This week in Christian history: Missionary in China, French secularism and Sunday School movement

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, September 13, 2020

Robert Raikes, Sunday School pioneer, born — Sept. 14, 1735

Robert Raikes (1735-1811), a British journalist and philanthropist who was a pioneer in the movement to create Sunday School. | Public Domain

This week marks the anniversary of when Robert Raikes, a British journalist and philanthropist who helped spearhead the Sunday School movement, was born.

A native of Gloucester, England, and son of a newspaper publisher, Raikes helped to promote Sunday School as a way to educate children who were otherwise left unattended on Sundays.

“Raikes engaged in 1780 a number of women to teach reading and the church catechism on Sundays. The experiment was so successful that he could record in the Gloucester Journal (Nov. 3, 1783) that the district had become ‘quite a heaven upon Sundays,’” explained Britannica.

“The Sunday-school movement spread rapidly to all parts of the country. In 1785 the Sunday School Society was formed. The Sunday School Union (1803) was a direct result of Raikes’s work.”