The Sunday School Movement

Today's Sunday schools are a pale shadow of what they were in the past. Churches have found other ways of serving children and young people and carrying out adult education. From a historical point of view the Sunday schools have immense significance. As late as the 1950s approximately half the children in Great Britain were associated with Sunday schools. In the nineteenth century Sunday schools were part of general educational provision. With National, British, and Ragged schools, Sunday schools represented the Christian philanthropic impulse to provide a basic education to the public at large and at low cost. The role of the churches in educational provision is again a topic of public interest and the time is right to reflect on some of the lessons of the past. A range of experts have been asked to assess different aspects of the history of the Sunday school movement: Clyde Binfield, Faith Bowers, John H. Y. Briggs, Grayson Ditchfield Hugh McLeod, Stephen Orchard, Jack Priestley, Geoff Robson, and Doreen Rosman. They provide a remarkable survey of many aspects of Sunday schools, from their origin to their reinvention, from teaching the catechism to promoting sport.

Demonstrates the vital role Sunday schools played in forming and sustaining faith before, during, and after the Frist World War for British populations both at home and abroad. Sunday schools were an important part of the religious landscape of twentieth-century Britain and they were widely attended by much of the British population. The Sunday School Movement in Britain argues that the schools played a vital role in forming and sustaining the faith of those who lived and served during the First World War. Moreover, the volume contends that the conflict did not cause the schools to decline and proposes that decline instead set in much earlier in the twentieth century. The book also questions the perception that the schools were ineffective tools of religious socialisation and examines the continued attempts of the Sunday school movement to professionalise and improve their efforts. Thus, the involvement of the movement with the World's Sunday School Association is revealed to be part of the wider developing international ecumenical community during the twentieth century. Drawing together under-utilised material from archives and newspapers in national and local collections, The Sunday School Movement in Britain presents a history of the schools demonstrating their lasting significance in the religious life of the nation and, by extension, the enduring importance of Christianity in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century.

Excerpt from The Front Line of the Sunday School Movement: The Line of the Vanguard of Sunday School Progress, With a Glimpse of Ideals Beyond When my long-time friend the president of Bangor Theological Seminary requested me to give a course of Lectures on the Sunday School to the students, two reasons were especially influential in deciding me to accept his invitation. The first was a desire to express in some degree the gratitude I owe to this Seminary for the training I received at its hands. Not the least of the providential blessings which have come unexpectedly into my life was the loving guidance which brought me to Bangor and its Theological Seminary: I congratulate the Seminary for its high ideals, for setting them before the students and saying: "There is the portrait of the minister whom the churches need, and whom they want. He stands continually before you - study him; set your faces in that direction; the whole training of the seminary course is to help you to become that man." I congratulate the students on their privilege of entering the ministry. The greatest joy a life-work can bring belongs to the Preacher who preaches the Gospel because he loves the Gospel, loves its Giver, and loves his fellow-men. The greatest joy of the Preacher is that, like his Master, he can also be a Teacher. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.