Sunday Schools' Future

Rev. Dr. William E. Gardner, Secretary of the Educational Department of the Episcopal Church, declared that the Sunday School has no future. His arraignment of the Sunday School caused a sensation among the 80 directors of religious education who had met at Omaha for the annual conference of educational leaders of the church.

" We need frankly to recognize that the Sunday School has no future. It is doomed to grow weaker in its appeal to the rising generation. Youth is having a hard time in squaring what he has heard about religion in church with what he hears in the classroom."

Dr. Gardner did not declare that there would be less religious instruction in the future, but that a more thorough and systematic organization must replace the present Sunday School. " Week day is the time for religious instruction, when the child is in a receptive mood, when effective teachers can be secured, and when discipline can be maintained."

Some city churches already have daily vacation Bible schools for the summer months. The Gary plan provides a definite time for religious instruction. The parochial schools of the Roman Catholics provide religious and secular instruction. The Protestants have no national scheme of combining these two fields of instruction.