Sunday School
A Sunday school, known as a Sabbath school in some sabbatarian Christian denominations, is an educational institution or weekly activity in a place of worship, usually Christian in character and often intended for children or neophytes.
Sunday school classes usually precede a Sunday church service and are used to provide catechesis to Christians, especially children and teenagers, and sometimes adults as well. Churches of many Christian denominations have classrooms attached to the church used for this purpose. Many Sunday school classes operate on a set curriculum, with some teaching attendees a catechism. Members often receive certificates and awards for participation, as well as attendance.
Sunday school classes may provide a light breakfast. On days when Holy Communion is being celebrated, however, some Christian denominations encourage fasting before receiving the Eucharistic elements.[1]
Early history
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.[2]
Protestant Sunday schools were first set up in the 18th century in England to provide education to working children.[3] William King started a Sunday school in 1751 in Dursley, Gloucestershire. Robert Raikes, editor of the Gloucester Journal, started a similar one in Gloucester in 1781.[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.[5]
The Sunday School Society was founded by Baptist deacon William Fox on 7 September 1785 in Prescott Street Baptist Church of London.[6] The latter had been touched by articles of Raikes, on the problems of youth crime.[7] Pastor Thomas Stock and Raikes have thus registered a hundred children from six to fourteen years old. The society has published its textbooks and brought together nearly 4,000 Sunday schools.[8]
In 1785, 250,000 English children were attending Sunday school.[9] There were 5,000 in Manchester alone. By 1835, the Sunday School Society had distributed 91,915 spelling books, 24,232 New Testaments and 5,360 Bibles.[3] The Sunday school movement was cross-denominational. Financed through subscription, large buildings were constructed that could host public lectures as well as provide classrooms. Adults would attend the same classes as the infants, as each was instructed in basic reading. In some towns, the Methodists withdrew from the large Sunday school and built their own. The Anglicans set up their National schools that would act as Sunday schools and day schools.[3] These schools were the precursors to a national system of education.[5]
The educational role of the Sunday schools ended with the Education Act 1870,[5] which provided universal elementary education. In the 1920s they also promoted sports, and ran Sunday school leagues. They became social centres hosting amateur dramatics and concert parties.[3] By the 1960s, the term Sunday school could refer to the building and rarely to the activities inside. By the 1970s even the largest Sunday school had been demolished. The locution today chiefly refers to catechism classes for children and adults that occur before the start of a church service. In certain Christian traditions, in certain grades, for example the second grade or eighth grade, Sunday school classes may prepare youth to undergo a rite such as First Communion or Confirmation. The doctrine of Sunday Sabbatarianism, held by many Christian denominations, encourages practices such as Sunday school attendance, as it teaches that the entirety of the Lord's Day should be devoted to God; as such many children and teenagers often return to the church in the late afternoon for youth group before attending an evening service of worship.
Development in Protestant churches - United Kingdom
The first recorded Protestant Sunday school opened in 1751 in St Mary's Church, Nottingham.[10] Hannah Ball made another early start, founding a school in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, in 1769.[11] However, the pioneer of Sunday schools is commonly said to be Robert Raikes,[12] editor of the Gloucester Journal, who in 1781, after prompting from William King (who was running a Sunday School in Dursley), recognised the need of children living in the Gloucester slums; the need also to prevent them from taking up crime.[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. Using the Bible as their textbook, the children learned to read and write.[9]
In 18th-century England, education was largely reserved for a wealthy, male minority and was not compulsory. The wealthy educated their children privately at home, with hired governesses or tutors for younger children. The town-based middle class may have sent their sons to grammar schools, while daughters were left to learn what they could from their mothers or from their fathers' libraries.[14] The children of factory workers and farm labourers received no formal education, and typically worked alongside their parents six days a week, sometimes for more than 13 hours a day.[15]
By 1785 over 250,000 children throughout England attended schools on Sundays.[9] In 1784 many new schools opened, including the interdenominational Stockport Sunday School, which financed and constructed a school for 5,000 scholars in 1805. In the late-19th century this was accepted[by whom?] as being the largest in the world. By 1831 it was reported that attendance at Sunday schools had grown to 1.2 million.[9][16]
The first Sunday school in London opened at Surrey Chapel, Southwark, under Rowland Hill. By 1831 1,250,000 children in Great Britain, or about 25 per cent of the eligible population, attended Sunday schools weekly. The schools provided basic lessons in literacy alongside religious instruction.[17]
In 1833, "for the unification and progress of the work of religious education among the young", the Unitarians founded their Sunday School Association, as "junior partner" to the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, with which it eventually set up offices at Essex Hall in Central London.[18]
The work of Sunday schools in the industrial cities was increasingly supplemented by "ragged schools" (charitable provision for the industrial poor), and eventually by publicly funded education under the terms of the Elementary Education Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 75). Sunday schools continued alongside such increasing educational provision, and new forms also developed, such as the Socialist Sunday Schools movement, which began in the United Kingdom in 1886.[19]Sunday School Minute Book
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_school. Dec2025
Sunday School Class Minute Book
A Sunday School Class Minute Book from the Sunday School Union at 56 Old Bailey served as a vital record-keeping tool for tracking attendance, lessons, finances (money collected/spent), library usage, and general class activities, helping organizers monitor spiritual and educational progress, manage resources, and maintain accountability within the burgeoning religious education movement of the 19th century.
Source: Gemini AI Dec2025
Sunday School Class Minute Book
The Minute Book below was probably used from 1882-1886 and contains many handwritten names.
We need assistance to interpret the names and other markings
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