Learning theology through the narrative of Scripture is incredibly important. But we’ve tended to replace our wider theological beliefs with the stories. So you can find a lot of teenagers who know the story of David and Goliath, but very few who can define sanctification, or even articulate a Christian understanding of growing in holiness.

One of the places where America began to become theologically illiterate was an odd one: Sunday school.

I believe the introduction of Sunday schools truly has caused the American church to know less about what they believe.

There are a few reasons:

1. When we began focusing on Sunday Schools, we moved from having theologically-trained pastors teach to having laypeople teach. (Don’t get too worked up about this yet. More below.)

2. The Sunday school movement was ecumenical (i.e. representing a number of different Christian churches). A lot of denominations have at least slightly different beliefs regarding doctrine, so they moved away from teaching any version of those debatable doctrines.

3. The easiest commonality was to teach Bible stories. So that’s where the focus went.

Some disclaimers:

Please hear these before any angry comments!

1. I’m thrilled that laypeople teach. I don’t believe you have to have been to seminary to be allowed to teach. With that said, there are times that we’ll take any warm body, even if that warm body doesn’t know what repentance is or why in the world we would need to be adopted by God. I applaud willing volunteers, but we can’t expect our learners to learn theology that their teachers don’t know.

2. I love ecumenical efforts. The catholic (universal) church has far more in common than it has in opposition. But if we run from any disputed doctrines, we’ll run from some things that have had the greatest impact on my life (e.g. a Wesleyan understanding of prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace).

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