"The Sioux Center Affair" (ii)

It's altogether unlikely that, where two or three of Sioux Center's pious folks were gathered, there was much talk about "Americanization." Ecclesiastical big wigs knew the meaning of that word and feared the consequences of any dancing with what they considered "American" values; but even those who didn't know the word understood acutely that a new world order laid siege just outside the city gates ever since the Koster family had set claim to a parcel of land that would become the city's Central Park.

Amazingly, the vehicle Americanization would create to sneak perilous new country values through the gates and into the ethnic fortress was Sunday School. You read that right. What split 150 families of like-minded religious folks wasn't dancing or movies or late night poker down the road in Hawarden. What sparked a decade-long religious war was Sunday School--yes, Sunday School, a uniquely American invention and, thus, fearful.

Lest you begin to think that such fears arose only in Sioux County, Iowa, it is helpful to remember that, already in 1918, the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church had made clear to its churches that Sunday School loomed over church life as a wolf in sheep's clothing might have.

Sunday School as an evangelization tool must arise from the Church as institution. Because the Sunday School is an aid to home catechism, its origins should come from private initiative. The Sunday School should be under strict church supervision so that an attitude of "Christianity above differences in beliefs" does not arise. 

Let this be understood: catechism per se came over from Holland in immigrant trunks. Catechism was a Dutch thing, approved for generations of old country saints. But what exactly was this new American invention? What was, really, Sunday School? How did it differ from catechism or from what covenant children would learn in a "school for Christian instruction"? The Synodical report goes on to say that "Perhaps there is nothing in present time that advances the weakening boundaries as much as the Sunday School."

The story of the Sioux Center CRC begins with war over Sunday School, an authentic American import and phenomenon, and enough to make people wary. What the CRC's most faithful feared more than anything was theological weaknesses that accompany movements that promise "no creed but Christ." 

Already in 1872, when the town barely existed, Dwight L. Moody formed the International Sunday School Association and created a web of Sunday School Teachers, who then worked hard to create a Uniform Lesson Plan meant to standardize weekly lessons throughout this nation's Protestant churches. Throughout the rapidly colonizing west, Moody and others determined that an institutional program was required to follow up on the work of circuit riding revivalists to provide "a constant means of grace."

Fancy talk that, but not at all Dutch.

Within Dutch communities like Sioux Center, Sunday Schools--despite the synodical warnings--could and did become hot items. Because their formation was, at the outset, aimed at children, in many churches the Sunday School was the first organization to put away the Dutch language. What's more, Sunday School tended to band together some of a church's more creative types, as well as those who practiced a more lively and energetic piety. If dour old men in smoke-filled consistory rooms caricatures the old church, lively Sunday School teachers--speaking the English language--soon came to energize church life.

Thus, two sides formed in Sioux Center: on one side sat the consistory, whose determination was to rule over church life; and on the other, the Sunday School teachers, bright and creative, most anxious to burn the wooden shoes. Meanings change, but the forces that shape them do not: you can call the opposing forces "traditional" and "progressive" if you like, or "conservative" and "liberal." Choose your weapons.

Meanwhile, in 1924 the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church doubled down on its Sunday School warnings by insisting that churches promote doctrinal truths. "We need this added preservative for the instruction of our covenant youth against the perils of liberal teaching with which the air is full." 

I don't suppose wars are ever waged in the immediate wake of a single event. At Sioux Center CRC both sides in this conflict must have been poised for battle long before the teachers, who the notes call "the Teachers Meeting," wrote up a new constitution. But that's where it started, Professor Van Dyke says, the summer of 1919, with the liberals, the Teachers Meeting, stumping for change.