Talk:Religious emblems programs

Categories
This article needs Category links at the bottom of the page, like "Boy Scouts of America", etc.--Jagz 01:11, 13 April 2006 (UTC)


 * added a few--Erp 01:41, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Footnote link
The link to Footnote 4 in the article is not working.--Jagz 19:57, 27 May 2006 (UTC)


 * fixed. I think I got a good reference.  Should note that I've seen no evidence for the next bit after footnote 4 "Many feel that this is in direct contradiction to the BSA's Declarations of Religious Principles, which asserts that the BSA does not involve itself in religious matters" --Erp 17:49, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Article title
Should the article title be "Religious Emblems Programs" or "Religious emblems programs"? See--Jagz 18:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The correct Wiki spelling of the article should be "Religious emblems programs", with a small e and p. --Jagz 00:06, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm planning on changing the article title to "Religious emblems programs", with a small e and p unless there are any objections. --Jagz 03:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. --Jagz 03:19, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Scope of article
This article needs to be expanded to talk about religious emblems programs in youth organizations other than the Boy Scouts of America. --Jagz 12:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed though I think most of the other organizations push it a lot less than the BSA. I am looking for a reference on the percentage of BSA members who earn a religious emblem. The only one I could find was 5% and that was on a now defunct page on uua.org (they are in the midst of reorganizing their web site so it may reappear in the near future). --Erp 01:20, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It is available on P.R.A.Y., specifically agency usage. You can do the math from that. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 01:26, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * BTW- those numbers are only for God & Country. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 02:17, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

According to P.R.A.Y., God & Country (the main Protestant program that P.R.A.Y. directly produces) was awarded to 23,054 BSA youth in 2005. There were a total of 2,938,698 youth members in 2005. That means about 0.8% of BSA youth members earned a God & Country award? --Gadget850 ( Ed) 16:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Issues and improvements

 * There is little content on the actual programs. Much of the article is on the BSA implementation and most of that is on controversies.  Given the content, this article should be titled "Religious emblems program controversies in the Boy Scouts of America".
 * The BSA specific information is now in Religious emblems programs (Boy Scouts of America), so there is a lot of duplication.


 * The "Other nations" section is not useful.
 * The image for the The Unitarian - Universalist Religious Emblem is tagged as a Scout logo, but this is not correct. The medal is owned by the UUA.  Only the BSA knot emblems should be tagged with BSAlogo.
 * Updated licensing information for this image. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


 * P.R.A.Y. is the administrator for the programs, but is not noted until the UUA issue.
 * The use of Hitler as an example is disingenuous and tends to invoke Godwin's Law. A less controversial example might be the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but I don't think we need an example.  Especially since that entire statement is not sourced and results in speculation (logical as it may be).  Removed and sentence tagged for reference.
 * The link for "UUA program description" is broken. Actually, all of the links into the UUA site are broken as they are in a reorg, and search returns invalid links.
 * Links are now on http://archive.uua.org/ temporarily until the reorg is complete. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:23, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

--Gadget850 ( Ed) It is back up. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 20:17, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * P.R.A.Y. refers to this as the Religious Recognitions Programs. If this article is on the overall program, then this is the name that should be used as the article title instead of the BSA name.
 * Friends Committee on Scouting can be merged into this article- it has been a stub for three years with only maintenance updates.
 * Reference 9 is broken fixed
 * The article uses the old reference system and should be updated to the preferred cite.php.
 * American Heritage Girls should be referenced as one of the four specific agencies supported by P.R.A.Y. AHG received 183 awards in 2006,  Camp Fire USA earned 8.  AHG numbers are rising slowly while the others are dropping.
 * The Covenant of the Goddess website is coming up blank.  This may be temporary, as Google does have a cache from 1 Apr 2007.


 * To be exact the P.R.A.Y. business office is a coordinator/clearing house that the various programs can use. P.R.A.Y. proper administers only the independent Protestant award.  The Religious committees of each of the youth organizations decides on what they will recognize. The UUA site is re-orging hence the broken links. I hope once they are finished we can reconnect to the new locations.--Erp 00:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Exactly. If this article is about the overall program, then there should be more on the role of P.R.A.Y. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 01:18, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you expand on AHG receiving 183 awards? Note that AHG is explicitly a Christian organization so much of its interactions with PRAY are through PRAY as the administrator of the God and Country program not through PRAY as the order processor for other programs.  How does AHG compare in size to Junior Catholic Daughters of America (95,000 members though not all are in the US)?  The latter can also earn religious awards (though only the Catholic award). 4-H members can also earn awards though 4-H itself has no apparent agreement with P.R.A.Y.  --Erp 01:32, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * That is a good point, as P.R.A.Y. only shows numbers for God and Country. Best I can tell, AHG has about 6000 members.[ http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54591 ] --Gadget850 ( Ed) 02:14, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Delete the Entire Article
The article called Religious emblems programs (Boy Scouts of America) contains all of this information and more, making this one repetitive, redundant and duplicative ;-) GCW50 19:23, 12 April 2007 (UTC)


 * According to the lead, this article is supposed to supposed to be about the Religious Recognition Programs used by several organizations, as administered by P.R.A.Y. It needs to be pared down and rebooted.  The BSA section should be redone per Summary style, but I would suggest waiting until Religious emblems programs (Boy Scouts of America) stabilizes for a bit.  --Gadget850 ( Ed) 19:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm not just those handled by P.R.A.Y.. Hart and Crescent isn't.  Also I've seen evidence that similar programs exist in Canada. Again P.R.A.Y. wouldn't handle them --Erp 02:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * True. Other than the CoG programs, I'm not aware of any others though.  --Gadget850 ( Ed) 10:32, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * However using P.R.A.Y. is purely a convenience for other religious organizations. They can choose to handle things directly and some do so in addition to P.R.A.Y. (for instance the Catholic info can be picked up directly from the diocese in many cases).  Also some books are apparently not available through P.R.A.Y. (e.g., the Light of Life for Eastern Catholics) and apparently none of the Catholic medals.  --Erp 06:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh Canada
Doing some hunting. The equivalent to the knot in Canada seems to be the Religion in Life badge --Erp 07:14, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Moved sections
I moved the sections "Unitarian Universalist Association" and "Wicca and other small religions" to the article Religious emblems programs (Boy Scouts of America) on 5 July 2007. --Jagz 16:22, 7 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I carefully reviewed both sections- the information was already included in the article. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 17:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20050830004103/http://www.planetout.com:80/news/article-print.html?1999/05/19/4 to http://www.planetout.com/news/article-print.html?1999/05/19/4

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