Researching Promises - preliminary findings

Faith Awareness clause: Compare three different Promises, one each from a different WAGGGS region. Explain how religious tradition may have helped shape the wording.

Last night I went in search of my 3 different Promises to research. During this process I got to read a whole bunch of Promises, and while each was fairly dry on its own, I found the differences between them most interesting. So even though I'm yet to choose my 3 promises, I thought I'd share these findings already.

Having experienced the change of a Promise and Law in Australia, I feel I can assume that MO's make adaptations to their P&L according to what they consider most relevant and important for their members. And what the MO considers important will be directly related to the culture which the MO is situated in.

The Netherlands

The first country I thought to look at was the Netherlands, since I had recently been on a trip there. I had been told by my Dutch friends that one of their prevailing attitudes about life is "If you don't like it, don't do it", with a policy of "tolerance, not acceptance" allowing the Dutch to live harmoniously side by side, even with ideological/religious differences. One of our tour guides considered this to be the reason why the Dutch legalised gay marriage in 2001!

While the two Guiding associations that merged into Scouting Nederland came from the Salvation Army/Ecumenical Council of Youth and the Roman Catholic Church, the current organisation doesn't have a religious affiliation overall. However, co-ed and single sex groups are allowed, as well as groups with a religion.

I think their promise reflects this idea, with the God clause being optional from Brownies all the way up. While a couple other countries have this clause, "go consciously in search of the spiritual value in my life" was a unique stand-out for me, because it is about a continuous journey of self-belief, in contrast to our "true to myself and develop my beliefs", which sounds to me much more like, "I'll believe what I believe already and then explore things on the side". Maybe I'm getting cynical.

The Philippines

I wan't going to do the Philippines as I thought it was a bit of a cop-out, but it turned out to be one of the more interesting ones because even though there are variations on the Promise for every level, God is non-optional in all of them!

God features from day 1! The phrasing is also interesting here as I am yet to see another country use "love God" in their promise.

Interesting that the "step up" is for the girls to become useful at home. Possibly this is included more pointedly as the girls are old enough to actually realise what they've promised and act on it a bit more than the Twinklers.

The Philippines is a very religious country, with about 90% of its population being Christian of some form, 5-10% are Muslim, and about 2% continue to practice pre-Hispanic traditional religions. It is probably therefore one of the few countries in which the inclusion of God, and the inclusion of only one God - singular - will fly happily. Having God included from the very youngest promise is interesting as this suggests that it is one of the basic expectations of young Girl Scouts. This is in contrast with Japan, whose promise for its youngest bracket of girls omits the mention of God.

Japan

Japanese Promises.

My initial thought about these promises is that there must be an opinion of religion here that contrasts with the Philippines - where Filipinos believe that even their youngest children have the capacity to engage with God, in Japan, it looks like the girls are not expected to make religious promises. I think this could either be because they feel that in general, children are not capable of understanding their spiritual position at this age and will grow into it later, or they just don't really consider this to be a super-integral part of their Guiding movement.

However, the Tenderfoot age bracket is only really for 4-6 year olds so perhaps I'm just reading way into that.

Religion in Japan is predominantly Buddhist according to Wikipedia's wisdom but there are a whole host of different varieties currently in use, sometimes concurrently. My very basic understanding of Buddhism was that Buddha was a person, not a God, so I need to do a spot more research there. I suspect that the original British wording (who brought Guides to Japan) was considered fixed or traditional in some way, so the "(Buddha)" was their way of translating the wording into Japanese religious norms.

It has actually now been a week since "last night" as I've realised I found out far more than I could pump out in writing. I think I will do this in episodes or I will never put this post out!!

More to come!!! Tune in next time for:

Asian Brownie laws and the role of children

Colonised islands and British promises

Syria and Israel: hope and difficulties

Russia and perfection

and of course,

New Zealand vs Australia: priorities and politics