cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/24428192
Stolen from Reddit.
The big drop in the 1970's was supposedly due to a change in the program to de-emphasize outdoor activities. The step down in 2019 was the LDS church cutting ties and starting their own program.
If you consider this as a proportion of the population it's an even bigger drop. In 1970 there were about 4.8M scouts in a population of 205M, so about 2.3% of all Americans were in Boy Scouts. Now it's 1M scouts in a population of 341M, so only 0.3% of Americans are in Boy Scouts.
It's worse than that because they are not even Boy Scouts anymore. They rebranded to Scouting America since the move to be more open around members. Girls and LGBT are now welcome in many troops.
Our pack in particular is also deemphasizing the Christian aspects.
Those all sound like good things to me.
I think they meant worse than that for the BSA. They're allowing way more people to join than ever before, and they're still down in membership.
No I meant that BSA does not exist anymore so that chart stops at last year, its now Scouting America. I was being too cheeky. FFS its good news that they opened up to everyone.
Ah. The way you wrote that I was wondering if Catholic trad-dad found his way onto Lemmy somehow.
Lol, def not how anyone would describe me.
Oh, I see what you mean - I read it as OP criticising those progressive moves, but yeah, they might have meant it your way, fair point.
Your explanation makes a lot of sense actually, because of how they start out.
Good call, I’ve reversed my downvote