Peacekeepers Come in All Sizes
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
February 9, 2020
Matthew 5:14-16
14 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
I spent some time this week researching the ever-evolving Scouts organization in which we are celebrating this day. It started when I came across an article a while back from The Atlantic about Boy Scouts holding together a war-torn country. Since, for the last several weeks, we have been talking about “peace” I thought it was an appropriate story to share. I will be doing that a bit later in the message.
As a former Cub Scout, myself, I have always valued those many nights back in grade school meeting in my friend, Andy’s basement. Andy’s dad was our scout leader and he was one of the most gentle and kind dad’s, other than my own, that I knew. I looked forward to being dropped off at Andy’s house, gathering with my scout friends and working on projects. Because my Scout Troop was part of our church, we would always begin with a prayer, which may have been the first time I led a prayer out loud in a group. We did service projects, learned about nature, talked about being good citizens, and we competed against each other for the annual Pine Wood Derby trophy (one of my favorite parts of scouts as it entailed using my artistic gifts).
Since I did not have older brothers and sisters who were scouts, I looked elsewhere for examples. For many years I was captivated by astronauts and the space shuttle program. All of the original astronauts, like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were boy scouts and many of the space shuttle astronauts were as well. Ironically, when I was doing some research this week, I found some surprising men and women that were scouts that may surprise you. Did you know…
Mariah Carey, Taylor Swift, Celine Dion, Queen Elizabeth II, Venus Williams,
Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Queen Latifah, Martha Stewart and Gloria Steinman were all scouts.
And Hank Aaron, Jack Black, Jimmy Buffet, Jon Bon Jovi, Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite), Chris Pratt, Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates were as well.
And a couple summers ago when we were on vacation, we visited Martin Luther King Jr.’s boyhood home and the church he pastored just down the road. We heard how he too was a scout and his father a troop leader at Ebenezer Baptist Church. In the museum at Ebenezer Baptist, we saw the register from Troop 151 in Atlanta that shows that Martin Luther King Jr. was a scout from the age of 11 to 13. Ebenezer Baptist continues this tradition in the heart of Atlanta where they still host Troop and Pack 213 every other Sunday.
I cannot even begin to image how proud the young scouts at Ebenezer Baptist must be, to think they are carrying on this tradition of their hero.
Martin Luther King Jr. continued to promote the ideals he learned through the scouts program at his church. And during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King said the following (just listen to how much speaks to the ideals of scouting)…
“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.”
King spoke of that “Peace and brotherhood” (and I would include “sisterhood” as well, today) of that hope for a brighter tomorrow. Ironically, the founder of scouting Robert Baden-Powell would have agreed with King. From the very beginning, Robert Baden-Powell saw his scouting movement as a way to achieve peace and worldwide brotherhood. History says that,
“Two years after the end of WWI, with the world still reeling from the horror and losses of that conflict, the Scouts held their first world jamboree. At the closing ceremony, Baden-Powell asked participants to take the spirit of brotherhood and the Scout Law they had felt at the gathering home with them “so that we may help to develop peace and happiness in the world and goodwill among all Scouts. Ever since then, Scouts have been practicing citizenship, doing service, spreading messages of peace, and selflessly sacrificing for others in an effort to make Baden-Powell’s vision a reality.”
I have never thought of the Scouts as a peace movement, but clearly that was part of the founder’s vision.
Over the years the Scouts have referenced several important historical documents in their continued evolution. Such as quoting the constitution of UNESCO in 1945 where the Scouts pointed out the following to support their cause,
“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”
Or Article 26 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948, where the Scouts emphasized,
“Education should be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”
Even Robert Baden-Powell, himself wrote in 1929,
“We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that it is a patriotism above the narrow sentiments which usually stops at one’s own country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others. Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognizes justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which leads our country into comradeship with…the other nations of the world.
The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our own borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life; so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbors.”
This is the importance of the message of peace that the scouting movement offers our world today. In 2011 after the devastation of 9/11, the World Scout Committee launched the Messengers of Peace initiative to recognize Scouts who work for peace and brotherhood, and support them in doing even more to create a better world. I was surprised at how similar this initiative fit within the Quaker S.P.I.C.E.S. The Messengers of Peace initiative encompasses three dimensions (just listen at how much they resemble our testimonies):
1. Personal: harmony, justice, and equality
2. Community: peace as opposed to hostility or violent conflict.
3. Relationships between humankind and its environment: security, social and economic welfare, and relationship with the environment.
And this takes me back to where I started this sermon, the article I read in The Atlantic.
The article was titled, “Boy Scouts Are Holding Together A War-Torn Country” but it was the subtitle that caught my Quaker eye. It read, “In the Central African Republic, peacekeepers come in all sizes.” This is what we believe as Quakers – everyone – young and old has a voice!
I would like to share the article to give you a picture of how Scouts are playing a crucial role in peacekeeping around the world.
If you venture outside Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, it’s dangerous to travel alone. Journeying from village to village means navigating jungle or savanna without paved roads or reliable communication networks. Central African Republic straddles one of the world’s largest magnetic anomalies, so compasses often err. And conflict among more than a dozen armed religious groups has balkanized the country.
Amid all of this, one unlikely institution has become crucial to the country’s survival: the Boy Scouts. Like scouts the world over, members wear trim shorts and multicolor neckerchiefs—but their youthful uniform belies a grander-than-average sociopolitical mission. When they aren’t earning badges for cooking and woodworking, they’re guiding ailing villagers to hospitals, or distributing mosquito nets and food at refugee camps. Last year, as Simon Allison reported in Mail & Guardian, the boys investigated rumors of Ebola in a remote part of the country. The year before that, they helped negotiate the release of a Muslim community held hostage by armed groups.
Since 2013, when rebels staged a coup and religious violence flared, Central African Republic has been in a state of civil war. Today, the enfeebled government in Bangui relies on foreign aid agencies to hold the country together—and the agencies in turn rely on the country’s 20,000 boy scouts, who surpass Central African Republic’s largest armed factions in both size and geographic reach. UNICEF, for example, deploys boys to public squares to perform plays about hand-washing, and sends them door-to-door to promote the polio vaccine.
The peacekeeping role that scouts play in Central African Republic is more fitting than it might at first seem. Founded in 1907 by the British army officer Robert Baden-Powell, the scouting movement combines military reconnaissance tactics with a pacifist philosophy—in his famous book Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell urged readers to think of themselves as “peace scouts.” According to Elleke Boehmer, a professor at Oxford, scouting technique was also strongly influenced by Baden-Powell’s observations during his extensive African travels. “The Ingonyama chorus—a central scouting chant—is a Zulu chant,” she told me. And the wooden beads on the uniform were inspired by “a Zulu necklace he once found during a raid.”
For many boys and young men in Central African Republic, scouting offers community, and keeps them from grimmer alternatives, such as being enlisted by local militias or drug dealers. Rod Gallaut, a scout leader in Bangui, told me that scout training helps young men secure work, and that he encourages child soldiers to lay down their weapons and join his troop.
Unsurprisingly, given Central African Republic’s pervasive sectarianism, Catholic, Muslim, and evangelical scouts have long had separate troops. In the past few years, however, they’ve begun to team up—motivated in part by a desire to join scouting’s official world body, which requires each member country to have a united national movement. In 2017, Gallaut, who is Christian, became friends with a Muslim scout leader when they traveled together to Cameroon for a scouting conference. “This experience has changed my conception of Muslims,” he said. Scouts of different denominations now attend camps where they bond over music and sports. And they recently began laying the bricks of an interfaith training center—and earning badges in peacebuilding.
From “The Atlantic” written by Kevin Volkl, July 2019 Issue
The current scouts in this meetinghouse and their leaders, us former scouts, and those young ones coming up that will be scouts in the future, I pray that this story and history inspires you to be prepared to make a difference in our world. Obviously, the legacy of peacebuilding is not only a Scouts foundation, but ours as Quakers as well. So I hope each of us here this morning, whether a Scout or not, would be dedicated to the vision of Robert Baden-Powell to…
…develop peace and goodwill within our own borders, by training our youth…to its practice as their habit of life; so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbors.”
I believe through Scouts, through our Affirmation Program, through our children’s meeting for worship, through children’s messages, mentoring, multigenerational ministries, lobbying for peaceful legislation, even through our excellent relationship with the co-op preschool housed in our building, we are raising and training our children and youth to embrace peace, goodwill, and sister/brotherhood as a habit of life. In these divided times, we need, even more, to dedicate ourselves to raising peacemakers of all sizes within our community.
Ask yourself this morning…
· What am I doing to help train “peacemakers of all sizes” at First Friends and in my community?
· How can I promote a more genuine and nobler patriotism which recognizes justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which leads our country into comradeship with our own communities and our world?
· How is First Friends leaving a legacy of peacemaking at First Friends?
Scout Sunday Prayer
O God, your will is that all your children should grow into fullness of life.
We lift to you the ministry of scouting.
We offer you thanks for camping,
to teach us that the world is our great home;
for study and work, to build character;
for service, to see our responsibility to those in need;
for encouragement in genuine patriotism and vital faith.
Bless the work of scouting, in this place and around the world,
that, through its efforts, the young may, like Jesus,
increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with you and all people.
Amen.