When I visit churches, I am invariably greeted as follows:
Our Sunday school is losing ground. If we don’t get children into our Sunday school, we won’t have young families and without young families, our church might die. How do we get children into our Sunday school?
That question reminds me that church folks know little about the history of Sunday school and are, therefore, missing its most important lessons. That Sunday morning hour of memory verses and snacks is barely an echo of the once radical reform movement that spawned it.
What history calls “The Sunday School Movement” began outside of the church in the 1780s, when Robert Raikes, Thomas Stock, and William Fox pioneered a system of schools that held Sunday classes to meet the educational needs of children as young as 6 who labored in urban factories. Sunday schools spread throughout England and within a decade, the formation of the first Sunday school association claimed 65,000 participants. Around the same time, the movement had crossed the Atlantic to be embraced as a tool for rudimentary instruction of child workers and eventually serving as the impetus for universal education in the United States. Once tax-supported education began to take hold in the United States, the educational mission of Sunday mission shifted toward providing literacy education to Blacks, immigrants and girls, all of whom were often excluded from common schools.
Not everyone celebrated the success of Sunday schools, however. In general, upper classes opposed educating the poor and churches resisted Sunday school, largely because of its association with reform movements. Unable to stop its momentum, church folks began adopting the institution as its primary vehicle for Christian education until it became fully domesticated, solely dedicated to the faith formation of children within the church. And today, in many local congregations, it is dying the sad death that comes to all wild things held in captivity.
It’s not too late to liberate the Sunday School Movement; to break it out of the chains of domestication and reclaim its power.
The podcast found at the link below traces the history of the Sunday School Movement, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and celebrates its potential to address our current context with the power of the gospel.
https://share.transistor.fm/s/baefda60
When I visit churches, I am invariably greeted as follows:
Our Sunday school is losing ground. If we don’t get children into our Sunday school, we won’t have young families and without young families, our church might die. How do we get children into our Sunday school?
That question reminds me that church folks know little about the history of Sunday school and are, therefore, missing its most important lessons. That Sunday morning hour of memory verses and snacks is barely an echo of the once radical reform movement that spawned it.
What history calls “The Sunday School Movement” began outside of the church in the 1780s, when Robert Raikes, Thomas Stock, and William Fox pioneered a system of schools that held Sunday classes to meet the educational needs of children as young as 6 who labored in urban factories. Sunday schools spread throughout England and within a decade, the formation of the first Sunday school association claimed 65,000 participants. Around the same time, the movement had crossed the Atlantic to be embraced as a tool for rudimentary instruction of child workers and eventually serving as the impetus for universal education in the United States. Once tax-supported education began to take hold in the United States, the educational mission of Sunday mission shifted toward providing literacy education to Blacks, immigrants and girls, all of whom were often excluded from common schools.
Not everyone celebrated the success of Sunday schools, however. In general, upper classes opposed educating the poor and churches resisted Sunday school, largely because of its association with reform movements. Unable to stop its momentum, church folks began adopting the institution as its primary vehicle for Christian education until it became fully domesticated, solely dedicated to the faith formation of children within the church. And today, in many local congregations, it is dying the sad death that comes to all wild things held in captivity.
It’s not too late to liberate the Sunday School Movement; to break it out of the chains of domestication and reclaim its power.
The podcast found at the link below traces the history of the Sunday School Movement, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and celebrates its potential to address our current context with the power of the gospel.
https://share.transistor.fm/s/baefda60