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CHAPTER 6. Wide Spheres of Usefulness: Sunday Schools and Church Music
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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Notes to chapter 6 start on page 263 118 THE institutional nature of Methodism altered as small societies meeting in homes grew into congregations with church buildings and parsonages , but there were other changes as well when Methodists organized. Originally the Wesleyan faith spread through the conversion of young people and adults, but members came to feel concern for the religious lives of their own children and those they saw in their neighbourhoods. Music had always been an important part of Methodist worship. It retained an important role as the services moved from homes and schoolhouses to the neat church buildings that came to dot the land, but it, too, changed. Gradually Methodists came to see the value of instruments and of choirs to enhance congregational singing. Methodist women undoubtedly participated in these shifts as they expressed their opinions both verbally and through the choices that they made, but their role is difficult to document. It is very clear, however, that in these changes they discovered new work to do, new ways to express their faith through action. The Sunday School Robert Raikes is well known as the founder of the Sunday school movement , but John Wesley and his women followers not only participated in but helped to organize the movement. Two pioneers were Hannah Ball, who established a school in Wycombe, England, and Sophia Cook Bradburn. Bradburn advised Raikes: “Pointing to the ragged, swearing children in the street, the perplexed philanthropist asked, ‘What can we do for these poor neglected children?’ Sophia replied as the practical genius of Methodism had taught her, ‘Let us teach them to read, and take them to church!’”1 As the stories were repeated in the denomWide Spheres of Usefulness: Sunday Schools and Church Music CHAPTER 6 inational press, Methodists knew of this heritage just as they saw how widely women were involved in Sunday school teaching in their own day. It was easy to look upon the Sunday school as an important location for the activity of women, not only welcoming, but dependent upon their work. Yet that is not the whole story, for the work of women was repeatedly overlooked or undervalued as Sunday schools became larger and more complex, and men frequently filled the administrative roles within them. In 1891, Ladies’ Day services were held in the Methodist Sunday school at Deseronto, Ontario. A report printed in the local paper and reprinted in the Christian Guardian commended the participation of fifteen women and girls who variously presided, reviewed lessons, demonstrated a temperance lesson, played organ, sang solos, and gave recitations . The writer concluded by saying, “All the exercises proved that this school, which is one of the largest in the connexion, has, under its capable staff of teachers, reached a high state of efficiency. Rev. J.J. Rice and Superintendent Richardson must be congratulated on such a happy state of affairs.”2 The minister and the superintendent were to be congratulated ; prodigious as the work of women was, the male officers were seen as having authority over it, and deserving the credit. Tradition sanctioned the work of women in Sunday schools, and their labour was deemed appropriate to their gender roles. Women were motivated to fulfil their responsibility as Christians and as women to help save the souls of others, especially the young. As motherhood was increasingly glorified, women who were mothers found in Sunday school work an appropriate extension of their maternal role, and those who were not mothers discovered a way that they, too, could participate in caring for and teaching children, much esteemed activities from which they might otherwise be excluded. The Sunday school was not a static institution, and the shape of women’s involvement changed as the schools developed over time. It also varied according to the size and location of the school. But throughout the varied circumstances, women found work to do, and normally carried it out with efficiency. In Saint John in 1860, Margaret McAlpine Hutchings “gathered and organized from among the waifs and street-arabs of the day, what was for many years known as the ‘Ragged School.’ At first she furnished a room for this beneficent work, in her own home, until the increased dimensions of this charity rendered it necessary to remove it to a more commodious hall.”3 Hutchings was following the pattern that origiSUNDAY SCHOOLS AND CHURCH MUSIC 119 [34.229.223.223] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 14:26 GMT) nated with Bradburn and Raikes in eighteenth-century...