When God Shows Up (): A History of Protestant Youth Ministry in America

"Weaving together stories of youth ministry pioneers and their organizations, Senter provides an intriguing historical perspective on the church’s concern for its young people. Drawing on the lessons from history, Senter provides insight into this frustrating area of ministry and the challenges the church must address in order to spiritually engage young people. When God Shows Up is required reading for anyone remotely concerned with the future of the church’s ministry to young people."

—Darwin Glassford, associate professor of church education, Calvin Theological

Seminary; book reviews editor, The Journal of Youth Ministry

Like a wise docent, Senter generously guides us through the archives of the history of youth ministry. Embracing a cyclical description of the evolution of youth ministry in America, Senter insightfully presents a well-researched, creative engagement with youth ministry in the Protestant church. Faithfully reporting the stories of our past, the text concludes with current observations and questions regarding our future direction. Comprehensive, accessible, and vital—a one-of-a-kind book that needs to be savored by every youth ministry professional!

—Cheryl A. Crawford, assistant professor of practical theology,

Azusa Pacific University

Every family, every organization, and every movement has a history that informs, explains, and inspires. Mark Senter has done a wonderful job of providing historical context for American Protestant youth ministry, which is a family, an organization, and a movement all in one. A thorough understanding of the contents of this book will help those who care about youth ministry to appreciate its roots and to be awed and inspired by youth ministry leaders from the past.

—Dan Lambert, professor of youth ministries, John Brown University

"This is not merely a history book; it is a compelling story of young lives— thousands of lives—transformed by the surprising grace of God. As a keen historian and reflective theologian, Senter provides a fresh perspective on the past that illuminates the future. When God Shows Up encourages those who care about young people to understand their past and challenges them to maintain the historic core conviction of helping young people encounter God."

—Mark W. Cannister, professor of Christian ministries, Gordon College

"This book establishes Mark Senter as today’s foremost youth ministry historian. When God Shows Up is a seminal work providing a historical analysis of Protestant youth ministry in America. Yet Senter goes beyond a historical survey to provide a sociological and theological exegesis of youth ministry from 1824 to 2010. When God Shows Up is a significant contribution to both the field of youth ministry education and modern American church history."

—Fernando Arzola Jr., associate dean, College of Arts and Sciences,

Nyack College; author, Toward a Prophetic Youth Ministry:

Theory and Praxis in Urban Context

Youth, Family,

and Culture Series

Chap Clark, series editor

The Youth, Family, and Culture series examines the broad categories involved in studying and caring for the needs of the young and is dedicated to the preparation and vocational strengthening of those who are committed to the spiritual development of adolescents.

© 2010 by Mark H. Senter III

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4412-0768-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

To

my grandchildren,

Elijah Houston Senter,

Emmy Ruth YeYe Susanka,

and

Aubrey Olivia Senter,

with the prayer that God shows up in their lives.

Contents

Series Preface

Preface: God Shows Up

Acknowledgments

Part 1 Birth of Youth Ministry Jazz: The Context

1. Newsies: A Survey of the Diverse Experiences of Youth in America

2. Rebel Without a Cause: The Rise and Fall of Adolescence in America

3. Bruce Almighty: A History of Spirituality in Youth Ministry

4. Whatever Goes Around Comes Around: The Concept of Cycles in History

Part 2 Youth Ministry Jazz: The Period of Associations (1824–75)

5. Tom Sawyer and the British Invasion: The Period of Associations (1824–75)

6. Cadets of Temperance: Structuring Youth Societies

7. Gangs of New York: The Setting for Modern Youth Ministry

Part 3 Sheet Music Jazz: The Period of Youth Societies (1881–1925)

8. Trouble in River City: The Period of Youth Societies (1881–1925)

9. Saturday Night in River City: Denominational Youth Societies (1889–1935)

Part 4 Modern Jazz: The Period of the Relational Outreach (1933–89)

10. The Great Gatsby: Youth Fellowships in Mainline Denominational Youth Ministry (1936–65)

11. Grease: Parachurch Club Programs (1933–89)

12. Pleasantville: The Evangelical Church Discovers Teenagers (1933–89)

13. Friday Night Lights: The Youth Rally Era (1938–67)

Part 5 Jazz Fusion: Combining Old and New (1990 and Beyond)

14. Into the Woods: Reinventing Youth Ministry

15. Mr. Holland’s Opus: The Legacy of Youth Ministry

Epilogue

Notes

Select Bibliography

Series Preface

In many ways, youth ministry has come of age. No longer seen as a stepping-stone to real ministry in the church, especially in North America, youth ministry is now seen as a viable career option. Over the last few decades a wide range of professional resources, conferences, periodicals, and books have been developed on this topic. Most Christian colleges and seminaries now offer a variety of courses—if not degree programs—in youth ministry. Youth ministry has all it needs to continue to push the church to care about and serve the needs of the young in God’s name, except for one thing: we have a long way to go to develop a rich, broad, and diverse conversation that frames, defines, and grounds our missional call.

There is good news, of course. There is a professional organization, Association of Youth Ministry Educators, that sponsors an annual conference and publishes a solid emerging journal. Several thoughtful books have helped to shape the discipline’s future. There are also now two major publishers who have academic lines dedicated to furthering the field of youth ministry. We have made great progress, but we must all work together to continue deepening our understanding of what youth ministry should be.

The purpose of Baker Academic’s Youth, Family, and Culture series is to raise the level of dialogue concerning how we think about, teach, and live out youth ministry. As a branch of practical theology, academic youth ministry must move beyond a primarily skills-based focus to a theologically driven expression of a contextualized commitment of the local church to a targeted population. James Fowler defines practical theology as "theological reflection and construction arising out of and giving guidance to a community of faith in the praxis of its mission. Practical theology is critical and constructive reflection leading to ongoing modification and development of the ways the church shapes its life to be in partnership with God’s work in the world.¹ And as Scott Cormode reminds us, we must not shirk our calling, but must strive to nurture leaders that are faithful. . . . Schools must prepare leaders to translate this faithfulness into effective action.² This is precisely what those of us who are called to engage the church in theological reflection of contemporary youth and family issues must do—develop a practical theology that takes seriously the reality of the context we are in, regardless of how and where it takes us. This is the future of youth and family ministry in the church.

Mark Senter’s When God Shows Up is the third book in the Youth, Family, and Culture series. A long-time leader of youth ministry thinking and writing, Dr. Senter brings a fresh perspective on where we have been and how we need to think about youth ministry as we move forward. The book offers a historical, cultural, and ecclesiological angle for those who serve the young and their families in the name of Christ, and therefore brings a helpful addition to the Youth, Family, and Culture academic series on youth ministry issues. As is the mark of this series, this volume once again is framed in a practical theology of youth and family ministry.

Chap Clark

Fuller Theological Seminary

August 2009

Preface

God Shows Up

Protestant youth ministry in America expected God to show up. Prayer meetings, camps, revivals, youth rallies, mission trips, service projects, and even the weekly meeting served as contexts where God demonstrated his presence in the lives of Protestant young people. Youth programming served as prologue. Activities retained the attention and loyalty of youth until such time as Jesus Christ became reincarnated in their lives either individually or in a group experience.

This history of Protestant youth ministry in America is the story of a search for Christian spirituality in young people. While not defined in terms of the classical writings of the desert fathers or medieval mystics, the desire was much the same. Prayer served as a central discipline, and faith communities provided support and accountability. The Bible provided a portal for youth to establish and maintain a personal relationship with God.

Approaches varied at different times and in different contexts. Some used their minds to engage the God of Scripture. Others experienced God emotionally through their hearts. Still other young people found God as they served others. Yet Protestant youth groups had one conviction in common: young people, especially the most faithful participants in youth groups, expected to experience God’s presence during the years of their youth.

A majority of clergy at one time supposed the normal worship services to be sufficient for ushering the youth of their church into the presence of God, but those assumptions proved flawed. From the earliest days of the American experience, isolated clergy experimented with gatherings outside the Sunday morning worship service to engage the rising generation in a quest to know God and live lives in conformity with God’s will.

The Industrial Revolution complicated the ability of churches and families to shape the lives of their youth. Many moved to the cities in order to make their fortune, an expectation that rarely succeeded. The move away from family and church caused great concern on the part of churchgoers, who responded by forming agencies that addressed this youth problem.

Periodic revivals swept the nation, and in most of them, young people were very responsive. Yet these revivals were neither uniformly spread across the nation nor frequent in their recurrence. In fact, most of the contributions made by youth ministry in America took place either between revivals or far removed from the places where such revivals happened. Further complicating our understanding of youthful spirituality in American history is the realization that eventually many youth grew up in Christian homes never thinking of themselves as anything but followers of Jesus Christ.

Youth ministry was an attempt to sustain God’s presence and activity in the lives of young people. Responding to the changing challenges of the societies in which they lived, church leaders created or re-created youth groups in order to design environments that were conducive to youth experiencing God’s presence.

For many Protestants in America, spirituality was measured by lifestyle. This was especially true of young people. While some historians viewed the apparent emphasis on youthful morality as a desire for social control, the leaders of these youth groups had what they considered a higher agenda. They wanted young people to experience God in a biblical manner, as understood by various faith communities.

As the American experience changed so did the manner in which youth groups functioned. New forms for highly focused youth groups developed and, at times, the organized activities or philosophy of ministry became more important to participants and leaders than the spiritual aspects. Despite ongoing changes in the functions of youth groups, the consistent desire in the early years of youth ministry was to create social settings in which young people could experience God.

In the first cycle of youth ministry (1824–75), young people sought to encounter God through the organization of societies dedicated to the task. The creation of these societies paralleled the organization of groups, such as firefighters and militia, that addressed other social needs. Major youth ministry agencies—Sunday school associations, the YMCA, and Protestant juvenile temperance societies—focused on young people’s outward lifestyle, a sanctified way of living that previously had been the product of spiritual awakenings or revival meetings. In time, the expectation of God showing up was lost, except on rare occasions. Consequently, a new approach to youth groups developed.

The second cycle (1881–1925) emphasized education as a means of experiencing God. Especially by the end of this cycle, youth societies took on educational functions and were compared with the approaches of progressive education. Christian Endeavor and various denominational youth societies became nonformal educational agencies that helped young people to learn biblical content and denominational distinctives with the goal of bringing about a lifestyle in harmony with the values of the sponsoring society. At first, prayer meetings and union (i.e., regional) gatherings created anticipation of God’s presence, and in various ways these anticipations were realized. However, as activities became routine in this second cycle of youth ministry, God’s presence seemed more and more contrived or nonexistent.

In the third cycle (1933–89), youth fellowships became relational at their cores. This was especially apparent as parachurch agencies attempted to win the right to be heard by unchurched youth. In church-based youth groups, fellowship became the focus, and Christ’s relationship with his disciples served as the model for youth ministry. The leadership encouraged adolescents to live out the Great Commandment (to love God with their whole body, soul, and spirit and to love their neighbor as themselves) and the Great Commission (to disciple all nations including their own). In time, however, entertainment superseded a search for God’s presence, and youth groups once again began to change.

A transition to a fourth cycle of Protestant youth ministry began in the 1990s. As with previous transitions between cycles, it has taken time for the nature of youth ministry in the twenty-first century to define itself. A pluralistic culture that values religious tolerance has made clarity elusive. Clear descriptors of a fourth cycle have yet to emerge. Yet a desire among young people to experience God’s presence persists, perhaps even intensifies, as young people continue to gather in youth ministry settings.

How God Showed Up in Youth Ministry

When God Shows Up: A History of Protestant Youth Ministry in America is divided into five parts. The first part clarifies three terms—youth (chapter 1), adolescent (chapter 2), and spirituality (chapter 3)—then explains the cyclical nature of Protestant youth ministry in America (chapter 4). While readers have some understanding of the three terms, the meaning of each has changed since the inception of youth ministry in America. People tend to think of youth groups either as uniform throughout America or as primitive expressions of current forms of youth ministry. While there is continuity in how these terms have been used in youth ministry, putting them into context and tracing them through the short history of youth ministry will enable us to better understand where youth ministry stands at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Parts 2 through 5 are built upon the assumption that youth ministry in America has followed a cyclical pattern. Each cycle began with a ministry innovation responding to changes in American society and within fifty years found that the social milieu of youth had changed so significantly that the earlier innovations had become somewhat irrelevant to the current generation of young people. While the agencies of youth ministry continued to exist, their emphasis had changed. No longer were they as relevant to the expectations of young people that God would show up in their individual and collective experiences.

Part 2 focuses on the beginnings of youth groups in America. Local improvisation begun in England but adapted to the American experience shaped the beginnings of Protestant youth ministry in America. This period of associations (1824–75) was dominated by three agencies from England—the Sunday school, the juvenile temperance movement, and the YMCA. In typical American fashion, each movement formed associations to promote their attempts to reach young people.

The Sunday school and YMCA (chapter 5) share clear concerns for the spirituality of youth, while the juvenile temperance movement (chapter 6) dealt specifically with the lifestyle issue of alcohol consumption, and thus was more concerned with an evidence of sanctification over which Protestants differed in opinion. Nonetheless the temperance movement set the structure for the formal emergence of Protestant youth groups in the second cycle of youth ministry.

While these three movements shaped much of what we know about the early years of Protestant youth groups in America, local churches took many initiatives to enable their youth to experience God’s presence in their lives. Responding to the spiritual needs of the youth of the city, Rev. Theodore Cuyler, pastor of Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, drew upon his experience in the prayer revival of 1857–59 to foster Christian spirituality among his young people. Cuyler’s innovations in one local church became the basis for the next cycle of youth ministry (chapter 7).

Part 3 describes the formal emergence of Protestant youth groups in America. It was a period of organization as national youth ministry programs shaped local youth groups. The period of youth societies (1881–1925) unfolded as America struggled to recover from the Civil War. There was an air of optimism in the nation. An experiment with the young people at Williston Church in Portland, Maine, conceived by Rev. Francis E. Clark, produced such immediate results that regional churches quickly sought help from the young pastor (chapter 8). Other church leaders hoped to achieve the dramatic birth and growth of the Society of Christian Endeavor in which youth found an attractive way to focus on their endeavor to know God. Nearly as quickly as the Society of Christian Endeavor sprang up, denominational youth societies followed (chapter 9). The Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians developed programs that encouraged youthful spirituality as well as denominational loyalty.

Part 4 captures the rise of the American teenager, the transition to a relational approach to youth groups, and the evangelical attempt to reach youth for Christ. Fellowship with Christian peers and friendships with unchurched friends shaped Christian formation during this phase. Proclaiming the gospel became the emphasis that reshaped the Protestant youth group in the period of the relational outreach (1933–89). Mainline Protestant denominations became dissatisfied with aging youth societies and reoriented themselves toward peers, while emphasizing the role youth should have in addressing the pains of the world (chapter 10). Dissatisfied with the lack of Christian influence on the peer culture in the public high school, parachurch agencies came into being that would evangelize students who had little if any knowledge of or experience with the Christian gospel. This Christian youth movement included the Miracle Book Club, Young Life, Youth for Christ, Fellowship of Christian Athletes as well as many smaller agencies (chapter 11). Newer evangelical movements stirred in the same relational direction while continuing to stress personal salvation, holiness, and other emphases characteristic of their movements (chapter 12). For a relatively brief period of time in the middle of the twentieth century, youth rallies came to characterize youth ministry in America (chapter 13).

The final section of the book (part 5) looks at the period that combines old and new (1990–2010). Chapter 14 critiques how parachurch ministries have tried to reinvent themselves while struggling with how to address a youth culture influenced by the erosion of certainty. The last chapter looks at the legacy youth ministers in the first decade of the twenty-first century are leaving behind in formal and nonformal training of the next generation of youth ministers. While modernity still exists, and, with it, established approaches to youth ministry remain effective in certain settings, the pluralism of the twenty-first century requires a far different response by youth ministry leaders. Whereas in the third cycle of youth ministry, a handful of strategies dominated youth ministry with an emphasis on evangelization, the fourth cycle, if it develops, appears to be returning to a more clearly defined effort to experience the presence of God.

In the epilogue I acknowledge the gaping holes in the book—areas in the history of Protestant youth ministry in America that still need to be studied and considered. Hopefully other researchers will pick up on some of the themes of the history of youth ministry and weave them into this jam session.

As a historian, I have attempted to make sense out of the heritage in which youth workers have participated. My conclusion is that Protestants in America have been very concerned with ensuring that their children, especially during their teenage years, have an opportunity to be present when God shows up. As imperfectly as youth workers have done the job, as unevenly as they have employed educational or sociological theory, as simple and even naïve as has been their faith, and as easily as they have slipped from theological visions to programmatic formulas, Protestants nonetheless have a rich heritage of utilizing youth ministry to encounter the God of the Bible. And God has shown up.

Acknowledgments

As I reflect on the number of people who assisted in the research and writing of this book, I feel a significant level of emotion. A wide range of people assisted my process of gathering information. Several organizations funded aspects of my research. Some asked critical questions that improved the final product. To all of these I am indebted and grateful.

My greatest appreciation goes to my wife, Ruth, who stood with me throughout the writing process and in the final stages accompanied me to the mountains of North Carolina, isolated from friends and family as well as the interruptions of daily life in Illinois, to allow me to complete the final stages of research and writing.

In the early stages of this project, Rev. Michael Perko, SJ, PhD, coached and encouraged my doctoral research at Loyola University of Chicago. Robert Schuster and his staff at the Billy Graham Archives made available rare documents while the Billy Graham Center Library provided a study room in which I wrote much of my dissertation and The Coming Revolution in Youth Ministries. These served as a basis for this current work.

Funding for research included grants from the Youth Ministry and Theological Schools Project, Union Seminary in connection with the Lilly Endowment Center, and from the Association of Youth Ministry Educators. The generous sabbaticals provided by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a part of Trinity International University, provided the blocks of time necessary for the completion of the book.

I appreciate the professionalism of the staff and availability of materials in the libraries and special collections of the Billy Graham Center Library and Archives, Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, Moody Bible Institute, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Trinity International University, Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education, and Wheaton College.

Access to materials and information from both former and current leaders of parachurch organizations proved invaluable. My special thanks goes to Jay Kesler, Dick Wynn, and Roger Cross of Youth for Christ, USA, along with June Thompson, as well as Bill Muir and Dave Rahn; to Doug Burleigh and Denny Rydberg of Young Life, and associates Suzie Coddington and Greg Kinberg; to Hal Merwald of Young Life Canada; to Richard F. Abel and Dal Shealy of Fellowship of Christian Athletes, along with Rod Handley, Kevin Harlan, Ralph Stewart, Carey Casey, Milt Cooper, and Julie Brown; and to Evelyn M. McClusky, founder of the Miracle Book Club.

Research about church-based youth ministry was aided by conversation, research materials, and/or articles written by Wes Black, Bo Boshiers, Richard Castleberry, Jim Forstrom, Roger McKenzie, Dan Webster, and Bob Yoder and his students. Especially helpful was the critical eye of fellow youth ministry historian Tom Bergler.

Interaction with Mark Cannister, Dann Spader, Wayne Rice, Mike Yaconelli, Thom Schultz and Rick Lawrence, Dean Borgman, and Pete Ward as well as the members of the Association of Youth Ministry Educators, have informed the writing of this book. I am especially grateful for the encouragement and patience of Bob Hosack, along with the critical editorial help of Brian Bolger at Baker Academic. To all of you as well as the students I have had over the nearly three decades of teaching, I say thank you.

Mark H. Senter III

Lake Forest, Illinois

October 6, 2009

part 1

Birth of Youth Ministry Jazz

The Context

Jazz is America’s classical music," commented my friend Bob Ligon as we rode to high school one day. The idea stopped me short. Jazz? Classical? How could the two genres be mentioned in the same sentence?

We were sophomores and sophomores know everything, so I had to argue. But Bob stopped me short. Think about it, Bob challenged, what makes a piece of music qualify as being classical? It is primarily because of its ability to endure, its distinctive structure, its reflection of the context in which it was created, and the quality of the musicians to whom it appeals. He went on to explain how jazz music satisfied all four criteria.

I don’t know where Bob got his definition of classical music, but it made sense to me. The conversation was short but it left me with an entirely new perspective on that distinctive American contribution called jazz. It seems fascinating to me that fifty years later I am using jazz as a metaphor for understanding the development of Protestant youth ministry in America. Like jazz, Protestant youth ministry has proven to endure, has distinctive structures, has fit into the culture of the day, and has attracted an outstanding cast of leaders.

Basic to this classical theme in Protestant youth ministry is the theology that ties a biblical understanding of God as present but not yet in evidence in the lives of humankind. The book primarily deals with how Protestant churches lived out the conviction that God would become a part of the lives of young people in a meaningful, and in a majority of cases, permanent way.

In this first section of the book, I will place the history of Protestant youth ministry in America into four contexts. The first chapter has to do with the widely-varied manner in which young people experienced their lives prior to adulthood. The various sections of the country as well as the changing dynamic of the American experience imprinted youth in very different ways.

The second chapter explores the meaning of adolescence. While the reader may assume that adolescence has always applied to teenagers or perhaps persons between the ages of twelve and twenty-five, for much of youth ministry in America the word hardly appeared. Some now question if adolescence can accurately describe the differences between later stages of childhood and an ever-extending period of young adulthood.

The third chapter looks at the history of spirituality as it has been applied to the lives of Protestant young people in America. Grounded in various traditions of pietism and connected to a broad cross section of Protestant churches, the common denominator appears to be the conviction that God would be active in the lives of young people and Christian people had the obligation to provide opportunities for this to happen.

The fourth chapter describes the distinctive characteristics of three cycles of youth ministry that stretched across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This description provides the structure upon which the history of Protestant youth ministry is built.

1

Newsies

A Survey of the Diverse Experiences

of Youth in America

The 1899 strike of the newspaper boys in New York City shocked the city. Boys could fight with each other, but they were not expected to challenge authority figures, no matter how corrupt. These news boys were quite different from the classic ideal of family life formed by the middle of the twentieth century. Few enjoyed the safety of families, schools, churches, and communities that prepared them to participate in the American dream.

The 1992 movie Newsies captured some of the dynamics of the era. Jack Cowboy Kelly, an orphan, and David Jacobs, who needed to support his family due to a job-related injury experienced by his father, typified many youth at the turn of the twentieth century. Cowboy was a hustler who did not worry about ethics when selling newspapers, while Jacobs was an educated Christian boy with organizational skills. The two found themselves pitted against the political and newspaper business establishment of New York City. Publishers William Randolph Hurst and Joseph Pulitzer vie for profits at the expense of the newsies until the lead characters rally the news boys to strike and, with the help of Governor Theodore Roosevelt, gain some degree of justice for their peers.

The strike was noteworthy since it was one of the few times prior to the twentieth century when young people came out on top. For the most part young people of their day had no rights, no protection, no access to political leaders, and no resources other than what they could muster through their own efforts.

Protestant young people in early America also experienced a surprisingly diverse set of life circumstances. The dynamics of the teenage years varied widely based on region of the country (not everything was like New England), ethnic background (not everything was English), religious conviction (not every Protestant was shaped by Puritanism), and economic position (not everything was economic middle class).

While youth ministry gained its earliest notoriety in New England with the birth in Portland, Maine, of the Society of Christian Endeavor in 1881, Brooklyn had provided a focal point for youth ministry experimentation thirty years earlier. Yet the nation was populated with a wide variety of young people for whom Protestants shaped by regional differences shared concerns.

Growing Up in America

The experience of people in their teenage years varied greatly as the American expansion shaped a wilderness into a nation. The contrasting opinions and experiences between Anglicans in South Carolina (where the passion for wealth trumped all other concerns), Puritan families in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (where Christian convictions commanded the attention of civic leaders), and the Dutch Reformed Church (supported by the Dutch West India Company–financed schools in New Amsterdam [New York]) created enormous disparities in attitudes toward education and religion in the lives of young people. French Huguenots in the Southern colonies, German Lutherans in the Midwest, English Quakers in the mid-Atlantic colonies, and English Wesleyans up and down the East Coast all brought their concepts of Christian formation of children and youth to the new world.

The role of youth in American society varied not only regionally but also according to the period of history being considered. Joseph Kett indicates three distinct periods for youth: (1) in the early republic, 1790– 1840; (2) toward the age of adolescence, 1840–1900; and (3) in the era of adolescence, 1900–1977.¹

The three-volume Children and Youth in America: A Documentary History divides its study of public policy toward children and youth into three somewhat similar periods: (1) from the earliest English settlements to the close of the Civil War (roughly 1600–1865), (2) Reconstruction to the New Deal (1865–1932), and (3) the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt to 1973.² While the foci of the two works differ (the former on understanding adolescence; the latter on public policy), the dynamics of the youthful experience discussed in them are very similar. Since Kett’s purpose is closer to the purpose of this work, I will follow his periodization, with the exception that I give more attention to colonial life before the early republic.

Colonial Period and Early Republic (1600–1840)

From the time British people first settled in Jamestown or the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock, American society has abounded with young people. Many of the settlers in Virginia were the younger brothers of British noblemen. Of the 102 passengers aboard the Mayflower, thirty-one were children. The average age at the birth of the republic was under thirty-five years. Yet in 1800 the median age was only sixteen.³ This meant that if all people living in the newly formed United States of America were lined up according to age, a sixteen-year-old would have been exactly in the middle of the lineup.

To put this into perspective, the median age in the United States as of the 2000 census, was 35.3 years. With such a high proportion of the population being young in the early years of the American experience, life for young people differed greatly from the youth culture of the twenty-first century.

Life for youth in the thirteen colonies spread along the Atlantic seaboard, though differing according to the colony in which a young person lived, had one common theme: work. When a child was big enough to contribute to the family or community, he or she began to work. With the exception of children from the few wealthy families, young people were needed to enable the family to survive, and so without regrets they worked. The problem that faced young people was not self-esteem but survival.

For many, maintaining a lively spiritual life proved to be difficult in America; the survival of the soul of the rising generation became a pressing matter. Protestant dissenters from the authorized churches of Europe (Church of England, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Reformed Church) came to the New World in search of religious freedom. Quickly they found that their newly-found freedom put their children at risk. The persecution experienced in Europe forced a spiritual solidarity on families; but the enemy in America became freedom and the spiritual apathy that it engendered.

Leaders of the various colonies, and especially church leaders, took responsibility for training young people to contribute to the common life. Maintaining spiritual convictions was a key aspect of local communities. The ability to read provided a minimal spiritual and intellectual training for youth, enabling them to know the Scriptures, while skills for providing food, shelter, and safety sustained life. Exactly how the leaders prepared youth varied according to the section of the nation in which the young person grew to maturity.

New England

By far the greatest influence on young people outside their families came from the American educational system, which was birthed in New England where Puritans stressed education as a means of cultivating values of righteousness in children beset by their sinful nature. Reading and understanding the Bible formed the cornerstone of education for Christian families. Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted legislation demonstrating governmental concern for schools and providing taxation for supporting public schools. As early as 1642 and 1647, laws required the teaching of reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion in vernacular schools.

From these beginnings grew the common school movement championed by James Carter, Horace Mann, and Thaddeus Stevens that resulted in legislation in 1827 supporting common schools by means of compulsory taxation. Governmental institutions needed literate voters to make decisions in order for the American democratic experiment to be effective. All citizens needed to be educated.

This shift from education in the home to the public schooling necessary for the building of a democracy began a process of removing the Christian Scriptures from a central place in education. In some communities Protestant parents and clergy sensed the need to train young people in Bible knowledge and application. In others, clergy felt a lack of parental support for their concerns for encounters with God and lives of personal holiness among youthful attendees, so ministers sought to create methods for attracting and holding the youth of their day.

The family-church-school symbiosis may have seemed simple, but young people in New England differed from one another in a multitude of ways. Unlike the ideals of economic middle-class America in the twenty-first century, families seldom functioned as depicted in a Norman Rockwell painting with father going off to work, mother taking care of the house, and children splitting their time between play and school. Life in early America was hard. Virtually every person above seven years of age worked to contribute to the welfare of the family. It was commonly understood that children owed their parents the labor they could render.⁴ This was not a violation of child labor laws since such laws were nonexistent. Child labor was a necessity of life.

In poor Massachusetts families life was especially harsh on children. In 1672, Boston Commissioners ordered that poor families bind out their children as servants in order to satisfy family indebtedness.⁵ Orphans in England endured even harsher treatment. At a merchant’s bequest, three hundred pounds were employed in the taking out of the street or out of the Bridewell (London’s house of correction) twelve fatherless and motherless boys and eight girls from seven years old and upwards and for furnishing them with necessities and paying for their passage to New England and for being bound apprentices to some such as will be careful to bring them up in the fear of God and to maintain themselves another day. Though more common in other colonies, these youth and others, including the unruly sons of English gentlemen, were sent to Boston primarily because of New England’s reputation for piety.⁶

In fact, life was so hard that the health or physical condition of many parents suffered due to working conditions to the extent that many times children provided a bulk of family income. Frequently children essentially skipped adolescence and functioned as adults before entering their teenage years. Churches seldom had special meetings for young people because there simply was no time or energy for extra activities when life hung by a thread.

The more mouths there were to feed, the greater the difficulty parents had in making ends meet. Yet every additional mouth meant additional labor to help the family survive when the children were old enough to work. With a high level of infant and child mortality, less than half of the children survived until adulthood. Families had to be large merely to guarantee that the family would perpetuate itself.

If children survived into their teenage years, two customs of the day removed many from their homes. For girls, marriage was not uncommon soon after menarche, which occurred at age fourteen or fifteen. For boys, the common feeling was that in their early teenage years, sons should be placed as apprentices in the homes of other families. The reason most frequently given was that another father would have a better chance of properly disciplining and training the lad than would his biological parents.

As an example, Benjamin Franklin was the tenth son of a Boston soap maker. His father, who eventually had seventeen children, could only afford one year of schooling for Ben, and so at age twelve Ben was allowed to be an apprentice in his brother James’s print shop. He never lived at home again. Unlike some apprentices whose master craftsmen were church-oriented, Ben’s teenage contacts with the church were negative. He and his brother engaged in a feud with Puritan ministers Cotton and Increase Mathers over the use of smallpox vaccine in Boston (not a typical youth group discussion topic). At age seventeen, after a falling-out with his brother, Ben struck out for Philadelphia, where he became an entrepreneur, writer, publisher, statesman, and diplomat.⁷

Other factors shaped the manner in which children grew to adulthood in New England. The death of a father, mother, or both required children, if fortunate, to live with a relative. Francis Clark, the founder of Christian Endeavor, was born Francis Symmes, but lost his father, Charles, to cholera when the boy was only three years old. His seventeen-year-old brother, Charles Henry, died apparently of pneumonia four years later, and shortly thereafter his mother, Lydia, also passed away. Frank (as they called him) was an orphan at age seven in 1859. As was common, his mother made provision before her death that Frank would be raised by her younger brother, Edward Clark, a minister in Massachusetts. His uncle, who was childless, adopted him.⁸ The saga of the Symmes family was common, not only in New England, but throughout America.

Often boys left home to seek their fortune while still in their teens. Dwight L. Moody, born on a small New England farm on February 5, 1837, was only four when his father, an alcoholic, died at age forty-one. Twins were born one month later to the family. His mother, Betsy, a thirty-six-year-old widow, had nine children at home and hardly any income. After years of struggle, D. L. left home on his seventeenth birthday to sell shoes for his uncle in Boston on the condition that he would attend church once a week. He found church boring but succeeded in selling shoes. Moody was on his own.⁹

While church attendance was a factor in the lives of New England youth in the colonial and early republic of the American experience, few if any churches treated young people as anything but either children or adults. Like D. L. Moody, most young people found their church experience rather boring. After all, it was assumed that they were adults because in many other aspects of life they functioned as adults.

Middle Atlantic Region

Life in the Middle Atlantic colonies (the current states of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) was equally challenging for children and youth. Whereas the settlers of New England early on required public schooling, private or parochial schooling was the norm in the Middle Atlantic