Is Rainbows religious?

[plantmum]

Joined the Rainbows waiting list on a nostalgic whim and the place finally came up. DD (4.5) went tonight and she loved it, but perusing the info, they have 'church parades' and they get certificates for attending. Is Rainbows quite Christian? I thought they were more secular these days.

My daughter's just joined brownies and the promise thing has been amended to refer not just to a Christian God I believe.

Guiding is secular, unless the unit is a sponsored unit which this might. Have a chat with the volunteer leaders first as this might be the case. Have a look at the website www.girlguiding.org.uk for more information.

Hello!

I am a Rainbow Leader and we are officially non denominational.

However, that said, we do get invited to youth events at the local church which we advertise to our parents/guardians as optional (they fall on different evenings to our weekly meet up).

Such parades are optional anyway so you can just opt out of those if they bother you. My daughter has been going a term and I haven’t heard any mention of god so far. The promise is to ‘think about my beliefs’ I think.

The promise | Girlguiding https://search.app/o7PyYHdKxqUNdZgMA

Some groups do church parade, mainly I've seen around Remembrance Sunday but not the monthly church parade when I was in Brownies and Guides (in the dark ages)

Church parades etc are voluntary, normally more seen if the unit is attached to the local church, which will be reflected in the units name and they normally meet in a church hall rather than a guide hut. The promise for all units was amended some years ago and talks about 'my god' if I remember correctly.

No. Ours did a carol concert but mainly songs about reindeer and Santa. And it was super cute!

Other than the fact our group is held in a church hall it has nothing religious about it.

I thought it was secular now but we've already had three sessions in the adjacent church (parents had to stay for the services with no warning too) and we only joined last September so it must depend on the group.

@ConflictofInterest don't know if I'm reading that right! Did you turn up for rainbows and get hustled into a church service?

Im a rainbow and brownie leader. Pp are correct that rainbows are officially non denominational and we welcome all girls of any or no faith. However there are some small exceptions - some units are "sponsored units" by a specific church so may have some religious requirements in terms of attending eg. Church parade. The leader can tell you if this is the case
The second way is that others may meet in a church hall at a very heavily discounted hire fee and so attend church events in return. Its really hard to find affordable venues and keep guiding low cost so many units end up in church halls. There will be no obligation for you to join in that side of things if you dont want to.

The promise has no mention of God at all anymore.

Wishing your daughter a very long and happy rainbows experience (i can't wait for my own DDs to be old enough to start!)

How interesting that it’s changed. I can still recall the Brownie promise I made over 40 years ago.
I promise that I will do my best to do my duty to God. To serve the Queen, to help other people and keep the Brownie Guide law.

I’m now of to look up if that’s correct.

Our unit is not at all religious. We go to the local remembrance service, but that’s it.

No, all ‘scouting’ type groups get invited for say Remembrance Sunday and maybe Mothering Sunday to represent the community. You don’t have to go. It’s very minimal. Mine are in Scouting (Beavers, Cubs, Scouts - which I found better than Guides btw) and we only occasionally go to the church services. We aren’t Christian, but it’s nice to show your community engagement so I don’t mind in that sense. I can’t imagine they get badges. When mine was in Rainbows, the badges were very achievement based - learning and demonstrating a skill, not for turning up to something (same with Scouts).

I don’t know but I suspect that in Guides where there are religious tones, there is always a non-religious option. So in Scouting, in the pledge, traditionally was “I promise to do my best to be kind and helpful and to love God.” Our units don’t even teach this wording. I guess you could request it if you wanted to use it. We say “I promise to do my best to be kind and helpful and to love our world.”

I would expect there to be very similar options. But no, it’s not at all overtly religious. It’s mostly crafts in the village hall and nature walks.

The Rainbows' Promise is "I promise that I will do my best to think about my beliefs and to be kind and helpful."

and for everybody else

"I promise that I will do my best, to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, to serve the King and my community, to help other people and to keep the (Brownie) Guide law."

It's a long way from promising to do their Duty to God.

DD does Rainbows. They attend remembrance day mass service but aside from that there's no other religious aspect. She's done some fab things with Rainbows like day trips and had her first sleepover last year. It was one of those slow burn activities, took a few months to get used to it now she's over a year in and absolutely loves it. One thing we don't really get a lot of time to do is badge work but there are other girls who do it avidly and some who don't do it at all. We've done the odd bit of badge work but they do a lot of badge work in the actual group meetings each week.

I was at brownies in the early 2000s, my promise was:

I promise that I will do my best, to love my God. To help other people and to keep the Brownie Guide Law.

So not much difference to yours.

My children went to Beavers but the religious nonsense was kept to a minimum.

Have you ever considered using Chat GPT to get something relevant to the discussion?

@BookyGilly yes this thread is about Rainbow Guides - as in the youngest age group in The Girl Guides.
It's just their name. It's nothing to do with actual 🌈🌈🌈
😂

Well said @NeverDropYourMooncup

@Needmorelego Thanks for the info. With regards to the question, I thought the Girl Guides was a Christian organisation still. It used to be normal practice to participate in church parades and services.

Our local Rainbow/Brownie unit is attached to a church but even so don’t do anything actually religious, it’s all games, STEM, baking, first aid etc. Most of the kids at it, including my DC, attend the associated faith school so it wouldn’t be a problem for us if it was religious but it’s definitely not, although they will have a stall at the annual church fun day and encourage the children to come along.

My DDs have been in a girlguiding group for 4 years and their venue is a village church hall. There are no religious obligations. They just help out by delivering Christmas cards for the church. Anything else they do is just being part of the community, bag packing at the local Co-op, visit to the care home for arts & crafts etc. nothing religious.

It depends on the group. DD started at one Brownies with the daughter of a friend and was very upset that they sang a hymn and said a prayer. We moved her to another group (still in a church) where there was no religious element.