Catechism Classes and Other Surprising Precedents for Age-Organized Ministries

An assessment of the historical claims made by proponents of family-integrated churches

If you are interested in locating the sources that I quote in this article, please read the full version of the article in Appendix 1 of the book Navigating Student Ministry, edited by Tim McKnight.

Photo by Jenny Marvin on Unsplash

In recent years, a small but vocal cluster of church leaders has contended that age-organized programs and ministries in the church ought to be eliminated. These proponents of “family-integrated” or “age-integrated” churches have called for congregations to dismantle any programs that practice “age-segregated discipleship,” including youth ministry.

“We do not divide families into component parts,” writes one proponent of family-integrated churches. “We don’t even do it in Bible study.” One support that has been claimed for this model of ministry is that age-organized classes for youth and children are a recent innovation. According to this line of thinking, age-organized ministry represents the modern imposition of individualistic philosophies in the church.

According to one supporter of family-integrated churches, classes where children or youth are discipled apart from the congregation as a whole originated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when churches began to imitate the age-organized structures of the surrounding culture. Age-organized ministries developed, this author claims, over the past two centuries from “the lofty deposits of platonic philosophy, the loamy organic of rationalism, the ethereal waters of evolutionism, and the breathable but allergenic air of pragmatism.” The promotional materials for Divided—a documentary that calls for the dissolution of youth ministry—similarly claim that the film unmasks the “shockingly sinister roots of modern, age-segregated church programs.” If these perspectives are correct, classes and programs for particular age groups in the church represent an innovation that has emerged over the past two centuries as a result of imitating pragmatic and progressivist practices in the surrounding culture. The emergence of these age-organized ministries has correlated, according to this interpretation, with an increasing absorption of non-Christian values in churches. The purpose of this research is to examine the historical claims made by advocates of family-integrated ministry.

This research presents a quite different account of the emergence of age-organized ministries. What the historical record reveals is that, centuries before the supposed culprits of “rationalism, ... evolutionism, and ... pragmatism,” faithful churches systematically offered age-organized classes led by vocational ministers. Far from being an innovation instituted in an attempt to imitate the practices of the surrounding culture, these gatherings were initiated with the explicit goal of re-instituting what was believed to have been the practice of the ancient church. These practices began no later than the sixteenth century as part of an attempt to restore what John Calvin and others perceived as earlier patterns. Furthermore, this attempt at restoring catechetical instruction in the church provided the template for some of the earliest expressions of Sunday school, particularly the forms of Sunday school promoted by Robert Raikes. In addition to critiquing the claim that age-organized ministries such as youth ministry emerged due to the church’s embrace of non-Christian philosophies, this research will also highlight the willingness of early Reformed churches to modify ecclesial methodologies to disciple young people more effectively.

“The Devil ... Overthrew This Policy”: Calvin’s Perception of Children’s Catechesis as a Restoration of the Practices of the Early Church

On January 16, 1537, a pastor named Guilliame Farel presented the Little Council of Geneva with a series of proposals for the government of their city. One of Farel’s co-architects in these proposals was a twenty-seven-year-old French theologian who had only recently been appointed to the colloquium of pastors in Geneva. The next year, this same young man would be dismissed from Geneva and make his way to the city of Strasbourg. His name was John Calvin.

The purpose of the articles Farel presented was “to maintain the Church in its integrity.” One of the primary means proposed in the articles to maintain ecclesial integrity was the catechesis of children. The articles of 1537 directed parents to “exercise pains and diligence” so their children would “be individually taught” to confess the true faith. At the same time, these articles also called for pastoral instruction of children. Parents in Geneva were instructed to bring their children before the pastors “at certain seasons.” At these designated times, the children would be expected not only to confess their faith but also to be examined before the church and, if necessary, to receive from the ministers “more ample explanation” of the catechism “according to [their] capacity.” Even in 1537, the leaders of the Reformation in Geneva saw the need for adapting content and instructional methods to the developmental capacities of the hearers.

Several months earlier, John Calvin had already envisioned how these processes of examining and instructing children might take place in the context of a local church. In the 1536 edition of the Institutio Christianae religionis, Calvin described how

children or those near adolescence would give an account of their faith before the church. The best method of catechizing would be to have a manual drafted for this exercise, containing and summarizing in a simple manner nearly all the articles of our religion, on which the whole believers’ church ought to agree without controversy. A child of ten would present himself to the church to declare his confession of faith, would be examined in each article, and would give an answer; if he were ignorant of anything or insufficiently understood it, he would be taught. Thus, while the church looks on as witness, he would profess the one true and sincere faith, in which those who believe with one mind worship the one God. If this discipline were in effect today, it would certainly arouse some slothful parents, who carelessly neglect the instruction of their children as a matter of no concern to them; for then they could not overlook it without public disgrace.

Calvin—like many others in the sixteenth century, including Martin Luther—seems to have viewed the development of children and youth as a process that unfolded in three seven-year stages. Calvin’s description of catechesis in the Institutio focused on the second of these developmental stages (“children or those near adolescence...a child of ten”)—the cycle that began with the dawning of reason and ended at puberty.

The pastoral practices described in the Institutio of 1536 and the articles of 1537 were occasional and seem to have taken place in the context of the entire congregation. Nevertheless, it is clear Calvin expected those who led Reformed churches to commit themselves to the training of children. The purpose of this increased engagement was not to replace parents as trainers of their children but to arouse parents to become more committed to their children’s spiritual training.

From the perspective of Calvin and his compatriots, the institution of catechesis for children and new converts represented the recovery of a long-lost practice that had characterized Christians in the apostolic era. According to the ecclesiastical articles to which Calvin contributed in 1537, ancient Christians had employed “a definite catechism” to instruct children in the fundamental truths of the Christian faith. After being instructed, “children of the faithful” presented themselves before the church for examination. If they were capable of rightly confessing their faith, they were received into the church’s full fellowship.

The practice of catechism and public profession had been, Calvin claimed, “abolished some centuries ago under the papacy.” This abolition was a disastrous act by which “the devil ... overthrew” catechetical instruction and set about “miserably rending the church of God and bringing upon it fearful ruin.” What had replaced catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church was, according to Calvin, confirmation. Confirmation was a “sign, which, invented by the rashness of men, has been set out as a sacrament of God.” By the sixteenth century, the confirmation of children had degenerated into a ritual that was—in Calvin’s words—“decked out like a prostitute” and filled with “gesticulations which are more than ridiculous and suited rather to apes.” The Roman Catholic rite of confirmation included a slap on the cheek of the child being confirmed; this may have been one of the ritual gesticulations that Calvin deemed “suited rather to apes.”

Calvin’s vision was to see in his own lifetime a divine “restitution of the church” through a renewed understanding of divine truth. The recovery of catechesis was so central to Calvin’s vision that, when he agreed to return to Geneva in 1541, retention of the catechism was one of the two conditions that he required. “I would never have accepted this ministry,” Calvin later declared, “if they had not pledged me these two things; namely, to keep the catechism and the discipline.”

Soon after his return to Geneva, John Calvin drafted a series of ecclesiastical ordinances for the city of Geneva. In these ordinances, he reshaped the catechetical ideals that he had outlined in 1536 and 1537 into a detailed plan for the discipleship of children and younger youth. Calvin never retreated from the priority he placed on parental catechesis of children. At the same time, his plan for catechizing grew more precise and moved closer to a partnership between the church and the home. Most important for the purposes of this research, these ordinances included a clear and comprehensive role for pastors.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

“At Midday, There Is to Be Catechism”: Pastoral Responsibility for Catechesis in Sixteenth-Century Geneva

In his ecclesiastical ordinances, John Calvin placed his catechetical instructions in the same section of the ecclesiastical ordinances in which he described the frequency and locales for pastoral proclamations of Scripture. He directed that each Sunday “at midday, there is to be catechism, that is, instruction of little children, in all the three churches.” The individual responsible for this instruction was the pastor—and this was not a peripheral function for the pastor. Rather, “the catechizing task of the pastors in Geneva occupied much of their ministerial activity.”

These weekly catechetical classes were designed as a distinct and separate gathering for children, and attendance was not optional. “All citizens and inhabitants,” the ordinances declared, “are to bring or convey their children on Sundays at midday to catechism” to be instructed by the pastor. If children were absent from the classes, parents were to be “called before the company of the elders, and, if they will not yield to good advice, they must be reported to their lordships.” Calvin’s ordinances spelled out not only the participants but also the content and the goal of these classes:

A definite formulary is to be composed by which they will be instructed, and on this, with the teaching given them, they are to be interrogated about what has been said, to see if they have listened and remembered well. When a child has been well enough instructed to pass the catechism, he is to recite solemnly the sum of what it contains, and also [or, “and so”] to make profession of his Christianity in the presence of the church.

The catechism that Calvin would compose the following year was to provide the content for the curriculum, and the method of instruction would be pastoral teaching followed by the posing of questions to test children’s knowledge. Calvin’s first instructional booklet for the youth of Geneva had been a confession of faith. This work had proved too difficult for many children to memorize. The new catechism that was published in 1542 was constructed in a question-and-answer format, following a trend that would in time characterize Protestant catechesis. Three years later, seeking to multiply the impact of the Genevan Reformation, Calvin translated the text of this catechism into Latin.

In 1547, Calvin adapted his original ecclesiastical ordinances to take into account the challenges faced by churches in the rural regions surrounding Geneva. Each pastor in these contexts served two congregations. As a result, a pastor was only available every other week, and the adjustments that Calvin made in the catechetical classes revealed the importance, in his mind, of a trained minister overseeing catechesis. The significance of the pastor as a teacher of children was such that catechetical classes occurred only on the weeks when the pastor could be present. Fathers were apparently required to be in attendance only if one of their offspring was being baptized; even then, fathers might be absent if a “legitimate excuse” was submitted to the consistory. By 1560, in certain regions ruled by Geneva, families were fined if they failed to send not only their children but also any servants or chambermaids who were “old enough [to] have the knowledge to learn” to catechism classes.

The training of youth and children in Christian doctrine had been—according to the preface of the new catechism that Calvin had produced in 1542—part of the “practice ... of the church” from ancient times. In the past, parents had been encouraged to prioritize the training of their children, and schools had been founded to train children and youth “more conveniently.” In Calvin’s mind, however, neither the presence of schools nor the priority of parents precluded the establishment of regular classes that separated children and younger youth from the rest of the congregation for instruction at their developmental level. Catechesis had a strategic role Calvin’s thought precisely because of its implementation not merely in the home but also—separate from the parents—in church classes and in school.

Between the first edition of the Institutio in 1536 and Calvin’s return to Geneva in 1541, the Reformer’s recommendations regarding the catechesis of children became both more comprehensive and more precise. Over the space of five years, Calvin’s expectation for pastors grew from occasional instruction in the context of a worship service into a systematic age-organized program for children. In the minds of Christians in Geneva, “catechesis led by professional clergymen should supplement home instruction.” In time, Calvin’s catechetical patterns would shape not only the Reformed congregations on the European continent but also the Reformation that was quickly gaining ground in England.

Photo by Anokhi De Silva on Unsplash

“The Church of God Will Never Preserve Itself Without a Catechism”: Confirmation and Catechetical Instruction in the English Reformation

Following the death of King Henry VIII in 1547, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer grew a beard that suggested his theological solidarity with the continental Reformers. It was not, however, merely in his pogonotrophic proclivities that the Archbishop of Canterbury imitated what was happening on the other side of the English Channel. Cranmer—not unlike Calvin—required catechesis of children and younger youth in the context of the church.

It seems that John Calvin may have influenced catechetical instruction in England through his correspondence with Edward Seymour, the self-proclaimed Duke of Somerset and the Lord Protector of England during the early years of the minority of Edward VI. In Calvin’s correspondence with the Duke of Somerset in the autumn of 1548, catechesis was clearly a topic of concern. According to Calvin,

There ought to be ... a common formula of instruction for little children and for ignorant persons, serving to make them familiar with sound doctrine so that they may be able to discern the difference between it and the falsehood and corruptions which may be brought forward in opposition to it. Believe me, Monseigneur, the church of God will never preserve itself without a catechism, for it is like the seed to keep the good grain from dying out, and causing it to multiply from age to age. And therefore, if you desire to build an edifice which shall be of long duration, and which shall not soon fall into decay, make provision for the children being instructed in a good catechism, which may show them briefly, and in language level to their tender age, wherein true Christianity consists. This catechism will serve two purposes: an introduction to the whole people, so that everyone may profit from what shall be preached, and also to enable them to discern when any presumptuous person puts forth strange doctrine. Indeed, I do not say that it may not be well, and even necessary, to bind down the pastors and curates to a certain written form.

As in Calvin’s ecclesiastical ordinances, catechetical instruction is—according to this admonition—not only a parental but also a pastoral duty, linked with proclamation of the Scriptures. Immediately before his recommendations regarding catechism, Calvin urged the cultivation of “lively preaching” in English churches and the provision of an “explicit summary of the doctrine which all ought to preach.” After addressing catechesis, Calvin also urged the elimination of chrism, the application of oil by which the power of the Holy Spirit was—according to Roman Catholic tradition—conveyed to the individual.

When the Book of Common Prayer was published the next year, Thomas Cranmer retained the rite of confirmation but eliminated chrism. At the same time, the Book of Common Prayer included a catechism. Before a young person could be confirmed and receive holy communion, he or she was called to commit to memory “all that is here appointed for them to learne” in the Book of Common Prayer. Thus, confirmation and communion became contingent on catechesis. In practice, however, the practice of catechesis grew far more significant in Anglican congregations than the rite of confirmation.

In the reign of Edward VI, visitation articles, which formed the means by which bishops set norms and queried compliance within their dioceses, largely ignored confirmation. By contrast, the articles did reflect an effort to impose a basic test of doctrinal knowledge before admission to communion. ... Catechizing, rather than confirmation, was the real gate to the sacrament of the eucharist.

Most important for the purposes of this research, the Book of Common Prayer—much like the ecclesiastical ordinances that John Calvin wrote for the Genevan churches—required pastors to conduct catechetical classes. The context for this instruction was a Sunday evening gathering that occurred, at minimum, once every six weeks:

The curate of every parish once in sixe wekes at the least upon warnyng by him geven shal upon some Soonday or holy day, half an houre before evensong openly in the churche instruct and examine so many children of his parish sent unto him, as the time wil serve, and as he shal thinke conventiente in some parte of this Catechisme. And all fathers, mothers, maisters, and dames, shall cause theyr children, servountes, and prentises (whiche are not yet confirmed), to come to the churche at the daie appoynted, and obediently heare and be ordered by the curate, until suche time as they have learned all that is here appointed for them to learne. And whansoever the Bushop shal geve knowlage for children to be brought afore him to any convenient place, for their confirmacion: Then shal the curate of every parish either bring or send in writing, ye names of al those children of his parish which can say the articles of theyr faith, the lordes praier, and the ten commaundementes. And also how many of them can answere to thother questions conteined in this Cathechisme. And there shal none be admitted to the holye communion: until suche time as he be confirmed.

It is clear these classes were for children (“so many children of his parish”) and that they entailed not only review but also teaching (“instruct and examine...as time wil serve ... in some parte of this Catechisme”).

Three years after the first Book of Common Prayer, Thomas Cranmer—in consultation with German reformer Martin Bucer—produced a revised edition of the prayer book. The rubric in the revision increased the expected frequency of catechetical classes from every sixth week to weekly (“upon Sundaies, and holy doies halfe an hour before Evensong”) but also allowed curates to delegate the responsibility of teaching (“The Curate of every Parishe, or some other at his appoynctmente“), making it possible for other ministers or teachers to undertake this task. The 1552 revision also made explicit what had been implicit in the 1549 edition, that none were to partake in communion until they were able to recite the catechism (“there shal none be admitted to the holy Communion, until suche time as he can saye the Catechisme, and bee confirmed”).

Ian Green summarizes the perspective of the English church on catechesis in this way:

The attitude of the English church to basic catechizing was not very different from that of the mature Luther or Calvin in the stress that was put on the role of the minister. ... In England from an early stage the brunt of the burden of ensuring the basic catechism was mastered and understood, especially by those who never attended a school, fell on parish clergy. ... That the clergy were aware of their duty to catechize can be demonstrated by the number who in their publications insisted that catechizing was enjoined by public authority, or cited the appropriate rubric or injunction for their action, or praised the authorities for their care in insisting on the regular performance of catechizing in church.

What becomes clear from the ecclesiastical ordinances of Calvin and the prayer books of Cranmer is that, in the sixteenth century, children and younger youth were expected to attend catechetical classes in their churches; this practice was neither sporadic nor informal but quite regular. Both in Calvin’s Geneva and among the English reformers, pastors were called to assemble young people on a weekly basis for catechetical instruction.

Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash

“This Day We Restored Our Primitive Practice”: Recontextualization of Catechesis in Colonial American Churches

The expectation of pastor-led catechetical classes for children was so engrained in the churches of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the practice persisted in both Conformist and non-Conformist churches. Furthermore, by 1570, the Church of England had authorized the printing of an even more extensive catechism than the one found in the Book of Common Prayer; this new catechism had been prepared by Alexander Nowell for grammar schools. The ongoing expectation that children and youth should participate in catechetical instruction is clear from the proliferation of catechisms in English throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This expectation was so strong that the ideal of weekly catechetical classes followed English settlers across the Atlantic Ocean. On December 6, 1674, a certain Apostle Eliot recorded these words regarding the First Church of Roxbury, Massachusetts:

This day we restored [our] primitive practice for the training up [our] youth, first [our] male youth (in fitting season, stay every sab[bath] after the evening exercize, in the Pub[lic] meeting house, where the Elders will examine theire remembrance [that] day, [and] any fit poynt of catechise [sic]. Secondly [that] [our] female youth should meet in one place, where the Elders may examine [them] of theire remembrance yesterday. [And] about catechisme or what else may be convenient.

Here, the practice of catechetical classes in the church was perceived as the restoration of a “primitive practice.” These classes entailed not only gatherings of particular age groups but also the separation of students according to gender. Once again, pastors led these gatherings through processes that included both examination and instruction.

In seventeenth-century Plymouth, Massachusetts, one pastor likewise conducted catechetical classes for children “once a fortnight, the males at one time and the females at the other” with one of his fellow elders “accompanying him therein constantly.” Such practices were not perceived in any way as innovations. By the closing decade of the seventeenth century, these classes had been revived as a weekly practice in the church that took place “between the morning & evening worship, the males one sabbath & the females another.”

During the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards seems to have reintroduced this pattern of gathering the young people after morning worship:

At the conclusion of the public exercise on the Sabbath, I appointed the children that were under sixteen years of age to go from the meetinghouse to a neighbor house, that I there might further enforce what they had heard in public, and might give in some counsels proper for their age. . . . About the middle of the summer, I called together the young people that were communicants, from sixteen to twenty-six years of age, to my house; which proved to be a most happy meeting. . . . We had several meetings that summer of young people.

Although catechetical instruction is not mentioned in this description from the pen of Jonathan Edwards, it seems likely that the existing template of Sunday afternoon gatherings to be taught by a pastor influenced the pattern that he chose. “That summer of young people” also explicitly included not only children (“under sixteen years of age”) but also older teenagers and young adults (“from sixteen to twenty-six years of age”).

“To Hear the Children their Catechism”: Robert Raikes’s Sunday School as an Extension of Catechetical Instruction to Marginalized Children and Youth

It seems that these existing templates were the ones that shaped the earliest expressions of Sunday school. Before examining this particular connection, however, it will be helpful to examine a common narrative related to the origins of Sunday school. According to this reconstruction of the origins of Sunday school, the initial purpose of Sunday school was to battle juvenile delinquency and moral degeneration by teaching children to read. The following descriptions from widely-used texts reveal the widespread acceptance of this narrative:

Sunday was the day when bands of wandering, unsupervised and often lawless children inflicted damage on the outlying areas. ... Soon after Raikes succeeded his father as publisher of the Journal in 1757 he committed himself to jail reform and the moral education of criminals. His attention moved from crime to ignorance as a cause of crimes and then to children and their ignorance. ... In modern terms, he wanted to shape preventive measures against juvenile delinquency.

Raikes felt that education was an effective tool in battling vice and moral degeneration. He determined to develop an experimental school to test his theory. However, he was legally barred from doing so. Until the passage of the Enabling Act in 1779 persons outside the Church of England were prevented from having schools. In 1780 he and [Thomas] Stork enlisted children from the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder in Gloucester in their first Sunday school. … The primary aim of Raikes’s school was literacy training.

What was needed was an impassioned reformer who could integrate the educational possibilities that Froebel and other Enlightenment educational reformers brought to light with the biblical teachings of Protestant theology. This individual came in the unlikely figure of an English newspaper owner named Robert Raikes, Jr. ... Raikes used his influence in the community to draw his readers’ attention to the plight of individuals who were in prison and in desperate need of assistance. ... Raikes set about to address the needs of the many juvenile delinquents who were running wild in the streets after work and on Sunday.

These narratives are not wholly inaccurate. Most of them rightly recognize that the role of Robert Raikes in the genesis of Sunday school was not as a founding father but as a popularizer and prophet. There is, however, at least one point at which these reconstructions should be modified: the initial aim of Raikes’s school was not merely—or perhaps even primarily—literacy training. Catechetical instruction was also a primary aim, and the template for this instruction seems to have been the venerable pattern that can be traced back through the Church of England to the ecclesiastical ordinances of sixteenth-century Geneva.

In eighteenth-century England, the capacity to provide priests with an income in many locations depended on gaining the favor of wealthy landowners. As a result, thousands of parishes in the Church of England had no pastors at all, and many of the church’s leaders were sons of aristocrats with little interest in religion and even less interest in the urban poor. Catechetical instruction, when it existed at all, seems to have taken place only in higher social classes.

In this context, Sunday school emerged, in part, to make the ideal of weekly catechetical instruction accessible to urban children who lacked any meaningful connection to the churches. The instructions provided by Raikes to the first four women who taught in his Sunday schools were specifically catechetical. The women were, in the words of Raikes, “to receive as many children as I should send upon this Sunday” and to instruct them “in reading and in the Church catechism.” Later, Raikes described the early emphases in his Sunday schools:

One or two clergymen gave their assistance by going around to the schools on the Sunday afternoon to hear the children their catechism. This was of great consequence. Another clergyman hears them their catechism once a quarter publicly in church, and rewards their good behaviour with some little gratuity.

When abolitionist William Wilberforce visited Raikes’s Sunday school, what he witnessed was a group of children who could “repeat simple prayers and catechism, and answer Bible questions, and then sing Dr. Watts’s hymns.”

Raikes’s template for a Sunday afternoon class “to hear the children their catechism” seems to have been the classes that had long been mandated for the Church of England in The Book of Common Prayer. If so, what happened in the early days of Sunday school was not an innovation. It was the extension of a practice with a venerable history to include children who had become disconnected from the church. Both the Sunday afternoon form of the classes and the catechism as the central content can be traced back to a longstanding ecclesiastical system with roots in sixteenth-century Geneva.

This emphasis on catechetical instruction in Sunday schools did not end with Robert Raikes. It persisted throughout the eighteenth century, even as literacy did become an increasing focus. According to the 1787 book of discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the purpose of Sunday school was to “procure our instructions” and to assist the children in the memorization of these instructions; for Methodists in the eighteenth century, “our instructions” referred to a catechism that John Wesley had published in 1745. The emphasis on catechism was made more explicit a few years later in the Methodist book of discipline, when “or catechisms” was added after the word “instructions,” probably to allow for usage of the new catechism that John Dickins had produced.

By the end of the eighteenth century, the focus of Sunday schools shifted toward expanding literacy. “What can be done,” Methodists lamented in 1790, “to instruct poor children (whites and blacks) to read? Let us labor, as the heart and soul of one man, to establish Sunday schools, in or near the place of public worship.” Even so, a focus on “our scripture-catechism” as the primary curriculum persisted in some contexts. The Sunday school overseen by William Fox, for example, worked to make the lower classes literate, but the learning of catechism was considered to be a crucial component in the curriculum.

By the opening decades of the nineteenth century, many Sunday schools do seem to have drifted from their catechetical foundations, particularly in the United States. Some American Sunday schools became ecumenical in nature, de-emphasizing catechisms and focusing on literacy and citizenship; others retained a stronger Christian identity and centered on evangelism even as they also worked to develop literacy. Many of these Sunday schools were open not only to children but also to adults. Since African Americans had been largely excluded from public education, these Sunday schools provided an opportunity for free African Americans to learn to read. In many northern Sunday schools, adult African Americans working to expand their opportunities by becoming literate outnumbered juvenile pupils of all ethnicities. Occasional efforts were even made to provide Sunday schools for enslaved African Americans in the South. In a home-based Sunday school in Virginia, William Elliott taught not only his own children and white indentured servants but also enslaved persons, albeit not at the same time. In these classes, “all were taught the rudiments of reading, in order that they might be able to read God’s Word.” The education of enslaved African Americans could not, however, survive the entrenchment of systemic racism in the American South. In the opening years of the nineteenth century, a certain George Daughaday was “severely beaten on the head with a club, and subsequently had water pumped on him from a public cistern” in South Carolina because he taught African American children in a Sunday school. By the midpoint of the nineteenth century, any provision of literacy for African Americans had been severely restricted or rendered illegal throughout the American South.

Complements, Not Competitors

The documented practices of the sixteenth-century Reformers discredit any suggestion that church-based classes for children or youth did not exist prior to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Furthermore, it is clear such classes did not arise due to the assimilation of practices in the culture. The institution of catechesis in the churches was perceived and presented by John Calvin as a restoration of the practices of the ancient church, with a flexible manner of implementation. This pattern became part of the pastoral expectations in sixteenth-centuryAnglican congregations and, eventually, wove its way into churches in the American colonies.

Scripture never explicitly commands catechetical classes for children and youth. This did not, however, prevent the Reformers in Geneva and England from implementing such classes on a regular basis for the purpose of fulfilling mandates that they did find in Scripture. Their ideal seems to have been a weekly gathering. This ideal schedule could, however, be freely adapted and modified based on the needs and context of each church.

Age-organized gatherings for youth and children did not diminish the expectation that parents were called to train their progeny in biblical truth. Although the Reformers were at times skeptical about the capacity of parents to fulfill this task, specialized instruction in the context of the church was seen as a complement to parental instruction, never as a competitor. Sunday schools emerged in part as an attempt to extend the ideal of weekly catechetical instruction to children and youth whose parents were disconnected from the churches in England. In time, the Sunday school movement would influence the emergence of early societies for the discipleship of young people such as the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor, which provided a template for many early youth ministries.

Regardless of what one thinks of youth ministry, the claim that age-organized groups for youth or children emerged from a cesspool of modern pragmatism is unsustainable. The roots of age-organized groups in the church are not “shockingly sinister,” as some proponents of family-integrated ministry claim. These roots can be traced back at least as far as John Calvin’s Geneva, and the initial goal of these classes was to restore an ancient church practice so that children and youth could be trained in the gospel-rich truths of the Protestant Reformation.

Photo by Jimmy Dean on Unsplash