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The founder of the YMCA was George Williams was born in 1821 on an English farm in Dulverton, Someset.
Baptized into the Church of England, he described himself growing up to be “a careless, thoughtless, godless, swearing young fellow.”
As a result, his family sent him away to apprentice at a draper’s shop in Bridgwater.
In 1837, Williams converted to Congregationalism and became an active member of the Zion Congregational Church.
He moved to London in 1841, and worked his way up to be a draper shop department manager.
Attending Weigh House Congregational Church, he became active in evangelizing.
Williams was inspired by reading Revival Lectures, published in 1835 by American lawyer-turned preacher Charles Finney.
Finney’s Lectures on Revival also inspired William and Catherine Booth who founded an organization in London to fight child sex-trafficking, preaching the saving Gospel among the poor – The Salvation Army.
Williams was appalled at the immoral conditions surrounding young working men, so he gathered his fellow drapers in London and, on June 6, 1844, founded a place where young men could go and not tempted into sin.
The YMCA pioneered integrating prayer and bible study with athletics.
This was the beginning of the 19th century movement known as “Muscular Christianity,” which led to the concept of “good sportsmanship.”
Williams named this interdenominational Christian organization the Young Men’s Christian Association – Y.M.C.A., to be a “refuge of Bible study and prayer for young men seeking escape from the hazards of life on the streets.”
One George William’s earliest converts and contributors was his employer, George Hitchcock, whose daughter, Helen, Williams married in 1853.
Concerned with keeping young men from temptation, especially sexual sin and immorality, Sir George Williams stated:
“My life-long experience as a business man, and as a Christian worker among young men, has taught me that the only power in this world that can effectually keep one from sin, in all the varied and often attractive forms … is that which comes from an intimate knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as a present Savior …”
Williams continued:
“And I can also heartily testify that the safe Guide-Book by which one may be led to Christ is the Bible, the Word of God, which is inspired by the Holy Ghost.”
After 50 years of bringing young men to Christ, Williams was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1894.
YMCA Founder Sir George Williams died November 6, 1905.
He was buried in the historic St. Paul’s Cathedral.
A stained-glass window in his honor was placed in Westminster Abbey.
In Montreal, Canada, the YMCA founded Sir George Williams University.
Though later merged into Concordia University, it retained the campus name “Sir George Williams Campus.”
The early 1881 emblem for the YMCA had the names of the five parts of the world: Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa and America.
It has grown to be the oldest and largest youth charity in the world, with a membership of millions in 124 countries.
An early emblem of the YMCA had at the center an open Bible displaying John 17:21, referencing the verse:
“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
Underneath the triangle were the letters XP, called the “Chi-Rho,” which were the first two Greek letters of the name of Christ — “Χριστοῦ.”
In 1885, the words “Spirit-Mind-Body” in a triangle were added by Dr. Luther Gulick, Jr., director of the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Dr. Gulick stated:
“The triangle stands … for the symmetrical man, each part developed with reference to the whole, and not merely with reference to itself …
What authority have we for believing that this triangle idea is correct? It is scriptural …
Such statements as, “Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all they heart and soul and mind and strength,” indicate … the scriptural view … that the service of the Lord includes the whole man.
The words, which in the Hebrew and Greek are translated “strength,” refer in both cases entirely to physical strength.“
In Switzerland, the Geneva chapter of the YMCA was founded by Henri Dunant in 1852.
Dunant wrote (Martin Gumpert, Dunant, The Story of the Red Cross, NY: Oxford University Press, 1938, p. 22)::
“A group of Christian young men has met together in Geneva to do reverence and worship to the Lord Jesus whom they wish to serve …
They have heard that among you, too, there are brothers in Christ, young like themselves, who love their Redeemer and gather together that under His guidance, and through the reading of the Holy Scriptures, they may instruct themselves further.
Being deeply edified thereby, they wish to unite with you in Christian friendship.”
In 1859, Henri Dunant organized care for 23,000 dying and wounded at the Battle of Solferino, Italy.
Henri Dunant then founded of the International Red Cross in 1863, for which he became the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1876, when Turkey was at war with Russia, the Red Cross introduced the name Red Crescent to allow Christian-motivated charity and humanitarian work to be carried on in Islamic countries.
In 1897, Henri Dunant supported Jews in their effort to repopulate their traditional homeland by being one of the few non-Jews to attend the First Zionist Congress in Basel.
During the Civil War, D.L. Moody ministered to soldiers on the battle-lines with the YMCA’s United States Christian Commission. He went on to become an internationally renown evangelist.
When the 1871 Great Chicago Fire destroyed Chicago’s YMCA, D.L. Moody raised funds to rebuild it.
Chicago White Stocking baseball star Billy Sunday began attending YMCA meetings in 1886 before beginning his career as a revival preacher.
Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute began a Bible Training school in 1893 to prepare students for Christian ministry.
Students helped out at community churches on Sundays; staffed a Humane Society; cared for area sick and needy; and ran a YMCA.
Booker T. Washington spoke at Memorial Hall in Columbus, Ohio, May 24, 1900 (The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 5: 1899-1900, Univ. of Illinois Press, 1976, p. 543-544):
“Dr. Washington began his address after a quartet sang. He spoke of the 91 YMCA Organizations for colored youths; of the 5,000 colored men studying the Bible, and of the 640 Bible students at Tuskegee.”
Tuskegee professor George W. Carver wrote to YMCA official Jack Boyd in Denver, March 1, 1927:
“Keep your hand in that of the Master, walk daily by His side, so that you may lead others into the realms of true happiness, where a religion of hate, – which poisons both body and soul – will be unknown, having in its place the ‘Golden Rule’ way, which is the ‘Jesus Way’ of life will reign supreme.”
YMCA instructor James Naismith, at the behest of Dr. Gulick, invented the game of Basketball in 1891, at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts.
YMCA missionaries first took Basketball around the world.
In 1892, William Morgan came to study at the International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School — Springfield College. After meeting James Naismith, Morgan invented the game of Volleyball in 1895, at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
Edwin Brit Wyckoff described how Naismith, along with Theodore Roosevelt, was an admirer of British author Thomas Hughes’ popular book, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 1857:
“Muscular Christianity is Christianity applied to the treatment and use of our bodies. It is an enforcement of the laws of health by the solemn sanctions of the New Testament.”
This self-reliant, muscular sentiment was echoed by Lord Baden Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, wrote an introduction to a 1917 pamphlet on Scouting & Christianity:
“Scouting is nothing less than applied Christianity.”
Theodore Roosevelt also championed muscular Christianity, addressing the Holy Name Society, August 16, 1903:
“I am not addressing weaklings, or I should not take the trouble to come here. I am addressing strong, vigorous men, who are engaged in the active hard work of life … men who will count for good or for evil … who have strength to set a right example to others …
You cannot retain your self-respect if you are loose and foul of tongue, that a man who is to lead a clean and honorable life must inevitably suffer if his speech likewise is not clean and honorable …
A man must be clean of mouth as well as clean of life — must show by his words as well as by his actions his fealty to the Almighty …
We have good Scriptural authority for the statement that it is not what comes into a man’s mouth but what goes out of it that counts …”
He added:
“Every man here knows the temptations that beset all of us in this world. At times any man will slip. I do not expect perfection, but I do expect genuine and sincere effort toward being decent and cleanly in thought, in word, and in deed …
I expect you to be strong. I would not respect you if you were not.
I do not want to see Christianity professed only by weaklings; I want to see it a moving spirit among men of strength …”
Roosevelt continued:
“I should hope to see each man … become all the fitter to do the rough work of the world … and if, which may Heaven forfend, war should come, all the fitter to fight … I desire to see in this country the decent men strong and the strong men decent …
There is always a tendency among very young men … to think that to be wicked is rather smart; to think it shows that they are men … Oh, how often you see some young fellow who boasts that he is going to ‘see life,’ meaning by that that he is going to see that part of life which it is a thousandfold better should remain unseen!
I ask that every man here constitute himself his brother’s keeper by setting an example to that younger brother which will prevent him from getting such a false estimate of life. Example is the most potent of all things.
If any one of you in the presence of younger boys, and … misbehave yourself, if you use coarse and blasphemous language before them, you can be sure that these younger people will follow your example and not your precept.
It is no use to preach to them if you do not act decently yourself … The most effective way in which you can preach is by your practice …
The father, the elder brothers, the friends, can do much toward seeing that the boys as they become men become clean and honorable men …”
Roosevelt concluded:
“I have told you that I wanted you not only to be decent, but to be strong. These boys will not admire virtue of a merely anemic type. They believe in courage, in manliness.
They admire those who have the quality of being brave, the quality of facing life as life should be faced, the quality that must stand at the root of good citizenship in peace or in war.
If you are to be effective as good Christians you must possess strength and courage, or your example will count for little with the young …
I want to see every man able to hold his own with the strong, and also ashamed to oppress the weak.
… I want to see him too strong of spirit to submit to wrong …
I want to see each man able to hold his own in the rough work of actual life outside, and also, when he is at home, a good man, unselfish in dealing with wife, or mother, or children.
Remember that the preaching does not count if it is not backed up by practice. There is no good in your preaching to your boys to be brave, if you run away.”
The President of the student YMCA chapter at Cornell University was John R. Mott.
He went on to served as General Secretary of the International YMCA Committee. For his efforts during World War I, John Mott was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946.
John R. Mott stated:
“I have a hard fight before me in crushing self but it must and will be done. I shall be wholly consecrated and strive to be like Christ.”
Dale Carnegie began his biblically-based motivational teaching in 1912 while serving as an instructor at the Y.M.C.A. on 125th Street in New York City. His best-selling book, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) has sold over 15 million copies.
On October 24, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson addressed the 70th anniversary of the YMCA:
“Christ came into the world to save others, not to save himself; and no man is a true Christian who does not think constantly of how he can lift his brother.”
Wilson continued:
“I do believe that at 70 the YMCA is just reaching its majority.
A dream greater even than George Williams ever dreamed will be realized in the great accumulating momentum of Christian men throughout the world …
These 70 years have just been a running start … now there will be a great rush of Christian principle upon the strongholds of evil and of wrong in the world.
Those strongholds are not as strong as they look … All you have to do is to fight, not with cannon but with light …
That, in my judgment, is what the Young Men’s Christian Association can do.”
During World War II, the YMCA printed and distributed prayer books to U.S. soldiers and sailors:
“The New Testament – An American Translation – Special Edition published for the Army and Navy Department by The National Board of the Young Men’s Christian Associations – One of the Agencies of the United States Service Organization – Association Press, 247 Madison Avenue, New York” June 1942.
The YMCA had inspired Mary Jane Kinnaird
to found the Young Women’s Christian Association in 1855.
to found the Young Women’s Christian Association in 1855.
Kinnaird had worked with Florence Nightingale to train nurses to during the Crimean War with Russia.
Donald Fraser wrote in Mary Jane Kinnaird (London: Nisbet & Co., 1890)
Mary Jane Kinnaird led a prayer movement for world evangelism, writing in a tract that believers should offer “… united prayer in reference … to the condition of the Jews, Mohammedans, and the heathen world.”
Kinnaird continued:
“Prayer … awakens such strong opposition … from the world, the flesh, and the devil …
Hence the power of prayer — when to one God and Father, through one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and by one Holy Spirit, the prompter of prayer, the multitude of them that believe appeal for … strength to fight the good fight of faith.”
In recent years, the YMCA, like the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and other community-based organizations, have been under pressure to distance themselves from their Judeo-Christian founding principles.
On May 21, 2018, YMCA of the USA issued a press release:
“WASHINGTON, PRNewswire —
The Biden Foundation and YMCA of the USA, Y-USA – today announced a joint three-year effort to foster LGBTQ inclusion and equity at YMCA locations nationwide … a pilot cohort of Ys … will develop and implement locally focused strategies designed to engage and support LGBTQ individuals …
… These strategies may include staff training; member outreach and engagement; program innovation for LGBTQ youth, adults, seniors and families; and community collaborations. In following years, the best practices and tools developed by the cohort will be scaled to reach Ys nationwide.”
Funding was also provided by the Gill Foundation and the David Bohnett Foundation.
“The Biden Foundation is committed to changing our culture so that everyone, including LGBTQ people, feel supported and affirmed,” said Louisa Terrell, Executive Director of the Biden Foundation. “We could not ask for better partners in this work than YMCA of the USA, with its history, reach, and impact in communities across America.”
Encouraging the organizations to stay true to its founding principles, Woodrow Wilson address the YMCA in 1914:
“Eternal vigilance is the price, not only of liberty, but of a great many other things …
It is the price of one’s own soul … What shall he give in exchange for his own soul, or any other man’s soul? …
There is a text in Scripture … It says godliness is profitable in this life as well as in the life that is to come …
This world is intended as the place in which we shall show that we know how to grow in the stature of manliness and of righteousness.
I have come here to bid Godspeed to the great work of the Young Men’s Christian Association.”
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