Sunday School card

This is one of four Sunday School cards sent to Malcolm Macann on his first, second, third, and fourth birthdays (1942-1945) by the Strathmore Park Baptist Sunday school. Malcolm was born in Seatoun, Wellington, on 9 April 1941. His parents were members of the Strathmore Baptist Church.

Historian Geoffrey Troughton has suggested that in the first half of the twentieth century New Zealand religion was mostly for children, as childhood engagement with institutional forms of religious education far exceeded adult participation (Troughton 2006, 39). Until the 1960s three quarters of children in New Zealand had regular contact with a church, but only one quarter of adults (Lineham 2017, 309). For Protestant denominations, Sunday schools were central to children’s religious education, and they were often vastly bigger than the churches that sponsored them.

Religion was thought to be good for children because it taught morality, and the Sunday schools were where those socially accepted moral values were introduced. Sunday schools were also the main point of contact between the church and community, and served as social centres (Troughton 2006, 42). The churches hoped that introducing children to religious feeling at Sunday school would encourage them to become members as adults, but there is limited evidence to suggest that this actually happened (Lineham 2017, 311).

Malcolm Macann’s family moved to Christchurch after the Second World War and Malcolm remained in Christchurch for the rest of his life. His daughter Sarah explains that ‘although he remained active in the Boys’ Brigade throughout his teenage years, by adulthood Malcolm had developed a sceptical view of organised religion and was not an active member of any church.’

Although church attendance rates were much lower for adults than for children, religion was not necessarily irrelevant to who moved out of organised Christianity. Troughton suggests that religious ideas introduced during childhood were often remarkably persistent, and ‘continued to shape habits of belief, feelings and moral expectations in profound ways’ (Troughton 2006, 52).

Sunday school was a significant feature of childhood for many New Zealanders in the twentieth century, and these Sunday school cards demonstrate how the connection between the church and the child was built and fostered.

References

• Lineham, Peter. 2017. Sunday Best: How the Church Shaped New Zealand and New Zealand Shaped the Church. Auckland: Massey University Press.
• Troughton, Geoffrey. 2006. ‘Religion, Churches and Childhood in New Zealand, c.1900-1940.’ New Zealand Journal of History 40 (no. 1): 39-56.