Sunday schools, adopted from the English model of religious education, began during the colonial period and were similar in style to the charity schools that also aimed at educating the children of the working classes. Sunday schools emphasized basic intellectual skills and moral training. They were typically nondenominational and welcomed youths of all religious persuasions. For the most part the schools were established, run, and financed by lay people, organized into, local gender- and race-segregated societies. Supporters of religious education worked to bring together the various Sunday school societies in regional and national organizations. Eleazar Lord and Divie Bethune, for example, created the New York Sunday School Union Society in 1816, and in 1824 a national organization was formed: the American Sunday School Union. The movement spread not only through the urban areas of the North but also throughout the more rural South. An average Sunday...