RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Sunday .Schools
and including incidentals, such as excursions, socials, and other items, the amount equals £1,200,000 per annum for the schools in Great Britain alone.
The growth in America was even more phenomenal than in Great Britain. In 1825, the American Sunday-school Union reported in its connection 1,150 Sunday-schools with 11,295 teachers and 82,697 scholars, and com-
5. In
America.
puted from reliable data that there were in other Sunday-schools in this country and British America and the West Indies upward of 61,000 Sunday scholars, making a total for North America of 143,697 scholars. The reported conversions in the schools of the American Sunday-school Union were] as remarkable as the growth of the schools. In 1828, the number of teachers in these schools reported as professing Christ was equal to about four per cent of the entire number of teachers. In 1829, the number of schools connected with the American Sunday-school Union increased to 5,901, with 52,663 teachers and 349,202 scholars. This rapid growth was further increased by the effort, national in scope, in 1830 to plant a Sunday-school in every needy community throughout the newly settled valley of the Mississippi. About eighty Sunday-school missionaries were employed to visit the 8,000 to 10,000 destitute settlements estimated to be in the valley; 2,867 new Sunday-schools were organized and 1,121 revived within about eighteen months, and not less than 20,000 adults and 30,000 scholars in the Union's schools professed conversion, as many as " 17,000 in a single year, it was believed." And in 1831, the semi-centennial of the founding of the system by Raikes, the American Sunday-school Union reported that the number in the United States enrolled as members of the Sunday-school may be safely estimated at upward of 600,000. In 1851 the membership in the United States and Canada was computed at 3,250,000. Meanwhile, besides the extension work of the American Sunday-school Union, which for over eighty years formed an average of three and one-half new Sunday-schools per day, the larger denominations separately began a vigorous Sunday-school extension and improvement in their respective churches. At the first international Sunday-school convention in 1875 the United States and Canada were reported to have 69,272 Sunday-schools with 788,805 teachers and 6,062,064 scholars. The latest statistics (1910-11) from the most trustworthy sources give the number of Sunday-schools held by Protestant churches in the United States and its possessions at 193,495, with 1,749,894 teachers and 15,380,694 scholars.
Schools enrolled in English-speaking lands are now computed at about 263,000, with about 2,500,- 000 teachers and about 24,000,000 scholars, while all the rest of the world not speaking English is to be credited with about 65,000 schools, upward of 300,000 teachers, and about 4,000,000 scholars. These facts indicate the phenomenal growth in English-speaking lands. It is also to be taken into account that in connection with this institution not less than 15,000,000 young people and adults also receive instruction. In connection with the movement is often found a " children's
day," on which the services are wholly for the children and in large part consist of exercises in which they have the principal parts. The system has not made such great gains in the continental countries of Europe, as in Great Britain and America. The Roman Catholic and Greek churches 5. In have not placed emphasis upon instrucenmars, ^Qn directly from the Bible, but from and ' catechisms, creeds, and confessions pe-
Norway. culiar to them. The large bodies of Protestants on the continent believe in religious instruction in their day-schools, which some there deem equal, if not superior in efficiency, to the method pursued in the modern Sunday-school. Thus, in Denmark, all between seven and fourteen years of age are compelled to attend day-school, and religious instruction is obligatory. Dissenters (numbering less than one in 100 of the population) can have their children excused from religious instruction in the State schools by showing that they are satisfactorily taught elsewhere. In 1907 it was computed that of " children's services " and Sunday-schools together, there were in Denmark about 1,000, having an attendance of about 80,000, the numbers having more than doubled in the last twenty years. In Germany, day-school attendance is compulsory and religious instruction required by the State. The kind of religious instruction thus given varies with the different views of the parish clergyman and the village teacher in charge of the school. The modern Sunday-school is there widely looked upon as designed for the lower classes. Children of the better class rarely attend. Yet Sundayschools on the " class " or " American " system were begun in Prussia about 1834, received a new stimulus from the American Albert Woodruff about 1862, are extending among the free or dissenting churches, through the work of the centennial mission of the London Union, and are winning their way slowly into State churches. Many Evangelical Lutherans, however, say: " Luther taught us how to teach the Bible in our schools; why do we need Sunday-schools? " The State views every one as a Christian who is not a Jew, Moslem, or pagan. Some see two kinds of Sunday-schools in Germany; those in State churches and those in dissenting churches. Some of the former adopt the class system, others do not. The free churches generally welcome the modern class system in Sunday-school. The reports for 1910 give about 9,000 Sunday-schools of all kinds in Germany with about one million scholars. The modern Sunday-school system was introduced into Norway, with the free-church movement, about 1850, and is extending into the State churches, about three-fourths of all Sunday-schools in 1898 belonging to them, and they use lessons of their own. Including the " children's services " and Sunday-schools in the State churches there were in 1910 upward of 1,000 schools in Norway. Many of the free-church schools are coordinated in a union and use the International Sunday-school Lessons.
Sweden introduced Sunday-schools also into the free churches about 1851, and the system is gaining strength in the State churches (see statistical table). The first Sunday-school in Sweden was organized about 1833 in Stockholm by the daughter of an
Sunday-Schools