THE BIENNIAL SURVEY OF SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROGRESS REV. E. MORRIS FERGUSSON GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE NEW JERSEY SUNDAY-SCHOOL ASSOCIATION, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY The progress achieved within the last two years by that division of the Sunday-school world which this association may fairly be said to represent is too diffuse, too intangible, and too imperfectly related to any known statistical inquiries, to be exactly set down in figures and comparisons. We can neither start from a well-defined point of attainment in the past, nor arrive at an ascertained condition in the present. Pending the establishment by this association of a bureau of adequate and definite information as to Sunday-school progress a bureau whose operation would be continuous and cumulative, and whose annual reports would serve as bases of measurement for the growth of the following year the most that can fairly be expected of such a paper as this is to note such present facts and tendencies as seem to indicate progress in the fields they typify. If then we are able to go farther and inquire what Sunday-school progress is, and what the present indications of progress mean, it may be that we can lay a basis for a forecast of Sundayschool progress in the future. In classifying such of the facts indicative of progress as can be here considered, we may begin with: 1. Numerical progress the planting and enlargement of Sunday schools. By far the greatest bulk of our information here must come from the International Sunday-School Association, which aims to represent completely the Protestant evangelical denominations of North America and its related islands. Its last figures* (June, 1905) show, for its whole field, 154,593 Sunday schools, with over a million and a half of officers and teachers, over twelve million scholars, and a total, including the non-attending home department members, of over fourteen millions. The general secretary, Mr. Marion Lawrance, writes under recent date: "The talk of numerical increase is in the air wherever I go. I hear more about it than I have usually been hearing." Judging by the reports from some typical portions of the field, there is a steady increase *The Development of the Sunday School: Official Report of the Eleventh International Sunday School Convention, Toronto, June 23-27, 1905. W. N. Hartshorn, Boston, Mass. Pages 669–676. The exact figures are: Officers and teachers, 1,552,473; scholars, 12,167,127; total, including home department members, 14,168,305. ΙΟΙ each year, but a relative falling off as compared with the growth in population. The same report gives the Sunday-school figures of the world as: Sunday schools, 262,131; teachers, 2,426,888; scholars, 22,739,323; total, 25,614,916. The absence of any machinery for gathering the facts as to Sundayschool population and increase in the numerous and important bodies not included in these statements leaves us without exact information as to the field as a whole, either in the United States, the North American continent, or the world. We have every reason to believe that the slow but steady numerical increase reported from the evangelical bodies is also true of the liberal denominations, the Roman Catholic Sunday schools, and the enterprising and thorough Sunday-school instruction of the Jews. In the matter of Sunday school missionary effort, the American Sunday School Union, the Baptists, the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians and doubtless other bodies, have each a large force of missionaries in the American field, while most of the other denominations are covering their territory in other and characteristic ways; and the record of new Sunday schools established, renewed, and supervised into selfmaintenance, usually into church life, does not slacken. Educationally, this work is necessarily extremely crude; but as a force in the religious history of the nation its significance is profound; and its phenomena, its apparatus, and its possibilities are worthy the close and sympathetic attention of the friends of religious education. Our second set of facts will concern: 2. Organic progress; or, growth and betterment in the organizations which have to do with the life of the Sunday school. This portion of our survey is cheering indeed. Beginning with the Religious Education Association, it has maintained and extended its activities, and has continued to regard its department of Sunday schools as one of the most significant. Its office is becoming an influential bureau of information. The secretary writes: "During the past year there has been a steady and rapid increase in the number of inquiries we receive as to methods of grading schools, plans for training teachers, correlating the work of the Sunday school to the work of the public school, the home, etc.; curricula for graded schools, for training classes, for men's classes, and for adult classes; as to suitable text-books; as to manual methods and kindergarten methods. These inquiries come not only from our members but from people everywhere in the Sunday-school world." The secretary adds that inquiries have also been made concerning paid superintendents, and concerning men competent to supervise grading and grade curricula over more or less extended fields. Such an information-center, developed along lines indicated by these voiced needs, is in itself both a justification of existence and a plea for increase. Let us build up the headquarters force of the Religious Education Association. These and other activities of the Association for the Sunday-school cause will no doubt be duly and officially reported to the convention; and for the labors of all its officers and representatives in this behalf the thanks of the Sunday-school world are due. Next, we note the progress of the International Sunday School Association. When our last convention assembled, the officers of that body were preparing for the eleventh international Sunday-school convention at Toronto, June 23 to 27, 1905. At that convention there were enrolled,* with the speakers, 1,983 duly chosen and accredited delegates from sixty of the constituent state, territorial, provincial, and insular Sunday-school associations; and twenty-eight of these delegations reached their full quota. The convention was more than ordinarily representative of its vast, democratic, and well organized constituency; and, like its predecessor at Denver a triennium before, it faithfully reflected the jealous suspicion with which the large majority of that constituency still views any encroachment upon the universality of the ungraded International lesson. At Toronto the lesson committee renewed their recommendation of an optional advanced course, and gave reasons therefor. The vote stood, 617 to reject the recommendation against 601 to sustain it; but the leader of the opposition, a little later, moved to reconsider and grant the request; and this passed unanimously, amid much rejoicing. Pursuant to this action the lesson committee has now, after much consideration and one or two withdrawals, issued its specifications for three years of advanced Bible study, giving forty lessons each on The Teachings of Jesus, The Life and Letters of Paul, and The Early Old Testament Prophets. Just what use the lesson publishers and the Sunday schools will make of these specifications is not yet clear. The making of lesson selections, however, is but an incident in the work of the International Association. Its recent progress is set forth in a bulletin issued by its general secretary. There are now seven secretaries available for field work, with six others arranged for. Adding the work of the state and provincial auxiliaries, which employ about *The Development of the Sunday School, p. 702. "News-Letter No. 5. November, 1906." Marion Lawrance, Toledo, Ohio. 150 general secretaries and department superintendents, besides a large amount of office help, the force of professional Sunday-school workers laboring for the unifying and upbuilding of the field is seen to be imposing. Nor are these labors vain; for in nearly every quarter of the wide field the hunger for new and better methods is keen, and those statistics which relate to method tell of steady advance. Under the consecrated leadership of Chairman W. N. Hartshorn, the executive committee of the International Association proposes to maintain an efficient departmental organization for every proper department of Sunday-school activity, and now has secretaries in charge of elementary Sunday-school teaching and of teacher-training and adult class work, with several other departments projected, and an immense aggregate of local departmental organization under its auxiliaries. It is also effectively reaching out after its more distant fields, and at present has one secretary in Mexico, another touring the West Indies to complete the admirable work of its commission sent a year ago, another in the sparcely populated Northwest, with two more soon to begin work there, four competent negro secretaries organizing not Sunday schools but Sunday-school organizations among the negro populations in the South, and a white secretary for the South soon to enter the field; while an honorary commissioner is in Japan, preparing the field there for independent organization. In this more than continental undertaking, whose conscientious decentralization and fostering of local initiative and control is as noteworthy as the imperial sweep of its plans, the advance since the forces were numbered at Toronto is, as the general secretary truly says, phenomenal. The Sunday School Federation of the Protestant Episcopal Church, while representing schools whose statistics are, wherever possible, included in the International figures, has nevertheless a distinct field and a separate record. From the Bulletin of the New York Sunday School Commission may be gleaned a story of rapid advance in diocesan and inter-diocesan organization, the formulation of a subject-graded curriculum intended to represent modern educational principles, the creation of a remarkably complete and varied apparatus, and the spread of enthusiasm and high pedagogic ideals among the Sunday schools of the Episcopal Church with a rapidity and to a degree that challenges the admiration of every observer. Every denomination, in fact, has made more or less progress in its Sunday-school activities. As publishers of lesson-helps, they have improved their product both in appearance and in pedagogic merit. *The Sunday School Commission Bulletin. Quarterly, 416 Lafayette Street, New York. The work of some successful lesson-writers is now syndicated and thus made to benefit a wider circle. The Sunday-school secretaries are vigilantly noting the needs of their fields and leading their conservative forces in the direction of educational reform. Under the pressure of a more and more insistent public demand, even the theological seminaries are making progress in attention to Sunday-school work; and many brief lecture-courses by recognized Sunday-school speakers have been admitted to their overcrowded calendars during this and recent seasons; while one (Southern Baptist, Louisville, Ky.) has installed a professor of Sunday-school methods, and others have continued their extension courses and other evidences of practical interest in the Sunday-school problem. The labors of such a bureau of information as was wished for at the outset of this paper would enable us, undoubtedly, to chronicle like progress in the many other forms of organized Sunday-school effort in this and other lands. The third division of Sunday-school progress may be styled: Specific progress progress in respect to specific phases of Sunday-school service, which we may broadly classify as, Extension, Organization, and Material. a. Extension. Whatever brings the influence of the Sunday school to bear upon a wider circle of individuals must be counted as a mark of progress, not only for the work in itself, but also for the reflex gains to the Sunday school proper. Hence we note with satisfaction the statistical indications that those ingenious and happy devices, the home department and the cradle roll, continue to make substantial progress, relating many added thousands each year to the Sunday school through participation in home Bible study and the joint interest of parents and school in the spiritual watch-care of the baby. b. Organization. The Sunday schools appear to be moving toward more efficient forms of departmental and class organization. In an organism whose activities are so largely habitual, impulsive - one might almost say sub-conscious every influence that tends to guide the teacher's work into more wisely chosen channels of effort, and to group hitherto separate movements into form and plan, is great gain. Hence the tendency to seek a graded or at least a departmental form of organization, noticeable at every center where inquiries from superintendents and pastors are received, must be counted progressive, apart entirely from the question as to how far these departments and grades are really teaching things worth while. Thanks, largely, to the vigorous administration of the International Association's department of elementary |