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Sometimes small questions can become big mysteries.
If you’re a person who likes a quick answer, that’s probably not a point of comfort for you. I, however, never mind an excuse to poke around in history when those big mysteries arise.
That is precisely how I found myself in the archives room of 1050 this week, sifting through records—some of which date back to the mid-1800s.
This all began when I went to update our letter to families about Bible Sunday, the occasion on which third-graders receive their very own copy of the Bible during our 11 am service. I wanted to include some language about how this has been a longstanding tradition at Asbury First UMC, reflecting upon the fact that I had received a Bible of my own here when I was a third-grader. My mother confirmed that she, too, had received one. And then I wanted to know…who had been the first to receive Bibles here as third-graders? And why did we give Bibles to third-graders? The questions were multiplying.
I started by reaching out to Nancy Adamus, a lifelong member of Asbury First, to see if she knew when we had started this “Bible Sunday” tradition. She promptly responded that she had talked to Betty Root Froelicher, another lifelong member—and while they were talking, Nancy said, “she reached over a little and picked up the Bible that she received when she was in the 3rd grade in 1940.”
Nancy also informed me that another of our members had received a Bible in third-grade from a different United Methodist Church, which was an important hint. I had already learned through a bit of research that the institution of Sunday School in the United States gained a lot of steam over the period from 1860-1910.
The Methodist Episcopal Church (one of our modern United Methodist Church’s primary ancestors) had established its own Sunday School Union in 1827, but a national focus on unity and “institution-building” likely helped to drive the exceptional growth of Sunday Schools in that period after the Civil War; also noteworthy was the concurrent work of the American Bible Society, which had been founded in 1816 with the mission of supporting “global Bible translation, production, distribution, literacy, engagement, ministry, and advocacy efforts.” By the end of the Civil War, it had distributed over 5.2 million copies of the Bible to military personnel and civilians—and this dovetailing of Bible distribution and Sunday School development may have formed the basis for a tradition in many Christian denominations of distributing Bibles to school-age children.
With that history in mind, I began to sift through our archived documents. One of my first answers came from a 1954-55 brochure outlining the Asbury First Church School program. At that time (and, it seems, for many decades beforehand), children’s Sunday School was divided into “departments;” the youngest group, the Primary Department, consisted of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. Here the document states that “upon leaving the Primary Department the child receives his own personal Bible which marks a mile-stone in his growth in God and is very important in his future activities.” So that was the “why” of the “why third-graders?”
But my main puzzle was still unsolved. I already knew that someone had received a Bible at Asbury-First in 1940, so I had to go deeper.
Thankfully, we have issues of The Visitor archived from as far back as the 1920s. They show that Asbury First has also been celebrating “Children’s Day” on a Sunday late in June for probably as long as it has a “promotion” Sunday in autumn. I discovered a lot of differing language for these events—as well as some names that seem to have faded from our tradition. For example, “Rally Day” was an occasion in mid-September that marked the beginning of the Sunday School year for all ages. This was followed by “Christian Education Sunday,” which involved a “moving up” ceremony for Sunday Schoolers, later in September—language that persisted from the 1950s into the 1980s and 90s, but seems to have been abandoned at some point in the aughts.
However, it appears that the presentation of Bibles did not always occur in the fall, as it does today; an annual Sunday School report from Ezra M. Sparlin in September 1914 notes that 26 children graduated from the Primary Department and received Bibles on June 14th, and a Visitor article from 1952 states that a similarly-sized class was to receive their Bibles in June. For whatever reason, it seems that the presentation of Bibles eventually became attached to the late-September celebration of Christian Education Sunday, and over the years that date slowly migrated into October to become the Bible Sunday that we know today. (It will take more time in the archives for me to determine exactly when that occurred.)
But though I still don’t have an exact answer to the question, “how long has Asbury First been giving Bibles to third-graders?” I can say with confidence that our tradition began over 100 years ago—which is pretty darn impressive. The custom pre-dates the merger between Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church and First Church.
I’ll probably keep digging, having been entranced by archive fever—and I’d be most elated to hear your own stories and recollections about this important milestone for our children. But one of my biggest takeaways from this endeavor is how uniquely fortunate we are to have such a vibrant, well-documented history; rather than acting as a limitation, our storied past with all its colorful characters, celebrations, humor, and whimsy provides ample inspiration for the possibilities that we, the congregation of Asbury First United Methodist Church, continue to dream of in 2026.
Thank you for being a part of the journey!
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