Want your daughter to learn all about camping, sewing and car repair, but with a heaping helping of Jesus? You could try to find a local Girl Scout troop with an especially Bible-thumping troop leader. Or you could just skip straight to the American Heritage Girls, conservative Christianity’s very own copycat.
It’s a common trope on the far-right that the Girl Scouts have become an out-and-out liberal organization with ties to Planned Parenthood. (The national organization patiently continues to insist they have no formal relationship.) This year, the barrage has intensified, thanks to a ginned-up controversy about the Girl Scouts of America supposedly tweeting support for Wendy Davis. (Not really true, but why let the facts get in the way of a boycott?)
And so, amid the bombardment, right-wing media outlets are trumpeting an alternative, called the American Heritage Girls. While much smaller—something like 30,000, compared to 2.3 million Girl Scouts—they’re held up as a competitor. A columnist at fire-breathingly conservative outlet Breitbart, recently cheered: “AMERICAN HERITAGE GIRLS OFFERS FAITH-BASED PATRIOTIC ALTERNATIVE TO DECAYING GIRL SCOUTS.” Glenn Beck’s site, The Blaze, did their second piece on the group, following a 2012 intro. The National Review ran a Q&A between founder Patti Garibay and Kathryn Lopez, carrying the headline, “Good American Girls.”
So what’s a gal gotta do to qualify as a “Good American Girl” these days? This video from September 2012 provides a nice introduction. The group paints itself as a force “countering the culture,” which “provides girls the necessary tools to defend their faith and to live righteously despite the mixed messages of a culture devoid of a moral code.”
“Through the vehicle of scouting, girls are taught leadership and life skills that will enable them to put legs on their faith, or to develop a relationship with God when one does not exist,” says founder Garibay in the video. The group is fairly popular on Pinterest; my personal favorite finding calls the group “The Conservative alternative to the progressive femi-nazi Girl Scouts…Promoting Christian and Family Values.” The group is even endorsed by evangelical Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. On the group’s website, you’ll find a Statement of Faith, which identifies the group as a “Christ-centered leadership and character development ministry” and includes the tenant of “purity.”The group was founded in 1995, when Girl Scouts began allowing members reciting the organization’s Promise to replace “in God” with alternatives like “Allah” or “my creator.” You know—dogs-and-cats-living-together level stuff. Garibay told Lopez:
AHG was founded due to the Girl Scouts’ change to its Promise in 1993, allowing girls to replace the word “God” with whatever their beliefs were, including no belief in God at all. The parents around the kitchen table at the founding of AHG felt it integral that God was the foundation for the new character- and leadership-development program for girls.
It doesn’t seem she buys into the dark conspiracy theories about connections to Planned Parenthood—but she didn’t need to, either. From The Blaze:
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