I promise that I will do my best: to do my duty to God, to serve the Queen and my country; to help other people; and to keep the Guide Law.It has now been changed to:
“I promise that I will do my best; to be true to myself and develop my beliefs; to serve my community and Australia, and live by the Guide Law.”
Brenda Allen, director of Girl Guides Australia said that with the deletion of God and the Queen, the Guides hope “to be seen as more inclusive and a modern, relevant organization and that many more women will like to join us”
There is a spin on the change which implies that younger members will welcome this change while older members will find it controversial. Catholic observers familiar with the controversies over traditional liturgy will be instinctively skeptical about that. It is normally the elderly trendies in an organisation that think that relevance and "inclusivity" are going to attract the young. The young themselves will find these supposed values irrelevant and puzzling.
Young people will be attracted to the idea of serving others, striving for high goals, being loyal to great ideals. Being "true to myself" and "developing my beliefs" put the bar down to a level that is not really worth bothering with.
15 comments:
Oh, dear.
Political Correctness has reached Australia !!!
"...and that many more women will like to join us”
I'm confused here, or possibly just obtuse, but surely the Guides is for girls, not women? I mean, they need to have adults, obviously, in supervisory roles and so on, so - is this change therefore intended to attract more of these?
Tongue further in cheek: maybe the term "girls" is now seen as being hopelessly non-inclusive or ageist or both, and the aim is that youngsters should be empowered to view themselves as women (more likely wimmin) from the earliest age?
I'm sure it'll come down to that sort of nonsense eventually but, joking aside, as you observe, Father: it's the same tired old search for trendy kudos by a bunch of confused relativists, falling over themselves for approval from the Great Ones of the World.
Who more than likely despise them and the whole institution anyway!
Well, if they develop enough their beliefs, they'll end up trying to do their duty to God and serving Queen and country. ;)
Decades back, an article's title was "Is Relevance Relevant?" Looks like someone didn't get the memo about which century we're in.
Oh, well: this, too, shall change.
It is astonishing that these organisations haven't figured out yet that this 'inclusiveness' they are always touting seems to drive out the people they already have in, and makes them unattractive to those they are trying to bring in ...
It's interesting to see how the changes have been made:
to do my duty to God
has become
to be true to myself
Looks like a new goddess to me, except that it is unclear exactly what form of worship this new goddess requires. What does being "true to myself" mean to a confused teenager, who is unclear about their own identity, troubled by their thoughts and desires, and disturbed by their body-image? If said teenager can get any meaning out of the new form, it is probably just the duty to be selfish, which would be rather confusing given the last part of the promise.
I think your analysis is correct: it's someone else's agenda imposed on the young as part of their own need "to be true to themselves and develop their beliefs".
Sickening.
Wow, enough material for many conferences in thise two sentences. When God goes, duty goes with Him; beliefs are not about truth but about me; the Law is no longer to be "kept" but "lived by" (with the lurking expectation that it will, like life, evolve); and "myself" pops up to take the place of "others".
But I fear these attitudes are much more deeply ingrained in the young than in your grey-bearded Tabletistas. You see the young people who still see the point of the Church. Believe me, they're not representative. We must be prepared for it to get worse before it gets better, facing that, as the Pope teaches us, with hope, not false optimism.
Well Father, it is all of a piece surely? The words may have changed but the intent has not. When Satan tempted Eve he was saying essentially: “Forget God. Be true to yourself”. The US Army’s promotional Ads always advocate: “Be all that you can be”. Athletes who have achieved some success in their sport invariably attribute it to their ‘hard work’ ‘dedication’ ‘commitment’ and so on. No acknowledgment that their God-given talents are just that – from God.
We just don’t learn. The builders of the Tower of Babel thought they could be true to themselves also and didn’t need God. It was a mistake then and it is still a mistake. We marvel at how the People of Israel in the Old Testament repeatedly turned away from God, despite all He did for them. But we are our fathers’ children and we continue to try and remove God from our lives. You wonder why God puts up with us at all…
It sounds like a pledge you might make before undergoing therapy. Person-Centred of course.
I think the semantic analysis has been done extremely thoroughly, so I will just add a little syntactic dimension. Grammatically, all that the new oath is swearing is 'I promise that I will do my best'. In the old oath, the colon allowed this main verb of 'promise' to govern the verbs which followed, so the promise continued. In the new oath, the verb 'promise' only governs that which appears before the semi-colon. So being true to myself and developing my beliefs, serving my community etc. are not promised at all. They are just infinitives hanging in the air, waiting for a main verb to come along and activate them, and until then, .. ummm ... signifying nothing. Fancy that.
"Australia"? What kind of neoLatinate colonial-oppressive nonsense is this? If the Guides were serious about being "more inclusive and a modern, relevant organization" they'd stop reinforcing Eurocultural conceptual norms, including that of national borders/identities.
Ooooohhh, imagine all the people, living life in peace...
Compare and contrast this:
I promise that I will do my best:
to do my duty to God, to serve the
Queen and my country;
to help other people; and
to keep the Guide Law.
With this:
I promise that I will do my best
To be true to myself and develop my beliefs
To serve my community and Australia
And live by the Guide Law.
Quite apart from the fact that the first is simply better-written than the second, "God" and "the Queen" have become "myself". That is the real story here.
tony abbott- leader of australia's conservatvie oppositon coalition and a catholic,was not very happy with the decision of the Girl Guides of Australia to drop "God and Queen".
perhaps because of this weak cultural relevance the GGA will go the way of the Anglicans here on Oz- there are less of them and more of us -Catholics and the Uniting Church - ahybrid Methodist,Congretationalist and Presbyterian group- who are predicted to die as a denominaiton by 2030 due to their ageing membership but perhaps becaquse there are so few faithful congregations around.
This change has nothing to do with politics. As a current adult girl guide and leader, the changes to wording of our promise & guide laws came about from years of surveys and comments from the girls themselves.
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