Monday, February 08, 2010

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 his resourcefulness saved his men.

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." The Scout Oath states: "On my honor, I will do my 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."

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge addressed a gathering of Boy Scouts in New York: "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: "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."

American Minute with Bill Federer

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