Article

Character

Comment

Friendship

Virtues

2 September 2025

6 min read

Guiding’s new badges don’t deserve this media criticism

Encouraging interests builds character now and for tomorrow

Paula Duncan

Paula Duncan is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, researching OCD and faith.

Girl Guiding.

As a Brownie leader, what I love about Girlguiding is the perfect blend of tradition and modernity. Lots of people will have memories of belonging to Brownies or Guides. In conversation, it’s often the uniforms that people mention first – for ex-Brownies it’s always the brown dresses, or the iconic yellow sweatshirt which has now been relaunched for adults as a retro range. I will admit to buying one almost immediately and have loved wearing my tribute to the Jeff Banks design era of uniform that I loved so much as a child.

For those unfamiliar with the organisation, Girlguiding began in 1909 with a small group of girls who joined a Scout rally and bravely asked that there be ‘something for the girls’ too. Today, Girlguiding has four youth sections: Rainbows (aged 4-7), Brownies (7-10), Guides (10-14), and Rangers (14-18).

I’m particularly excited to go back to our weekly meetings after the school holidays because a new range of interest badges have just been launched for all sections – 78 in total! These badges are designed so that girls can choose which activities they’d like to pursue – either a new skill or hobby or learning something new. Each badge fits into one of our six distinct programme areas: Be Well, Express Myself, Skills for My Future, Take Action, Know Myself, and Have Adventures.

A lot of the publicity surrounding the badges has been really positive – praising the organisation for representing the interests of young people. The badges were designed, after all, with the input of members and with extensive testing by groups across the UK, and feedback from 11,000 girls about the new badge offerings. My Brownie unit enjoyed being part of the testing pool for the ‘Passions’ badge, which encouraged them to think more deeply about the hobbies they have and try some new pursuits. Reading the final version of the badge when it was released was brilliant because I could really see the impact of the Brownies’ feedback.

I’ve been disappointed to see the organisation’s new badges be subject to some heavy media criticism and that headlines have been tailored to mock, rather than share the relevant and interesting content that the badges actually offer. The Telegraph used the current tensions around gender identity to create a clickbait title: “Girlguiding ‘hostess’ badge gets gender-neutral makeover” which, inevitably, caused a flurry of (largely unpleasant) Facebook comments about identity politics. While the article itself does well to describe some of the new badge offerings, leading with a controversial heading detracts from the truth that the previous ‘hostess’ badge was discontinued as part of the programme refresh and that member feedback brought about a return of a similar offering.

Victoria Richards writes in The Independent that: ‘Girlguiding is […] modernising the way it interacts with young people. Speaking their language. After all, what use is an organisation for girls if nobody wants to join it?’

This does not seem to be the opinion of Lucy Mangan who writes a particularly scathing indictment of the movement in general and in a large part advocates for teaching children how to use a gun and cut down trees. Obviously unfamiliar with the Girlguiding programme, she misses that our new interest badges are just that – part of a programme that encourages girls to pursue their own interests and often to try something new! “Interest” simply means that we allow girls to choose for themselves what they are interested in learning more about. We remain dedicated to teaching core life skills (things like first aid, I’d argue, rather than using a gun) as part of the Skills Builder set of badges that progress through each section.

An opinion piece in The Express says: ‘The new Girl Guide badges are so easy, it’s like awarding a gold star for blinking’… This simply isn’t true; even the youngest members are encouraged to try something new or improve on a skill. It’s strange that none of these critical articles come from current members or leaders. Sometimes we do offer badges for participation at an event or marking on occasion but part of the joy of those is collecting them. I love looking for a badge patch when I’m on holiday and adding them to my camp blanket. There are some fantastic blankets out there – with badges from people’s travels, awards they’ve earned, and badges they’ve swapped with others they’ve met at events.

Why shouldn’t we be encouraging our youngest members to have courage?

Most articles – including the BBC – have chosen to lead articles with the range of badges that fall under ‘Be Well’ or ‘Know Myself’ and are therefore designed to help young people learn valuable skills in self-care and identifying the things that are important to them. They are, by nature, designed to help young people learn more about themselves and how they interact with the world.

This leads readers to believe that all badges are ‘self-centred’ as critics like Mangan have written. Why shouldn’t we be encouraging our youngest members to have courage? Girlguiding’s research has shown that 50 per cent of girls surveyed felt anxious about their future in 2024. Showing girls how to manage feelings of worry from a young age can only be a good thing. Our Rainbows are encouraged to “share the laughter with someone else.” Brownie Guides are working on their friendship badge are asked to “spend time with a new or old friend”.

Dig a little further and look to the other interest badges and there can be no doubt that the programme Girlguiding offers is important and helps young people to challenge themselves and build new skills. The activities offered are relevant to the concerns of young people and the betterment of their communities. Rangers are supported to learn more about voting and how to ensure their voice is heard. In a world with fast fashion and markets like Temu dominating digital spaces, Guides can find out how to make informed decisions as part of their Conscious Consumer badge.

Brownies can learn new languages or work towards their Mechanic badge. Even the youngest girls have the chance to learn about key principles of architecture in their Construction badge – the full syllabus of which is online. For critics who say that traditional skills like knot tying, sewing, or semaphore are forgotten by Girlguiding, all of these can be found in our Skills Builders and unit meeting activities. It can be so easy to be critical of something new or something that is changing without doing any further research to find out whether the headlines are accurate. Clickbait headlines are designed to drive up traffic and revenue, but something of the truth is lost in the process.

I am incredibly proud to be part of an organisation that offers a rich, varied programme to young people. It has helped me grow from an anxious primary school child to a leader who can recognise the value of teaching life skills that are relevant to our time and place. Right now, girls need to have the resources and support to thrive in both the tangible world, and in an increasingly digital world.

For those disheartened by the reception of the new badges, it’s worth looking to smaller news outlets. Those who have taken the time to garner responses from members and young people are much more encouraging and help to celebrate an exciting new step in our programme. I hope that those who can see the value of the programme offered to girls through Girlguiding can use this opportunity to find out more. If anything in this article has resonated with you, please do check out volunteer opportunities.

From someone who likes to incorporate things like Star Trek into my academic work, why shouldn’t we be able to offer a badge about Fandoms? Why shouldn’t we celebrate the things that we enjoy? There really is something for every girl, even if the loudest voices in Facebook comment sections don’t make that clear. I’m incredibly proud to be part of an organisation that brings out the best in young people (and in me as an adult leader!).

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Review

Culture

Film & TV

Politics

War & peace

18 December 2024

6 min read

Watching Bonhoeffer from below

Does a new biopic capture a compelling and complex character?

David Emerton

David Emerton is Director of St Mellitus College, East Midlands.

Two men, dressed in the style of the 1940s look around shocked.

Jonas Dassler as Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Angel Studios.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not live to see his 40th birthday.

Sentenced to death in a sham trial at Flossenbürg concentration camp, he was stripped naked, led to the gallows, and executed on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler in April 1945, essentially for treason. Ever since, Bonhoeffer’s life and thought has been subject to projects in wish fulfilment. Bonhoeffer has been secularised, liberalised, radicalised, and popularised by people across the religious and political spectrum, and in ways that evidence only casual concern for historical fact and little (or no) comprehension of his literary estate. Most recently and remarkably—in fact, repulsively—Bonhoeffer’s name has even been used by the right-wing Heritage Foundation to denounce the so-called “open-borders activism” and “environmental extremism” of the American Left in its Project 2025 wish list for the presidency of President-elect Donald Trump.

It was with mixed feelings, therefore, that I sat down in a movie theatre in downtown San Diego a few weeks ago to watch the new film Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. Released by the Christian production company, Angel Studios, and written and directed by Todd Komarnicki (producer of Elf and writer of Sully), the film (coming to UK cinemas in early 2025) is trailered thus:

“As the world teeters on the brink of annihilation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is swept into the epicenter of a deadly plot to assassinate Hitler. With his faith and fate at stake, Bonhoeffer must choose between upholding his moral convictions or risking it all to save millions of Jews from genocide. Will his shift from preaching peace to plotting murder alter the course of history or cost him everything?”

The accompanying image has the pacifist-preaching Bonhoeffer holding a gun.

Like any big-screen biopic, Bonhoeffer mixes fact and fiction with a healthy dollop of artistic and cinematic license. This license is of course necessary for the screenwriting art: time needs compressing; biography needs enlivening; peoples’ character needs demonstrating; ultimately, the film needs watching.

There is no doubt that Bonhoeffer spent time at Union Theological Seminary in New York and that whilst there he bemoaned the state of American theology, actively participated in the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and became close friends with an African-American student, Frank Fisher.

But learning to play jazz piano at a Harlem nightclub? Being beaten by a racist hotel owner with the butt of a rifle? And becoming an ardent advocate for African-American civil rights?

There is no doubt, too, that, as Hitler rose to power, Bonhoeffer spoke out against the dangers inherent in the Führer concept and that throughout the 1930s he steadfastly critiqued Nazism and national socialist ideology.

But were his words ever these?

“I can’t keep on pretending that praying and teaching is enough.” “Dirty hands ... It’s all that I have to offer.” Or, in response to being asked by his friend and student, Eberhard Bethge, if Hitler is the first evil leader since Scripture was written: “No. But he’s the first one I can stop.”

No one is going to dispute, either, that Bonhoeffer led an underground seminary at Finkenwalde to train future pastors of the Confessing Church in Germany; or that he said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” (Even if, in German, he more literally said, “Every call of Christ leads into death”).

But what is disputable is that (as the film suggests) Finkenwalde was a safe haven from which a plot to assassinate Hitler was launched, and that Bonhoeffer’s most memorable aphorism of Christian discipleship was intended to be spliced (as it is in the film) into footage of a conspirator preparing a suicide bomb.

And Bonhoeffer certainly did join the German Military Intelligence and act as something akin to a double-double-agent. He certainly did pass information about the conspiracy to international church leaders on his travels outside of Germany. He certainly did know about both “Operation Seven” (a plan to smuggle a small group of Jews and Jewish Christians out of Germany to safety in Switzerland), and the planned plot to assassinate Hitler.

But to suggest (as the film does) that Bonhoeffer was central to these plans and personally involved in them, or that he asked Bishop George Bell to lobby Winston Churchill to supply a bomb that the conspirators could use to kill Hitler, is nothing more than highly contentious, even conspiratorial, conjecture.

In a panoply of embellished facts, the film’s final scenes are in equal measure harrowing, arresting, and deeply moving.

Bonhoeffer’s life and thought is obviously compelling.

It is also complex.

Bonhoeffer left behind an array of books, essays, sermons, unfinished manuscripts, working notes, and letters, all of which are notoriously difficult to interpret, especially in the round. Bonhoeffer rides roughshod over this difficulty and complexity, and thereby trivialises the legacy of a modern-day, martyred Christian saint. It also tells in part an untrue story—the story of a man destined, indeed determined, to disavow a life of prayer, teaching, and diplomacy to become a would-be assassin and engage in violent political espionage and activism at any cost.

This is a (very) far cry from the man who, in 1930, urges American Christians to remember that they have brothers and sisters “in every people,” not just in their own, and that if the people of God were united then “no nationalism, no hate of races or classes can execute its designs and ... the world will have its peace.”

It’s a far cry from the man who, in November 1940, writes that “radicalism,” and “Christian radicalism” in particular, “arises from a conscious or unconscious hatred ... toward the world, whether it is the hate of the godless or of the pious.”

And it’s a far cry from the man who, at Christmas 1942, reflects on the “incomparable value” of having learned “to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.”

Bonhoeffer therefore risks exposing Bonhoeffer’s legacy, as a theologian, pastor, and man of resistance, to yet further abuse. At a time when political and religious discourse is increasingly laced with xenophobic, authoritarian, and nationalistic rhetoric, and at worst Christian nationalistic rhetoric, this is not what is needed. It is not surprising that Bonhoeffer scholars across the world and Bonhoeffer’s own descendants have registered concern.

But is Bonhoeffer nevertheless worth the price of a ticket?

Perhaps surprisingly, I think that it is: if only for its denouement.

In a panoply of embellished facts, the film’s final scenes are in equal measure harrowing, arresting, and deeply moving. Shortly before his execution, Bonhoeffer leads his fellow prisoners in morning prayer, breaking bread and drinking wine with them in commemoration of the death of Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer then walks to the gallows in peace, knowing that for him, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, his death is but the beginning of life.

It is such steadfast hope, in the face of all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions (to borrow some words from Fyodor Dostoevsky), that the church and our world today is perhaps most desperately in need of.

Bonhoeffer opens in UK and Irish cinemas on 7 March.

Bonhoeffer film web site.

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