One argument I have heard as to why the US is much more religious than Europe today is that the US was populated heavily by religious refugees who were more fanatic than those who stayed behind in Europe. These people then taught their kids to be fanatics, or the kids were born with DNA that predisposed them to being as fanatical as their parents were, etc. Some religious groups that started in Europe basically packed up the entire body of believers and moved here - the Amish are a good example of a migration of nearly the entire movement to a completely different area, and the dying out of the movement at home as the few remaining followers let themselves be assimilated into other churches.
I work for a Y (a particularly secular one at that) and the one thing that surprised me most when I started working there was that the Y I work for is almost 100% an independent organization. There is a central governing body that sort of sets the tone for the whole system, but Y’s are each independently operated with their own rules and guidelines. So the application in Chicago and the application in San Diego can be very very different. Where I work we don’t mention the Christian Principles portion at all, though we do have a variation on the rest of what you quoted.
Follow up thoughts on religious fanatics in the US (and the 13 colonies before 1776):
- Pilgrims, of course. Their main purpose in coming to Massachusetts was to escape religious persecution and find a place where they could worship as they wished.
- Mormonism - sure, the LDS Church itself is homegrown, but it came about in a milieu of tent revivals and fundie preachers who would ride up and down the East Coast in the 1820s and 1830s preaching REPENT NOW!111!11!!11one and Joseph Smith got disillusioned with that.
- Entire towns were founded in the wilderness as the headquarters of a religious group. The LDS founded several towns, including Salt Lake City. Ephrata, Pennsylvania was founded by a doomsday cult in the 1700’s that practiced sleep deprivation, hours of prayer a day, no breakfast, celibacy, and abolishment of gender distinctions in dress (everyone wore long white gowns). The town ended up surviving but the movement died shortly after the Civil War, it turns out that celibacy tends not to contribute to growth of your movement and is off-putting to most potential converts. D’oh!
On the topic of the Salvation Army: It is absolutely an extrememly Christian organization. The whole concept is of an army fighting a spirtual war.
[quote=“dolphinboy, post:1, topic:672508”]
Growing up I learned that YMCA stood for Young Men’s Christian Association, and I used to use their facilities and nobody ever asked me my religion, which is fortunate since I wasn’t Christian. 
You likely will spend multi-millennial in a very hot purgatory.
Yes, they are a separate denomination. There’s a Salvation Army church just down the street from my own Episcopal church, and yes, they have to remind people that they can’t leave their castoffs there, especially whenever there’s a disaster somewhere. :o
There’s a Y, as in a sports and community center, in my neighborhood, and a nearby town has a YWCA, although AFAIK it’s just a regional office. I actually stayed there, in their commons room, when I was a kid and a club I was in took a trip to this city (I grew up in a city 3 hours away). We had to pack sleeping bags and our own food.
[quote=“bonitahi, post:25, topic:672508”]
Bonitahi, people have been telling me the same thing since I was a little kid, but being stuck in Purgatory for a million year isn’t a worse case scenario. 
I actually don’t believe in Heaven or Hell or any place in between. I never have.
If you can prove to me scientifically that such places really exist I would be open to believing in them.
My girlfriend uses the YMCA gym despite not being a man, a Christian, or an association.
I drove and walked by a YMHA in downtown Toronto many times, so there’s another such city.
Locally, we have a YMCA, which has gym facilities open to both sexes and all religious beliefs (or lack of them); and a YWCA, which seems to act as a women’s shelter.
Some Y’s have living quarters , but others don’t.
About the JCCs- it appears that some JCCs started out as YM-YWHA's and had a name change.
I spent the summer of 1988 summer working as a receptionist at a YWCA camp - there was transportation available to religious services in the area (several Christian denominations and a sinagogue); any prayer was carefully neutered and as pan-religious as it could be. The camp’s definitely still there, with the daughter of the former directors as the current director.
From what I’ve observed the YWCA has evolvedinto more of women’s issues advocate and less of a gymnasium. They run many of the battered woman shelters and women coming out of prison can often get a room inn their facilities as well. Women’s health issues, job training and child care are what they are about now.
I was a Y member until recently, I don’t remember that box at all. (I’m in the US FWIW)
I believe that each region of the Y is separately incorporated as a non profit entity, with an affiliation with the larger organization, like a franchise.
The bigger issue IMHO, is that the Y is primarily a gym and operates as a fee based organization with monthly memberships and fees for classes, childcare, etc. They compete head to head with for profit gyms for members etc. Yet they pay no income taxes and typically no property taxes. If you were the owner of Bob’s Gyms you would probably view this as unfair competition, as the Y could charge slightly less because they have no tax burden.
The Y could charge less, but at least in my personal experience, they don’t.
I have a family membership (for my wife and myself) at our local Y. It’s $60 a month (they also charge an initiation fee, which is, IIRC, $100, but I joined during a membership drive, when that fee was waived). I could join Charter Fitness for $20 a month (no initiation fee), and I know that both Lifetime Fitness and L.A. Fitness have membership rates which are lower than what I’m paying for my Y membership.
As I noted upthread, I know that I pay more to go to the Y, but I support their community programs, and I’m OK with the price.
Yow. The Y I work at is significantly less expensive than the other gyms in the area where I live (our main competition charges twice what we do for a family membership and locks you into a 6 month contract). I would also note that, while most of the public views the Y as primarily a gym, it really isn’t. It’s a charitable organization first who’s most public part is a gym. Like I said, every branch is going to be different but at my branch we offer an variety of child care options, host free community events, run food drives, teach ESL, CPR, college prep classes and much more. During Hurricane Sandy last year we served as a shelter for people who were displaced.
Also while our family membership rate is listed as $100 a month we will not turn anyone away if they can’t pay. Our sliding scale goes as low as $5 a month for the same family membership, and if that is a burden we can work something else out.
To make an analogy, this seems to be similar to one of the concerns levied against the Church of Scientology. Scientology seems to operate in ways that are very similar to for-profit therapy, self-help, and self-actualization groups but doesn’t pay taxes like those groups.
Was it fun?
So you were a young man and you stayed at the “YMCA!” ; anything more you’d like to tell us? 
Did you get your self clean? Did they have everything for your mental joy? Was this club of yours co-ed or did you hang out with the boys?
How something operates isn’t really what determines whether it’s a non-profit group. It’s whether the organization exists for one of a list of specified purposes and whether there are shareholders/owners who make a profit. For-profit colleges and non-profit colleges operate in much the same way, and private practices providing therapy operate similarly to charities providing therapy. But the for-profit college and the private practice have shareholders to whom the profits are distributed while the non-profits do not.