Sunday school
[1] Sunday schools in Europe began with the Catholic Church's Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, founded in the 16th century by the archbishop Charles Borromeo to teach young Italian children the faith.
[4] He wrote an article in his journal, and as a result many clergymen supported schools, which aimed to teach the youngsters reading, writing, cyphering (doing arithmetic) and a knowledge of the Bible.
[13] He opened a school in the home of a Mrs Meredith, operating it on a Sunday – the only day that the boys and girls working in the factories could attend.
[23] The concept of Sunday school in Sweden started in the early to mid-1800s, initially facing some backlash, before becoming more mainstream, as it was often intertwined with the growth (and eventual legalization) of free churches.
The first documented Sunday school was started in 1826 in Snavlunda parish, Örebro County, by priest Ringzelli, and was still active during the time of Pastor Lennart Sickeldal in the 1950s.
[25] Carl Ludvig Tellström, later missionary to the Sámi people, made another early attempt to start a Sunday school around 1834.
[26] While in Stockholm, he was converted by George Scott, an influential Scottish Wesleyan Methodist preacher who worked in Sweden from 1830 to 1842 and was controversial due to his preaching in violation of the Conventicle Act.
[27] Within the Church of Sweden, however, based on the format of Methodist Sunday schools, he started several in Flykälen, Föllinge, Ottsjön, Storå, and Tuvattnet.
Influenced by Pietistic revivalist preachers such as Scott, and particularly Carl Olof Rosenius, Foy found herself part of the läsare (Reader) movement.
[26] Sometime between 1848 and 1856, educator and preacher Amelie von Braun, also part of the revivalist awakening movement, started a Sunday school primarily teaching children Bible stories.
[31] Around 1851, Sunday schools were established by Foy's friends Betty Ehrenborg (1818–1880) and Per Palmqvist (1815–1887), brother of Swedish Baptist pioneers Johannes and Gustaf Palmquist.
There were over 250 children and 20 to 30 teachers;[33] classes were taught by laypeople and included literacy training in addition to Bible lessons, singing, and prayer.
[37][35] However, even despite the abolition of the Conventicle Act in 1858 and increasing religious freedom, there were still challenges: Palmqvist was reported to the Stockholm City Court by a priest in 1870 for teaching children who did not belong to his congregation, but was later acquitted.
More Sunday schools were soon founded in the 1870s and 1880s: in Vaasa – including by the local Lutheran parish, in Kotka, Turku, Åland, Helsinki, Ekenäs, Hanko, and other cities.
[40][41] The first organized and documented Sunday school in the United States was founded in Ephrata, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, by an immigrant from Germany, Ludwig Höcker, the son of a well-respected and influential Reformed Church Pastor and teacher in Westerwald.
Ira Lee Cottrell writes:"It is especially interesting to us to know that a Seventh Day Baptist Sabbath school was organized about 1740, forty years before Robert Raikes Sunday-school.
This Sabbath school was organized at Ephrata, Pa., by Ludwig Hocker among the Seventh Day Baptist Germans, and continued until 1777, when their room with others was given up for hospital purposes after the battle of Brandywine…".
In New England a Sunday school system was first begun by Samuel Slater in his textile mills in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in the 1790s.
It was a building layout with a central assembly hall surrounded by small classrooms, conceived with Methodist minister John Heyl Vincent and architect Jacob Snyder.
[46] Notable 20th-century leaders in the Sunday school movement include: President Jimmy Carter, Clarence Herbert Benson, Henrietta Mears, founder of Gospel Light,[47] Dr. Gene A. Getz,[48] Howard Hendricks, Lois E. LeBar, Lawrence O. Richards, and Elmer Towns.
[49] In Evangelical churches, during worship service, children and young people receive an adapted education, in Sunday school, in a separate room.
While many Sunday schools are focused on providing instruction for children (especially those sessions occurring during service times), adult Sunday-school classes are also popular and widespread (see RCIA).
[53] In Great Britain an agency was formed called the Religious Tract Society which helped provide literature for the Sunday school.
[55] Sunday school teachers are usually lay people who are selected for their role in the church by a designated coordinator, board, or a committee.
Some churches require Sunday school teachers and catechists to attend courses to ensure that they have a sufficient understanding of the faith and of the teaching process to educate others.
Some well-known public figures who teach, or have taught, Sunday school include Space Shuttle astronaut Ronald J. Garan Jr., comedian Stephen Colbert,[56] novelist John Grisham,[57] and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.
