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Monday, December 22, 2025

SUNADAY SCHOOLS: NURSERIES OF THE CHURCH (Santamaria)

SUNDAY SCHOOLS THE NURSERIES OF THE CHURCH

Contents

FOREWORD

One would think that enough has been said to criticize the Old School Baptist position on Sunday Schools, but perhaps there are some unturned stones.

Guillermo Santamaria

Sunday Schools

Sunday School is basically the church’s “learning hour” (usually before or alongside the main service) built around age-group classes, volunteer teachers, and a set curriculum. But it didn’t start as “cute kids’ Bible class.” It started as a blunt instrument for literacy + moral formation among poor working children.

In late-18th-century England, kids in industrial towns often worked six days a week and had little schooling. Robert Raikes (Gloucester) helped popularize Sunday schools around 1780 as a way to teach reading (often straight from the Bible) and basic Christian instruction on the one day children were free. (NCPedia)

In the U.S., Sunday schools show up by the 1790s (especially in cities like Philadelphia), and the model quickly scales—because it’s organizationally addictive: volunteers + cheap printed lessons + a simple weekly rhythm. By 1817, leaders formed what became the Sunday and Adult School Union (Philadelphia), later known as the American Sunday School Union1 (name change in 1824), specifically to promote Sunday schools and supply curriculum. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

That’s when Sunday School becomes more than a local class. It becomes part of the wider 19th-century “voluntary society” ecosystem (Bible societies, tract societies, missions, etc.). Standardized lesson materials and massive distribution networks turn it into a national machine. Some historians note explosive growth in the 1800s (ARDA summarizes claims of tens of thousands of schools by the end of the century), and also note that Sunday schools later faced competition as public education expanded. (ARDA)

What happens inside a Sunday School depends on the tradition, but the usual DNA looks like this:

  1. Structure: superintendent, opening exercises, then classes (often age-graded).
  2. Curriculum: Bible stories → doctrine/catechism → “life application,” sometimes synced across many churches (“uniform lessons”).
  3. Social function: it’s not just teaching; it’s membership training, culture-passing, and (in many settings) an outreach funnel.

That “funnel” function matters. Sunday School often became the easiest way to get children connected and, by extension, get parents through the doors. Once a church offers “your kids will be taught and cared for,” it lowers the friction for adults who are indifferent, busy, or wary—so it becomes a soft form of evangelism-by-infrastructure.

That’s brilliant as a growth strategy… and also exactly why critics call it a man-made “means” that can quietly replace plainer New Testament patterns of family instruction and congregational life.

The Old School/Primitive Baptist critique (the Absoluter wing, historically)

Old School Baptists didn’t merely dislike Sunday School aesthetics. They tended to attack the principle: importing religious institutions not found in the New Testament, and then treating them as God-appointed instruments for conversion.

The Black Rock Address (1832) is a key snapshot of this mindset. In one passage it distinguishes between humble local literacy help (teaching poor children to read Scripture) and the more ostentatious institutionalized “society” version. (Marchtozion.com) But it also directly objects to Sunday Schools as a religious institution claiming conversion power—arguing (1) their “arrogant pretensions” about converting thousands and (2) that they were “never established by the apostles, nor commanded by Christ,” so they have no warrant to be imposed as church machinery. (pbokc.org)

That is the classic Old School objection in one sentence: if it’s treated as a church institution necessary for spiritual ends, it’s an unauthorized invention—part of the broader “means system.” And once you buy the logic that “we need a new device to get results,” you’ve basically opened the door to endless add-ons: tract societies, mission boards, theological schools, protracted meetings, etc.—all justified by “look what it accomplishes.”

So… are Sunday Schools “good” or “bad”?

Historically, they’ve done really well (literacy, Scripture familiarity, community stability). (NCPedia) But they also carry predictable risks:

Outsourcing discipleship:

parents and the whole congregation can subtly assume “the program handled it.”

Moralism/decisionism drift:

lessons can become “be nice/make a choice/repeat a prayer” rather than Christ-centered preaching and lived church discipline.

Age segregation:

The church becomes a set of demographic silos instead of a single worshiping body.

  1. Institution creep: the tool becomes the identity (“our church is strong because our Sunday School is strong”).

NURSERIES OF THE CHURCH

The phrase “nurseries of the church” isn’t a single coined slogan with one inventor—it’s an old metaphor that got reused in different eras for different “feeder systems” (family, schools, seminaries, Sunday schools).

Here’s the lineage you can actually document:

Older Christian usage: “nursery” = a seedbed for future church life (often clergy-training).


Long before modern Sunday schools, writers used nursery language for training institutions that “raise up” future ministers or church members. John Calvin, describing early clerical training, explicitly calls it “a nursery of the Church.” (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
This overlaps with the older Latin idea of seminarium ecclesiae (“seedbed/seminary of the church”)—the word seminary itself is basically “nursery” in Latin clothing.

Puritan / early-modern household theology: the family as the church’s nursery.

By the 1600s, the metaphor is also applied to the home: the family is where church life is cultivated before it shows up publicly. A later printed devotional work preserves (and attributes) the classic “Baxter” sentiment that if family religion is neglected, the church will suffer—because the family is the church’s nursery. (quintapress.webmate.me)

19th-century Sunday School movement: the phrase becomes a rallying cry.

When Sunday schools exploded in the early 1800s, the metaphor was repurposed as publicity and justification: Sunday schools are the “nurseries” supplying future church members. A Wesleyan Sunday-school book puts it bluntly:
“Sunday schools are the nurseries of the Church … Where are the additions to our church to come from, but from Sunday schools?”2 (Project Gutenberg)
Modern scholarship notes the same period language—Sunday schools described as “nurseries of the church of God.” (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

So, the phrase comes from an older, wider Christian metaphor (church growth as cultivation), then gets popularized in the 19th century as Sunday schools and other institutions are defended as the church’s “seedbeds.” That’s why you’ll see it attached to families, schools, seminaries, parochial schools, and Sunday schools—same metaphor, different target.

That slogan is basically a metaphor on loan.

In older Protestant speech, a “nursery” meant a seedbed where young plants are raised—so writers spoke of Christian households as places where future church members are “nursed and propagated.” One 19th-century devotional treatise puts it bluntly: “Christian families are called the nurseries of the church on earth…” (Project Gutenberg) That nursery → future church logic was already in the air before the Sunday-school movement turned it into a tagline.

Who used “nurseries of the church” in the Sunday-school world?

John Angell James (England),3 very early and very explicit (1816/1817).


In The Sunday School Teacher’s Guide (first published 1816),4 James tells teachers that Sunday Schools “should be viewed as nurseries for the church of God.” (Monergism)
This is one of the cleanest early programmatic uses: Sunday schools aren’t just literacy charities; they’re supposed to feed the church.

Early movement rhetoric also used “nursery” language even when it didn’t say “of the church.”


A widely repeated example is the Wesleyan line (recorded in later reference works quoting Wesley’s journal), imagining Sunday schools becoming “nurseries for Christians.” (McClintock & Strong Cyclopedia)


Not the exact phrase, but the same conceptual engine.

The American religious press used the exact wording by the 1830s.


An 1835 issue of the New York Evangelist contains: “Our Sabbath schools are the nurseries of the church…” (Wikimedia Commons)

Later 19th-century Sunday-school “how-to” literature repeats it as a stock slogan.


R. G. Pardee’s5 The Sabbath-School Index (published 1868)6 urges churches to stand by “the Sunday-schools—the nurseries of the Church.” (Project Gutenberg)


That’s not a casual metaphor there—it’s an argument for budgets, rooms, staffing, and institutional priority.

The American Sunday School is basically the church’s “learning hour.”

(usually before or alongside the main service) built around age-group classes, volunteer teachers, and a set curriculum. But it didn’t start as “cute kids’ Bible class.” It started as a blunt instrument for literacy + moral formation among poor working children.

In late-18th-century England, kids in industrial towns often worked six days a week and had little schooling. Robert Raikes7 (Gloucester) helped popularize Sunday schools around 1780 as a way to teach reading (often straight from the Bible) and basic Christian instruction on the one day children were free. ([NCPedia][1])

In the U.S., Sunday schools show up by the 1790s (especially in cities like Philadelphia), and the model quickly scales—because it’s *organizationally addictive*: volunteers + cheap printed lessons + a simple weekly rhythm. By 1817, leaders formed what became the Sunday and Adult School Union (Philadelphia), later known as the American Sunday School Union (name change in 1824), specifically to promote Sunday schools and supply curriculum. ([Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)][2])

That’s when Sunday School becomes more than a local class. It becomes part of the wider 19th-century “voluntary society” ecosystem (Bible societies, tract societies, missions, etc.). Standardized lesson materials and massive distribution networks turn it into a national machine. Some historians note explosive growth in the 1800s (ARDA summarizes claims of tens of thousands of schools by the end of the century), and also note that Sunday schools later faced competition as public education expanded. ([ARDA][3])

What happens inside a Sunday School depends on the tradition, but the usual DNA looks like this:

Structure: superintendent, opening exercises, then classes (often age-graded).
Curriculum: Bible stories → doctrine/catechism → “life application,” sometimes synced across many churches (“uniform lessons”).
Social function: it’s not just teaching; it’s membership training, culture-passing, and (in many settings) an outreach funnel.

That “funnel” function matters. Sunday School often became the easiest way to get children connected and, by extension, get parents through the doors. Once a church offers “your kids will be taught and cared for,” it lowers the friction for adults who are indifferent, busy, or wary—so it becomes a soft form of evangelism-by-infrastructure. That’s brilliant as a growth strategy… and also exactly why critics call it a man-made “means” that can quietly replace plainer New Testament patterns of family instruction and congregational life.

The Old School/Primitive Baptist critique (the Absoluter wing, historically)

Old School Baptists didn’t merely dislike Sunday School aesthetics. They tended to attack the principle: importing religious institutions not found in the New Testament, and then treating them as God-appointed instruments for conversion.

The Black Rock Address (1832)

This is a key snapshot of this mindset. In one passage, it distinguishes between humble local literacy help (teaching poor children to read Scripture) and the more ostentatious institutionalized “society” version. ([Marchtozion.com][4]) But it also directly objects to Sunday Schools as a religious institution, claiming conversion power—arguing (1) their “arrogant pretensions” about converting thousands and (2) that they were “never established by the apostles, nor commanded by Christ,” so they have no warrant to be imposed as church machinery. ([pbokc.org][5])

That is the classic Old School objection in one sentence: if it’s treated as a church institution necessary for spiritual ends, it’s an unauthorized invention—part of the broader “means system.” And once you buy the logic that “we need a new device to get results,” you’ve basically opened the door to endless add-ons: tract societies, mission boards, theological schools, protracted meetings, etc.—all justified by “look what it accomplishes.”

More on the Black Address & Sunday Schools

The Black Rock Address (1832) basically said: “Sunday Schools” (as a religious institution) had started talking like an ordained means of salvation—claiming “tens of thousands” converted, shaping children’s “tender minds” into Christians by instruction, and leaning on the idea that regeneration happens by “impressions made upon the natural mind.” They also explicitly tied the whole thing to the national society model (“Sunday School Union, &c.”) with its money, agents, and publicity. (hiddenhillssovereigngracebaptistchurch.org)

Here are concrete historical developments that show those weren’t paranoid hallucinations.

By 1830–1832, the movement really had become a national conversion project


Black Rock complains that Sunday schools were making conversion claims and treating the school as an “instituted means” comparable to preaching. (hiddenhillssovereigngracebaptistchurch.org)


A major historical study of early US Sunday schools notes that by 1832, they numbered over 8,000 and enrolled almost ten percent of American children ages 5–14, and that conversion was the main goal of early nineteenth-century Sunday school training. (Journals at KU)


In other words, the “nursery” wasn’t a cute local class; it was a fast-scaling system aimed at producing conversions.

The American Sunday School Union turned Sunday school into an organized “mission” with agents, campaigns, and fundraising
The Black Rock Address attacks “modern inventions” precisely because they function like extra-church machinery—programs run by centralized bodies rather than by the local church. (hiddenhillssovereigngracebaptistchurch.org)

Now compare that with the ASSU’s own documented operations: a major archival guide records that 1830 marked the beginning of the Mississippi Valley enterprise,8 with a formal resolution to establish a Sunday school in “every destitute place” across a vast region, funded by subscriptions, and carried forward by missionaries/agents assigned to states and districts. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

That’s not “parents teaching their kids” anymore. That’s a para-ecclesial expansion program.

The publishing engine became enormous, standardizing “religious instruction” at an industrial scale
Black Rock’s worry includes the idea that these institutions create a pipeline of religious ideas and habits that can displace the apostolic pattern. (hiddenhillssovereigngracebaptistchurch.org)

A Library Company report notes that by 1830, the American Sunday-School Union had issued more than six million copies of its books and periodicals, making it a dominant Protestant children’s publisher.
So yes: mass production of “approved” Sunday-school material was already a reality right when Black Rock was written. The “conversion-by-instruction/impression” model became a defining feature, not a fringe one

Black Rock explicitly says the whole thing is grounded on the notion that “conversion or regeneration is produced by impressions made upon the natural mind” via religious sentiments instilled by instruction. (hiddenhillssovereigngracebaptistchurch.org)

Boylan’s analysis shows that Sunday school organizers theologized and engineered curricula around conversion as the goal, and only later did some shift toward “Christian nurture.” (Journals at KU) So the Address is hitting a real theological engine, not shadowboxing. The system depended on money + scale, and it visibly rose and fell with fundraising realities

One of Black Rock’s recurring complaints about “the great national institutions” is the machinery of funds, agents, and organized efforts. (hiddenhillssovereigngracebaptistchurch.org) The ASSU archival guide reports that the Mississippi Valley effort drew over $100,000 in the 1830s, with nearly half received before 1833, and then contributions dropped, creating difficulty sustaining the schools—showing how “the work” was structurally tied to fundraising capacity. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

Put bluntly: the Black Rock Address warned that Sunday schools (as promoted by the national “Union” model) would behave like an institutionalized means-system—claiming conversions, shaping the young through organized instruction, funded and expanded by centralized agencies. The documented history of the ASSU’s campaigns, agents, publishing output, and conversion-centered program matches that profile uncomfortably well. (hiddenhillssovereigngracebaptistchurch.org)

Outsourcing discipleship:

parents and the whole congregation can subtly assume “the program handled it.”

Moralism/decisionism drift:

lessons can become “be nice/make a choice/repeat a prayer” rather than Christ-centered preaching and lived church discipline.

Age segregation:

the church becomes a set of demographic silos instead of a single worshiping body.

Institution creep,

The tool becomes the identity (“our church is strong because our Sunday School is strong”).

[1]: https://www.ncpedia.org/sunday-schools?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Sunday Schools"

[2]: https://pcusa.org/historical-society/collections/research-tools/guides-archival-collections/rg-73?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Guide to the American Sunday School Union Records"

[3]: https://www.thearda.com/us-religion/history/timelines/entry?eid=332&etype=1&utm_source=chatgpt.com "The American Sunday School Union - Timeline Event"

[4]: https://marchtozion.com/black-rock-address-1832/ "Black Rock Address (1832) – Marchtozion.com"

[5]: https://pbokc.org/blackrock/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "The Black Rock Address"16-day School Union orbit, the phrase functioned like a mission statement.


Modern historians note how Sunday-school unions (ASSU included) framed Sunday schools as “nurseries of the church (of God)”—i.e., a pipeline into church life and membership. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

So: the phrase didn’t drop from heaven; it migrated from older “home/catechizing as nursery” language into Sunday-school advocacy, where it became a recruitment slogan: support the school, because it grows the church.

Endnotes

  1. 1.

    The American Sunday School Union (ASSU) was the big 19th-century American engine that helped turn “Sunday school” from a local church practice into a national, interdenominational system—with curriculum, books, missionaries, and a distribution network.

    It began in Philadelphia in 1817 as the Sunday and Adult School Union, then changed its name in 1824 to “American Sunday School Union” to match how wide its work had become. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

    What it actually did

    1) Printed everythingASSU wasn’t just “classes on Sunday.” It was a
    publishing society on an industrial scale: lesson helps, children’s books, “reward” books, teacher aids, little chapbooks, magazines—mass print for mass formation. Philadelphia historians note that it quickly became one of the largest national religious publishing societies in the U.S. (Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)A major institutional collection at the Library Company of Philadelphia even calls it
    the most prolific publisher of children’s books in 19th-century America, famous for heavy use of wood-engraved illustrations. (Library Company of Philadelphia)

    2) Sent “missionaries” to start Sunday schools (especially the frontier)In
    1830, the ASSU launched its famous westward push—often called the Mississippi Valley Enterprise—aiming (in their own resolution) to establish a Sunday school in “every destitute place” where practicable across the Mississippi Valley within two years. (InFaith)So: it functioned like a home-mission society, except the unit it planted was often a
    Sunday school first, not necessarily a fully organized church.

    3) Stayed intentionally cross-denominationalIt wasn’t a single denomination’s board. Contemporary reference works describe it as cross-/interdenominational, which helped it spread fast (and helped its literature travel into many kinds of churches). (
    Encyclopedia.com)

    Why it mattered (the “so what”)

    ASSU helped create a uniquely modern religious phenomenon: standardized Christian education as a scalable product—curriculum + training + printed media + field workers. That model becomes the template for later Protestant “voluntary societies” and, eventually, denominational education boards. (Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)

    The pushback (why some Baptists hated it)

    Primitive/Old School Baptists didn’t usually object to poor children learning to read. What they objected to was Sunday School becoming a religious institution with grand conversion claims and a parachurch authority inside Christ’s churches. The Black Rock Address (1832) is famous for that two-handed statement: it grants that plain literacy schools can be useful, while opposing the ostentatious, institutionalized system that functioned like a new “means” of conversion not grounded in apostolic command. (pbokc.org)

    ↩︎
  2. 2.

    The Village Sunday-School: With brief sketches of three of its scholars is a short Methodist Sunday-school “encouragement narrative” by John C. Symons, revised by Daniel P. Kidder, published in New York (Lane & Scott) for the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Sunday-School Union (1850). (Project Gutenberg)

    Symons says up front he’s not trying to be literary—he’s trying to keep discouraged teachers from quitting. The stories are “substantially true,” but names/places are changed. (Project Gutenberg)

    What happens in the book

    1) The setting + the problem (Chapter I)A small village in western England gets a new Methodist chapel, then attempts a Sunday school. The author stresses the obstacles: parents’ indifference and a shortage of truly pious teachers, so the school runs largely on “moral” (but unconverted) helpers and the superintendent’s sheer perseverance. (
    Project Gutenberg)Even so, the school is orderly, and during a revival
    , the author claims many of the converted were connected with the school. (Project Gutenberg)

    2) The “three scholars” are three brothers (James, Thomas, George)The school rewards Scripture memorization; the brothers become stars—reciting huge portions and learning large stretches of the Gospels. (
    Project Gutenberg)

    James (Chapter II): leaves the village, becomes a teacher elsewhere, and later joins the Wesleyan society. His own testimony is the book’s most quoted part: he calls Sunday schools “the militia of the Church” and flatly says “Sunday schools are the nurseries of the Church,” arguing that the future ranks of the church come from them. (Project Gutenberg)

    Thomas (Chapter III): becomes a teacher, then drifts when apprenticed and later in London—he describes “spiritual dissipation,” laziness, and neglect of service. Eventually, he returns to steady work and becomes a Wesleyan local preacher. (Project Gutenberg)

    George (Chapter IV): stays longer in the original school, becomes a teacher, is converted during a revival, serves faithfully, then feels called to preach; he too becomes a local preacher, and he explicitly credits Sunday-school instruction as having a “salutary influence” even if he can’t recall early impressions clearly. (Project Gutenberg)

    3) The thesis statement (Chapter V): Sunday school as “instrumentality.”The conclusion argues
    that Sunday schools produce:

    Delayed fruit (instruction “lies dormant” and later revives), (Project Gutenberg)

    Negative good (preventing Sabbath-breaking and downstream crime), (Project Gutenberg)

    Positive conversions (he claims “scores… hundreds” converted), and he goes further: missionaries, divines, and popular preachers “owed” their conversion to Sunday-school instrumentality. (Project Gutenberg)He also explicitly answers an objection (“they would’ve turned out fine without Sunday school”) by defending the whole idea of
    God using means/instruments—and insists Sunday schools can be “channels of salvation.” (Project Gutenberg)

    4) Appendix: a model “holy death” of a teacherA letter describes the death of “Jessy,” a Sunday-school teacher, presented as a final encouragement: the work is worth it; the workers die well; heaven is real. (
    Project Gutenberg)

    That’s the book in one sentence: Sunday school is justified not merely as literacy or moral uplift, but as a church-feeding, conversion-producing instrument—proved (the author says) by the life-trajectories of three boys shaped by it. (Project Gutenberg)

    ↩︎
  3. 3.

    John Angell James (6 June 1785 – 1 Oct 1859) was a major English Nonconformist (Congregational/Independent) minister and devotional writer, best known for practical, conscience-pressing books aimed at ordinary church people—teachers, parents, anxious seekers, and young believers. (Wikisource)

    He was born at Blandford Forum (Dorset) and trained for ministry at David Bogue’s academy at Gosport—a key evangelical Dissenting training center of that era. (Banner of Truth USA)

    Ministry in Birmingham

    James is most associated with Carrs Lane Independent (Congregational) Chapel, Birmingham. He began preaching there in 1804, settled in 1805, and was ordained in 1806, remaining there for the rest of his life. (Wikipedia) His ministry eventually drew very large congregations; a new chapel was completed in 1820 with seating for about 2,000. (Wikipedia)

    Late in life, he had Robert William Dale alongside him (as co-pastor from the 1850s), and Dale succeeded him in the Carrs Lane pulpit. (Wikipedia)

    Theology and style

    He’s often described as an evangelical leader in the “in-between” period—after the first waves of the Evangelical Revival and before the Spurgeon era. (Banner of Truth USA) Doctrinally, he’s commonly tagged as moderately Calvinistic (evangelical, but not a hard-edged high-Calvinist polemicist). (Wikipedia) His writing style is direct and pastoral: heavy on application—what you should fear, pursue, repent of, and do.

    Why he matters in Sunday School history

    His The Sunday School Teacher’s Guide (1816) became one of the early “teacher formation” manuals: it frames Sunday-school teaching as spiritual work aimed at children’s eternal welfare, not merely literacy. (That’s also where he uses the “nursery for the church of God” idea you flagged earlier.) (Monergism)

    Major writings (high-impact)

    Two of his most famous titles:

    The Sunday School Teacher’s Guide (1816) (HathiTrust)

    The Anxious Inquirer After Salvation: Directed and Encouraged (first issued 1834; widely reprinted) (HathiTrust)

    He also produced a large body of family- and church-oriented practical works (many later gathered in collected editions). (Internet Archive)

    Personal life (bare bones)

    He married twice: first Frances Charlotte Smith (d. 1819), then Anna Maria Neale (widow of Benjamin Neale) in 1822. (Wikisource) He died in Birmingham in 1859. (Wikisource)

    If you want to use him in your Sunday School / “means system” critique, the most fruitful move is to quote him precisely where he defines the teacher’s “ultimate object” (salvation/conversion) and then compare that institutional aim with Old School Baptist objections to Sunday School as an invented conversion machinery.

    ↩︎
  4. 4.

    The Sunday School Teacher’s Guide (J. A. James; your “1816” date is basically right for the composition—the preface is dated Oct. 14, 1816, but the Google scan I’m using is the 6th edition, printed 1817) is a manual for forming Sunday-school teachers, not a “how to run the classroom logistics” book. James explicitly says he’s focused on the moral and spiritual side of the institution, and he treats Sunday schools as a religious institution aimed at the salvation of souls, not mere literacy. (books.google.tm)

    What the book is doing (big picture)

    James starts with a short history of the Sunday school movement, painting pre–Sunday school England as a place where the poor were often illiterate, Sunday was commonly spent in “riot,” and social order and conscience were being chewed up. He crowns Robert Raikes of Gloucester as the “father and founder” of Sunday schools and quotes Raikes’s own account: seeing ragged children in the street, hiring women to teach them on Sundays, catechizing them, and shepherding them into church. (books.google.tm)

    From there, the book becomes a spiritual “field guide” for the teacher’s soul: what you’re aiming at, what kind of person you must be, how to teach, how to endure the grind, and how to keep the fire from going out.

    Chapter-by-chapter summary

    Introduction: origin, progress, improvement

    Sunday schools arise as a response to widespread ignorance and Sabbath profanation among working-class children.

    Raikes’s model: Sunday instruction in reading + catechism, with order, discipline, and church attendance as expected outcomes. (books.google.tm)

    Chapter I: the ultimate object of teaching

    James hammers the thesis: your goal isn’t just to make kids read, or even to make them “well-behaved.” It’s the conversion/salvation of the child.

    If a teacher settles for “education, morality, civility,” they’ve missed the center.

    Chapter II: The teacher’s qualifications

    He gives a candid list—basically: “Don’t volunteer for this if you’re playing dress-up with religion.”

    Personal piety: the teacher should be genuinely godly, since the job is spiritual work. (books.google.tm)

    Seriousness of character: a weighty, steady temperament—because you’re handling eternal realities, not running a hobby club. (books.google.tm)

    Consistency and propriety: even things like habits and dress are mentioned, because the teacher becomes a living model in the child’s imagination. (books.google.tm)

    Chapter III: How to teach

    This is the “craft” chapter—still moral, not mechanical.

    Adjust to children’s different capacities; use patience, clarity, and repetition.

    The teacher must do more than assign a reading: they must press truth onto conscience and heart (not just memory).

    Practical advice shows up: gain attention, use questioning, keep order, and don’t confuse mere recitation with understanding. (books.google.tm)

    Chapter IV: Duties Teachers Owe Each Other

    Teachers need unity, mutual forbearance, shared prayer, and coordinated effort.

    James strongly pushes prayer as the engine of the whole enterprise: if the work is spiritual, its fuel can’t be mere technique. (books.google.tm)

    Chapter V: temptations of Sunday-school teachers

    This chapter is surprisingly psychologically sharp.

    Secularization of the Sabbath: the work can become “busy” and mechanical—so you end up losing devotion while doing “religious” labor. He even worries that certain “systems” and classroom mechanisms can flatten the spiritual atmosphere. (books.google.tm)

    Levity with holy things: talking about eternal matters in an “official,” emotionally dead way hardens you.

    Pride and authoritarian manner: the authority over children can inflate the ego and produce an overbearing tone. (books.google.tm)

    Chapter VI: discouragements

    James basically anticipates burnout.

    Discouragement from children’s dullness, ingratitude, and the feeling that moral change is not happening. (books.google.tm)

    He answers with two encouragements:

    Slow growth is normal, and

    Visible results are not the only results—seed can lie buried and later spring up. He even imagines heaven filled with people who received their “first devout impressions” in Sunday school, as a morale-boosting picture. (books.google.tm)

    Chapter VII: How to keep up “the spirit of the office”

    He’s trying to prevent the teacher’s calling from turning into a dead routine.

    Keep the ultimate object (salvation) in view constantly. (books.google.tm)

    He praises Sunday School Unions (teachers meeting across schools) as a way to rekindle zeal through shared reports and exhortation. (books.google.tm)

    He urges regular teacher meetings for conversation and prayer, and he complains that many ministers neglect Sunday schools—arguing pastors should see the school as vital to church health and future membership. (books.google.tm)

    Chapter VIII: motives to diligence

    Now he stacks motivations like firewood.

    Sunday schools benefit society by elevating moral character and reducing crime; he frames this as patriotic as well as a Christian duty. (books.google.tm)

    He still ranks them under the ordinary labors of an evangelical ministry, but as the most powerful auxiliary among “plans” for social religious improvement. (books.google.tm)

    Appendix (what it adds)

    The contents page tells you exactly what James thought were the “danger zones” where Sunday schools could drift off mission:

    Improper anniversary sermons used to fund/promote schools

    Public exhibitions that tempt children toward admiration/applause

    Teaching writing on the Sabbath

    A savings fund among children

    How to judge the benefits of Sunday-school teaching rightly

    “Freeman’s Card” for adult instruction (showing the adult-school parallel) (books.google.tm)

    So the appendix is basically his “please don’t turn this into a circus / a fundraising show / a Sabbath-breaking machine” warning label.

    The book’s vibe in one sentence

    James is trying to keep Sunday schools from becoming mere moral reform + mass instruction, insisting they remain a church-adjacent, prayer-driven, soul-aimed work—and he spends as much time guarding the teacher’s heart as instructing the teacher’s hand. (books.google.tm)

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  5. 5.

    R. G. Pardee is Richard Gay Pardee (1811–1869)—a 19th-century American lay (“non-clergy”) leader in the Sunday-school movement, strongly associated with the American Sunday-School Union world and its print ecosystem. (Quod)

    He was born in Sharon, Connecticut (Oct. 12, 1811) and died in New York City (Feb. 4, 1869); he married Rebecca Camp (1836). (Internet Archive) From the inside-baseball view of Sunday-school organizers, Pardee was known as a highly “system-minded” worker—someone who treated teaching, organization, and training like an engineering problem for the church to solve well. Rice’s major history of the American Sunday-School Union describes him as a farmer’s boy with limited formal schooling, but trained in business and noted for methodical leadership; it also reports he was a frequent contributor to The Sunday-School Times and authored two standard helps: The Sunday-School Worker’s Manual and The Sabbath-School Index. (Internet Archive)

    In the wider Sunday-school convention circuit, he had a reputation as a kind of “utility infielder” of the movement—experienced, practical, and constantly on the road. One Sunday-School Times notice even calls “R. G. Pardee, of New York” “the lion in all these conventions,” praising how his experience “added much” to the gatherings’ “edification.” (liberty.contentdm.oclc.org) Rice likewise repeats the tradition that he visited every U.S. state except California, and preserves an anecdote (from Ralph Wells) portraying him as intensely devotional—getting up at night for long seasons of prayer. (Internet Archive)

    His best-known book, The Sabbath-School Index (Philadelphia, 1868), is essentially a one-volume “how-to + why-we-do-this” manual: history of Sunday schools, approved methods of instruction, object teaching, blackboard use, infant-class management, teachers’ meetings, conventions, institutes, etc. (Quod)

    A small but telling footnote: the Pardee family history even flags his lineage connection (through the Brewsters) back to Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower line—very on-brand for 19th-century Protestant respectability narratives. (Internet Archive)

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  6. 6.

    The Sabbath-School Index (R. G. Pardee, 1868) is a big all-in-one handbook for running and improving a Sunday/Sabbath school—half history, half pedagogy, half administration (yes, that’s 150%… which is the vibe). Pardee says he wrote it because leaders were tired of buying “a dozen English and a dozen American works” just to cover the basics, and he wanted a single, updated “index” of best practice. (Project Gutenberg)

    The book’s core thesis

    Pardee treats the Sabbath school as a central working arm of the church and insists its highest aim is the “immediate conversion” of the scholars to Christ and then their “thorough religious training.” (Project Gutenberg) He repeatedly frames the Sunday-school “union” and the whole movement as a coming powerhouse for church-wide effectiveness. (Project Gutenberg)

    What’s inside (how it’s organized)

    The table of contents lays out 25 chapters that move from “what the Sabbath school is” → “how it developed” → “how to run it” → “how to teach well.” (Project Gutenberg)

    1) Definition + history (Chs. I–II)He argues that whenever “pure religion” revives, attention returns to the religious training of children; he grounds this in biblical patterns and then sketches a long historical pedigree (including catechumen schools in early Christianity and later Reformation-era efforts). (
    Project Gutenberg)A notable (and very “19th-century confident”) move: he claims the church must often
    “supply the lack” of parents who are indifferent or unable to teach their children, via catechetical/Sabbath-school instruction. (Project Gutenberg)

    2) Movement machinery: conventions + institutes (Chs. III–IV)He explains what teacher conventions and institutes are for:
    survey “destitution,” plant new schools, fix bad habits of teaching, and train teachers. (Project Gutenberg)He even narrates how mid-1850s multi-day conventions (e.g., 1856–57) helped normalize this training culture. (
    Project Gutenberg)

    3) Administration: roles and systems (Chs. V–VIII)Separate chapters on the
    superintendent, library/librarian, secretary, and teacher—with lots of nuts-and-bolts procedure and an obsession with orderly operation (records, circulation, routines, discipline). (Project Gutenberg)

    4) Teaching method: how to get truth into kids’ heads (and hearts) (Chs. IX–XVIII)This is the most “manual” part: lesson preparation, teaching techniques, and then the famous trio:

    Illustrative teaching (stories, parallels) (Project Gutenberg)

    Pictorial teaching (images/prints as prompts) (Project Gutenberg)

    Object-teaching (using physical objects, charts, maps, etc.)—with worked examples of how to question children through a picture lesson. (Project Gutenberg)He gives a whole chapter to
    the blackboard as a teaching engine, including outlines, acronym devices, chart layouts, and map-drawing methods. (Project Gutenberg)He also includes specific sections for
    infant classes and young men/women’s Bible classes. (Project Gutenberg)

    5) Pastoral tactics: attention, questioning, visitation, mission-schools (Chs. XVII–XXII)Two chapters are basically early “classroom psychology”:
    how to secure attention and how to question well, plus strong emphasis on visiting scholars and systematic district visitation to reach neglected children and start new schools. (Project Gutenberg)

    6) Revival + nurture: conversion and “culture” of children (Chs. XXIII–XXV)He explicitly addresses children’s conversion, encourages children’s prayer-meetings, and even discusses preaching to children and children’s meetings/monthly concerts—again showing how tightly the school is linked (in his mind) to evangelistic outcomes. (
    Project Gutenberg)

    The feel of the book in one line

    It’s a systems-and-techniques blueprint for making Sunday schools efficient, attractive, and evangelistically “productive”—with the assumption that the church should treat the Sabbath school as one of its main strategic fields. (Project Gutenberg)

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  7. 7.

    Robert Raikes (1735/36–1811) was a Gloucester printer/newspaper proprietor and Anglican layman who became the best-known promoter (not necessarily the first inventor) of the modern Sunday-school movement. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

    He inherited and ran the Gloucester Journal after his father’s death (1757), and he had a strong “public reform” streak—he was involved in humanitarian causes like prison reform and used his public platform to publicize social ills. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

    What he did for Sunday schools

    Around 1780, Raikes began sponsoring Sunday instruction for poor children in Gloucester—basic reading (often from Scripture) plus catechism and moral discipline. The classic story emphasizes children “running wild” on Sundays; modern historians note the founding story got embellished over time, but the core point stands: he organized, funded, and then broadcast a replicable model. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

    Two reasons he mattered more than earlier local experiments:

    He scaled the idea through publicity. After observing results, he promoted Sunday schools through the press (including his own paper), which helped the idea spread rapidly. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

    He helped “brand” Sunday school as a movement. Britannica summarizes it simply: he noticed neglected children, hired women teachers in 1780 to teach reading and catechism on Sundays, and the experiment took off. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

    Important nuance: “founder” vs “promoter.”

    Even sympathetic sources emphasize that Raikes wasn’t the first person ever to run a Sunday school, but he became the movement’s emblem because he gave it momentum and a public story. (Wikipedia)

    Why did he become a symbol?

    By the 19th century, Sunday schools were widely seen as a moral-educational force, and Raikes was memorialized accordingly (statues, named buildings, etc.). His old Gloucester premises are still a notable landmark today (“Robert Raikes’ House”). (Wikipedia)

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  8. 8.

    The Mississippi Valley Enterprise was the American Sunday-School Union’s big, headline-grabbing western expansion campaign, launched in 1830, to blanket the frontier with Sunday schools.

    At the ASSU annual meeting in Philadelphia on May 25, 1830, Rev. Thomas McAuley offered (and the meeting adopted) the resolution:

    to “within two years, establish a Sunday school in every destitute place where it is practicable, throughout the Valley of the Mississippi.” (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

    What the “Mississippi Valley” meant

    The ASSU defined it very broadly: west of the Alleghenies to the Rocky Mountains, and from Michigan to Louisiana—about 1.3 million square miles. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

    How they tried to do it

    This wasn’t just talk. They ran it like a coordinated mission:

    Fundraising by subscriptions (ongoing solicitation, using ministers and agents). (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

    Year 1 was reconnaissance: agents were assigned by state/territory to survey conditions and “secure additional means” efficiently. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

    Staffing: In 1830–1831, they employed 49 missionaries/agents in the Valley, plus about 20 voluntary missionaries. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

    Reported results (early): in under 18 months, they reported 2,867 schools established and 1,121 visited and revived. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

    What happened after the initial burst

    The “two-year” deadline quickly became more aspirational than binding, and the work ran into the reality that mass religious logistics cost money:

    Enthusiasm stayed high for about two years, but contributions fell off, and the Union struggled to meet ongoing costs. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

    The financial crisis of 1837 further squeezed missionary work. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

    The ASSU soon launched a parallel Southern Enterprise (1833) using a similar model. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

    So in plain terms: the Mississippi Valley Enterprise was a continent-sized plan to “plant” Sunday schools across the frontier, organized with agents, districts, fundraising drives, and published reporting—exactly the sort of “institutional means-system” that Old School Baptists were alarmed by in the early 1830s. (Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.))

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