The Sunday School movement is generally considered to have begun in 1780 in England under the leadership of Robert Raikes, though some Brethren historians in the early twentieth century tried to claim this honor for the Brethren, citing young people’s meetings at Germantown as early as 1738 or the Sabbath school connected with the Ephrata Community in the 1740s. These Brethren nominees for this honor have rightly been dismissed; the Germantown meetings were essentially prayer meetings while the Ephrata Community had already broken any ties to the Brethren.
The earliest mention of Sunday Schools in the minutes of Annual Meeting occurred in 1838 when a query was brought “whether it be right for members to take part in Sunday-schools, class-meetings and the like.” The answer was brief: “Considered most advisable to take no part in such like things.” As sometimes occurred on other innovations initially forbidden by Annual Meeting, the assembly softened its stance in 1857 and gave conditional support to Sunday Schols “if conducted in gospel order, and if they are made the means of teaching scholars a knowledge of the Scriptures.”
A strong supporter of Sunday Schools in Henty Kurtz’s Gospel Visitor was his associate at the paper, James Quinter. In 1858 he was careful to stay within the limits established by Annual Meeting the previous year and to assuage fears about the Sunday School undermining the responsibility of parents to train their children in spiritual matters. He reinforced certain benefits that could be realized through the introduction of Sunday Schools among the Brethren: they would help children “advance in Scriptural knowledge,” they could prevent children from forming evil habits, and they would offer children from non-Christian families the opportunity to obtain religious instruction. The photo is of the article in which Quinter presented his arguments.
The Old Order Brethren considered Sunday Schools a popular human invention, lacking biblical support and out of harmony with the apostolic order of the church. They maintained that the command to bring up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord was directed to parents, not Sunday School teachers. They especially feared that the Sunday School would reduce the hold the parents had over the Christian education of their children and increase the “danger of imbibing the principle and faith of a false Christendom” (especially if children attended union or interdenominational Sunday Schools).
The Progressive Brethren were strong supporters of the benefit that Sunday Schools could have for the spiritual training of children and youth. Such Progressives as Henry Holsinger, P. J. Brown, and E. L. Yoder led the way in establishing Sunday Schools in their congregations and also supported the holding of Sunday School Conventions, which provided teachers in districts within the church with best practices for their Sunday Schools in their local congregations. The German Baptist Brethren through Annual Meeting ruled against these conventions in 1882, considering them an expression “of popular Christianity and . . . contrary to the principle of the Gospel and contrary to the Scriptures” according to Romans 12:2.
Sunday Schools were but one of a number of flash points in the church that would lead to the three-way division among the German Baptist Brethren in 1881-1883.