Boy Scouts

* I imagine most Buddhist Boy Scout leaders, and I know at least one, will be too busy guiding their Scouts into productive and honorable lives to respond to Jon Nelson’s letter (Dec. 17), in which Nelson maintains Buddhists could be excluded from scouting because, “like atheists, they do not happen to believe in the Judeo-Christian God.” He suggests Boy Scouts are afraid of such people.

Scouts are reverent and faithful to God as they know him. Those who meet special requirements, according to their faith, may merit special scouting religious emblems such as the Zoroastrian “Good Life” emblem, the Islamic “In the Name of God” emblem, the Baha’i “Unity of Mankind” emblem and, yes, the Buddhist “Sangha” emblem.

Nelson charges the Scouts with being exclusionary on religious grounds but my two Episcopalian sons have a Jewish Scoutmaster and their one troop is chartered to both Catholic and Presbyterian churches.

While they may not be afraid of people with different beliefs, the Boy Scouts would do well to be afraid of people of no belief. It is they who would abridge the Boy Scout’s First Amendment right to freedom of religion by “prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

DIANE R. ANDERSEN

Claremont