Word: wesley
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...ragamuffins" to better themselves in life. Yet his attempt at social progress was criticized in the press as subversive to the "peace and tranquility which constitute the happiness of society." Even churchmen excoriated the new schools as a violation of the Sabbath. One clergyman, however, a Methodist named John Wesley, took a different view. "Who knows," Wesley wrote in 1784, "but what some of these schools may become nurseries for Christians...
...other half fully lived up to Wesley's prediction. Especially in America. Into the 1950s, some 90% of the Protestant Church's new members came from Sunday schools...
Today the National Council of Churches likes to boast that Sunday schools are still the nation's biggest volunteer enterprise, with a total enrollment of 35.6 million (27.1 million Protestant, 8.5 million Catholic). Still, if Wesley were alive, he would be glum. Except for conservative churches like the Southern Baptists, who are doing well, Sunday school participation has dropped by almost 25% in the past ten years. "Mainline" Protestant churches-Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, have been worst hit. Says California's Institute for American Church Growth: "The Sunday school is in a desperate struggle for its very existence...
...bigger the government, the more it governs, right? Wrong, snorts Charles Peters, the irrepressible, iconoclastic editor of the Washington Monthly, who has written a sprightly, salty assault on practically everybody in the nation's capital, How Washington Really Works (Addison-Wesley; 146 pages; $10.95). The secret is that Washington does not really work, says Peters; it just appears to in a great game of make-believe. Claims Peters: "In Washington, bureaucrats confer, the President proclaims and the Congress legislates, but the impact on reality is negligible, if evident...
...only survivor of the fall from the bridge was the driver of the pickup truck, Wesley Mclntyre, 56, of Gulfport. His truck first hit the Summit Venture and then bounced into the water. Recalled Mclntyre of his miraculous escape: "The bridge was swaying. I could see the ship, and the end of the bridge was breaking off. I couldn't stop. I just slid, and then I hit the ship and dropped into the water. The next thing I remember I was in the water, and I managed to get the door open. I started swimming to the surface...