THE ADVANTAGE OF SABBATH SCHOOLS EXAMINED. (Vail)

 

For the Signs of the Times.

THE ADVANTAGE OF SABBATH SCHOOLS
EXAMINED.

SUNADAY SCHOOLS: NURSERIES OF THE CHURCH (Santamaria)

SUNDAY SCHOOLS THE NURSERIES OF THE CHURCH

Contents

• FOREWORD
• Sunday Schools
• The Old School/Primitive Baptist critique (the Absoluter wing, historically)
• So… are Sunday Schools “good” or “bad”?
• Outsourcing discipleship:
• Moralism/decisionism drift:
• Age segregation:
• NURSERIES OF THE CHURCH
• Older Christian usage: “nursery” = a seedbed for future church life (often clergy-training).
• Puritan / early-modern household theology: the family as the church’s nursery.
• 19th-century Sunday School movement: the phrase becomes a rallying cry.
• Who used “nurseries of the church” in the Sunday-school world?
• John Angell James (England),3 very early and very explicit (1816/1817).
• Early movement rhetoric also used “nursery” language even when it didn’t say “of the church.”
• The American religious press used the exact wording by the 1830s.
• Later 19th-century Sunday-school “how-to” literature repeats it as a stock slogan.
• The American Sunday School is basically the church’s “learning hour.”
• 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.
• The Old School/Primitive Baptist critique (the Absoluter wing, historically)
• The Black Rock Address (1832)
• More on the Black Address & Sunday Schools
• Outsourcing discipleship:
• Moralism/decisionism drift:
• Age segregation:
• Institution creep,

FOREWORD

EXPERIENCE (JOHN E. DAILY) 1886

"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."— Col., ii, 8. 

BANNERS (BEEBE) 1841

[Have things changed much since Beebe's days? - ed]

BIBLE STUDIES AND RELATED SUBJECTS (ELDER JOHN G. CROWLEY)

A sister church has adopted formal Bible studies, giving rise to wounded feelings among our fellowship. 

We wish to record our reasons for opposing these new things. We wish to be distinctly understood that we recommend the reading of the Holy Scriptures to all and sundry without reserve. We believe that the reading of the Scriptures has been used by God to awaken and feed His elect and that He imparts to them a hunger and thirst for His Word. 

We further believe that the people of God delight speak to one another about the spiritual treasures they find in the Word of God. 

We feel, however, that formal Bible Studies (so-called), after the manner of the Arminians, held week after week at a stated time, where the Bible is discussed and dissected with the tools of carnal reason as if it were the mere textbook of a human science, are a grave departure from the spiritual manner in which Old Baptists desire to worship. 

We feel such practices smack of burdensome duty and legal bondage, and give the appearance of going “after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them” (II Kings 17:15). 

Some think formal Bible studies beneficial to the young, but often such tiresome regimentation sours children on worship and the Scriptures. A child growing up in a home where the Scriptures are truly loved and revered will not have to attend a special meeting to hear the Word quoted and expounded. Nor do we expect that the truth as it is in Jesus will long abide in such institutions founded on worldly wisdom.

PROVERBS 22.6 (BEEBE)

In reply to a sister who has desired our views on the text: “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

THE NATIONAL BAPTISTS AND THEIR IDOLS...

Although Beebe was speaking of a group that has changed its name, the principle upon which they stood remains the same today with similar organizations - ed.

WHAT SUNDAY SCHOOL CAN DO!

 

The wonders of Sunday School! - ed.

WHAT PENNIES CAN DO!

This is the kind of article that was being circulated about the POWER of Sunday Schools - ed.

BENEVOLENT EFFORTS 2

“He that is first in how to own cause seemeth just; but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him. ” - Solomon.

BENEVOLENT EFFORTS 1 (Beebe) 1836

“He that is first in his own cause seemeth just but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him.” - Solomon.

SOT: SUNDAY SCHOOL...

After so long a time I once more resume my pen to continue my remarks on some prominent errors. The fifth comes next in rotation, which is, “Holding that the natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit, neither can he discern them, & yet that parents and guardians ought to, and can teach their children the things of the Kingdom of God.”

THE BLACK ROCK ADDRESS OF 1832...

Black Rock Address 1832

MINUTES OF THE PROCEEDINGS AND RESOLUTIONS, DRAFTED BY THE PARTICULAR BAPTISTS, CONVENED AT BLACK ROCK, MARYLAND SEPTEMBER 28, 1832 ALSO KNOWN AS


THE BLACK ROCK ADDRESS OF 1832

(Copied from the first number of the Signs of the Times.)

SOT: ANTI-CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS...

Our brethren in Georgia are right in asking of us scriptural authority for the position we have taken in regard to the religious inventions of the day.

SUNDAY SCHOOL, VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL & CHILDREN'S CHURCH PART 2...

A continuation of the history of the unbiblical practice of separating children from their parents in religious education.

SUNDAY SCHOOL, VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL & CHILDREN'S CHURCH PART 1...

Mom, apple-pie, all-American practices like Sunday Schools and Children's Church although common now, were not always practiced in America.  As amazing as it may sound to some, they were unheard of in the New Testament church.