In 1824 the American Sunday School Union was organized to extend Sunday schools throughout the country and to provide religious resources. Within five years it had issued more than six million copies of Sunday school publications. In the first decade of the twentieth century, it organized thousands of new schools, resulting in hundreds of churches. The various denominations promptly organized for educational purposes, establishing their publishing houses for the issue of tracts and books, and providing printed helps for Bible study. The earliest method of studying the Bible was to memorize parts of Scripture, and question books were prepared for drills in the knowledge of the Bible. The American Sunday School Union introduced a plan for a five-year course of Bible study, with select verses, questions, and notes for every Sunday. In 1865 the plan of a lesson quarterly was adopted by the Sunday School Union, which became very popular. Sunday school institutes and conventions helped to stimulate interest and to invent improvements. At one such convention, a lesson committee of Sunday school publishers was appointed to prepare lessons to cover the entire Bible in seven years. For decades the Sunday schools of the evangelical churches in America and Britain used this uniform lesson system. Naturally, the denominational publishing houses with their valuable plates and copyrights did not want to make any changes to the lessons. But dissatisfaction grew as the lessons did not seem suited for small children, grading was not provided for, and adult instruction was inadequate. Attempts to provide better methods and lesson helps were made independently.
Impact: The steady improvement of secular schools made it imperative that Sunday schools should be improved if they were to truly help their pupils, and by the end of the nineteenth century it was evident that extensive modifications must be made. A particularly valuable experiment was the instruction of teachers at summer assemblies and by means of local study classes. The Chautauqua Movement for popular education grew out of a summer assembly for the better training of Sunday school teachers. It outlined a system of reading courses that were adopted widely by local groups of teachers and other interested persons, with an annual gathering at Chautauqua, New York. These assemblies lasted for several weeks with lectures and intensive study. In 1903 the Religious Education Association was organized to put religious education on a broader basis than the Sunday school. Composed mainly of ministers and educators, it was organized into expert commissions that investigated conditions, planned improvements, and published useful aids for religious education. This group was not only active in the Sunday schools but they also worked with colleges, Young Men’s Christian Associations, and young people’s societies.