{"id":6097,"date":"2013-06-19T10:52:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T09:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?p=6097"},"modified":"2013-06-19T10:58:35","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T09:58:35","slug":"2013jun19guides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/2013jun19guides\/","title":{"rendered":"Guides drop God for New Age pledge"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brownies<\/a>
Brownies making the guiding promise<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Girl Guides are to drop references to ‘God’ and ‘country’ from their traditional pledge but are to retain a public expression of allegiance to the Queen, reports the Daily Telegraph<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In the new Promise, which will take effect from 1st September, the words ‘to love my God’, which already had an\u00a0individualistic feel, is to be replaced with ‘to be true to myself and develop my beliefs’, sounding like something out of a New Age self-help manual.<\/p>\n

The Guides have retained their pledge to the Queen, who just happens to be Patron of the UK Girl Guides,\u00a0but\u00a0\u00a0the words ‘to serve the Queen and my community’, begging the question ‘who or what is “my community”?’ will replace ‘to serve the Queen and my country’. \u00a0A vow to “help other people” and to “do my best” will remain part of the new promise.<\/p>\n

The Guides have no evidence that the old pledge was putting girls off joining, so the whole exercise seems driven by the secularist spirit of the age embodied in\u00a0the group’s new chief executive, Julie Bentley, who has been in post for just over six months. \u00a0Ms Bentley stepped across from the militantly anti-Christian ‘fpa’, otherwise known as the Family Planning Association<\/a><\/strong>, and describes the Guides as “the ultimate feminist organisation”.<\/p>\n

Stephen Evans, campaigns manager of the National Secular Society, applauded the Guides by getting out his secularist politically-correct phrase-book: “By omitting any explicit mention of God or religion the Guide Association has grasped the opportunity to make itself truly inclusive and relevant to the reality of 21st century Britain.<\/p>\n

“The new secular promise can now be meaningful and relevant to all guides and potential leaders, whatever their beliefs – and sends a clear signal that Girlguiding is equally welcoming to all girls.”<\/p>\n

The Guides website claims<\/a><\/strong> that the new promise will lead to them ‘welcoming more members’, but David Landrum, advocacy director at the Evangelical Alliance said: “No doubt, the Girls Brigade will be the main beneficiaries from this erroneous decision, because as the growing popularity of faith schools attests, parents will always seek to provide religious rather than secular humanist values for their children.”<\/p>\n

In 2007 the Girl Guides started a programme called ‘Get Wise’ to teach about ‘sexual health’. The programme sank into embarrassed obscurity, but the organisation’s website had a page called ‘fit for life’ which promoted new age treatments such as aromatherapy, colour therapy (whatever that might be) and yoga. \u00a0The guiding website forum urges girls to\u00a0‘indulge your inner gossip queen<\/a><\/strong>‘.<\/p>\n

We understand there is still a weblink to the fpa in the GirlGuiding members area but another, to a Government url astonishingly called ‘www.playingsafely.co.uk’, as if sex is just an adolescent recreational activity, appears to have been dropped. The link was redirected straight to a suggestive NHS website called condomessentialwear.co.uk.<\/p>\n

The Girl Guides were founded in 1909 by Agnes Baden-Powell, sister of Robert Baden-Powell, the architect of the Scouting movement.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Girl Guides are to drop references to ‘God’ and ‘country’ from their traditional pledge but are to retain a public expression of allegiance to the Queen, reports the Daily Telegraph. In the new Promise, which will take effect from 1st September, the words ‘to love my God’, which already had an\u00a0individualistic feel, is to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,86],"tags":[866,867,865,864,862,863,868],"class_list":["post-6097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-freedom","category-secularism","tag-david-landrum","tag-evangelical-alliance","tag-family-planning-association","tag-fpa","tag-girl-guides","tag-julie-bentley","tag-national-secularist-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Stephen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/author\/stephen\/"},"rttpg_comment":18,"rttpg_category":"Christian freedom<\/a> Secularism<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"The Girl Guides are to drop references to ‘God’ and ‘country’ from their traditional pledge but are to retain a public expression of allegiance to the Queen, reports the Daily Telegraph. In the new Promise, which will take effect from 1st September, the words ‘to love my God’, which already had an\u00a0individualistic feel, is to…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}