Demonstrates the vital role Sunday schools played in forming and sustaining faith before, during, and after the Frist World War for British populations both at home and abroad. Sunday schools were an important part of the religious landscape of twentieth-century Britain and they were widely attended by much of the British population. The Sunday School Movement in Britain argues that the schools played a vital role in forming and sustaining the faith of those who lived and served during the First World War. Moreover, the volume contends that the conflict did not cause the schools to decline and proposes that decline instead set in much earlier in the twentieth century. The book also questions the perception that the schools were ineffective tools of religious socialisation and examines the continued attempts of the Sunday school movement to professionalise and improve their efforts. Thus, the involvement of the movement with the World's Sunday School Association is revealed to be part of the wider developing international ecumenical community during the twentieth century. Drawing together under-utilised material from archives and newspapers in national and local collections, The Sunday School Movement in Britain presents a history of the schools demonstrating their lasting significance in the religious life of the nation and, by extension, the enduring importance of Christianity in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century.

Drawing on examples from British world expressions of Christianity, this collection further greater understanding of religion as a critical element of modern children’s and young people’s history. It builds on emerging scholarship that challenges the view that religion had a solely negative impact on nineteenth- and twentieth-century children, or that ‘secularization’ is the only lens to apply to childhood and religion. Putting forth the argument that religion was an abiding influence among British world children throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, this volume places ‘religion’ at the center of analysis and discussion. At the same time, it positions the religious factor within a broader social and cultural framework. The essays focus on the historical contexts in which religion was formative for children in various ‘British’ settings denoted as ‘Anglo’ or ‘colonial’ during the nineteenth and early- to mid-twentieth centuries. These contexts include mission fields, churches, families, Sunday schools, camps, schools and youth movements. Together they are treated as ‘sites’ in which religion contributed to identity formation, albeit in different ways relating to such factors as gender, race, disability and denomination. The contributors develop this subject for childhoods that were experienced largely, but not exclusively, outside the ‘metropole’, in a diversity of geographical settings. By extending the geographic range, even within the British world, it provides a more rounded perspective on children’s global engagement with religion.

This two-volume set examines women's contributions to religious and moral development in America, covering individual women, their faith-related organizations, and women's roles and experiences in the broader social and cultural contexts of their times. This second edition of Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion provides updated and expanded information from historians and other scholars of religion, covering new issues in religion to better describe and document women's roles within religious groups. For instance, the term "evangelical feminism" is one newly defined aspect of women's involvement in religious activism. Changes are constantly occurring within the many religious faiths and denominations in America, particularly as women strive to gain positions within religious hierarchies that previously were exclusive to men and rise within their denominations to become theologians, church leaders, and bishops. The entries examine the roles that American women have played in mainstream religious denominations, small religious sects, and non-traditional practices such as witchcraft, as well as in groups that question religious beliefs, including agnostics and atheists. A section containing primary documents gives readers a firsthand look at matters of concern to religious women and their organizations. Many of these documents are the writings of women who merit entries within the encyclopedia. Readers will gain an awareness of women's contributions to religious culture in America, from the colonial era to the present day, and better understand the many challenges that women have faced to achieve success in their religion-related endeavors.

Born in 1753 to a prominent Dutch-American family in Hackensack, New Jersey, Richard Varick became a lawyer, then a Patriot officer in the American Revolutionary War. Colonel Varick served with distinction as aide to generals Philip Schuyler and Benedict Arnold. Later, George Washington entrusted him with the editing of his wartime papers—forty-four volumes now housed in the Library of Congress. In peacetime Varick helped initiate the new Federalist-oriented government of New York City, becoming its mayor from 1789–1801. Next he turned his energies to the accumulation of lucrative real estate, all the while furthering the development of Columbia University and the Society of the Cincinnati, and starting the entity that became Jersey City. His personal passion was to help promulgate the Christian message, especially through the founding of the American Bible Society and the New York Sunday School Union. A highly respected, multitalented businessman and national hero, he was returned to Hackensack for burial in 1831.