Religion: Needed: New Hats

Last week the World’s Sunday School Association issued a quadrennial report declaring that in 1936 some 37,000,000 children—1,000,000 more than in 1932— were enrolled in the Sunday schools of the world. The gain was unimpressive, half of the million new pupils being scattered through the jungles of Africa. In the U. S., while the population has increased, Sunday school enrollment has remained stationary since 1926. Losses were reported not only in irreligious Russia and Germany but in England, Scotland, Wales. In Syracuse, N. Y. a remedy for dwindling enrollments was offered by Rev. Philip C. Jones, director of education at Manhattan’s Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. Said he: “The bane of most Sunday schools is dullness. . . .Most of us, when we were young, were planked down in a dusty corner of a drab church basement. We had a teacher who wore the same hat for four years, and hadn’t smiled for the same length of time. It wouldn’t be amiss for churches occasionally to buy a Sunday school teacher a new hat.”