We stopped teaching goodness. Now we’re living with the consequences.
There was a time when Sunday School was part of almost every child’s life. In the early 1960s, one in seven children under fourteen went every Sunday to hear Bible stories, talk about God, and learn Christian values. We put on our best clothes and headed off to join our friends in fellowship and safety - in a place of love.
The idea of Sunday School began in 18th-century England. Robert Raikes, a Gloucester printer and philanthropist, saw the suffering of child labourers in factories and mines. Their only day off was Sunday, so he created schools where they could learn to read - first the alphabet, then the Bible.
As Raikes said, “Vice could be better prevented than cured.”
From those humble beginnings in 1780, Sunday Schools spread like wildfire across Britain. By 1831, they reached over a million children - a quarter of the nation’s youth. Raikes’s idea had become not just a form of education, but a movement of the heart.
By the time I came along, Sunday School had become part of family life. In 1961, nearly 90% of Australians identified as Christian. Attending church wasn’t just faith - it was routine, it was community, it was childhood.
I remember trundling off down the gravel road to church each Sunday morning. Dressed in my “Sunday best,” gumboots on my feet and shoes in hand, I carried my threepence for the offering. My Sunday School teacher was the mother of a schoolmate. She played the organ and taught us to worship God, to honour Jesus Christ, and to live with decency and kindness. She was largely successful but we did still manage to have fun and get up to mischief.
It was a wonderful part of life - though not without its moments of awe and terror. Sitting in the front pew, we “Sunday Schoolers” watched our minister thunder about sin and salvation, the veins in his neck standing out as if he might burst. We sat wide-eyed, half-afraid, half-thrilled - wondering if heaven and hell might break loose right there in the church.
But underneath the brimstone was love - a club of belonging. Sunday School wasn’t just lessons; it was life. We learned about joy and sorrow, loss and healing, right and wrong.
And we went home to a warm hearth and a united family and, after a hearty morning tea of home baking, we would head off to get into mischief and enjoy all that God and our Minister told us was ours to have and enjoy.
The fishing in the creek under the willow tree; the bike ride or the baked potato on a hike to a mysterious mountain.
That was childhood. That was Sunday School.
Redhead - one of those wise souls who has seen nearly a century of change - remembers it too:
“Our nondenominational church was half a mile from the farm,” she told me. “We walked rain, hail, or shine. We loved Sunday. Our teacher was an older lady who lived with her brother. There seemed to be so many unmarried women - maybe their sweethearts were lost in the wars.
The old organ would play, and we’d sing those lovely hymns - All Things Bright and Beautiful, Abide With Me, Away in a Manger, and Onward Christian Soldiers.
Now, I look around and there’s no Sunday School anymore. Perhaps parents are too busy. Maybe the internet has taken over. I can’t help wondering if that loss of love and care is why cruelty and selfishness have grown. We were taught kindness - to animals, to each other. Where is that now?”
Where indeed?
Perhaps Raikes was right. If we no longer teach goodness, we can hardly be surprised when we have to cure.... or endure .... its absence.
We need to return to those values - Life. Honesty. Decency. Caring.
UK police say that "people are not allowed to sing church songs outside of church grounds".
— 🏛 🌹PeriklestheGREAT 🌹 🏛 "Vox Populi, Vox Dei" (@PeriklesGREAT) October 12, 2025
But they will allow Muslims to pray anywhere, blocking streets & sidewalks, blasting "call to prayer" over loud speakers.
UK is a lunatic asylum ?
Thoughts ?pic.twitter.com/H8joHZneQH
If we do not, then hell on earth won’t be a metaphor. It will simply be the world we’ve made - without love, without reverence, and without the simple joy of a child in gumboots, walking to Sunday School.
Today, the church seems lost in a fog of modern distractions - debates over gender, race, and climate that leave many ordinary families feeling alienated. In trying to be all things to all people, the church has blurred its message and weakened its purpose.
In the 1960s, Sunday School taught children decency, honesty, and care through simple Bible lessons, joyful hymns, and community fellowship. Today, churches too often replace clarity with confusion, and children are left adrift in adult debates they cannot understand.
It’s time to return to the basics - the Ten Commandments, the teachings of God, and the enduring truth that love begins with responsibility.
When faith loses its clarity, governments soon follow. And when both fail, something else will fill the void.
HISTORY SHOULD BE OUR WARNING
— TheIrishWatchdog (@WatchdogTh96012) October 6, 2025
The expansion of Islam across the West is happening at an accelerated rate. But this time they are being invited in like the Trojan Horse by Woke Leftists & Anti-Christians. #Islam #ChristianityUnderAttack #TheWestIsChristian #WakeUp #Muslims pic.twitter.com/ZM3hhmQiqZ
If the churches and governments cannot find their footing again - if parents remain exhausted by work and schools are filled with teachers who sneer at tradition - then who will watch over the children?
Tragically, the very children we hope will shape a bright and beautiful future are the ones growing up lost or forgotten. Fat chance, it seems, unless we act.
Who will teach them right from wrong, kindness from cruelty, reverence from indifference?
If we do nothing, this next generation may inherit not hope, but emptiness. They may become the lost or the forgotten - and with them, the future we dreamed of may vanish before it even begins.
