Religious Education in the Church

Religious Education in the Church is a work by Henry Frederick Cope on the practical organization and conduct of religious education within American Protestant congregations during the Progressive era. The book belongs to Cope’s substantial body of writing produced during his long service as General Secretary of the Religious Education Association from 1907 until his death in 1923.

The early twentieth century saw substantial reform of American Protestant religious education. The older Sunday school tradition that had grown up across the nineteenth century was being criticized as inadequate to the educational demands of the new century. The Sunday schools had typically been organized as separate enterprises only loosely connected to the regular congregational worship and ministry, often run by volunteer lay teachers with no formal preparation in education or theology, and depending heavily on standardized curriculum materials produced by the various denominational publishing houses.

The Religious Education Association and the broader religious education reform movement that Cope was central to advocated significant changes. Religious education should be integrated more fully with the regular life of the congregation rather than being relegated to a separate Sunday school operation. Teachers should be properly prepared through formal training programs. Curriculum should be developed on sound educational principles rather than being adapted from materials designed for very different purposes. The substantial new educational psychology that was emerging in the early twentieth century should inform religious teaching practice.

Cope’s book works through these reform questions in practical detail. He provides specific recommendations on congregational organization, on teacher training programs, on curriculum design, on the relationship between religious education and the broader pastoral work of the church, on the integration of religious education with congregational worship, and on the various other practical questions that ministers and lay leaders faced in implementing the broader reform program.

The book reflects the moderate American Protestant educational assumptions of the period. Modern readers will find aspects of the framework dated, particularly the assumptions about gender roles in religious education and the Protestant-specific framing of the material. The basic insistence on properly trained teachers, sound curriculum, and integration with broader congregational life has continued to influence American religious education across the subsequent century.

The book is mostly of interest now to historians of American Protestant religious education. It pairs with Cope’s other writings on the subject.