Sunday school

Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.

Quotes

• What I recalled of Sunday School was that the more difficult something became, the more rewarding it was in the end.
  • John August (screenplay), Big Fish (2003).

• I teach Sunday School, motherfucker.
  • Stephen Colbert, Interviewing Stanford University professor emeritus Dr. Philip Zimbardo, author of the book The Lucifer Effect. After an increasingly heated debate on the problem of theodicy, Colbert sets the record straight responding to Zimbardo's slightly sarcastically charged "Obviously you learned well in Sunday School". The Colbert Report (11 February 2008).

• I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard — even to vomiting — in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.
  • Robertson Davies, Forgotten Dialogues (1961).

• All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School.
  • Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986).

• I went to Sunday School and liked the stories about Christ and the Christmas star. They were beautiful. They made you warm and happy to think about. But I didn't believe them. The Sunday School teacher talked too much in the way our grade school teacher used to when she told us about George Washington. Pleasant, pretty stories, but not true.
  • Frances Farmer, "God Dies" (1931); essay with which she won first prize in a writing contest during high school.

• Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
  • H. L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques (1916).

• I associated much of Christian doctrine with children's stories because I grew up in church. My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.
  • Don Miller, Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books).

• In Sunday school, they taught me don't confront, don't argue, even if you're right, turn the other cheek.
  • Boniface Mwangi, The day I stood up alone, at TEDGlobal 2014.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• We the Sunday-school workers, what are we but the church at work? The Sunday-school is the church in futuro. Our recruits come almost wholly from the training classes of the Sunday-school. The Bible, the open Bible, the studied Bible, the Bible in the heart is the only hope of our land to-day.
  • Henry M. Parsons, p. 569.

• The hope of the nation and of Christendom, and of the lands called heathen, alike is to be found in the indoctrination of little children in the knowledge of God's truth; for the missionaries will tell you that the adult heathen population of to-day are to die heathen; the minister will tell you that the adult, virtually heathen population of Christian lands to-day are to die in that condition, unless God showers down altogether unprecedented grace — with only such occasional exceptions as confirm this general and terrible law. If this be so, the hope of Christianity is in childhood. Towards childhood must be directed the work of the sappers and miners of the church. Here is the weak point of the enemy's fortress. Here let the breach be made, and his topmost turret shall be laid low.
  • Cyrus David Foss, p. 570.

• Let the Sunday-school for the children teach Christ first, Christ last, Christ in the middle, Christ all the time. And the school that shall be so single-eyed for the Master, shall have the full beam of His eyes which smile as the sun shining in its strength ever upon them.
  • Stephen H. Tyng, Jr., p. 570.

• It is a grand thing to train the human mind in the academy and in the college and university to great intellectual achievements. It is a grand thing for you to leap, as it were, by the lightning of your thought, from crag to crag of discovery. It is well to make paths for tender feet through the morasses and over the mountains of study. These bring honor and power. But it is also well to remember that the diplomas of colleges and universities can never bring pardon for sin; that all the scholarships and all the titles in the world can never bring peace to the dying. Oh, brethren, it is this discipleship with the Man of Galilee who trod the wine-press alone, and carried His cross up Calvary's hill; this discipleship with the man Christ Jesus, that constitutes the moral and spiritual power in our work. That power it is yours to impart to the children under your care. Aye, this is grander than all human achievements.
  • J. Clement French, p. 571.

• Bring the little ones to Christ. Lord Jesus, we bring them to-day, the children of our Sunday-schools, of our churches, of the streets. Here they are; they wait Thy benediction. The prayer of Jacob for his sons shall be my prayer while I live, and when I die: " The angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads."
  • T. Dewitt Talmage, p. 571.

• Begin in prayer; continue in prayer; end in prayer. All the help that we have in the conversion of the children comes from God. We cannot convert their souls, but God can by the influence of His Spirit. When we study our lessons, let us go first for illumination to God, that we may so impress it on the minds and hearts of those we are teaching, that they may bring forth fruit for salvation; that they may see our earnestness — see that our desire is for their conversion. Let us pray individually for each one of our scholars.
  • A. O. Van Lennep, p. 571.

• Learn to teach the children to look at this world as a beautiful symbol of Jesus; every thing, Jesus; Christ, all; Christ, in all. So shall you educate the imaginations of the children to receive, and their memories to retain and to use, that Christian truth; and you yourself shall be lifted up, as on angel's wings, to see with John things which are unspeakable, but which the sanctified imagination realizes.
  • Stephen H. Tyng, Jr., p. 572.

• Oh, be assured, fellow teachers, that there is no time in life so favorable to sound conversion as early childhood.
  • Theodore L. Cuyler, p. 572.

• To live a godly life is the best way to light up a lesson that the teacher can possibly employ.
  • John Heyl Vincent, p. 572.

• Let us see to it that in our schools, as far as possible, every week, some lessons from Scripture, in the language of the Scripture are learned.
  • Wayland Hoyt, p. 572.

• The teacher should use illustrations for the better teaching of the lesson, and never to fill up time, to amuse the class, or to display his own genius.
  • John Heyl Vincent, p. 572.

• It is quite likely that the modern contrivances for making Sunday-schools amusing have given them a distaste for the more solemn services of the sanctuary. If so, the amusement is a sin. The schools should feed the church. Children ought to be led by one into the other, exposed to the preaching of the gospel, taught the ways of God's house, and brought up under its influence, with all its hallowed and elevating influences.
  • Samuel I. Prime, p. 572.

• The more you study the lessons as the word of God speaking to you by the Holy Ghost, and the more you come to believe in direct answers to prayer, the more efficacious will be your teaching by word and example upon the hearts and lives of others.
  • Henry M. Parsons, p. 573.

• The primary principle of education is the determination of the pupil to self-activity — the doing nothing for him which he is able to do for himself.
  • Sir William Hamilton, p. 573.

• Be assured, my dear Anne, that it is only by taking our lesson from God and doing the will of God, that we can either please Him in time, or be happy with Him in eternity.
  • Thomas Chalmers, p. 573.