Short History of the Sunday school
The following short history of the
Sunday school was compiled by students in Keith Drury’s “Local Church
Education” course at Indiana Wesleyan University over the years 1996-2010.[1]
Robert Raikes, Glochester,
England—1780’s
At the dawning of the
industrial era in the late 1700’s (about the time of the United States
Revolutionary war) England had a large underclass of poor people who had moved
from the countryside to the city to work in “factories.” There was at least one
factory in Glochester that manufactured pins.
Children as young as eight years old worked six days a week in gruesome
surroundings for a pittance. When their tiny hands (which helped them as
workers) got caught in the machinery and got cut off, the children were simply
dumped on the streets and new workers were hired. There was no free schooling
at this time. Education was considered a family (not a communal) purchase—if
you had enough money, you sent your children to school. If you were poor, your
children did not learn to read and write, and were probably destined to a life
of poverty so they couldn’t even read. In the growing factory society the poor
never seemed able to rise out of their abject poverty.
Sunday was the one these
children got off. Many blew off steam wandering around the town breaking
windows and robbing homes while the upscale parishioners attended church. The
street urchins of the day survived miserable conditions at work and learned how
to be pickpockets and thieves at a young age. There was no way out of the
poverty cycle for these children.
These “gangs” of street
urchins sparked a vision and burden in Robert
Raikes. He saw their lack of education, their
dead end life of poverty, and their turning to crime as something Christian folk should be concerned about
so he got an idea. His idea was simple: why not start a school on Sundays for
these poor children where good Christian people would teach them to read and
write, teach them the Ten Commandments, and instruct them in moral living?
Maybe with a basic education they might be able to escape their dreadful life.
So Raikes
started a “Sunday school” for these poor children. Their parents could not pay
for school like other better-off people could so Raikes
paid for the first school himself—and recruited others to contribute. He became
obsessed with reforming the morals of the poor children and the “lower
class.” In 1780 (or maybe 1781) he
started this first Sunday school and paid the teacher himself. She quit soon after but he hired others.
Since he was a printer, Raikes published large sheets
with the Ten Commandments and other Scripture verses on them so the children
could use them for his double-duty aim of learning to read and write—and at the
same time learning moral principles to live by. These printed sheet were in a sense the first “Sunday school
curriculum.” Raikes
was a devout member of the Church of England.
The idea spreads—London,
1785
The Quakers in
Philadelphia—1790
Just seven years after the
end of the Revolutionary War, a group of Philadelphia
Quakers founded their “First Day Society and started to teach “the offsprings of indigent parents” every Sunday. They based
their design on Quaker George Fox’s
plan in England, but kept that quiet since following the Revolutionary War
Americans weren’t inclined to copy anything from their former “oppressor.” From that First Day school grew an entire
common school system for children of the poor. The schools were supported by
more than just Quakers. This was an interdenominational ecumenical effort
getting support from laity as varied as Dr. Benjamin Rush (Universalist), Mathew Garey
(Roman Catholic) and (Protestant) Episcopal Bishop William White. This
interdenominational effort was an early example of a pluralistic approach to
educating the poor. Eventually the Sunday school would gravitate toward
Protestantism in general and evangelicals in particular, and in fact eventually
every denomination would have their own Sunday school but at its early stage
the movement was interdenominational.
Isabella Graham & Joanna Bethune in New
York—1816
Isabella Graham yearned for revival and collected sermons and articles about revival in
England and shared them with her New York friends which spawned a small group
that included her married daughter, Joanna
Bethune. This gathering of women prayed and chatted about revival until
eventually, in 1816, they founded “Female
Union for the Promotion of Sabbath Schools in New York City borrowing the
constitution for the elaborately named group from England’s Bristol Sunday
School Union. In this day when women could not vote and were considered “pushy”
if they sought leadership, these women launched a New York movement that led to
planting Sunday schools and simultaneously became a way of empowering women.
Working with children was one of the few ways woman could lead in most churches
at the time.
Opposition from ministers
Opposition arose quickly to
Graham and Bethune and their idea of starting Sunday schools. The idea of
holding classes on Sunday was called Sabbath-breaking. Isabella’s husband
encouraged her not to wait for the male pastors to get aboard but simply start
with the women—which is why the word “Female” got into
the title of her organization. Meanwhile her husband organized the New York Sunday School Union which
tapped male givers who couldn’t bring themselves to support the women’s group.
This mother-daughter team faced typical opposition from established pastors
(especially the prominent role of women in the movement). For instance, in 1817
in Medway, Massachusetts when the minister and deacons were opposing the
women’s idea of starting a Sunday school one male leader complained, “These
young folk are taking too much upon themselves.” Others said “These women will
be in the pulpit next.[2]”
Spreading
Sunday schools in the east.
In the first few decades of
the 1800s the Sunday school movement spread across east coast cities with
dozens of leaders like Isabella and Joanna and a collection of men—mostly
laity. Ministers eventually grudgingly accepted the Sunday school—even women
teachers—and soon most populated towns had a nondenominational school for children that was especially focused on the poor. The movement was mostly led by women—many of
them young women, though an increasing number of lay men got on board too as
they saw the value to the developing nation. Shrugging off criticism and
opposition these people planted schools and educated the poor, teaching them to
read and write and used their curriculum the Bible and the Ten Commandments.
They intended to change the coming generation by raising up moral adults who
could escape poverty through education, and would became solid honorable
Christian citizens by learning the Bible and moral principles.
Lewis & Clark and the
Sunday school
But the attention of the
nation was now focusing on the West. Lewis and Clark had successfully made a journey
to the Pacific Ocean and returned in 1806. Young couples (and some older ones)
felt a yearning to leave the eastern organized states and head west to the rich
new territories described by Lewis and Clark.
When the two New York women founded their organization in 1816 only four
states had been added to the original 13 states. These were Vermont (1791),
Kentucky (formed in 1792 as a split from Virginia), Tennessee (formed in 1796
on land donated by North Carolina) and Ohio (formed with land donated by
several East cost states). The “rest of the West” was made up of territories
still unorganized as states.
A growing burden for the
untamed west
Young couples who wanted
their own farmland were packing up wagons and heading into these new rich lands
to carve out their own homesteads. Stories of this “wild western frontier” (in
places like Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Arkansas) drifted back to the east
coast—stories of “wild unruly people” where children had no schools and the
sparsely settled communities were served only by trading post, a tavern and a
whorehouse. Youngsters raised in this wild land had no Sunday schools, could
not read, and had little moral training. The East coast Sunday school movement
quickly sensed a burden for these Western lands and thus morphed from a local
missionary movement to a sent-out movement—their goal became to send out Sunday
school missionaries “across the Appalachian mountains” into the west. This
missionary movement provides some of the most inspiring stories of the spread
of the Sunday school movement
Sunday school
missionaries go west—1830-1860
In 1824 in Philadelphia, a
new organization was organized that collected together the fragments of local
Sunday school movements, the “American
Sunday School Union.” Just six years
after organizing, in 1830 this Union launched an astounding program to
establish a Sunday school in every destitute place in the Mississippi
valley—the lands which drained into the Mississippi River, and they planned to
do so within two years. The Mississippi
valley to them meant everything west of Harrisburg Pennsylvania to the Rocky
Mountains—a gutsy undertaking. The union had only three full time workers and
the huge missionary endeavor was to be accomplished by mostly volunteer
workers.
Multiple SS Unions are
born
Seldom in American can one
organization represent everyone, so other Unions sprang up dedicated to the
same task. Eventually at least five organizations were
committed to spread Sunday schools into the west and eventually most Western
areas even had their own Sunday school union. The movement to educate the
children in the west would need books and Bibles—for both were rare in the
west. The newly formed American Bible society got on board and
printed print tons of Bibles and the newly formed American Tract Society printed more then 2 million books and
pamphlets. The “union idea” prevailed
among all these organizations: Sunday school missionaries would raise their own
support and head west to establish non-denominational Sunday schools that
focused on areas of agreement between the various denominations—the core truths
that were held by all denominations. These “Sunday school workers” or “agents”
used the Bibles and books supplied free and they would plant Sunday schools in
“every destitute place” in the Mississippi Valley. Their goal was to bring every child and youth
under the influence of the gospel without arguments over baptism, and other
issues where denominations disagreed.
Opposition and suspicion
There were detractors of this
movement of course. Most of the lay leadership of The Union was Presbyterian and non-Presbyterians worried that the
movement might be a plot to bring the western youth into Presbyterianism under the
guise of a non-denominational movement. European immigrants could find little
land to farm on the east coast so they quickly re-migrated to the west. Many
were Catholics so some Catholic leaders saw the Sunday school movement as a
Protestant plot to capture the Catholic youth of the west. Politicians got into
the act too. Most of the Sunday school workers were conservatives—members of
the Whig party, and the Democrats worried that the whole movement might be a
plot to convert western youth into political conservatives. Some politicians from the west resented the
description of their people as “unruly barbarian mobs” and their land as
“destitute places.” But these missionaries forged on and planted Sunday schools
anyway.
Gaining steam in the west
The movement to plant Sunday
schools in the west gained a might head of steam in spite of these suspicions.
In 1831 a large gathering of senators and congressmen gathered to discuss the
movement and gave their support to it—some even serving as officers in the Sunday
school union. The movement was unstoppable. At the grass roots, the volunteer
Sunday school missionaries had no doubt about their goal: to “Christianize America so America can
Christianize the world.” Volunteers—many of them women—stepped up to travel
by foot from the eastern towns to the rough western lands to organize a Sunday
school in every village and town. Women traveled down the Ohio River to
Pittsburg then walked by foot into Ohio and Indiana to organize schools in
these new territories. They went from
farm to farm recruiting children to come once a week on Sunday to learn to read
and write and to study the Bible. Many of these women were single and later
settled down in the community and became the only school teacher in the
community—long before there were “one room school houses.” The rest traveled
form town to town as itinerant missionaries, founding a Sunday school, training
local people to lead it after they were gone, then they moved on and returning
later to check up on their fledgling Sunday schools in apostolic fashion.
Take no horse—horses eat
but cannot talk
The Sunday school
missionaries were urged to not use a horse but to walk from village to village.
In their instructions they were told that a horse would tempt them to go too fast
and besides, the missionary is generally welcome, because s/he can talk as well
as eat but the horse can only eat.
Pioneer families hungry for news invited these missionaries to stay with
them and before long the missionary was opening their satchel of books and
Bibles to sell or give away. They quickly rounded up children and youth for
their new Sunday school and parents were gratified that their children were
learning to read and write even if they also got moral and biblical training
along with these skills.
John McCallagh
A Scottish immigrant, John McCallagh
was a typical male Sunday school agent. He went to the Kentucky hills and
became known as the “Sunday school man of the South.” He was a blunt and rough man but was intent
on starting Sunday school throughout the Kentucky hills where there were few
churches. McCallagh wandered about looking for young
people who would listen to his gospel story and when he had a group of them he
organized a Sunday school then moved on to another community before doubling
back to check up the schools he had founded. These traveling missionaries often
returned to the east to raise their support periodically and became popular
speakers at the large Sunday school conventions in the east. Some conventions
raised more then $5000 in one day for new efforts. In theory a Sunday school
agent was to receive a salary of one dollar a day, but most (especially the
women agents) lived on much less and survived on the hospitality of local folk.
Many raised their own support by selling books which soon provided the core for
the first libraries in the western communities. Some of the single women agents
found husbands in the western villages and settled down to lead a single Sunday
school in their own newly adopted town.
Steven Paxson
Probably the most famous
Sunday school missionary was Stephen Paxson. An unlearned and irreligious man who lived on
the prairie in Illinois, his daughter persuaded him to attend one of the Sunday
morning classes and while there he was converted. Paxton learned how to read
and write and by the mid 1800s began riding his faithful horse “Raikes” to become a “traveling Bishop” of the region,
organizing Sunday schools across Illinois and neighboring states. He carried
news from one settlement to another, sold books, gave away Bibles and organized
more than 1200 Sunday schools, many of which eventually grew into churches. Paxson’s strategy had five steps: “A few papers and books,
gather the children, the parents follow, then a prayer meeting, then a preacher.”
Many unnamed women
Fewer names of the host of
women agents have survived but there were many. Weary of eastern towns these
women felt called to become Sunday school missionaries. Often with another woman (and often against
their family’s wishes) they gathered books and Bibles and headed west by boat
then on foot to the communities of Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois.
Walking along the route like Johnnie Appleseed, they
spread their Bibles and books and gathered children to teach them about God and
how to read and write. They slept on floors in rustic cabins, in barns and
sometimes along the roadside which struck fear in the hearts of their parents
and relatives back east when they told about it in their letters home. When
they arrived in a settlement with a dozen families they often settled down and
taught the children and youth weekly. Sometimes they married one of the local
single men. Others never got married and moved on to nearby settlements to do
it all over again. Their names were mostly lost when their eastern families
tossed out their letters that had been stored in attics years later, but they
left behind thousands of Sunday schools strung across the “western territories”
of Indiana,
Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois and neighboring states.
Urban and African
American Sunday schools
Everything the Sunday school
agents attempted did not turn out as well as the western [Mississippi River]
“Valley Campaign.” The Sunday school
movement was supported by generous philanthropy—especially from wealthy
easterners. Just seven years after launching their “Mississippi valley
campaign” the panic of 1837 broke loose. Of the 850 banks in the United States
at the time, 343 collapsed entirely, and another 62 failed partially. Many lost
their life savings completely in the ensuing depression. This panic and depression hit all
money-raising organizations hard and the effect on the Sunday School Union was
crippling. Poor immigrants from Europe flooded America’s east coast and filled
up the urban areas. Some saw the need of this “mission field on our doorstep”
but it never had the romance of the western mission so they labored with less
support and their names are now lost. Others specialized in starting Sunday
schools among African-Americans but they were vehemently opposed by most
southern by slave-holders who thought that teaching slaves to read and write
would generate rebellion and “uppity hopes” in their slaves. Their suspicion
was fed by the slave rebellions of the 1830’s since the leader, Nat Turner, was chiefly educated in a
Sunday school. Still, missionaries tried and many succeeded so that an
increasing number of slaves and free slaves learned to read and write. The
Civil war was looming and the country was increasingly divided. However the
movement had succeeded in spreading Sunday schools across the entire
Mississippi Valley. Most settlements of a few dozen families had a Sunday
school and the enormous “Valley Campaign” dream had largely been realized.
The Sunday Schooling of
America
Sunday school was an idea
whose time had come. By 1832 there were more than 8000 Sunday schools. The idea
spread so fast that by 1875 there were more than 65,000 schools, By 1889 there
were ten million children in American Sunday schools and it was performing the
heavy task of public education, sponsored by Christians our of their own
pockets. The idea was so powerful that soon governments got into the act.
The “Schoolmarm” and
public education
Sunday school often was the
precursor to the arrival of the schoolmarm. When a community had an operating
Sunday school staffed by volunteers they eventually saw the need for more
education than just the Sunday morning classes. Their farms were doing better
and their children could now be released for learning. Communities were developing
and now they even had a sheriff, and several dry goods stores. Families wanted
more education for their children than the Sunday school could provide. Their
community was becoming a “proper town.”
Families banded together as a community to recruit a permanent teacher
who could teach their children through the week, not just on Sundays. Sometimes
this was the local Sunday school teacher and at other times they “sent back
east”: for a schoolmarm. The Sunday school thus provided the kick-start for the
development of “one room schoolhouse” which followed the Sunday school’s
pioneering work. The Schoolmarm (almost always a single woman from the east)
taught all week but generally had the same aim as the Sunday school: teaching
reading and writing and arithmetic in order to make solid Christian citizens of
the coming generation. Many of the “common schools” in Indiana started first
with a Sunday school planted by a Union worker then later developed into the
one room schoolhouse staffed by a schoolmarm the community had pitched in to
pay for. The ministry of the Sunday
school and the public “common school” so overlapped for the next few decades so
that by 1858 the American Union was selling hundreds of thousands of its spelling
books to both Sunday schools and public common schools as if they were doing
the same thing. They were.
Libraries
Books were rare in the
western settlements. Families were absorbed in the hard task of cutting down
trees to clear the land, building cabins, breaking the land, plowing the fields,
and bringing in their crops. In packing for their migration west there was
little room for books—a plow was more important than a book for their survival.
But once they began to thrive they hungered for books. Besides the supply of
tracts and Bibles, the Sunday school agents carried Union catalogs offering a
“Sunday school library” for a community. Ten or twenty families in a settlement
would pitch in to purchase their own community lending library taking turns
rotating the books—these became first public libraries in many settlements. By
1859 there were 50,000 libraries in America, 30,000 of them were Sunday school
libraries!
From Sunday school to
church
By the dawning of the Civil
War in 1860 many western settlements had grown into communities, then towns and
some into cities. First came the early pioneers
seeking land to farm. When enough farms were established in an area a
settlement arose—usually offering a trading post, and maybe a tavern. Then came
the Sunday school agents and a Sunday school was founded. As the population
increased “dry goods” shops were constructed and eventually the town organized
and elected a sheriff and brought in a schoolmarm after building a one room
schoolhouse. Itinerant preachers wandered as “circuit riders” on the fashion of
the Sunday school agents and baptized and performed weddings along with holding
periodic worship services. The first worship gatherings met in homes but
eventually several families banded together to construct a little church
building in town. Not able to afford their own full time minister they often
shared one with neighboring communities. The circuit rider might serve four or
five or ten such communities. It made complete sense that the Sunday school
should now move into their church building. Now they offered “Sunday school and
worship”—in one church for the entire town. When the town got large enough to
support their own minister they took one from whatever denomination would
supply one.
From church to churches
If this first church was
pastored by a Methodist the typical American “brand competitiveness” soon
arose. Some of the town’s people considered themselves Presbyterians or
Baptists and refused to attend a Methodist congregation. Others attended but
only “until we get our own church.” If the first church was Methodist
eventually a second church would be constructed and the Baptists got their own
pastor and now there were two churches. This continued until the town (perhaps
now proclaiming themselves a “city”) offered five churches of various
denominations. This made sense to the growing population—they had ten different
dry goods stores competing for their business in their downtown and now had
five different churches too—they offered something for everybody’s tastes. They
considered themselves a proper city now—with all the expected choices Americans
expect.
Denominations absorb the
Sunday school
So long as a town had only
one church the location of the Sunday school was obvious—it should be held in
the single church. But what would they do when they had two churches, or six or
ten? Would the Presbyterians and
Baptists send the children to the Methodist Sunday school or start their own?
Their answer was, “If five churches are better then one, then five Sunday
schools are better too.” Thus, the era
of Sunday school as a parachurch interdenominational
movement ended. Local churches absorbed the Sunday school and made it a part of
their own outreach to children and youth.
In the late 1800s (after the Civil war) denominations began to organize
their own Sunday school societies and boards and began publishing their own
resources.
Public schools absorb
education
The original Sunday school
movement was two-pronged in focus: education and Christian education. It sought
to teach reading and writing while at the same time presenting the gospel and
moral education. With the arrival of the one room schoolhouse the task of
general education was absorbed by the “common school” leaving the Sunday
schools in churches to focus more on moral education. As communities grew they
built more schoolhouses within traveling distance of their people until
eventually many of these schoolhouses existed and eventually even these were
“consolidated” into “graded schools”—with students divided into classes of
similar ages (first grade, second grade etc.). Some states resisted taxing
their populace to pay for public education and simply named their state’s
volunteer-led Sunday schools as the public school system for the state. But
eventually public education prevailed and took on the full task of education
leaving the Christian education and spiritual formation to the various
churches’ Sunday schools. While the public schools (until the 1950’s) still
also attempted some moral (even Christian) education, the Sunday school gradually
lost its literacy aim and refocused primarily on the spiritual goals of making
moral Christians. However the public school’s spiritual aims diminished slowly.
In the 1950’s virtually every day of public school began with reading from the
Bible and the Lord’s Prayer and even the Ten Commandments were often
prominently posted on the walls of classrooms.
As the “Christian consensus” eroded in the nation these practices
disappeared and what resulted is today’s division of labor: The public schools
handle education and the Sunday school handles Christian education.
Christian schools &
Home schooling
However, not all Christians
were permanently satisfied with this division of labor—the public schools doing
the education while Sunday schools doing the Christian education. Many thought
education ought to be integrated with faith and thus arithmetic and history and
science should be taught “from a Christian perspective” and not be drained of
all religious significance. By the 1970s’ these Christians began founding
“Christian Schools” as a parallel and competing program with the public
schools. Some denominations had always taken this route—most prominently
Lutherans and Roman Catholics, now evangelicals got on board. Many Christians
withdrew from the public schools and started attending their own
church-sponsored (or undenominational and collaborative) Christian schools.
Some traditional ministers opposed this movement too at first arguing that “if
you take all the salt and light out of the public schools what will happen to
them?” But the movement grew. There are now about 4 million students attending
religious schools, about one in twelve of all students in the USA. The
Christian school movement might be considered a reincarnation of the old Sunday
school—focusing on both education and Christian education in an integrated way,
like Christian colleges do. A more recent phenomenon has been the rise of Home
schooling which is related to but different than Christian schools and can
likewise be seen as a re-emergence of the old idea of the first Sunday schools,
thought it would be hard to argue that either of these approaches have done
much to educate the poor.
Where to from here?
The Sunday school has fallen
on hard times recently. In the 1980’s many pastors saw the Sunday school as an
antique that needed to be gotten rid of like other old fashioned programs like
prayer meetings and Sunday evening services. As churches went to multiple
worship services an increasing number of parents sent their kids to Sunday
school as a baby sitting service while they attended worship—then after an hour
they all went home. Some clergy resented lay teachers presiding over their own
little flock in Sunday school classes and competed with them—hoping they would
die out. In the 1980’s and 1990’s small groups were introduced as a candidate
to kill the Sunday school though they have still not yet eclipsed the Sunday
school. As churches constructed new
buildings the high cost of classroom space caused many to reduce the number of
classrooms and others to eliminate classes altogether and go to all-worship
programs. When an increasing number of lawsuits were filed for sexual abuse of
children related to churches, boards started reorganizing small classes into
larger and larger gatherings where 40 or 60 or even 100 children attended mass
“classes” that became more like worship services, Sesame Street performances or
concerts than the intimate small groups of children with a teacher-who-knew-their-name
of the past. But another thing changed
in the 1960’s. Until the mid 1960’s the first question parents always asked
their children after church was, “What did you learn in Sunday school?” IN the
1960’s and 70’s this question changed: Parents now ask their children at the
door of the classrooms, “Did you have fun?” Perhaps more than any other shift,
this changed question has affected the content and direction of today’s Sunday
schools.
Yet the Sunday school is
a battered survivor.[3]
The Sunday school still
holds the very best time slot of the week—the hour before or after Sunday
worship. Small groups are effective but they have yet to rival what the Sunday
school already does even in its battered condition. Few small groups programs
have ever figured out how to adequately perform Christian education for
children. Millions of children and adults gather every single week in smaller
classes to learn abut God and apply the Bible to their lives. They may be
getting a poor Christian education—but it is still better than anything else
offered by any other program. Well, maybe there is one exception—Christian
schools take a more serious approach to what the Sunday school was started to
do—providing a dual function of education along with moral training. But
Christian schools are decidedly not for poor children. They are mostly limited
to middle and upper class Christians who pay a handsome fee to educate their
children (while also paying taxes to support the public schools). In the 1950s’
churches ran busses all around their towns collecting children for Sunday
school. These programs really tried to help the poor and unchurched.
But busses are gone for most churches and Sunday school programs today are
mostly for the church kids—a program designed to baby sit children and teach
them a few Bible stories and songs while their parents attend worship.
The question we’re asking…
We ask, “What would it be
like if the church got a burden again like Robert Raikes?”
What if we cared for the poor and illiterate and tried to educate them
again—out of our own pockets? Is it time for the old Sunday school movement to
become the new one? Will we keep the narrow focus of Sunday school to baby
sitting our own kids and teaching them a few songs and stories until we’re ready
to go home ourselves? Or could we reinvent the Sunday school by returning to
its roots—offering literacy and moral education to the poor—for free? Do
Christians care enough to do that?
Research
and original writing by Students in the “Local Church Education” course at
Indiana Wesleyan University. Revised, expanded and edited by Keith Drury,
Associate professor of Religion, IWU.
So what do you think?
During the first few weeks, click here to comment or
read comments
Keith Drury March 30, 2010
[1] These stories of the Sunday school were collected and written over the
years by Indiana Wesleyan University students in the course “Local Church
Education. One little book (now out of print) should receive great affirmation
and credit for many of the ideas and stories: The Big Little School—200
years of the Sunday School, by Robert L. Lynn and Elliott
Wright (1971, Abingdon). And we want to thank our professor, Keith Drury for
editing and revising our work.
[2] George Bethume, Memoirs of Mrs. Joanna Bethune (Harper, 1863) p. 120
[3] Based on Sunday School: Battered Survivor, by Martin Marty in Christian Century June 4-11, 1980, pp. 634-636 http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1745