Figure 1.--
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Figure 1.-- |
The institution of the Sunday School was much more important in the northern United States than in the southern United States. Northern missionaries went south after the Civil War after which the Sunday School became a much more national institution.
The Sunday school is a pervasive feature of Southern religious life. We know, however, of few serious studies of Sunday schools in the South. These schools are especially important because many were founded before public schools--especially public schools or black children. Evven after public schools were more established, the southern Sunday school became a very important part of religious life and a major institution in Southern communities.
We have little information about Sunday schools in the white South before the Civil War (1861-65). As far as we can determine, there were few Sunday schools sponsored by white churches before the Civil War. Albert Raboteau wrote about antebellum slave churches as "invisible" institutions. There would have been no Sunday schools fo the South's large slave population.
Many references exist to both white and black Sunday schools in theyears following the Civil War (1861-65). There is relatively little scholarly research on the topic, however, some writershave begun to address the subject. Perhaps the best study is Sally G. McMillen's To Raise Up the South. She provides many interesting insights such as new opportunities the Sunday school provided church women for leadership roles, new denominational publishing houses, and how Sunday schools in the late-19th century increased denominational and sectional tensions.
Protestant Christians placed great importance on Sunday schools in the post-Civil War South. There were many boosters who laid geat stock with the value of Sunday school attendance. The gratest focus was on the importance in children's lives, not just their spiritual lives, but promoting civic responsibiity as well. [McMillen, p. 7.] This was not just a Southern development, but going on in the North and England as well. We know less about Europe. The expansion of Sundays was related to a larger movement to extend public schools for both white and black children.
Northern missionaries from the American Sunday School Union came south even before the end of the Civil War. They both established Sunday schools and sold religious literature. Many also thought that thir efforts would help "bind the country together" through common
religious activities. There were, however, differences which arose about a vision for the new generation. Some scholars maintain that Southern promoters of Sunday Schools were more interested in using them to perpetuate their own destinctive religious identity. [Stowell.]
Others insist that most southerners were primarly concerned with religious education than who was sponsoring the chools. [McMillan, p. 53.] Northern missionaries actively promoted Sunday schools for both white and black children. Most Northern missionaries conducted their Sunday school work with surprisingly few problems. The few initial problems came from southern church leaders. [McMillan, p. 52.]
Some difference of opinion exists concerning the denomintional loyalty in the South. We are unsure about just how important the Baptist church was. It should be remembered tht America was still a very rural country at the time of the Civil War and for several decades afterwards. Rurl residents did not have the mobility so common today. Church services in many rural communitie were often not weekly. Thus rural people might take advantage of whatever Protestant preaching or teaching was available. This does not mean, however, tht peoplke did not have denominational loyalties.
White Southern Protestants began to incresingly compete in the late-19th century after Reconstruction to make sure children did not fall into the hands of a "wrong" church". Southern Church leaders were concernbed about both competing southern denominations as well as northern churches. As a result, the southern churches devoted increased resources in founding and supporting Sunday schools. As a result, so many Sunday schools appeared, most supportd by southern churches, that the Sunday school became an accepted Southern
institution.
Sunday school literature appears to have differed little by either
denomination or region. This may have been largely because it was so basic and written for such young children that doctrinal disputes were rarely apparent. The tendency of some Sunday school writers to appropriate ideas or even shamelessly plagiarize from other publications also explains the similarities. Even so, regional and denominational complaints increased in the
closing decade of the 19th century. The drive for denominational distinction was perhaps basically a matter of economic
interest. [McMillan, p. 112.] Some authors contend that competition for the Sunday school clientele customers was intense. Denominational publishers called for section and denomination which proved a powerful lever. Mny authors have discussed the role of print culture in the
spread of American Protestantism and the growth of denominational
identities. [Paul Harvey, Nathan A. Hatch, and Beth Barton
Schweiger, among otherss] The lucrative
Sunday school market spurred the growth of denominational presses and
actually increased pressures for regional and denominational
differentiation. [McMillan, p. 6] Aadvertisements for Sunday school materials by the early 20th century increasingly stressed regional and denominational differences. [McMillan, p. 120 and 242-43.] The important denominations found that profitable publishing houses were critical to their finances. [McMilln, p. 243.] This apparntly affected both the southern Sunday school and very "goals of each denomination involved in this Christian enterprise". [McMillan, p. 120.]
Sunday school teachers and lessons sought to shape the minds, hearts, and behavior of children. Techers began with devotional stories and Bible passages to memorize. They stressed the importance of regular church attendance, temperance, and financial support for church and missionary endeavors. Children in the Sunday schools were taught to be model citizens and church members who "through their faith . . . would contribute to family, church, and region" [McMillan, p. 25.] Southern women commonly took the lead in founding and
sustaining many of the Sunday schools. For many this was their first important activity outside the family. While women provided the majority of teachers, rarely did they become superintendents. This was one area in which female activism was allowed and even encouraged by male church officials. In many ways it was because it "reinforced
southerners' perception of women as Christian nurturers of the young". [Mc Millan, p. 56.] The experiences of organizing, teaching,
or managing the schools helped women "develop a sense of confidence and
self-worth" in the generation before women's sufferage.
Northern Sunday school missionaries in the post-war South founded schools for both whites as well as newly freed blacks. In a few locations the schools were integrated, but rarely for long. [McMillan, p. 165.] Both northern and local-run white and black
Sunday schools had many similarities in organization and lessons. Schools for both races emphasized Biblical training and middle-class or
"respectable" behavior. Black-run schools were more likely to be run by female superintendents. Given the paucity of state public school funds for segregated schools, black Sunday schools were
more likely than their white counterparts to continue basic literacy
training into the early 1900s. Like post-war Southern churches in general, Sunday schools in the New South were racially segregated and,
asserts, "reinforced, rather than mitigated, the region's racial divide". [McMillan, p. 244.] As such, segregated Sunday schools "by their silence on human equality ... failed to challenge white youngsters' understanding about race". [Mc Millan, p. 247.]
Sunday schools got involved after Reconstruction in a variety of race issues. White Southern religious leaders urged support from their denominations for black schools. White southerners were not assuctomed to promoting any kind of edcation for blacks, religious or secular. Sunday schools for blacks was a new concept introduced by nothern missionaries. This was a threat, both to Southern churches and to the established white power structure after the end of Reconstruction. Not only were northern denominatins expanding their influence, but they also had a more benighn attitude toward race. This should not be over stressed as there was still intense racism rapant among northern churches, but still it was less intense than in the south and some northern missionaies had extremely progressive attitudes for the time. This was thus a threat for Southern leaders attemptin to supress black political influence which had been promoted during Reconstruction. Southern religious leaders criticized continued northern involvement by offering regional and paternalistic arguments about the need to improve race relations, prevent black theological error, and acclaimed white southerners "special" understanding of and interest in the racial situation.
The new blak churches organized National
Baptist Convention with its own publishing house. Black
Sunday schools essenially developed like their white
Southern counterparts. The black churches at first accepted assistance from whereever it was offered. The black Sunday schools received assistance abd materials from whomever offered in the
early years from both Northern and Southern publishers and denominational missionaries). The black churches grew more independent and assertive over their own institutions, including Sunday school literature and publishing houses by the early 20th century. This was made possible by te rise of a black middle class. In the era of Jim Crow and vicious racial violence, black-run Sunday schools provided a refuge and an institution clearly under the control of and working in the interest of black communities. Sunday school boosters projected that graduates would learn lessons and "absorb values that ultimately would advance the entire race". [McMillan, p. 163.] It is no accident that theCivil Rights movement in the South was to rise out of black churches and those churches with their Sunday schools were targets of the Ku Klux Klan and other racist grops.
Sunday school teachers, superintendents, and promoters in the early 20th century were active in or swept along by the same currents of
Progressivism that was at the same time drawing much-needed attention on public education in the South. Actually, many Sunday and public school teachers and officials were the same people. [McMillan, p. 7.] Sunday school leaders sought to adopt progressive methods without altering the religious messages. They promoted age divisions (grades) in the classes, special classes for adults, pedagogically trained teachers, and the compilation of statistical datas on weekly attendance, lesson and reading selections, offerings collected, and other figures. Religious newspapers and denominational reports from this period are filled with statistical reports of pupils, teachers, and, most importantly, newly saved members of the church.
One of the major reasons for Sunday schools was to attract new members. Church leaders were convinced that Well-run schools would strengthen the church by adding new members. Regular camp meetings and summer revivals were gradually replaced with the more systematic and dependable education and training program of the Sunday
school. Some evangelical Sunday school programs seemed surprisingly
similar to the processes of catechism and confirmation practiced by their liturgical cousins. Instead of the revival pattern of individual tribulation and conversion, by the early 20th century, "groups of children from various schools all underwent conversion simultaneously" on Decision Day". [McMillan, p. 13.]
Not all Southern Protestants endorsed the new methods and materials. This included both black and white church leaders. Mny rural more traditinal leades bristled against the modern methods of the Sunday school, the centralizing tendencies of denominational Sunday school boards and publishing houses, and the urban and middle-class themes of "respectability" in the lessons. Many rural Protestant church leaders "remained untouched by the institution or
rejected it outright". [McMillan, p. 222.] Although 19th century Sunday school boosters initially promoted the classes as an answer to insufficient religious education at home or even in churches, some religious and socially conservative church leaders feared that the Sunday school would "usurp domestic religious instruction and encourage mothers to neglect their duty" to educate and nurture children spiritually. These concerns, however, may not have been widely shared by parents who tended to view Sunday schools as an extension of
the home and an aid in child rearing. [McMillan, p. 230.]
Sally G. McMillen. To Raise Up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865-1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 297p.
Daniel Stowell. Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1998.
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