Sunday school
The Sunday school is in many, mainly Protestant, churches the Sunday catechesis of children and - more rarely - adolescents or adults. Today it has often developed into what is known as a children's worship service .
Originally Sunday school not only imparted religious knowledge, but also helped literate the underprivileged classes. She still has this function in some underdeveloped countries today.
history
Origins
The first Sunday School was founded in 1780. The English newspaper publisher and social reformer Robert Raikes (1735–1811) began teaching neglected children to read and write using the Bible on Sunday mornings in a gloucester slum . His real intention was to raise the children to the Christian faith. Sunday school spread rapidly in England and a short time later in America and was soon part of the regular program of most churches and free churches. In 1803, an interdenominational Sunday School Union was established in London .
Germany
As early as December 9, 1790, the Hamburg Poor Collegium ordered the establishment of an evening and Sunday school for poor children who were unable to attend the spinning mill because of other livelihoods . The plan was to teach the children reading, religion, writing and arithmetic every evening from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m., as well as on Sundays from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. or from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. Whether this evening and Sunday school started its work cannot be clarified on the basis of the available sources.
Sunday school was introduced in Bavaria in 1803.
In 1813 a Sunday school was established in the Weimar area. "Orphan father" Johannes Daniel Falk , who took in children orphaned by the Napoleonic war campaigns, and preacher Karl Friedrich Horn from Weimar founded the philanthropic association Society of Friends in Need . The association with sites in Wiegendorf, Isserstedt, Umpferstedt, Schwabsdorf and where else besides sewing, spinning and knitting schools also a Sunday school has thus helped some wild or abandoned children to learn useful handicrafts and trades. The reason for this foundation was the devastating side effects of the battle of Großgörschen for the population of this region . The Sunday school had around 100 pupils.
In a memorandum from 1820, Count Adalbert von der Recke-Volmerstein , founder of the rescue facilities in Düsselthal and Overdyck , suggested the establishment of “Sunday schools in the cities and in the country”. His main concern was the "wholly or half orphaned criminal and vagabond children of both sexes".
The decisive breakthrough in Sunday school work did not come until 1825, however. In that year - inspired by the merchant from Varel and later founder of the continental European Baptist Church, Johann Gerhard Oncken - the Sunday school Hamburg-St. George . Oncken had brought the idea with him from England, where he had worked as a merchant for several years . However, this idea was implemented by the Evangelical Lutheran pastor Johann Wilhelm Rautenberg , who described the beginnings and tasks of the Sunday School as follows: [...] That's why I took it as an instruction from above, in the summer of 1824 from the [Sunday] School Association In London by the agent of the local continental society [for the dissemination of the Holy Scriptures], Mr. JG Oncken, I was asked to establish a Sunday school and at the same time I was promised with the most loving willingness a grant of ten pounds for the foundation of the same [...] Purpose of the Sunday School to be founded [should be]:
- Children of both sexes from the beginning of the sixth year of life who only attend the week school sparingly or not at all due to the poverty of their parents or foster parents, are the students of the institution. However, if even less needy parents, regardless of their diligent and uninterrupted attendance of their children at the week school, still want them to take part in the lessons in Sunday school, it is open to them too.
- Classes are limited to reading art and the knowledge of Scripture, in which religious instruction other than to the Bible the Small Catechism of Luther and the hymnal used.
- Christian friends of the cause take on the trouble of teaching free of charge, for which they naturally also request permission and approval from the competent school authorities.
- Two or three hours every Sunday are devoted to the actual lessons, with the arrangement being made in such a way that the children are by no means prevented from attending public services ; rather, the teachers will urge them to do so in the most serious way.
- The relatively low costs of the institution are met from mild gifts that are to be brought together by means of a private subscription.
- The purpose of this school is clear from what has been said. She wants to stand by the schools for the poor , to seriously warn children and parents to conscientiously use them; The gaps that these inevitably leave, fill in the best possible way, and many neglected children, who, even with the best organization of a possible compulsory schooling, cannot be adequately brought to the week schools, at least communicate one thing that is necessary, the knowledge of God and their Savior . And then she really wants to make holy Sunday, which unfortunately only too often becomes a day of sin for our youth, who are often left to their own devices, a day of the Lord for all of her pupils.
The hamburgers Sunday school became the nucleus of the Johann Hinrich Wichernhaus justified inside mission and children worship.
In 1826 Oncken in Bremen submitted a motion to Wittheit to set up the enlarged Bremen Senate to set up Sunday schools for poor children in the manner of those that exist under the direction of the preacher Rautenberg at St. Georg in Hamburg [...] . This request was rejected. The later attempt by the businessman Bröckelmann to found a Sunday school in Bremen was ultimately successful. Sunday schools were also established in Berlin (Pastor Stobwasser) and Dresden (Oberhofprediger Dibelius), but their form was more oriented towards church worship than school instruction.
The state church and the state organs initially treated Sunday school work very critically, even hostile. In Hamburg there was even temporary police surveillance of the lessons. Sunday schoolwork was not officially recognized by the church until the Stuttgart Kirchentag in 1869. For the state church area, it was given the designation "Sunday School as a Children's Service". At the Sunday School Congress in Bremen in 1882 the term “Sunday School” was replaced by “Children's Service” for the area of Protestant national churches. However, the Free Churches (Baptists, Methodist Church, etc.), the New Apostolic Church and the Christadelphians have retained the term “Sunday School” up to the present day. The Seventh-day Adventist Church introduce the term children Sabbath school because they do not Sunday, but sabbath (Saturday) worship celebration. Today, however, the term “children's worship” is being used more and more, and more recently the term “ children's church ”.
anthem
One of the best-known Sunday school songs in German-speaking countries was the so-called Sunday school anthem , which often had to be sung at the beginning or at the end of the event; here the three stanzas:
Sunday school is our pleasure
Sunday school is our pleasure / and it becomes more and more;
she brings us what we didn't know / in sweet hours.
The truth from the purest source / and Jesus' love clear and bright.
We are taught to love, look upwards / and trust in the Lord.
[Refrain:] Sing, so that it resounds loudly / and earth and sky echoes:
Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna be the Lamb of God!
We thank you, dear teachers, for your care!
You lead us to the kingdom of heaven / early in our youth.
And if we move out of the father's house / once out into the wide world,
your faithful advice / always lead us on the path of life.
[Refrain:]
How beautiful it is when we gather around our preacher,
like young lambs, fine and tender / around their shepherds!
We like to hear his voice / and follow our Lord with him.
How will it be in heaven! / O Lord, bring us in.
[Refrain:]
Sunday schools for adults
The Mormons offer a Sunday school for young people and adults before the actual service. At the same time as Sunday school, the primary association takes place in Mormon congregations, which is aimed at children up to the age of 12.
Well-known teachers and students
Former US President Jimmy Carter is one of the prominent people currently involved as Sunday School teachers . Up to 12,000 students participate annually in the Sunday school hours for adults that he organizes and takes place in his home church, the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia . One of the most famous German Sunday school students is the East Frisian comedian Otto Waalkes , whose mother Adele Waalkes was a member of the Emden Baptist congregation and who regularly sent her son to Sunday school.
Teachers and students were (selection):
Jimmy Carter (US President), teacher
Adolf Damaschke (soil reformer), student
Peter Dienel (sociologist), student and teacher
Mahalia Jackson (singer), schoolgirl
Otto Waalkes (comedian), student
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See also
- Bible study
- Bible study
- Gottfried Fankhauser (Swiss Sunday School Pedagogue)
- Sermon for children
- Eduard Scheve
- Albertine Assor
literature
- Carsten Berg: Church service with children. From Sunday school to children's worship. Gütersloh 1987 (Gütersloh publishing house), ISBN 3-579-01746-2 .
- Volkmar Hamp: From “Singevögelein” to “A lot of tones”. On the history of free church children's song books in Germany. In: Theological Conversation 32 (2008), ISSN 1431-200X , Issue 1, pp. 23–37.
- D. M. Hennig: Source book for the history of the inner mission. Hamburg 1912.
- Philipp: Article Sunday School and Children's Service. In: Evangelisches Gemeindelexikon. Wuppertal 1986, p. 477.
- E. Quandt: The Christian Sunday School. Words of sympathy for their friends and their opponents. Berlin 1867.
- W. Thiel, E. Voehringer: Sunday School article in: Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Vol. VI (Tübingen 1962), Sp. 144ff.
- Karl Heinz Voigt: International Sunday School and German Children's Service. An ecumenical challenge. From the beginning to the end of the German Empire. Church - Confession - Religion, Volume 52. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 3-89971-402-4 .
- Discover God together. Quarterly magazine of the free church Sunday schools, Oncken Verlag, Kassel.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ P. Wurster, M. Hennig: What everyone today needs to know about the Inner Mission. Heilbronn 1914, p. 78.
- ^ The College of the Poor: No. 5 of the advertisements, circulars etc. to the gentlemen poor nurses ; quoted from: D. M. Hennig: Quellenbuch zur Geschichte der Innere Mission , Hamburg 1912, p. 98f.
- ^ Max Döllner : History of the development of the city of Neustadt an der Aisch until 1933. 1950; 2nd Edition. Ph. CW Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch 1978, ISBN 3-87707-013-2 , p. 498.
- ^ Society of Friends in Need in Weimar: Origin, Origin and Progress in the Year of Our Lord 1813 , pp. 31–35; quoted from D. M. Hennig: Quellenbuch zur Geschichte der Innere Mission. Hamburg 1912, p. 112f.
- ↑ Zeitschrift Der Menschenfreund , Düsselthal 1848, pp. 1–11; quoted from D. M. Hennig: Quellenbuch zur Geschichte der Innere Mission. Hamburg 1912, p. 128
- ^ Karl Heinz Voigt: International Sunday School and German Children's Service. An ecumenical challenge. From the beginning to the end of the German Empire , vol. 52 in the series Church - Denomination - Religion ; P. 23ff
- ↑ a b Wilhelm Philipp: Sunday School article , in: Evangelisches Gemeindelexikon (ed. By Erich Geldbach et al.), Wuppertal 1986, p. 477, Sp I + II)
- ^ Rautenberg: 1st report ; in: Fr. Maßling: Contributions to the history of the development of the Inner Mission, with the special relationship to Hamburg , Hamburg 1898, p. 16ff
- ↑ Quoted from: Karl Söhlke, Gregor Helms u. a .: 150 years of Baptists in Bremen and around. Bremen 1995, p. 22.
- ^ Philipp Bickel : New singing bird. A collection of songs for Sunday schools , No. 69 (without mentioning the author and comp), Kassel 1952
- ↑ J. A. Huber: Former President Carter Teaches Sunday School in Hometown of Plains, Ga. - Jimmy Carter is Plainly Not Just a President , March 2006 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed on April 18, 2010
- ↑ See, for example, the short biography of Otto Waalke at WELT online ; Accessed April 19, 2010
- ↑ Covers the songbooks Songbirds, New Songbirds, Praise God, Our Children's Song Book and Lots of Tones .
