Up with People is the butt of many jokes and spoofs in the media, but what do we really know about the organization?

It all started with a group called Moral Re-Armament, a Christian movement founded in 1938. The organization was formed as a reaction to the re-militarization of Germany after World War I. As time went on, however, the group admitted people of all religious faiths and focusd on four “absolutes”: absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness and absolute love.

In 1965, a dynamic musical production was staged on Mackinac Island, Michigan, as part of an international youth conference. The performance had actually been arranged by Moral Re-Armament, but corporate sponsors were wary of MRA being seen by some folks as a “cult,” so the concert was dubbed Sing Out ‘65 instead. The performance was such a hit that local Sing Out groups sprouted up across the country. They were a publicist’s dream – the participants were so clean-cut that they could be extras on The Lawrence Welk Show, yet young enough to sing current pop hits and get plenty of national TV coverage to counteract the hippie and anti-Vietnam movements.

By 1968, the organization had changed its name to Up with People and had severed all ties with MRA. It is now a registered educational international non-profit entity that gives its participants an opportunity to travel the world while communicating a positive message via the international language of music.