Spreading Protestant Modernity : : Global Perspectives on the Social Work of the YMCA and YWCA, 1889–1970 / / ed. by Ian Tyrrell, Harald Fischer-Tiné, Stefan Huebner.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus PP Package 2021 Part 2
• MitwirkendeR: Antolihao, Lou,; Bean, Ryan,; Bromber, Katrin,; Cretu, Doina Anca,; Cummings, Lance,; Fischer-Tiné, Harald,; Hillmer, Paul,; Huebner, Stefan,; Matějka, Ondřej,; Neuhaus, Dolf-Alexander,; Tillman, Margaret Mih,; Tyrrell, Ian,
• HerausgeberIn: Fischer-Tiné, Harald,; Huebner, Stefan,; Tyrrell, Ian,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2020]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Perspectives on the Global Past
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (280 p.) :; 6 b&w illustrations

A half century after its founding in London in 1844, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) became the first NGO to effectively push a modernization agenda around the globe. Soon followed by a sister organization, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), founded in 1855, the Y-movement defined its global mission in 1889. Although their agendas have been characterized as predominantly religious, both the YMCA and YWCA were also known for their new vision of a global civil society and became major agents in the world-wide dissemination of modern “Western” bodies of knowledge.The YMCA’s and YWCA’s “secular” social work was partly rooted in the Anglo-American notions of the “social gospel” that became popular during the 1890s. The Christian lay organizations’ vision of a “Protestant Modernity” increasingly globalized their “secular” social work that transformed notions of science, humanitarianism, sports, urban citizenship, agriculture, and gender relations. Spreading Protestant Modernity shows how the YMCA and YWCA became crucial in circulating various forms of knowledge and practices that were related to this vision, and how their work was coopted by governments and rival NGOs eager to achieve similar ends.The studies assembled in this collection explore the influence of the YMCA’s and YWCA’s work on highly diverse societies in South, Southeast, and East Asia, North America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Focusing on two of the most prominent representative groups within the Protestant youth, social service, and missionary societies (the so-called “Protestant International”), the book provides new insights into the evolution of global civil society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its multifarious, seemingly secular, legacies for today’s world.Spreading Protestant Modernity offers a compelling read for those interested in global history, the history of colonialism and decolonization, the history of Protestant internationalism, and the trajectories of global civil society. While each study is based on rigorous scholarship, the discussion and analyses are in accessible language that allows everyone from undergraduate students to advanced academics to appreciate the Y-movement’s role in social transformations across the world.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Conventions -- Introduction The Rise and Growth of a Global “Moral Empire”: The YMCA and YWCA during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries -- Part I. The Origins of the YMCA’s and YWCA’s Social Work in Asia: The Social Gospel and Local Interpretations -- 1 Vectors of Practicality: Social Gospel, the North American YMCA in Asia, and the Global Context -- 2 Proximity, Progress, and the YMCA in Early Twentieth-Century Asia, 1902–1912 -- 3 The Japanese YMCA, Christian Masculinities, and Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 1905–1919 -- 4 The YMCA’s Message of Public Health and Masculinity, 1910s–1920s: Transnational Impacts of the Physical Education Programs in China, the Philippines, and Japan -- 5 Mediating Modern Motherhood: The Shanghai YWCA’s “Women’s Work for Women,” 1908–1949 -- Part II. The YMCA and Internationalism after World War I: The Attempts to Integrate Eastern Europe into a Global Civil Society -- 6 Returning “Genuine Faith” to Modernity: The Academic YMCA in Interwar Czechoslovakia -- 7 For the “Youth of a Great Nation”: The American YMCA and Nation Building in Greater Romania in the Interwar Period -- Part III. The YMCA and American Society: Inculcating White Protestant Middle-Class Values -- 8 The Idiom of Modernity and the Construction of the Native Speaker: YMCA Language Instruction at Home and Abroad -- 9 Building a “Modern” “American” “Indian”: The Legacy of Y-Indian Guides, 1926–1995 -- Part IV. The Aftermath of Fascism and World War II: The YMCA’s Social Work in Cold War Africa -- 10 Education for Leadership: The YMCA in Late Imperial Ethiopia, 1940s–1970s -- Contributors -- Index