200 Years of United Methodism
An Illustrated History

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All the churches of what is now United Methodism were educational societies. More students were attending a growing number of Sunday schools, and if better is defined as more money being spent on associations, executive secretaries, teaching materials, and teacher training, then the Sunday schools were getting better and better. Children on the playground, Kingdom House, St. Louis, Missouri. Photograph, ca. 1910.The Evangelicals formed a Sunday School and Tract Society in 1859, while the United Brethren set up a Sabbath-school Association in 1865 with Isaac Crouse as the first executive secretary. Northern Methodist Sunday schools advanced under the leadership of John H. Vincent, who said, "All truth is divine . . . . The secular teachers tell the little ones of God in nature; we, of God's grace." Atticus Haygood, a forward looking leader of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, directed that church's Sunday school growth. Under these leaders a more or less conscious policy was developed for using the Sunday school as a way of drawing persons into church membership.

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