This engrossing book traces the social history of Protestant Sunday schools from their origins in the 1790s--when they taught literacy to poor working children--to their consolidation in the 1870s, when they had become the primary source of new church members for the major Protestant denominations. Anne M. Boylan describes not only the schools themselves but also their place within a national network of evangelical institutions, their complementary relationship to local common schools, and their connection with the changing history of youth and women in the nineteenth century. Her book is a signal contribution to our understanding of American religious and social history, education history, women's history, and the history of childhood.
Women who want God to be more than superficially in their lives can rise above the world's expectations by becoming housewife theologians finding true meaning and true worship everyday. Great for journaling and for group discussion.
In the half century after the Civil War, evangelical southerners turned increasingly to Sunday schools as a means of rejuvenating their destitute region and adjusting to an ever-modernizing world. By educating children -- and later adults -- in Sunday school and exposing them to Christian teachings, biblical truths, and exemplary behavior, southerners felt certain that a better world would emerge and cast aside the death and destruction wrought by the Civil War. In To Raise Up the South, Sally G. McMillen offers an examination of Sunday schools in seven black and white denominations and reveals their vital role in the larger quest for southen redemption. McMillen begins by explaining how the schools were established, detailing northern missionaries' collaboration in their creation and the eventual southern resistance to this northern aid. She then turns to the classroom, discussing the roles of church officials, teachers, ministers, and parents in the effort to raise pious children; the different functions of men and women; and the social benefits of such participation. Though denominations of both races saw Sunday schools as a way to increase their numbers and mold their children, white southerners rarely raised the race issue in the classroom. Black evangelicals, on the other hand, used their Sunday schools to discuss and decry Jim Crow laws, rising violence, and widespread injustices. Integrating the study of race, class, gender, and religion, To Raise Up the South provides an exciting new lens through which to view the turbulent years of Reconstruction and the emergence of the New South. It charts the rise of an institution that became a mainstay in the lives of millions of southerners.
According to the leading church growth expert, Ken Hemphill, Sunday School is not only worth saving, it has the potential to revitalize your entire church. 'Revitalizing The Sunday Morning Dinosaur' gives you specific, detailed steps on how to lead your congregation in making it happen.
In 1780, the story of Sunday School began when Robert Raikes walked down the steps from his second story printing office to the street below. There, he encountered a wash woman that complained that the swearing of the children on the Sabbath Day made it sound more like hell than heaven. At that moment God dropped a word into his heart-try. Raikes took thirty children off the street and began to teach them how to read. Their first lessons were "God is One" and "God is love." He cleaned them up, gave them clothes, and taught them that vice is preventable and that a good example can draw others like a magnet. Other children were drawn so that the one school grew to seven schools; and after three years, he published to the world the effects of his experiment. He called it "botanizing in human nature." In a letter to a friend, he explained that his vision was to "create a new race out of what others called waste." By the time Robert Raikes died, over four hundred thousand children were enrolled in Sunday Schools. The story you are about to read was first told to a Sunday School class by J. Henry Harris in 1900. The author edited this story so that the testimony of Robert Raikes may inspire us to believe in the power of God's Word to transform lives and shape the future of our nation. Dr. Michael Peters graduated cum laude from Covenant Theological Seminary and holds a Ph.D. in historical theology from Saint Louis University.
