Throughout my childhood up until my first two years of college, I faithfully attended Sunday School. Although I loved my classmates and enjoyed my teachers, I often took these classes for granted, and I didn’t think much about what it would mean to leave Sunday School when I turned twenty. As I got older, I would often feel awkward or out of place when I visited different Sunday School classes in which I was one of the oldest students. I welcomed the idea of moving on to church, mostly because I wanted to be somewhere I fitted in.
At the same time, I was aware of some strong resistance to the idea of Church. I go to Principia College, and I occasionally heard a few of my peers complain about listening to the Christian Science Bible Lesson being read aloud, especially if they had already studied those readings throughout the week. I was certainly influenced by these complaints, and when I did go to church, I found myself easily distracted by student readers, thinking more about their personalities rather than the ideas they were sharing aloud.
But as more of my friends started graduating from Sunday School, I became less connected to my own class experience. Near the end of my sophomore year of college, I started going to Sunday School less often. I found it difficult to be on time for class, so I usually went to church with one of my roommates instead. At my school, church begins at 10:45 a.m., while Sunday School starts 15 minutes earlier. It seemed perfect: I had extra time to sleep in every Sunday morning, and I didn’t think I was missing out on inspiration. But as I spent more time away from Sunday School, I felt less comfortable talking about Christian Science and I felt like I wasn’t actively processing what I heard read aloud every week. I missed having weekly discussions about spiritual ideas, but I wasn’t sure what I would be able to contribute to these conversations if I went back to my Sunday School class.
