Lots of people have already blogged about their disappointment with the new Girl Guides promise eg Gillan, David, Alison. I didn’t manage last week, but I did express some of my feelings on Twitter. That resulted in an interview with Helen Legh on 3 Counties Radio that went out on Sunday morning. You can catch it on iPlayer until next Sunday – my slot was about 1hr 10minutes into the show. I very much enjoyed talking to Helen and think I managed to get across most of what I’ve been thinking. Which is:
- The Guides is a brilliant organisation. I will always be grateful to Guides for friendships made and the encouragement to lead and take responsibility.
- I understand that not everyone wants to make a promise to God.
- But being ‘true to myself’ is either meaningless – a sort of Disney nonsense, or a more insidious call to the worship of self (my daughter thought it meant ‘be selfish’).
What I forgot to mention was that the promise is going to be tricky for girls to say if they believe that to be true to themselves they cannot promise to be true to themselves, as they know that their selves are flawed and imperfect and not to be trusted. Which is essentially what a Christian believes.
And I also didn’t mention, because I didn’t know it at the time, is that my former Guide leader, (a member of my home church which I visited last Sunday), is considering sending back her trefoil (a sign of membership) because she is so cross about the new promise. She led our Guide company for many years and went on to other senior guiding responsibilites. Seems to me that the Guides may need to have a little think about where they are headed with this seemingly self-centred new declaration.
The Vicar's Wife 
I really don’t see why they need to take God out of the promise…I did Bharathanatyam dance when I was 18 and in common with other traditional dance styles from the Indian subcontinent the class started and ended with a movement prayer. Originally this pray would have been to the Hindu gods, but my teacher said to dance it to whoever we believed in, Shiva, the christian God, mother earth….if that worked for us, why can’t the same be said for Guiding. If they want God to mean themselves or their favourite football team that is fine. I feel the biggest threat to christianity in the UK isn’t Mainstream Islam, but the politically correct push to secularism. Somehow they don’t realise that at the end of the day…we all worship something!
Perhaps they are channelling Shakespeare – isn’t that from Hamlet? (“To thine own self be true…”)?
Indeed – it’s from that list of bad advice that Polonius gives Laertes, which Shakespeare meant to be ironic and tedious for comedy, but which people have ever since taken seriously…
I didn’t think it right that non-believers should be obliged to promise to a God they don’t believe in, but the promise was not a Christian promise anyway – it was a monotheistic promise: whichever ‘god’ you chose was interchangeable and that never sat right with me either. I would rather have a Christian promise, or a secular promise, no wishy-washy in-between (my girls have not long joined the Brownies so the thought has occurred to me). But I think the phrase ‘be true to yourself’ is rather vomit-inducing. I can imagine the scene where the fairy godmother waves her wand and says in a silvery, tinkly voice, “Just be true to yourself, Amadora!” It’s meaningless. And yes, there is the underlying Disneyfied endorsement of self-worship… tacky, greetings card sentiment.
On the other hand, there are worse things going on so this will be my sole contribution on the subject.
We have had the phrase “to be true to myself” in the Guide promise in New Zealand for a few years now and I’ve never seen it as promoting self-worship. When we talk with the girls in my Brownie unit about the promise we say that it is about staying true to your beliefs or feelings, so not going along with others if you know what they’re doing is bad, and speaking out or taking action if something is wrong even if no one else does. Obviously that’s a bit simplistic but the girls are 7-9 years. The guide promise and law work together or at least they do in New Zealand, we also promise to live by the Guide Law, and being selfish doesn’t fit with the Guide law. Having said that, our promise is being reviewed at the moment so it could all change.
Just found your blog our church is also trying to decide what to do. As a Christian and a guide leader I believe that I cannot make the new promise nor can I ask a girl to make it.