On Sunday School History

Our Hardshell brothers object to Sunday Schools because they say that they are a new thing and not authorized by the bible. The following article however shows that this is not exactly true.

The New International Encyclopedia (here -emphasis mine)

SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. An agency of the Church for giving religious instruction to learners of all ages. The method of instruction is generally interlocutory and the subject of study more particularly the Bible. In its essentials the Sunday-school or Bible-school was an important part of the early Jewish educational system. About B.C. 80-70 Simon ben Shetach established a system of religious schools in connection with synagogues in Palestine, making attendance obligatory. Historians like Edersheim and Schürer confirm the general existence of such schools then and later in the time of Christ.

Bunsen says that “the Apostolic Church made the school the connecting link between herself and the world.” Her catechetical instruction (cf. Luke i. 4; Acts xviii. 25) grew so steadily in acknowledged importance that church buildings were designed to provide special accommodations for the Bible-school. These early catechumenical schools included children and adults, who were taught individually, by the interlocutory method, subject matter beginning with the Old Testament story of creation and proceeding to practical Christian living. Gregory the Illuminator Christianized Armenia at the beginning of the fourth century by a compulsory system of Bible-schools for children in every city, while at that period similar schools were to be found in Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Egypt, and elsewhere. In all these schools the Bible text was the main subject. In the Middle Ages the Bible-school idea was adhered to among the Waldenses, Albigenses, Lollards, Wiclifites, etc. A notable example of the Bible-school, apparently in many ways like our modern institution, were the schools of Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, in the middle of the sixteenth century. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the direct study of the Bible gave way to the rote memorizing of set answers in catechisms not intended for such uses, and genuine Bible teaching was thus largely displaced.

It is to Robert Raikes (q.v.) that the modern revival of the Sunday-school is justly accredited, although numerous isolated Bible-schools were to be found both in England and America prior to his time and pioneer efforts were made in America independent of his example. (Consult Trumbull, Yale Lectures on the Sunday-school, Philadelphia, 1889.)

Thus, Robert Raikes did not invent the Sunday School as the Hardshells claim.