The Boys Scouts of America was
incorporated FEBRUARY 8, 1910.
Sir Robert Baden-Powell began the movement in England two years prior.
A
hero of the South African Boer Wars, Sir Baden-Powell's troops were
besieged 200 days by an overwhelming army, but thanks to his
resourcefulness, his men were saved.
The Boy Scouts are now the largest voluntary youth movement in the world, with membership over 25 million.
In the pamphlet "Scouting & Christianity," 1917, Baden-Powell wrote:
"Scouting is nothing less than applied Christianity."
President Calvin Coolidge wrote to the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America, Washington, DC, May 1, 1926:
"The
boy on becoming a scout binds himself on his honor to do his best...'To
do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the scout law...To help
other people at all times...To keep myself physically strong, mentally
awake, and morally straight'...
Members
must promise to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous,
kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent...
It would be a perfect world if everyone exemplified these virtues in daily life...
Those
who attempt to live in opposition to these standards...become slaves of
their own evil doing, realizing the Scriptural assertion that they who
sin are the servants of sin and that the wages of sin is death."
President Dwight Eisenhower stated on the 50th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America, June 1, 1960:
"That
is the great thing about Scouting...We read in our Bibles the Parable
of the Good Samaritan...They individually and collectively begin to
think of their nation in part as a 'good Samaritan,' doing the decent
thing in this world...
Scouting is indeed doing something...vital to our vigor as a nation based upon a religious concept."
President George H.W. Bush stated at James Madison High School, Vienna, Virginia, March 28, 1989:
"People
wonder and talk about...the Thousand Points of Light?...Helping some
kid that may be tempted to use narcotics...A church group doing
something...It's the Red Cross...It is the Boy Scouts...It is Christian
Athletes...Voluntarism."
On July 25, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge addressed a gathering of Boy Scouts in New York headed to Copenhagen:
"The three fundamentals of scouthood are reverence for nature...reverence for law...and reverence for God.
It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Doubters do not achieve."
President Coolidge concluded:
"Faith
is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities
unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and
that his work, well done, is part of an unending plan."
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