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Moral Education in the Victorian Sunday School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Trygve R. Tholfsen
Trygve R. Tholfsen*
Affiliation:
Teachers College, Columbia University
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Extract

One reason that educational institutions are of interest to the historian is that they provide direct access to values and beliefs, both explicit and implicit, that are deemed worthy of transmission from one generation to the next. A case in point is the Victorian Sunday school. As a product of the evangelical revival, its primary purpose was the inculcation of religious and moral principles. Yet the moral education that it offered was by no means limited to Christian doctrine. The teachings of the Sunday school comprised a number of disparate and intertwined elements, each the product of a different history. At the core of the instructional program was the moral theology of evangelicalism, affirming the Christian faith against the competing claims of “the world.” Alongside orthodox doctrines that remained formally intact, however, were other beliefs and attitudes characteristic of the surrounding culture. Juxtaposed with the doctrine of original sin, so fundamental to evangelical theology, was a distinctly Pelagian view of man. In a number of other ways also the teachings of the Sunday school reflected an evangelical subculture that had in fact become comfortably adapted to the world around it. Conceptions of God and Providence had a Victorian coloration. The social values of the middle and lower middle classes took their place beside such traditional virtues as piety, charity, and honesty. Also conspicuously present were the consensus ideals of Palmerston's England.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , Spring 1980 , pp. 77 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. In approaching educational institutions from this point of view it is well to have in mind Theodore Zeldin's warning against the platitude that “in every society education reflects its values.” France 1848–1945, II, (Oxford, 1977), 206. The actual relationship between the two has to be established in each case.Google Scholar

2. Thomas Laqueur's authoritative monograph, Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture 1780–1850 (New Haven, 1976), concentrates on the pre-Victorian period.Google Scholar

3. For a suggestive account of the generic characteristics of cultural Christianity see Richard Niebuhr, H., Christ and Culture (New York, 1951), pp. 83–115.Google Scholar

4. Handy, Robert T., A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities (New York, 1971), p. 210.Google Scholar

5. Cohen, David K. and Rosenberg, Bella H., “Functions and Fantasies: Understanding Schools in Capitalist America,” History of Education Quarterly (1977), 113–137. See also Talbott, John E., “Education in Intellectual and Social History,” in Gilbert, Felix, ed., Historical Studies Today (New York, 1972), pp. 193 210. Also relevant to the history of education is J.G. Pocock's discussion of the sort of “reductionist pressure” to which the history of political thinking has been subject as a result of the tendency to refer to “the extra-intellectual or extra-linguistic as ‘reality’, and to the intellectual or linguistic equipment, at least by implication, as non-reality.” Politics, Language and Time (New York, 1971), p. 39.Google Scholar

6. This analytical construct is intended to embrace the common characteristics of the sort of institution found in the Sunday School Union. Unitarian and Tractarian Sunday schools have been excluded. “Victorian” includes the early and mid-Victorian periods, roughly the generation after the death of Wilberforce. Whereas the late 1840's mark a distinct dividing line in political and social history, a somewhat different periodization is required in religious history. For the significance of denominational differences in the development of Sunday schools in the early nineteenth century, see Laqueur, , chapters 2 and 3, and Ward, W.R., Religion and Society in England 1790–1850 (London, 1972).Google Scholar

7. Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, Vol. I (London, 1966), pp. 5–6, 37–455; Sellers, Ian, Nineteenth Century Nonconformity (London, 1977. pp. 20–35. See also Briggs, John and Sellers, Ian, Victorian Nonconformity (New York, 1974), pp. 1–11, for a discussion of the “remarkable homogeneity” that characterized Nonconformist theology in the early nineteenth century, despite denominational differences. Theological disputes continued, as is pointed out by David Thompson Nonconformity in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1972), pp. 6–8, but the tide was flowing in the direction of “non-Credalism”. For the eighteenth century background, see Sangster, Paul, Pity My Simplicity: The Evangelical Revival and the Religious Education of Children, 1738–1800 (London, 1963).Google Scholar

8. Liverpool Sunday School Union, First Report (Liverpool, 1815); The Sunday School Union Jubilee: Containing Reports of Meetings, etc. (London, 1853), pp. 38–41; Davids, Louisa, The Sunday School: An Essay (London, 1847), p. 94. The phrase quoted from Davids occurs in a form letter, written for teachers to send to parents of children in a Sunday school. It is a cogent statement of evangelical doctrine, quite uncontaminated by “the world.” Google Scholar

9. The Forty-sixth Report of the Red Hill Wesleyan Sunday Schools (Sheffield, 1863); Baptist Sunday Schools Magazine (1865), 119; United Methodist Free Churches Magazine (1858), 25; Sunday Scholars' Magazine and Juvenile Miscellany (1842), 30; Sunday School Teachers' Magazine (1860), 374. See also Laqueur, , pp. 160–169.Google Scholar

10. United Methodist Free Churches Magazine (1858), 25; Red Hill Sunday Schoool, 44th Report (1861). A Primitive Methodist Sunday school formed a special class composed of “scholars who have been converted during our school revival.” Bethel Sunday School, Coalpit Lane, Teachers' Meetings, Minute Book, 14 March 1858, MS, Sheffield Reference Library.Google Scholar

11. Red Hill Sunday School, 20th Report (1835); Sunday Scholars' Magazine (1842), 29, 22.Google Scholar

12. Davids, Lousia, The Sunday School, p. 28; The Teachers' Farewell: A Parting Gift to Elder Scholars on Their Leaving the Sunday School (London, 1842), p. 21; Sunday Scholars' Magazine (1842), 11; Children's Magazine (1842), 307.Google Scholar

13. Sydenham, George, Notes of Lessons (London, 1856), p. 28; Teacher's Farewell, p. 27.Google Scholar

14. Sunday Scholars' Magazine (1842), p. 31; Lloyd, W.F., Helps for Infants in Spelling, Reading, and Thinking (London, 1848?), p. 161; Teacher's Farewell, pp. 32, 23. Minute books of teachers' meetings show a continuing preoccupation with problems of discipline in the schools. See, for example: German Street Sunday School, Manchester, Teachers' Meetings, Minute Book, 1835–1854, MS, Manchester Reference library; Surrey Street Sunday School, Teachers' Meetings, Minutes, 1842–1872, and Bethel Sunday School, Teachers' Meetings, Minute Book, 1856 1858, MSS, Sheffield Reference Library. The minute books also illustrate a point stressed by Laqueur, the extent to which the operational details of the schools were in the hands of the teachers. See, for example: Hanover Sunday School, Teachers' Meetings, 1852–1871, MS, Halifax Reference Library; Mansfield Road Sunday School, Minute Book, 1856–1859, MS, Nottingham Reference Library.Google Scholar

15. United Methodist Free Churches Magazine (1858), p. 25; Teacher's Farewell, p. 73; St. Peter's Mutual Improvement Society, Minute Book, 1859, MS, Manchester Reference Library.Google Scholar

16. Red Hill Sunday School, 20th Report (1835). See also Young Men's Christian Institute, “Annual Report,” 1864, MS, Sheffield Reference Library. Edward Baines, Jr. in an “Essay on Knowledge” in 1818 rejected the suggestion that “knowledge is a cause of scepticism, arrogance, and vain glory,” and argued that “infinity of knowledge is the highest attribute of God,” and man must therefore seek “perfection of knowledge.” MS, Leeds Archives, Baines Collection, Bundle 45. The Sunday schools embodied a similar combination of evangelical Nonconformity and utilitarian rationalism. For other examples of rationalist attitudes in early nineteenth century Sunday schools see Laqueur, , pp. 221–222.Google Scholar

17. Collins, Robert, The Teacher's Companion: Designed to Exhibit the Principles of Sunday school Instruction and Discipline (London, 1842), pp. 126–132.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., p. 132. Collins provided an impeccable summary of the “fundamental doctrines” of Reformation Protestantism and stressed their importance in the teachings of the Sunday schools. In the mode of cultural Christianity, however, he was primarily interested in promoting moral improvement and the happiness of the civilized world: “You can humanize if you cannot christianize.” Ibid., p. 131.Google Scholar

19. Groser, W. H., Sunday School Teacher's Manual (1877), p. 117.Google Scholar

20. Fifty Sunday School Rewards (London, 1859); Sunday School Teachers' Magazine (1866), 236. Like other aspects of the teachings of the Victorian Sunday school (see notes 22–25 below), this conception of the innocence of children was not novel. For a discussion of conflicting attitudes within the hymns of Watts, Issac and Wesley, Charles, see Sangster, , pp. 42–47 and Laqueur, , pp. 11–15. By the beginning of the Victorian period, however, a sentimental version of Watts' “cheerful piety” had triumphed. On the complex relationship between the evangelical doctrine of innate depravity and the more favorable view of children that emerged in the eighteenth century, see Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (New York, 1977), pp. 405–408, 463–468.Google Scholar

21. Red Hill Sunday School, 40th Report (1856); Sunday Scholars' Magazine (1842), 32.Google Scholar

22. While these motifs are most visible in Wesley's Arminianism, they were also present where Calvinism persisted. The Angelican Evangelicals developed a “discreet and un-dogmatic” versions of Calvinism that made it more palatable. In the old Dissent also there was a softening of the “austerities” of the Calvinist creed. See Walsh, J.D., “The Angelican Evangelicals in the Eighteenth Century,” in Aspects de l'Angelicanisme (Paris, 1974, pp. 92–93, and “Methodism at the End of the Eighteenth Century,” in Davies, Ruper and Rupp, Gordon, eds., A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, vol. I. (London, 1965), 290–297. See also Chadwick, , I, 407–408, 412–413; Briggs, and Sellers, , pp. 5–10, Sellers, , pp. 20–22; Annan, Noel, Leslie Stephen (London, 1951), pp. 119–120.Google Scholar

23. Barth, Karl, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1972), Chapter 3.Google Scholar

24. See, for example, Wesleyu's, “An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion” in Outler, Albert ed. John Wesley (New York, 1964), pp. 384–424. But the religious impulse remained at full strength. Bernard Semmel's judgment, The Methodist Revolution, (New York, 1973), p. 6, that Wesleyan Methodism was a “profoundly ‘liberal’ and ‘modern’ ideology” is one-sided. As J.D. Walsh has said of Methodism, “Its vitality, its appeal lay principally in its spiritual message.” “Methodism”, 13.Google Scholar

25. Wilberforce, William, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System among Professed Christians…, eleventh edition (London, 1815), p. 34.Google Scholar

26. Wilberforce's A Practical View is a sustained attack on every aspect of the cultural Christianity that was to be in the ascendant by the time of his death. See, for example, chapter II, “Corruption of Human Nature,” and chapter IV, “The generally prevailing Error, of substituting amiable Tempers and useful Lives in the place of Religion…” While Wesley's Arminianism entailed a rejection of predestination, the doctrine of original sin and innate depravity was never in question. See for example sections XXIII and XXXIV of “Predestination Calmly Considered” in Outler, ed., John Wesley, pp. 440–41. See also the sermons “On Sin in Believers,” “The Fall of Man,” and “Original Sin” in Works (London, 1872), vols. V and VI. Wesley's conception of prevenient grace represented only a tangential mitigation of the doctrine of innate depravity. See the sermon, “On Working out your own Salvation,” Works, VI, 506–513.Google Scholar

27. Stephen, James Sir, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, third edition, Vol. II (London, 1853), pp. 462–507; Annan, Noel, Leslie Stephen, pp. 114–122; Meacham, Standish, “The Evangelical Inheritance,” Journal of British Studies, III (1963): 95–97.Google Scholar

28. For the late nineteenth century patterns that emerged from such trends in Victorian Christianity, see Gilbert, Alan D., Religion and Society in Industrial Engalnd (London, 1976), pp. 181–183; Currie, Robert, Methodoism Divided, (London, 1968) pp. 117–140; Sellers, p. 30.Google Scholar

29. Children's Magazine and Missionary Repository (1851), 3; Sunday Scholars' Magazine (1842), 31. Green, Samuel, Adresses to Children (London, 1849), p. 117.Google Scholar

30. Fifty Sunday School Rewards; Green, Samuel, Lectures to Children on Scripture Doctrines (London, 1856), p. 47.Google Scholar

31. Sunday School Teachers' Magazine (1866), 120–121. The Sunday schools that embraced Victorianism most enthusiastically were those in the Unitarian tradition. See, for example, the publications of the Manchester District Sunday School Association in the 1850's and 1860's: The Teacher's Journal and the Sunday School Penny Magazine. At the New Zion Sunday School in Leeds, the ballads of Martin Tupper were recited regularly at anniversary celebrations' see New Zion School, “Book of Celebration Pieces Recited by Students on Anniversaries and Other Important Occasions,” and Kilburn, B.A., “Annals of Zion Schools, New Wortley,” MSS, Leeds University Library.Google Scholar

32. Green, Samuel, Addresses, p. 87. Niebuhr's description (p. 83) of the attitude of cultural Christians applies here: “They feel no great tension between the church and the world, the social laws and the Gospel, the workings of divine grace and human effort, …” Google Scholar

33. Groser, W.H., Men Worth Imitating (London, 1871), pp. 115, 36, 148; Fifty Rewards .Google Scholar

34. Ibid.Google Scholar

35. Sydenham, , Notes of Lessons.Google Scholar

36. Fifty Rewards: Red Hill Sunday School, 39th Report (1855).Google Scholar

37. Children's Magazine (1842), 262; Fifty Rewards .Google Scholar

38. Baptist Youth's Magazine (1859), 224.Google Scholar

39. Baptist Youth's Magazine (1859), 210–211.Google Scholar

40. Fifty Rewards.Google Scholar

41. For example, in the following tale from the Children's Magazine (1842), 257. This emphasis on the middle-class and lower middle-class character of the Sunday school ethos should be supplemented by reference to Laqueur, whose main theme is working-class predominance in the institution. There can be no doubt, as Laqueur points out, that we are not dealing with the “imposition” of “middle-class values.” Nevertheless, in this institutional setting, working-class children found consensus values expressed in a distinctly middle-class form that they found quite congenial. And there were lower middle-class children in attendance: such as the Red Hill pupil whose deathbed request to her father was that he close the shop on Sunday.Google Scholar

42. Fifty Rewards.Google Scholar

43. Band of Hope Record (1860), pp. 103–126.Google Scholar

44. Groser, W.H., Men Worth Imitating, pp. 1–17.Google Scholar

45. Sunday School Union Jubilee (1853), p. 38; Sunday School Teachers' Magazine (1866), 238–239.Google Scholar

46. Ibid., 120–121.Google Scholar

47. Red Hill Sunday School, 44th Report (1861); Jubilee, p. 39; Sunday School Teachers' Magazine (186)), 120.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., 238.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., 123; Jubilee, p. 40.Google Scholar

50. Sunday School Teachers' Magazine (1860), 371.Google Scholar