What Is the Purpose of Sunday School?
What is the purpose of Sunday school? I’ve been cogitating on this question for a couple of months, and on the purpose of religious instruction for children, generally, regardless of the time and place. If you ask most people, if you’d asked me a few years ago, the answer would probably be some variation of, “To teach them the Bible stories, especially, the stories about Jesus.”
Here is the problem with that. Here is the source of my struggle. In our culture, we have developed a distinction between fact and fiction or myth. We assume that facts are “true” and fiction and myths are “lies.” This distinction does not acknowledge that what is reported to us as “fact” is always told from the perspective of some human being. In history, in human interactions, it is nearly if not utterly impossible to determine what “the facts” are. Even if you catch something on tape, people will interpret what they see differently.
This distinction between fact and fiction or myth also does not acknowledge that great and even eternal truth may be learned from either one.
The Bible contains both what we in the 21st century would call fact and what we would call fiction. Some of its stories are grounded in fact but told from a particular perspective, reflecting the ancient cultures of the writers. Some stories are embellished to support the writer’s point of view; some stories are told and retold with different emphases. Some stories are mythological, and the facts behind the myth, if there ever were any, were lost thousands of years ago. Many of the stories in the Bible are some mixture of fact, fiction and embellishment and it is impossible, thousands of years later, to tell which is which.
So in Sunday school, we teach young children, who are very concrete, these Bible stories. Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark, Jesus’ walking on water, Jesus’ feeding the multitudes. We teach the stories as though they are fact in a 21st century sense – as though the distinction between fact and fiction can be made easily, and as though that distinction is important. And then the kids hit about age 11 or 12 or 14 or 15, and because they have the same 21st century approach to fact and fiction as the rest of our culture, they say, “This is all a bunch of lies. You’ve been teaching me a bunch of lies. The BIBLE is full of lies. I’m out of here.” And instead of growing disciples, we’ve sent more agnostics and atheists into the world.
Then, if we are lucky – if they are lucky – they come back to church at some point and discover that Scripture shapes our faith and our lives and our relationship with God and each other in profound ways – with truth that transcends any attempt to label Scripture as fact of fiction.
I speak from my own experience. And I describe what I have seen with adolescents in my congregation. In my experience, Christianity is a very adult faith. Of course we welcome children. But is traditional Sunday school the way to do that?
What IS the purpose of Sunday school? I invite your thoughts.
Elizabeth
Thu 30th Aug 2012 at 11:41 am
I would have to say the purpose of Sunday School is to teach a child about community and caring. Once that has been established it is to guide them in some of the situations they will encounter to do what is right for the community.
The Rev. Dr. Joanne Whitt
Sun 09th Sep 2012 at 3:38 pm
That is lovely but then how does that differ – if it does at all – from the efforts at community-building and cooperation in the public schools – which I applaud. Do they make Sunday school superfluous?
Royce Truex
Fri 31st Aug 2012 at 10:13 am
I’m very surprised to hear that your experience has been that a reason for leaving church is that it had been teaching lies. I’ve never heard that before.
I believe that the principle underlying all that is done in church school should be that a child’s spiritual journey has already begun, independent of us, and that we, as adults, want to join them on their journey, not lead them. This might mean, for example, experiencing with them, while presenting to them, the raw materials of our faith, rather than presenting the material as an authority, being open to their experiences and interpretations.
Children are not empty vessels that need to be filled by us with our interpretations and instructions about how to live.
Thus, Sunday morning could offer an experience of God or Jesus more than a lesson about them.
The Rev. Dr. Joanne Whitt
Fri 31st Aug 2012 at 10:05 pm
I love how this sounds but I’m trying to picture it in the flesh. We should talk.
Martha Joyce
Sat 01st Sep 2012 at 1:58 pm
Joanne, this is a great way to look at this question. I know that our educational system values science and facts very highly. So nowadays, when you ask a kid to believe that Jesus walked on water or that the seas parted for Moses, it is an invitation to incredulity and “you gotta be kidding!” If Sunday School is a safe place for kids to learn that they are part of a community of people that cares about peace, justice, and caring for our world and others…that sounds like a good goal to me. And that this is a community that looks to the Bible to tell us where we’ve come from and what has shaped our beliefs over the millenia about how to live and act.
The Rev. Dr. Joanne Whitt
Sun 09th Sep 2012 at 3:39 pm
OK, you are nominated to write this curriculum. I know you have loads of free time.
Martha Joyce
Mon 10th Sep 2012 at 10:31 pm
Right! As soon as I figure it out!
Michael Fitzgerald
Sat 08th Sep 2012 at 7:21 am
Hi Joanne,
I’ve been thinking about this post a good deal lately. No coincidence that I’m about to start teaching Sunday school again, I’m sure. Plus, a number of the youth in my class (7th-10th grades) have opted out of confirmation class, with their parents’ ok.
I suspect a number of them don’t care about the truth of the Bible; they care about whether it matters in the lives of their peers.
I feel like it’s my job to get them to care about whether these stories mean something. There is truth in that. Of course, I would like it if God’s truth was consistent and scientifically verifiable.
But even the human sciences, social and medical, aren’t ‘true’ in the sense of physics. Medicines work well for some patients and kill others. Some of us are immune to terrible diseases. Economists, anthropologists, social scientists use artificial, if repeatable, frames to try to find ‘truth.’
Thanks for posting. Pray for my Sunday school class!
The Rev. Dr. Joanne Whitt
Sun 09th Sep 2012 at 3:46 pm
Thanks for addressing the question of truth as a moving target in many fields of endeavor. And I love your statement about what your job is as a Sunday school teacher.
I wonder if it were more obvious to young people that Christ’s teachings make a huge difference in the lives of his disciples if we’d even be having this discussion. And I mean, obvious in a positive way, as opposed to much of what appears to be obvious about Christians in the media. I mean obvious in terms of loving, inclusion, caring, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, bringing sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free …
The Rev. Dr. Joanne Whitt
Sun 09th Sep 2012 at 3:47 pm
And by the way, yes, I will pray for you and all Sunday school teachers.