Joseph Priestley and Education - Religious Education

Religious Education

Priestley pondered what form the best religious education would take throughout his life. In the 1760s, when he was a student at Daventry Academy, he imbibed the pedagogical principles of its founder, Philip Doddridge; although he was dead, Doddridge's emphasis on academic rigor and freedom of thought lived on at the school and impressed Priestley. These ideals would always be a part of Priestley's educational programs. He began writing one of these while still at Daventry, the Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion. However, he did not publish the work until 1772, when he as at Leeds. In an effort to increase and stabilize membership at his church there, he taught three religious education classes. He subdivided the young people of the congregation into three categories: young men from 18-30 to whom he taught "the elements of natural and revealed religion" (young women may or may not be included in this group); children under 14 to whom he taught "the first elements of religious knowledge by way of a short catechism in the plainest and most familiar language possible"; and "an intermediate class" to whom he taught "knowledge of the Scriptures only." Unlike the later Sunday schools established by Robert Raikes, Priestley aimed his classes at middle-class Rational Dissenters; he wanted to teach them "the principles of natural religion and the evidences and doctrine of revelation in a regular and systematic course," something their parents could not provide.

Priestley wrote texts for the courses he envisioned: A Catechism for Children and Young Persons (1767), which went through eleven English-language editions; and A Scripture Catechism, consisting of a Series of Questions, with References to the Scriptures instead of Answers (1772), which went through six British editions by 1817. He aimed to write non-sectarian Catechisms, but in this he failed. He offended many orthodox readers by focusing on God's benevolence instead of on Adam's sin and Christ's atonement. Priestley implemented this same system of religious instruction over a decade later in Birmingham, when he became a minister at New Meeting.