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The Sunday School Movement
It was a Sunday afternoon in Sooty Alley, the date July 1780. Boisterous children, normally shut in a Gloucester pin-making factory, played and shouted their freedom on this Sabbath day, much to the annoyance of a city gentleman living nearby by the name of
Robert Raikes.
Robert was all too aware of the many families who had been attracted from the countryside to the city workhouses by the lure of easy money. Many had fallen into heavy drinking including some of the children. Few had any education, which was reserved for a fortunate elite in industrial England at that time.
Robert Raikes
This seemingly insignificant event that Sunday afternoon set Robert's mind thinking of the deprivation which existed amongst these people and especially the little ones. So began his crusade to eliminate injustice and hardship mainly through the pages of the Gloucester Journal, of which he was the proprietor and editor.
He sought the reform of a corrupt prison administration. He preached against the uncontrolled sale of strong drink, particularly to children at the gin parlors on every corner. He instigated a crusade for education which he believed to be an effective means of reform. He started what we call today the "The Sunday School Movement."
Rev Thomas Scott
Beginning in a small way, he opened two schools, one in the parish of a concerned clergyman,
The Rev. Thomas Stock
and another in Sooty Alley. Like so many great movements of God, success did not come easily. Robert Raikes' school closed after only six months because of discipline problems.
Raikes however continued to put his ideas into print and this caught the attention of the magnetic preacher,
John Wesley.
Wesley was greatly impressed and called the Sunday School Movement "one of the noblest specimens of charity which have been set on foot in England since the times of William the Conqueror." The great Methodist advertised them and soon schools were springing up all over England and in Wales, Scotland and Belfast too.
Like so many great movements of God, success did not come easily.
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