Sunday school

A young Methodist lady, Hannah Ball, started the first ever Sunday School in 1769 at High Wycombe, England. However the idea didn't catch on until 1780 when a newspaper editor and Anglican layman, Robert Raikes (1735-1811), concerned by the religious ignorance of poor children in his native city of Gloucester who worked all the week in industry, opened a "Sunday school". 

Sunday School. Pentecostal

Raikes had been pondering the fate of the poor children of Gloucester. Visiting the local prisons, he saw how easy it was for the young ruffians to slip into crime as their parents were so steeped in sin themselves they had no intention of training them to do better. He was convinced that the best way to help the poor children was by giving them education and religion.

In 1780 Raikes organised a school that would run on Sunday, the only day the poor children of Gloucester weren't working. He hired four women to teach and with the help of Reverend Thomas Stock, he enrolled one hundred boys, from six to fourteen years old. 

The teachers gave the children reading lessons from ten to two, with an hour break for lunch. Then they marched them to church, after which the boys were taught the catechism until 5:30 P.M. Good behavior was rewarded with small prizes.

Raikes' "Sunday school," which initially met in the home of a Mrs Meredith was originally just for boys. Soon girls were attending and with a few years several Sunday schools had opened in the Gloucester area. 

Robert Raikes Statue , outside Shell Mex House, in Victoria Embankment Gardens. From geograph.org.uk

Impressed by the Sunday school work of Robert Raikes which tallied with ideas he had earlier tried to implement, a Baptist deacon named William Fox called for an association to assist and promote Sunday schools. On September 7, 1785, Fox headed up a meeting at 4 PM at Paul’s Head Tavern in London. Several prominent philanthropists took part. The result was the first Sunday School Society for Britain. Its innovation was to form Sunday schools under volunteer teachers and to focus on Bible studies rather than secular subjects.

In 1805, the interdenominational Stockport Sunday School was built on London Square to accommodate 5000 children. Up until the Education Act of 1870 it would be the only source of education for many children and in the late 19th century it was the largest Sunday school in the world.

By April 5, 1811, the day of Raikes' death around half a million children in England and Wales were attending Sunday school providing basic lessons in literacy alongside religious instruction. Twenty years later Sunday schools in Great Britain were attended weekly by 1,250,000 children, or about 25 per cent of the eligible population. 

The American Sunday School system was first begun by Samuel Slater in the 1790s. After migrating to the United States at the age of 21, Slater designed the first textile mills in the US in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He also brought the Sunday School system from his native England to his Pawtucket textile factory using college students to teach the children reading and writing.

Sunday school, Indians and whites. Indian Territory (Oklahoma), US, c. 1900.

The words for "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear," the first well-known Christmas song to be composed in the United States are based on a poem written by a young Unitarian minister in Massachusetts, Reverend Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810-1876). They were written at the request of his friend and fellow minister, W.P. Lunt and first presented at Lunt's 1849 Sunday School Christmas celebration.

The words and music for "Jingle Bells" were written by James S. Pierpont, a popular American composer in 1857, with the title of "One Horse Open Sleigh." It was originally penned for a local Sunday school entertainment on Thanksgiving Day in Savannah, Georgia. 

The British film production and distribution company, Rank Organisation, was the major force in the British movie industry during the mid 20th century. It had its origins in 1933 when J. Arthur Rank, a prosperous flour-miller and Methodist with no great interest in cinema, thought of showing religious films at his regular Sunday school lessons. Finding few that were any good, he resolved to try making them himself.

William Hoover, founder of the Hoover vacuum cleaner company was a Sunday school teacher for 50 years.

Sunday school at a Baptist church in Kentucky, US, 1946

In the UK, Sunday school attendance saw a gradual decline during the 20th century. It dropped from 55% of the eligible population in 1900 to 4% in 1999. 

Benedict Arnold's tomb is currently embedded in the wall of a Sunday school classroom at St. Mary’s church in the Battersea section of London, next to a tropical fish tank.

Source Christianity