I know many young adults (and adults) who are or were Scouts.
Our congregation hosts a scout troop.
I have supported scouts who are working towards becoming Eagle Scouts.
I have participated in their Court of Honor.
I admire the values scouting does its best to instill in young adults.
They are values which I try to model in my own life and which I did my best to teach my two sons.
From all accounts, those values were not the ones on display yesterday when President Trump spoke at the annual Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia.
I hope the phone lines and the email inboxes of the national leadership of the Boy Scouts are filled with calls and emails from scouts and their parents who are deeply offended by what was said.
I hope every scout receives an apology from the national scout leadership team detailing what was offensive and wrong and how it was and is counter to what the Boy Scouts say they stand for and value.
I hope there were conversations late into the evening last night as troop leaders debriefed what happened and why and how it was hurtful and how it was antithetical to what scouts stand and say together each time they meet.
And while I doubt it will happen, I hope the President apologizes.
He asked me how I was going to address the increasingly divisive rhetoric in and around the presidential election.
Behind his question was both was both an assumption and a request.
The assumption was that this place – a church – would have something to say about how we are talking to and about one another. The request was for some sort of framework; some reminders of values that he could use and others could use to think about and to shape his own response.
At some point, our conversation shifted from How was I going to talk about it to How might he talk about it. He is an educator. Charged with helping young adults not only learn facts and figures, but, more importantly, helping young adults learn to think and to articulate their ideas. What he was seeing was that the rhetoric of the campaign was already spilling over into the hallways and the classrooms of the school where he worked.
Where is the moral voice? He asked.
Not the domestic policy or international affairs voice.
But the voice which reminds the rest of us of how we are to talk and to treat each other especially in such a heated and divisive moment?
In the end, that voice is our voice.
And, we are left to decide if and how we will use it.