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Church: A Sponsor of Literacy

Introduction

Sponsors of literacy refer to individuals or groups that support, teach and regulate/suppress literacy, and benefit from it in some manner. The deliverance of literacy from preacher to learner has always required some coercion or means of assistance (sponsors) throughout the course of history, and churches have contributed immensely as a sponsor of literacy. Church, as a sponsor of literacy, plays a role of delivery system of literacy to the learners (Brandt, 2001, pp 1-25). A church can be considered a place of worship and also a sponsor of literacy, such as church of Christ, Huntsville, Alabama.

This research work discusses the church of Christ of Huntsville, Alabama, a Christian church (i.e. church that is associated with practice based on the bible alone) as a sponsor of literacy, ways their learning process is similar to the ways we learn and write in school, and analyses church's literacy text or ways to impart literacy. This church basically teaches the community about living with faith to equip its members for the final days which is coming of Jesus Christ. This is because, as part of their worship process, which is to teach, recite, read, sing and pray, they can be similar to the ways we learn in school.

Discussion

Literature review

Church as a sponsor of literacy has historical grounds. In US, the universal literacy initiated as a basic imperative for Christian mission, which later developed to nation building (Brandt, 2001, pp 1-25). The church members interpreted the bible themselves when the bible was translated in the common man's language. Also, the church has served as learning (reading and writing) centers for marginalized people throughout the course of history. For example, congregants learned to write and read in African American church, which helped them to develop separate identities from the ones in power. According to Deborah Brandt, (a professor of English at University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the award-winning study Literacy In American Lives (2001), literacy development depends on literacy sponsors and traces the sponsors of literacy as they appear in the accounts of ordinary Americans recalling how they learned to read and write (Brandt, 1997, pp. 167). In the early days, in England, the Sunday schools offered fundamental, reading instructions to the working class as their evangelical duty and later the Sunday school students demanded to provide writing instructions on Sundays (such as math and writing) because these writing instructions would be a mean for the students upward mobility (Lacquer, 1976, pp 124).

The rich language and literacy learning takes place in the church, homes, and after school programs. Researchers have propagated that as the children participate in communities and churches, they tend to draw their repertoires of multiple code and registers to make sense of their experiences by acquiring skills and competencies (Lucila, 2008, pp 1-13). Therefore, the role of the church as a literacy sponsor cannot be denied as the history demonstrates that churches have always been major sponsors ...