Not Your Grandma's YWCA

...I'm not the head of a Christian organization," Ireland told the N^-w Yo^k Times soon after her appointment, "I'm the head of a social justice women's organization...

...By effectively severing its links to its Christian past—and taking for its leader a master of professional querulousness and victim politics—the new YWCA has chosen to blend still further into the crowded field of secular liberal advocacy groups...

...Whatever Landor recommends, a fundamental change of direction has already taken place...

...In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, local chapters joined with other social service organizations to lobby for reforms designed to protect women and children...

...The YWCA began in 1860 as a boardinghouse for working women in New York City...

...Our mission is to empower women and girls and to eliminate racism," says the current statement of purpose...

...Landor Associates is conducting focus groups and we'll go where the path leads us...

...Would the YWCA consider dropping "Christian" from its name...

...it did so in large part by pursuing an ideal of Christian service...

...Are we doing this to usher in a new era of advocacy for the organization...

...In fact, the organization has always done advocacy work, reflecting its origins in the 19th-century Christian social service movement...

...In the 1890s, YWCA chapters lobbied state lawmakers to raise the age of consent...

...An expert face-lift may or may not succeed in revitalizing the YWCA's "brand," but it certainly won't save its soul...

...Partly to help settle this matter, the group recently hired Landor Associates, a consulting firm, to lead a major "rebranding" effort...

...In the 1890s, the Boston YWCA described its purpose as the careful tending of "the temporal, moral, and religious welfare of young women who are dependent on their own exertions for support...

...Abortion Rights Action League in the late 1960s, and the group vigorously supported the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in the 1970s...

...To the growing ranks of girls working in factories, the YWCA offered respectable lodgings and opportunities to socialize...

...Advocacy, for the new Y, means promoting the standard feminist agenda: opposition to any restriction on abortion including parental notification, support for affirmative action across the board, and vigorous defense of Title IX requirements for college athletics...

...But since the 1960s, its advocacy has taken an increasingly liberal turn...

...Historically, the YWCA's mission was firmly grounded in biblical morality...

...Influenced by second-wave feminist activism, representatives of the Y were present at the founding of the National Christine Rosen is a resident fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C...

...Today, the YWCA's website goes so far as to note that the founders of the organization "had a religiously based concern for the worth of all individuals...

...Once, the YWCA sought to make a practical and moral difference in the lives of women...

...And Ireland had such a wonderful record at NOW...

...To "emphasize the responsibility of women and girls for right social standards" when they came into contact with male military recruits...

...Mostly, though, the website expresses a vision of social justice unmoored from biblical injunctions and inhospitable to all but the politically correct...

...With nearly 70 percent of local chapters operating at a deficit and participation among the young at an all-time low, according to Advertising Age, its leaders have streamlined their national board and redefined their priorities...

...Its stated goal remains "To put Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind, and body for all...

...That's what this branding effort will tell us," says Peeples...

...One matter of organizational identity, however, remains in the balance: whether the Y will retain any token Christian affiliation...

...Every year the organization joins forces with Lifetime Television for Women to decry "gun violence, violence linked to racism and bigotry, and violence in the media...

...A small flurry of protests ensued, led by pro-family and conservative groups who charged that Ireland—an avowedly secular liberal and bisexual—was hardly fit to lead a Christian organization...

...Another change was the decision to relocate the headquarters...

...We moved the national office to Washington [this spring] to be closer to the Hill," says Audrey Peeples, chair of the organization's national coordinating board...

...Absolutely," she says...

...During World War I, they deployed female physicians to communities near the Army's domestic training camps...

...in order to attain a common vision: peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all people...

...It turns out, then, that Patricia Ireland is a natural to head the new YWCA, an outfit whose rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of feminist groups such as the National Organization for Women and the Feminist Majority Foundation...

...BY CHRISTINE ROSEN IN MID-MAY, Patricia Ireland, former president of the National Organization for Women, assumed her new position as CEO of the Young Women's Christian Association...

...But a glance at the recent history of the YWCA suggests that Ireland's appointment is less a departure than it is the culmination of a decades-long migration away from the YWCA's mainstream Protestant roots...

...Many people think the YWCA's principal purpose is to manage gyms and swimming pools...

...Today, the YWCA is in the midst of a multi-year reassessment...

...by 1900 there were Ys in over 100 cities...

...Local chapters sponsored Bible studies and prayer groups as well as job training...

...The YMCA's advocacy is nonpartisan, and its activities include child care, healthy living, and character development programs...

...The Y mobilized volunteers who acted as surrogate parents for young women living away from home...

...Their mission...

...For good measure, the YWCA issued a statement denouncing the war in Iraq...

...Interestingly, the parallel organization for males—the Young Men's Christian Association—has hewed more closely to its original mission...