God help us when Girl Guides ditch religion for the shallow cult of the individual

Obviously I’ve never been a Girl Guide. Nor did I ever join the Scouts. I was briefly a member of the more junior Cubs — but got out as soon as I could.

The regimentation never appealed. Camping was a mixed blessing, and knot-tying had its limitations.



So scouting was not for me. But I was glad that there were people more energetic, and perhaps more public-spirited, who wanted to be Guides or Scouts.

New pledge: The world of Girl Guides is being turned upside down under the leadership of Julie Bentley. The promise which young recruits make has been modernised. God and country have now been axed

Over the years, those feelings have deepened. Thank goodness that, in an age in which many young people are glued to their computers, there are still some of them who want to shin up trees, light camp fires and do good turns. Believe it or not, there are nearly half a million Girl Guides in this country.

But, alas, their world is being turned upside down under the leadership of a politically correct female Torquemada called Julie Bentley. The promise which young recruits make has been modernised. God and country have been axed.

Until now the pledge has read: ‘I promise that I will do my best: to love my God, to serve the Queen and my country, to help other people and to keep the Guide law.’

The new pledge will be: ‘I promise that I will do my best: to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, to serve the Queen and my community, to help other people and to keep the Guide law.’

Some people may welcome these changes. Indeed, Stephen Evans, campaigns manager at the National Secular Society, has said how pleased he is to see God written out of the script.

We live in a secular age in which religious belief is declining, though in the 2011 census 55 per cent of people still described themselves as Christian, with 5 per cent professing other faiths. Why should young people say they embrace a God in whom they may not believe?

Ms Bentley, in Stephen's opinion, wants to transform the venerable organisation under her care, and make it as unlike its old self as she can manage before she hands it on

Many may also welcome the shift from ‘country’ to ‘community’. Community is supposed to be a good thing — and so it is. Why not substitute it for country?

I don’t agree, of course, because we are talking about the Girl Guides. You wouldn’t expect the Hells Angels to pledge themselves to God and country (though some of them might), but you would expect the Girl Guides to do so, as they always have. That’s what they’re like.

In any case, the old pledge only required Guides ‘to do their best’ to love God. In other words, it did not demand of them that they should love him, or even believe in him, but simply try to love him.

As for the exhortation to serve ‘community’, it is difficult not to see this as a concession to minorities who feel no particular love for this country, if any at all, but a strong allegiance to their religious or ethnic grouping. That seems against the spirit of the Girl Guides, who are national and inclusive.

There’s nothing at all wrong with ‘community’, and the word could have been inserted before ‘country’, so that Guides could serve both. But it is very foolish, and contrary to the tradition of the Girl Guides, to smother national pride.

The new wording effectively replaces religious belief with belief in oneself. ‘I will do my best to be true to myself, and develop my beliefs.’ But what if those beliefs are narrow, selfish, ignorant or even violent, as might be the case? Wherein lies the benefit of developing such beliefs?

‘Being true to oneself’ could mean following one’s baser instincts. One virtue of religion, or of any belief system, is that it enjoins us not to please ourselves but to please God, or at least to accept the existence of a universal moral code that should regulate our selfish instincts or ‘being oneself’.

This new Girl Guide pledge is a declaration of individualism. God and country are jettisoned in favour of self and the smaller entity of community. The Queen miraculously survives, though I shouldn’t be surprised if she were chopped before long by Julie Bentley.

Ms Bentley is the recently appointed chief executive (why ‘chief executive’ — is it a business?) of the British Girl Guides. Try to think of a traditional Guide, and then think of the opposite. You have imagined Julie Bentley.

This new Girl Guide pledge is a declaration of individualism. The Queen miraculously survives, though Stephen wouldn't be surprised if she were chopped before long by Julie Bentley

The new pledge will be: 'I promise that I will do my best: to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, to serve the Queen and my community, to help other people and to keep the Guide law'

Her previous job was as head of the fpa (formerly the Family Planning Association) for five years where she championed abortion rights and sex education. On taking up her new post last autumn, she announced that ‘the Guides is the ultimate feminist organisation’. Of course it is! How silly of the rest of us not to see!

In short, in my opinion, Ms Bentley is a trendy, Lefty moderniser, doubtless also thoroughly secular, who wants to transform the venerable organisation under her care, and make it as unlike its old self as she can manage before she hands it on, largely ruined, to someone else. She has already declared that the Guides are ‘too middle-class’.

I have nothing very much against her and people like her. I just wish that with their bland smiles and complacent assumptions they had not taken over nearly all our institutions, and that people who respect traditions, and don’t believe in permanent revolution, might occasionally be given a turn.



The Church of England, still dear to my heart, is another institution increasingly dominated by such people. By the way, one of their most egregious characteristics is intolerance. They nearly always speak of traditionalists and conservatives with contempt.

Last Friday, at a party in Oxford, I found myself talking to the biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins and a very senior Anglican clergyman. I asked this cleric, whom I know and like, whether he believed in the Resurrection. He said that he did not. He added that he ‘didn’t think for a moment’ that he ‘would survive after death’.

A senior clergyman in our Established Church publicly and shamelessly professing such disbelief makes one despair. Perhaps we shouldn’t wonder that the Girl Guides have become secular if the Church of England harbours such doubters.

What was so painful was this clergyman’s easy denial of a cornerstone of his faith in front of the most notable and militant atheist of our age. In effect he was saying to Mr Dawkins: ‘You’re right, and the Church is wrong.’

I hope my friend is part of a minority in the Church of England, and think of my own local Anglican church, whose admirable priests most certainly do believe in the Resurrection. I also marvel that an institution can be so quickly corrupted from within.

All institutions evolve and change. But clergymen who don’t believe in a Christian God shouldn’t be priests, and leaders of Girl Guides who don’t revere the traditions of the Girl Guides should look for another job.