Or maybe not.

An op-ed in the Journal reflects on the contemporary demise of Sunday school as an American religious institution and wonders about the effects of this development on the spiritual nurture of the nation’s youth.   Among the findings the author, Charlotte Hays, cites the following:

A study by the Barna Group indicated that in 2004 churches were 6% less likely to provide Sunday school for children ages 2 to 5 as in 1997. For middle-school kids, the decline was to 86% providing Sunday school in 2004 from 93% in 1997. Similarly, there was a six-percentage-point drop in Sunday schools offered for high school kids — to 80% from 86%. All in all, about 20,000 fewer churches were maintaining Sunday-school classes. And the future does not look bright: Only 15% of ministers regarded Sunday school as a leading concern. The younger the pastor, the study showed, the less emphasis he placed on Sunday school.

Hays’ column brought to mind the autobiographical reflections of H. L. Mencken, who despite being reared by an inveterate sceptic, still sent his sons to Sunday school.

In the days of my earliest memories my father had an acquaintance named Mr. Garrigues, a highly respectable man of French origin who operated a men’s hat-store in West Baltimore, not far from our home in Hollins street. This hat-store of his, though it drove an excellent trade, occupied him only on week-days; on Sundays he threw himself, rather curiously for a man of his race, into super-intending the Sunday-school of a little Methodist chapel in nearby Wilkens avenue. Early one Winter evening he dropped in while my brother Charlie and I were playing Indians up and down the front staircase, and proposed to my father that we be articled to his Sunday-school. I recall, of course, nothing of his argument, though my brother and I naturally eavesdropped; I remember only that it lasted by a few minutes, and that the very next Sunday afternoon Mr. Garrigues came to the house in a high silk hat, and conducted us to his seminary.

It was not until years afterward that I learned why my father had succumbed so quickly, or indeed at all. I understood by that time that he was what Christendom abhors as an infidel, and I took the liberty of expressing some wonder that he had been willing, in that character, to expose his two innocent sons to the snares of the Wesleyan divinity. He hemmed and hawed a little, but finally let go the truth. What moved him, he confessed, was simply his overmastering impulse to give over the Sunday afternoons of Winter to quiet snoozing. This had been feasible so long as my brother and I were puling infants and could be packed off for naps ourselves, but as we increased in years and malicious animal magnetism and began to prefer leaping and howling up and down stairs, it became impossible for him to get any sleep. So he was a set-up for Mr. Garrigues, and succumbed without firing a shot. “The risk, he went on to explain, “was much less than you seem to think. Garrigues and his Methodists had you less than two hours a week, and I had you all the rest of the time.” (Happy Days, 1880-1892)

Hays’ believes that parents need take the bull by the horns if Sunday school is going to be revived. “Ultimately, if Sunday school is to thrive, parental involvement is necessary — somebody has to say, ‘Go,'” she writes. But if Mencken’s experience is any indication, Sunday school may need more umph — say from catechesis at church and in the home.