughter cannot join?

Balgair

This thread takes me back, I had the exact same situation as the OP's daughter when I moved up to Guides, having been in Brownies (led by the same Guider) for four years without ever being asked about my beliefs; I had no idea that Guides was a "Christian organisation" until she told me it was, since it never came up the rest of the time. When it came to making the Guide promise I was asked, was honest, and then wasn't allowed to make my promise as a result, which upset me quite a lot when all my friends who moved up at the same time as me did get to make their promises.

Eventually the Guider offered me a compromise, basically asking me if I could believe there was something out there, even if not a specific god. I agreed to that concept and that was good enough, perhaps something like that could help the OP's daughter? I never have believed in anything specific (gods, power, etc), but I've always admitted that it's possible (albeit unlikely in my opinion) that there's something, and so it felt acceptable to me to go with that, and it was acceptable to my Guider as well.

As to a promise needing to mean every word, I never really felt that - I made the promise in the days of it being "God", not "my God", and we all knew Guiding wasn't restricted to only Christians at that time, so the wording was faulty, and I'd have been far from the only one paying lipservice to it. Having been used to paying lipservice to religious stuff in school anyway, I didn't think much of it at the time (my primary school made the older pupils take it in turns to individually say Grace before lunch, and I feel that speaking a direct prayer to a god I didn't believe in was worse than mentioning a god in a promise where it'd been made clear that it didn't have to be any specific god)

Person_one

Fire_Fox wrote: »

If we are going to say Guides should be more inclusive to atheists should they also accept boys?

Scouts take girls, but that happened because girls wanted to join and asked to be let in in substantial numbers.

Have many boys petitioned to join the guides?

Mrs_Arcanum

Fire_Fox wrote: »

If we are going to say Guides should be more inclusive to atheists should they also accept boys?

A colleague who is a Brownie Pack Leader gets very huffy over any such notion and would stop if this were to happen. :rotfl:

silvercar

Religion for athiests:

http://www.alaindebotton.com/Religion.asp

The cultural benefits of organised religion without the belief.

Fire_Fox

Person_one wrote: »

Scouts take girls, but that happened because girls wanted to join and asked to be let in in substantial numbers.

Have many boys petitioned to join the guides?

Are the numbers important or the principle?

dizsiebubba

The scout association did not let in girls because the girls all petitioned to join...they let in girls because they needed women to run the units and the numbers were dwindling...girlguiding has massive waiting lists so would not need to extend its membership.

System

Fire_Fox wrote: »

If we are going to say Guides should be more inclusive to atheists should they also accept boys?

They are also ageist.

Tawny75

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

They are also ageist.

How are we ageist? We have recommended ages ie Guides is from 10-14 BUT and it is a big BUT, if a girl still benefits from Guides and is older and there is room, she stays. I know this for a fact because I stayed in Guides until I was 16. I am now both a Guide and a Ranger Leader.

Please explain how we are ageist?

tea_lover

Tawny75 wrote: »

How are we ageist? We have recommended ages ie Guides is from 10-14 BUT and it is a big BUT, if a girl still benefits from Guides and is older and there is room, she stays.

I stayed in Brownies way past the recommended age limit as I loved it so much. I'm 33 and I'd still be there now if only I could still get in the dress

Tawny75

tea_lover wrote: »

I stayed in Brownies way past the recommended age limit as I loved it so much. I'm 33 and I'd still be there now if only I could still get in the dress

You should come back as a leader, I get to act like a 10 year old for two hours a week. Fabulous!