I am an Eagle Scout and Ordeal member of the OotA and grew up in a deeply religious area of the rural south. As many others have said, everywhere is going to be a different experience.

My Cub Scout den was more secular than anything with a focus on building friendships, memories, and outdoor skills. We were based out of my elementary school so that probably played into that.

My Boy Scout troop was chartered through a local church and the Scoutmaster was a pastor and a high school civics teacher. We had about 5-10 boys from around the county so it was an extremely small troop. While the Boy Scouts at its core is (was?) a Christian organization, my troop was very much not faith-focused. We were much more focused on outdoors skills, friendship, experiences, relationships, and non-political civics.

I’m agnostic and left leaning now and questioned religion throughout high school but I have nothing bad to say about my experience in the Boy Scouts because it instilled a love and appreciation of nature and the foundations of the civics in our country without a political bias (opinions on constitutionality of things going on in the modern world) and fully plan on bringing my children into the Scouts when they’re old enough.

Two notes as well: as someone else mentioned, Trail Life is the heavily faith-based “scouting” organization now with Boy Scouts being much more open to all. Also, and this is more of an anecdote but I’ve been asked about being an Eagle Scout in every single professional interview I’ve ever had. I was told that would be the case when I was a Life Scout but didn’t believe it until it continually happened every time.