Calvin Synod Herald, 1980 (80. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1980-03-01 / 3-4. szám

4

CALVIN SYNOD HERALD

SUNDAY SCHOOL - UNUSUAL BITS OF INFORMATION

ROBERT RAIKES is honored as the father of the Sunday School Movement, not the inventor of the Sunday School. Though Robert Raikes started his school in Gloucester, England, in July, 1780, earlier inventors include Rev. Thomas Stock, Miss Hannah Ball, and High Wycombe. We celebrate in 1980 two hundred years of ministry through a school on Sunday.

SUNDAY SCHOOL teaching from the very beginning was aimed at meeting the needs of learners. The need for the underprivileged who were left without educational opportunity to leam the fundamentals of reading. The need for the children of the slums, many of whom worked as apprentices in the factories during the week and ran wild in the streets on Sunday, to learn personal hygiene, self-discipline and basic social graces.

Though Robert Raikes responded to Sophia Cook’s suggestion to start a Sunday school to deal with the concern they had for the children, it was not his first attempt to stem the “evil tide” by teaching basic Christian principles.

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL SOCIETY was launched through the efforts of William Fox, a wealthy London merchant, in September, 1785. The purpose of the Society was to found and organize new Sunday schools which were visioned by Fox as providing the means of bringing about a moral and religious transformation in Great Britain. It was felt that the moral climate would be greatlly influenced if more Bibles were made available and more people could read them. The Society furnished Bibles, Testaments and spelling books for use in the schools. They also paid the salaries of teachers. In the first fourteen years the Society’s expenditures reached $17,000 for teachers’ salaries alone.

It was about 1785 that the happy event occurred in which the first teacher in Oldham, England, refused his weekly stipend and thus started the volunteer teacher idea. John Wesley saw the possibility of reviving religion through the volunteer teacher idea which increased the possibility of self-supporting Sunday schools. This made the Sunday school less dependent upon the wealthy class of society.

CURRICULUM RESOURCES used by Robert Raikes’ teachers included old prayer books, psalters, instruction books on church observances. The children called their ABC books “Redinmadesy.” In 1785 Raikes published the Sunday School Companion which was a simple scripture reading book.

AMERICA. In 1785, only two years after Great Britain declared the colonies free, the first Sunday school was started in America which was destined to be the fertile soil of its greatest growth and development. The Sunday school aided and was aided by the successful system of public education in America. The United States helped the Sunday school grow, but the Sunday school was also one of the major influences in the nation’s growth.

William Elliott opened a Sunday school in his home, patterned after Robert Raikes’ school in 1785. It was started primarily to educate Elliott’s own children and the slaves’ children of his plantation. Both the white children and negro children were taught but at different hours. Later the children of neighbors and friends were included in the school. In 1801 the school was transferred to the Burton-Oak Grove Methodist Church, Bradford’s Neck, Accomac County, Virginia. Mr. Elliott served as superintendent of the school until he was too feeble to attend. It became an official agency of the Methodist Church in 1818.

SABBATH SCHOOL. In the village of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1809 a Society for the “suppression of vice, reformation of manners, and propagation of useful knowledge” started a Sabbath School on August 22. The school was designed to carry out the Society’s program through religious instruction.

THE FIRST DAY OR SUNDAY SCHOOL SOCIETY was started December 19, 1790, to secure rooms and teachers for schools throughout Philadelphia. Though the Society had religious connections, it functioned primarily to achieve educational values. In 1791 the Society petitioned the State Legislature to establish state schools, pointing to the success of the Society’s schools as an example and reason for starting a system of public education.

PROMOTIONAL SOCIETIES were very important in the growth of the Sunday School Movement. In New York “The Female Union Society’’ was founded in January, 1816. Within three months after its organization, this Society could account for sixteen Sunday schools for women and girls, with 200 teachers and nearly 2,200 scholars. On February 26, 1816, the men of this fellowship founded “The New York Sunday School Society.” The Bethunes were leaders in the development of the New York Societies and helped in the formation of the Sunday School and Adult School Union in Philadelphia in 1817. Promotion of teaching and reading materials was the Sunday and Adult School Union’s main purpose. Rev. William C. Blair was sent out as the first missionary.