2 - British Sunday Schools and the First World War, 1914–18

Summary

The First World War touched all aspects of life on the home front. Sunday schools were no exception. As the president of the NSSU remarked in September 1914:

There is no doubt that we of the Sunday School and the Christian world generally will have to pass through a trying time. Many of our best teachers are away, the war spirit is everywhere predominant; many of our supporters will be impoverished, and there is no break in the dark horizon.

His remarks highlight the great disruption, uncertainty, and loss the schools faced during the war. They lost buildings, resources, scholars, and teachers to the war effort. Yet, even with the upheaval of war, Sunday schools across the country strived to continue their work and minimise the disruption to their members.

Despite the significant role the schools played in the lives of much of the population, their wartime experience has been little explored. Scholarship concerning Christianity during the war has tended to concentrate on the key figures of the churches, rather than those in the pews. Given the role the laity played in sustaining morale in local communities throughout the conflict, this is a large oversight. As Chapter 1 demonstrated, Sunday schools were an important part of local community life before the outbreak of war. This continued throughout the conflict. For example, Robert Beaken demonstrated that in Colchester, Sunday schools helped to provide children and adults with a sense of ‘business as usual’. It is, therefore, surprising that the role of the Sunday schools during the war has not been considered in greater depth. This chapter seeks to examine the experiences of the schools during the conflict as well as the various ways in which they supported the war effort and those in their local communities.

The Response of Sunday Schools to the Outbreak of Conflict

Many Sunday schools strongly believed that their men were fighting in a righteous Christian conflict. Opinions in Sunday school magazines and material aimed at teachers supported Britain's involvement in the war. For example, one leading article for the Sunday School Chronicle concluded that ‘[…] this war which has been forced upon us is a holy war, and all its horrors and sufferings must be endured with calmness and courage in the hope of ending war for ever’.