Sunday School, Green Cove Springs, Florida, c. 1880 . Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views—New York Public Library / [Public domain] Wikimedia Adapted from the essay “Young People Are Actually Becoming Accurate Bible Theologians’: Children’s Bible Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century America” by K. Elise Leal, first published in Every Leaf, Line, and Letter, edited by Timothy Larsen. Essay ©2021 by K. Elise Leal. Volume © 2021 by Timothy Larsen. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400 , Downers Grove, IL 60559 . www.ivpress.com
Young “Bible theologians” How Nineteenth-Century Sunday Schools emphasized the Bible Elise Leal If you ever attended an AWANA club or memorized Scripture in Sunday school as a child, at least one Bible verse probably stuck with you: John 3:16 (see p. 1). For your memorization efforts, perhaps you received badges, ribbons, and even trophies. Even critics of memorization-based programs recognize the value of knowing Scripture by heart. Still the question remains: Does Bible memorization change your heart? Americans in the 1800s sought to answer this question during a transformational moment in American religious history as Protestant reformers across denominations united to create institutions and ministries exclusively for young people. They designed these institutions as, first and foremost, Bible-saturated cultures. sunday school for all In the 1820s Sunday schools taught literacy and catered almost exclusively to childhood and adolescent religious formation. They spread rapidly after the formation of the American Sunday School Union (ASSU) in 1824. A nonsectarian association, the ASSU promoted a “Bible alone” approach to saving souls and cultivating a virtuous citizenry, aspiring to place religious education “within the reach of every individual in our country.” The society established over 70,000 new Sunday schools over the nineteenth century. By 1832 over 10 percent of White American children attended an ASSU Sunday school; by the 1850s a church without a Sunday school was considered an anomaly. African American Sunday schools also existed, but White cultural resistance to Black education worked against thorough recordkeeping. ASSU workers in the
new freedom Black students in Florida attend Sunday school, c. 1870–1890.
South before the Civil War often hesitated to use the word “school,” preferring the more ambiguous term “catechesis” to avoid the implication that they taught African Americans to read. Nevertheless Sunday schools for Black children proliferated, particularly in southern states where Blacks were a majority. Some Sunday schools, affiliated with White Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist denominations and with the ASSU, were founded by White missionaries; the African Methodist Episcopal Church and African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion also led efforts. Richard Allen’s Mother Bethel Church in Philadelphia opened its first Sunday school by 1827. The AME spread Sunday schools as far west as Ohio by 1829 and by 1842 had established them as far south as Louisiana and Georgia. For both Black and White pupils, Scripture permeated Sunday school. Literature told Bible stories and concepts in imaginative, child-friendly language. Song books and prayer books provided a weekly diet of Scripture-laden exhortations and reflections. The Sunday school sermon by the superintendent or a local pastor was the centerpiece of the weekly routine. Sunday school teachers initially emphasized memorization as the key to inculcating scriptural values and awakening faith in pupils’ hearts. This echoed standard educational philosophy at the time and also reflected popular romantic conceptions of children’s minds as empty receptacles that need filling.
Issue 143 15
