The ymca and globalisation of pysical education

29 Mission of the YMCA arose from the interpretation of the present reality. In the Paris Basis, this was not expressed, although it was described in the reports to the First World’s Conference. There were two basic points, which the YMCA stressed. The first part of the interpretation was the life conditions of young men that the flood of youth to towns had caused. Due to long working hours and crowded dormitories, young men were subject to negative influences without the possibility of personal development. The second part of the interpretation dealt with the spiritual condition of youth in general. From a revivalistic point of view, young people were spiritually passive and distant from the Kingdom of God.

The actual goal was the improvement of the life conditions of young men. However, as Paul Limbert notes, “the YMCA at its best has been more than a ‘mutual improvement society’; it has been a movement with a mission to extend the Kingdom of Christ among other young men (WComR 1955, 8).” These two goals were not two separate aims but complemented each other. Improving life conditions was seen as a requirement for the possibility of personal development, which included both mental and spiritual aspects. Spiritual development, in turn, enabled a young man to resist those social evils that threatened his life.

The special vocation of the YMCA was work among young men. Thus, the movement was not focusing on general evangelism but on a special target group.

30 WComR 1881, 14.

31 WComR 1881, 14f.

32 Shedd 1955a, 70f.

33 Quoted by Hopkins 1951, 80. See also Ross (1951, 49f.). Morse (1913, 52) says that the Paris Basis was “adopted as a basis of world fellowship.” However, this might be a simplification of the process. Both Hopkins (1951, 362-369) and Ross (1951, 57ff.) state that the restriction to Evangelical churches was made in 1869 and that the interpretation of the Paris Basis as an international bond occurred only then.

34 Morse 1913, 279f. The definition of Evangelical churches had already been made in Detroit in 1868:

"…And we hold those churches to be Evangelical which, maintaining the Holy Scriptures to be the only infallible rule of faith and practice, do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (the only begotten of the Father, King of kings, and Lord of lords, in whom dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and who was made sin for us, though knowing no sin, bearing our sins in his own body on the tree) as the only name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved from everlasting punishment and to life eternal." (Morse 1913, 279). However, the NAIC refused to give a list of churches it regarded as ‘Evangelical’ (Morse 1913, 127; Latourette 1957, 25).

35 On the process, see Hopkins (1951, 414f., 512ff., 519-537), Ross (1951, 326-333, 341-347).

36 Hopkins 1951, 521, 524f.; Ross 1951, 58, 341.

37 Hopkins 1951, 520.

38 Henri Johannot (1955, 651f.) says that Gladstone used this argument for physical education in 1858. However, it does not exist in Gladstone’s presentation or in the report of the conference.

39 Juvenalis 100-154, X 356.

40 Elmer L. Johnson, in his History of YMCA Physical Education, notes that the roots of physical education were in German and Swedish systems of gymnastics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. When immigrants from these countries arrived in the US, they introduced their systems to their new country. Physical education had played a minor role in North America during the occupation of the frontier land in the West. When, in the second half of the nineteenth century the frontier faded, American society started to change from being simply a rural society to a complex industrial one. The emergence and development of YMCA physical education was part of this process. (Johnson 1979, 17ff. see also Macleod 1983, 3-28).

41 Putney 1995a.

42 Bloomfield (1994) sees that Charles Kingsley, an advocate and philosopher of Muscular Christianity, was influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg’s theses of the relationship between the soul and the body. She also notes the influence of German romanticism on Kingsley through Thomas Carlyle’s works. Stephen Prickett (2001), in turn, notes that Kingsley was influenced by Matthew Arnold (headmaster of Rugby) who attempted “to create an enlightened and forward-looking religion. For him this meant a Christianity that was ‘scientific,’ ‘non-Semitic,’ Indo-European, and Aryan... containing ‘more of Plato and Socrates than Joshua and David.” Prickett links this stream of nineteenth-century science directly to “the death-camps of the Second World War.” Hopkins (1967, 7), in turn, notes that Kingsley influenced Social Gospel as well.

43 On the Boys’ Brigades, see Macleod 1983, 85-93.

44 The relationship between the Scout Movement and the YMCA could be summarised by saying that in the YMCA Baden-Powell found sympathy for his ideas and means to diffuse it (Macleod 1983, 97, 140, 146; Warren 1986, 388). Veikko Tolin (1987, 202; 1989, 67) also mentions that Baden-Powell was a vice-president of the English National Council of the YMCA until his death.

45 Putney (1995a) defines as “foremost among questions” of his dissertation to study “why they thought this necessary and whether they succeeded.” An extreme wing of this movement was Men and Religion Forward Movement, which lived shortly for two years from 1900-1902. The movement was, as Putney (1995b, 280) puts it, “men’s adverse reaction to feminised Protestantism.”

46 Putney 1995a. On Muscular Christianity, see Putney (1995b) and Macleod (1983, 44-54).

47 Kingsley in 1858 (according to Bloomfield 1994, 174).

48 See Weber’s (1970a, 95-143) arguments on the asceticism of Calvinism, Pietism and Methodism.

49 It seems that during this time, Muscular Christianity was in a stage which Herbert Blumer (1953, 199-202) has called general social movement. In this early stage, a movement is more like a cultural trend without any specific organisation and expresses itself in texts of movement intellectuals who “are likely to be ‘voices in the wilderness’, pioneers without any solid following (idem 201).”

50 WConfPrep 1858; Shedd 1955a, 157.

51 Report of the Second World’s Conference 1858 (quoted in Shedd 1955b, 158).

52 Report of the Fourth World’s Conference 1865 (quoted in Shedd 1955a, 168f.).

53 Goss 1922, 1; Morse 1913, 79.

54 A Brief History of the YMCA Movement 2001.

55 Morse 1913, 77.

56 Morse 1913, 166.

57 Macleod 1983, 73; Johnson 1979, 27-42.

58 Social Gospel was a movement in American Protestant churches at the end of the 19^th century and at the first decades of the 20^th century, which tried to find Christian answers and solutions to problems of industrialism. Among its major proponents were reverends Walter Rauschenbusch, (whose Theology for Social Gospel from 1918 was a major definition of movements goals), Washington Gladden (‘the father of Social Gospel’), Shailer Matthews, Josiah Strong, and economists Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons. The movement rose both from the experiences of these men in their work and as a reaction against too individualistic a Christianity, which focused only on salvation of souls.

The peak of Social Gospel was the decade before the First World War. For example, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America endorsed it in 1908. The movement faded after WW I.

On Social Gospel, see Hopkins 1967(1940); White & Hopkins 1976; Handy 1966; Visser ‘t Hooft 1928; Niebuhr 1937; 1988.

59 Gladden 1902, 11f.

60 Hopkins 1951, 534.

61 Hopkins 1951, 393, 536.

62 Hopkins 1951, 393.

63 Hopkins 1979, 274ff., 725 n.5; Putney 1995b, 277f. On Social Gospel in Mott’s theology, see Hopkins 1979, 622-633.

64 On neglected voices in Social Gospel movement, see Lindley (1990). On African-Americans in the YMCA, see Mjagkij (1994) and Chandler (1995). On women in the North American YMCA, see DeMarche (1953), Hall & Sweet (1947) and Men and Women Adrift (1997).

65 Hopkins (1851, 12f.) notes that the rapid urbanisation also increased crime and argues that the Temperance Movement, reform movements, Tract and Bible societies, etc. were reactions to this.

66 Macleod 1983, 35.

67 Macleod 1983, 44.

68 Macleod 1983, 45.

69 Macleod 1983, 30.

70 WConfPrep 1913, 4.

71 For example, if one is tired and everything seems to fall on him, it is also easy to see God as Demander, as well.

72 Zald 1970, 33; Shedd 1955, 289.

73 Senior Director of Physical Education for Europe, Geo E. Goss (1922, 1) reported to the Copenhagen Plenary in 1922 as follows: “The second Association to include physical activities in its programme was Lausanne, (Switzerland) which took this action in 1872; the third, Liverpool, (England) in 1877; the next associations were: Montreal and Toronto (Canada), Stockholm (Sweden) and Paris (France), all of which commenced in 1888.” Goss probably meant that in these years those associations officially accepted the Four-fold Programme as their mission. As we saw above, there were already 101 gymnasiums in the US in 1886.

74 Zald 1970, 43ff.

75 Zald 1970, 45.

76 Morse 1913, 77ff.

77 Walter W. Gethman 1927-37, Tracy Strong 1937-53, Paul M. Limbert 1953-62.

78 On World Service, see Latourette (1957).

79 Expression “evangelization of the world in this generation” is originally from Arthur T. Pierson who used it in his sermon during the Mt. Hermon student conference in 1886 (Hopkins 1951, 297; 1979,70). The expression has become known via John R. Mott (see chapter 5.3.4.), who used the slogan in the title of his manual for Missionary Movement in 1900 (Mott 1900).

80 Latourette 1957, 33-46.

81 Latourette 1957, 50, 97; Shedd 1955b, 306ff., 310f.

82 In the Caribbean area, the sparks came mainly from Britain. Primarily, the Latin American YMCA was, however, an American plant.

83 The Calcutta YMCA was founded in 1854 but it soon ceased to operate. A new attempt was made in 1857, but a permanent Association managed to survive only since 1875. It was launched as a result of the evangelistic campaign of a Scottish Free Church Pastor. In 1891, 35 associations formed the National Council of YMCA of India, Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon. (The YMCAs of the World 1958, 87; David 1992, 19-24)

84 David 1992, 25f.; Latourette 1957, 109f.; Dunderdale 1993(1962), 19f.

85 David 1992, 28.

86 The North American YMCA had restricted its membership to men only in 1867 (Sweet 1953, 4).

87 According to David (1992, 30) “of the 250 members of the Madras YMCA in 1891, 56 per cent, that - is, 140 - were Indians, 82 Eurasians and 28 Europeans. 151 members were Christians (41 being Indian Christians) and 99 non-Christians, of whom 92 were Hindus, 4 Muslims and 3 Parsis.”

88 Traditionally, outcasts were denied permission to enter Hindu temples (Latourette 1957, 107). The YMCA policy was expressed by Rev. E. Yesudian in his address to the First National Convention in 1891 when he suggested that Christians practising the caste system should be excluded from active membership (David 1992, 34).

89 YMCA physical education made possible for India to participate in the Olympic games in 1924 for the first time (David 1992, 170-174; Dunderdale 1993(1962), 98f.).

90 The Student Christian Movement came in India in 1893. After the revivalistic student conference series of John R. Mott and Sherwood Eddy in 1895-6, it extended to several Indian towns. The significance of the Student Christian Movement, attached to the YMCA, was that it trained most prominent leaders of the Indian Church.

91 Ashram was a way to Indianise Christianity. It used the Yoga system in meditation and music in Indian Bhakti (worship of personal God) style. (David 1992, 10f., 24, 63-72, 240f.; Latourette 1957, 111ff., 125ff.)

92 The work of YMCA grew so fast that in 1907 the Indian movement was financially almost self-supporting: 12 Associations had their own buildings and 25 had rented ones. The well-founded basis gave fruit during the ‘Great Decades’ of Indian YMCA, from 1910-30. According to David, its people-oriented activities, indigenous leadership and catholic approach "brought it closer to the Indian people than most of the missionary bodies which remained sectarian, European-managed and distant.” (David 1992, 10f., 90, 96, 308.)

93 Devanandan 1953, 3.

94 Quoted in Shedd 1955a, 164.

95 Shedd 1955a, 194.

96 On the establishment of the work for the armed forces in the US, see Morse 1913, 219.222; Hopkins 1951, 453ff.

97 WConfPrep 1898, 10. See also Hopkins 1951, 454. Similar reports were heard from Germany and Britain. Shedd 1955b, 373.

98 Morse (1913, 219f.) and Hopkins (1951, 208ff.) tell, that the work, after the Civil War episode, started among the volunteer training camps of the National Guard. Thus, it might be that in some cases, the YMCA just followed its members to these camps. On the other hand, the YMCA had already focused on special groups of young men.

99 Strong 1955b, 580.

100 This, as Tracy Strong puts it, "has become a YMCA maxim. It is revolutionary. Why should such supreme loyalties as nation, race, confession, political parties, financial support become secondary in a service of a Christian organisation? Is not the answer found in the Christian conception of man as a child of God and God’s test to the nations and his disciples of ‘feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked and caring for the sick and visiting the imprisoned’?" (Strong 1953, 29.)

101 This limited the YMCA work to such services where it had competence. Often this meant that the work was carried on in partnership with other agencies like churches, YWCA, WSCF, the Provisional Committee of the WCC and the Red Cross. (Kilpatrick 1955, 594f., Strong 1955b, 557f.; Cedergren 1969, 70.). Reasons for the close co-operation between the YMCA and the ICRC were both in their common roots (Dunant) and in their ‘personal-union’ relationship. During the war years of 1914-1918, Paul Des Gouttes was both president of the World’s Alliance and secretary of the ICRC (Strong 1953, 28).

102 In all its activities, the YMCA had emphasised local leadership. Even in its extension work, the goal was to implement ‘self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating’ indigenous YMCAs (Latourette 1957, 50, 97; Shedd 1955b, 306ff., 310f.). The work in camps was no exception from this general policy. This policy was facilitated when there were trained YMCA leaders as soldiers, prisoners and refugees in camps where the work was done. One example of this policy was that in the 1940s, the YMCA was the only organisation in Palestine with Palestinian staff (WComR 1955, 56).

103 This principle sounds self-evident today but as we have seen in the case of India and in the case of African-Americans, the principle of equality in the 1940’s was not always clear. Moreover, Walter Kilpatrick tells that, after the Second World War, “for years international staff members could enter the major refugee countries only in the uniforms and with the status of Occupation personnel.” In those cases, they were under military law regulations, which stated even who could eat with whom. (Kilpatrick 1955, 595.)

104 Kilpatrick 1955, 589.