For the past 50 years there have been variations of the British Scouting Association's scout pledge for Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and those who live in the UK, but who are not UK citizens. For those without any religious belief, nothing was in place, until now.
"Throughout its 106-year history the Movement has continued to evolve and today marks an important step in that journey," Wayne Bulpitt, U.K. Chief Commissioner for The Scouting Association, told NBC.
The deliberation lasted 10 months and the new atheist version will be available to be used by scout groups by January 2014. The change to accept non-religious scouts was first led by the British Girl Guides to drop the phrase "to love my God" from their promise in June 2013.
The new pledge has replaced the original "On my honor, I promise that I will do my best, to do my duty to God and to the Queen, to help other people and to keep the Scout Law," to "I promise that I will do my best to uphold our Scout values."
Terry Sanderson, the president of the National Secular Society has long campaigned for an end to the exclusion of the non-religious in the Scouts.
"It means that the Scout movement is at last open to everyone, and young people who don't have a religious belief can join in good conscience," Sanderson told NBC.
The Church of England was pleased that the original "Duty to God" will stay in the original pledge and Church spokesman, Rt. Revd. Paul Butler told NBC that "enabling people of all faiths and none to affirm their beliefs through an additional alternative promise the Scout movement has demonstrated that it is both possible, and I would argue preferable, to affirm the importance of spiritual life and not to restrict meaning to arbitrary self-definition."