Moral Education in the Victorian Sunday School

ONE REASON that educational institutions are of interest to historian is that they provide direct access to values and beliefs, both explicit and implicit, that are deemed worthy of transmission from one generation to next. (1) A case in point is Victorian Sunday school. (2) As a product of evangelical revival, its primary purpose was inculcation of religious and moral principles. Yet moral education that it offered was by no means limited to Christian doctrine. The teachings of Sunday school comprised a number of disparate and intertwined elements, each product of a different history. At core of instructional program was moral theology of evangelicalism, affirming Christian faith against competing claims of the world. Alongside orthodox doctrines that remained formally intact, however, were other beliefs and attitudes characteristic of surrounding culture. Juxtaposed with doctrine of original sin, so fundamental to evangelical theology, was a distinctly Pelagian view of man. In a number of other ways also teachings of Sunday school reflected an evangelical subculture that had in fact become comfortably adapted to world around it. Conceptions of God and Providence had a Victorian coloration. The social values of middle and lower middle classes took their place beside such traditional virtues as piety, charity, and honesty. Also conspicuously present were consensus of Palmerston's England. The moral teachings of Victorian Sunday School were end product of a long process of acculturation that had gradually changed character of evangelicalism. In course of an ambiguous and ironic encounter with world, evangelical tradition had drifted steadily in very direction that it had been determined to avoid. It had developed into a form of cultural Christianity, imbued with finest ideals of secular culture. (3) While successfully defending its religious integrity

Moral education · Pedagogy · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Gender Studies · Religious Education and Schools

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