For a long time, they were the only way working-class families could receive an education.
By Timothy Larsen
It is important to realize that Sunday schools were originally literally schools: they were places were poor children could learn to read. The Sunday school movement began in Britain in the 1780s. The Industrial Revolution had resulted in many children spending all week long working in factories. Christian philanthropists wanted to free these children from a life of illiteracy. Well into the 19th century, working hours were long. The first modest legislative restrictions came in 1802. This resulted in limiting the number of hours a child could work per day to 12! This limit was not lowered again until 1844. Moreover, Saturday was part of the regular work week. Sunday, therefore, was the only available time for these children to gain some education.
The English Anglican evangelical Robert Raikes (1725-1811) was the key promoter of the movement. It soon spread to America as well. Denominations and non-denominational organizations caught the vision and energetically began to create Sunday schools. Within decades, the movement had become extremely popular. By the mid-19th century, Sunday school attendance was a near universal aspect of childhood. Even parents who did not regularly attend church themselves generally insisted that their children go to Sunday school. Working-class families were grateful for this opportunity to receive an education. They also looked forward to annual highlights such as prize days, parades, and picnics, which came to mark the calendars of their lives as much as more traditional seasonal holidays.
Religious education was, of course, always also a core component. The Bible was the textbook used for learning to read. Likewise, many children learned to write by copying out passages from the Scriptures. A basic catechism was also taught, as were spiritual practices such as prayer and hymn-singing. Inculcating Christian morality and virtues was another goal of the movement. Sunday school pupils often graduated to become Sunday school teachers, thereby gaining an experience of leadership not to be found elsewhere in their lives. Even some Marxist historians have credited 19th-century Sunday schools with empowering the working classes.
In both Britain and America, universal, compulsory state education was established by the 1870s. After that, reading and writing were learned on weekdays at school and the Sunday school curriculum was limited to religious education. Nevertheless, many parents continued to believe that regular Sunday school attendance was an essential component of childhood. The trend for permissive parenting in the 1960s, however, meant that a widespread culture of insisting that children go to Sunday school whether they want to or not (especially when the parents were not themselves going to church) was abandoned.
SUNDAY SCHOOL ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN ZIONISM IN THE POST-WAR GENERATION
by Hikaru Kitabayashi
Many people who are now making life and death decisions in the United States and Israel regarding the 7 October 2023 BLACK SWAN WAR in Palestine belong to my generation, the post-World War II generation, born in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. The primarily non-Judaic elements of this generation were raised to be Christian Zionists. And, being a representative of that generation and, as most American families of that era were regular church goers, I trace most of the Christian Zionist education of that period of American history to Sunday School.
Sunday sermons were an adult phenomenon aimed at adults and largely above the heads of children. But, Sunday School was different. In addition to the baby Jesus story, Sunday School was a time for Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles. And what did these stories teach us.
For one, they taught us about incest among the children of Adam and Eve, between Abraham and Sarah, Lot and his two daughters. They taught us that lying was a clever thing to do, as was the case of Jacob lying to receive his older brother’s birthright or Rebecca lying to her husband, Isaac, or Rachel lying to her father about stealing the family Gods. They taught us about prostitution being acceptable to middle-aged men through the story of Judah having sex with his daughter-in-law, thinking she was a prostitute. We learned that ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Canaanites by the Hebrews was a divine command. We learned that God was not only jealous, but also had other very human emotions. We learned that polygamy was a sign of God’s blessings. We learned that slavery was normal and was not condemned by God. We learned that God was discriminatory and that segregation was right because God loved some people more than others. And, in the absence of computer games, this made Sunday School bearable and left a lasting impression on a whole generation of children that I see being manifested in the Black Swan War.
It is too late to undo the damage of the past, but I do hope for better from the future. At the very least, I hope that the awful horror of this war will change the thought processes of at least a few of my generation for the better. This, though, is not only a hope. It is also a prayer.
