[Alex Murphy]

The United Methodist Church, as an entity, doesn't sponsor those Boy Scout troops (in general). Rather, a separate entity called United Methodist Men is the sponsor. I suspect the other denominations actually operate the same way. This keeps the business of Scouting out of the control of the church board and the higher administrative levels of the United Methodist Church.

Something was bugging me about the table of numbers, and your post prompted me to do a little research. Check this out:

Number of LDS-hosted scouting units — 37,856.
Number of LDS churches in the USA — 11,841

Number of UMC-hosted scouting units — 10,868
Number of UMC churches in the USA — 34,000

Number of Catholic-hosted scouting units — 8,397
Number of Catholic parishes in the USA — 17,644

(I didn't cover the last three because the labels were too vague, i.e. "Baptist" not SBC, "Presbyterian" not OPC, etc).

Notice the ratio of support. Statistically speaking, every LDS ward in the country sponsors an average of three and and half BSA troops each, while less than half of all Catholic and Protestant local churches sponsor even one BSA troop. Culturally speaking, Mormons can be seen putting all of their support and trust in a non-Mormon, non-religious organization to define "good character" behaviors and values for their children. Catholics and some Protestant denominations, on the other hand, sponsor explicitly religious "good character" alternatives (such as Awana, the Royal Ambassadors, etc), which would explain why their support of the BSA is comparatively lacking.

[muawiyah]

At the same time most Methodist churches are on their last legs financially, so only active churches with members have a UM Mens organization available to sponsor a Scout unit.