We offer classes for younger learners on most Sunday mornings. The students
join us in worship until after the choir anthem and then adjourn for their
classes.
Although religious education of various types had been known earlier within Christianity, the beginning
of the modern Sunday school can be traced to the work of
Robert Raikes (1736–1811), a newspaper publisher in
Gloucester, Eng., who was interested in prison reform. He
decided that young children, many of whom were employed in
factories every day except Sunday, could be deterred from a life
of crime if they were given basic and religious education on
Sundays. The first school was opened in 1780 with the
cooperation of the Anglican parish minister, although lay people
were in charge. Classes were held in the teachers' homes. After
three years, Raikes's writing about the Sunday schools in
Gloucester in his newspaper aroused interest, and the system was
copied throughout the British Isles. Some church officials
opposed the schools because they thought that teaching
interfered with the proper observance of Sunday, and others did
not believe in educating the poor because it might lead to
revolution. Eventually, however, the Sunday schools became
closely associated with the churches. When Raikes died, 31 years
after the first school was opened, it was reported that about
500,000 children in the British Isles were attending Sunday
schools.
In the United States each denomination
generally established its own Christian education policy,
although interdenominational cooperation was frequently an
important factor. The Philadelphia Sunday School Union, the
first interdenominational Sunday school association in the
United States, was organized in 1791. The International Council
of Religious Education, which was organized in 1922, became part
of the National Council of Churches in 1950.
