Episode 119: History of Mormon Sunday School

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:07)
Okay, I'm excited. I just ate an entire Gladlock baggie of Cheerios, and I'm ready for you, Bryan Buchanan, to give us the history and the background of how Mormon Sunday School came to be, because it's so boring all the time, and many of us have had to sit through it, and I just want to hear what you have to say about it and how the history goes and what we'll learn about.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:28)
Then away, haste away.
Come away to the Sunday School. Then away, do not delay. Come away to the Sunday School.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:36)
What?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:36)
Welcome, welcome, Sabbath morning. Now we rest from every care. Welcome, welcome is thy donning, holy Sabbath day of prayer.
Loving teachers kindly greet us as we meet in Sunday School.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:48)
Bryan, stop. No, please stop. Please.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:51)
Hey!
Ma'am, I couldn't be any clearer. Listen, the morning rain clouds up my window, and I can't see at all. And even if I could, it'd all be gray. But the Sunday School picture on my wall, it reminds me that it's not so bad.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:07)
Okay, wait, are you just trying to say this is a Sunday School Stan account? That's what all of this is about?

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:14)
Yes, thank you.
Get your tie tied. Get your dress ironed. School's in session, B-Words.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:27)
Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:29)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:30)
Bringing you the story of Mormonism from the shadow of the Everlasting Hills, straight out of Zion, this isn't your grandpa's Mormon history.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:57)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners from our roots until present day.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:02)
Gird your loins, lock your hearts and pay your tithing, because we're bringing you the story of Mormonism in all its paradisiacal glory.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:11)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:32)
Do you know who went to a Sunday school or two back in the day? Dale Morgan. That's who.
You know what would be very helpful in this discussion? Hey, Richard Saunders' new biography of Dale. It is the first biography of Dale L. Morgan, preeminent Western historian of the fur trade, historic trails and the Latter-day Saint movement. He's also adorable in his letters to Juanita Brooks.
The book explores how despite personal struggles, Morgan committed his life to tracking down sources and interpreting the past on the strength of documentary evidence.
Connecting Morgan's life with some of the broad cultural changes that shaped his experiences, this book engages with methodological shifts in the historical profession, the mid-20th century collision of interpretations within Latter-day Saint history, and the development of a descriptive, scholarly approach to that history. Morgan's body of work and commitment to serious scholarship signaled the start of new ways of understanding, studying and retelling history, and he motivated a generation of historians from the 1930s to the 1970s to transform their historical approaches. Sounding board, mentor and close friend to Nels Anderson, Fawn Brody, Juanita Brooks, Bernard Devoto, Wallace Stegner and Leonard Errington. Dale Morgan is the common factor linking this influential generation of mid 20th century historians of Western America. Dale L. Morgan, Mormon and Western Histories in Transition by Richard Saunders, new from the University of Utah Press. Check them out at uofupress.com.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:08)
It's such a good book. It's unbelievably good.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:10)
It's because Taylor Morgan's unbelievably good.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:13)
Let's go.
Here's the thing, I can't just march us right into Sunday School yet, because we need to do two things. We've got to talk about Sunday Schools in Europe, especially England, and we also need to talk about Richard Ballantyne. It's all up to you, LHP, pick your poison.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:46)
It really seems inappropriate to start with a guy named Dick, whose last name starts off with Ball, really.
Richard Ballantyne, Ballantyne. You make this too easy.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:58)
Well, that was not the line of reasoning I was expecting. Fine, okay.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (5:02)
Don't key it up for me, then.

**Bryan Buchanan** (5:03)
Well, we're just going to sail off for jolly old England, then. We're in the middle of the 18th century. As the first Sunday schools are about to be born there, there's an important current of what historians call social control. But rather than seeing it as a way to enforce the old social order for the elites, the prominent historian of Sunday schools, Anne Boylan, argues that it was, quote, the process of transmitting to others the personal qualities and values, self-control, delayed gratification, self-improvement, that reformers believed essential to individual and national progress.