University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--Sociology Sociology 2020 IT’S NOT JUST SUNDAY SCHOOL: YOUNG CHILDREN, RACE/ ETHNICITY, AND GENDER IN THREE HOMOGENEOUS PROTESTANT SUNDAY SCHOOLS Henry James Zonio University of Kentucky, [email protected] Author ORCID Identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3091-7683 Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2020.515 Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Zonio, Henry James, "IT’S NOT JUST SUNDAY SCHOOL: YOUNG CHILDREN, RACE/ETHNICITY, AND GENDER IN THREE HOMOGENEOUS PROTESTANT SUNDAY SCHOOLS" (2020). Theses and Dissertations--Sociology. 47. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/sociology_etds/47 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Sociology at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--Sociology by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT AGREEMENT: I represent that my thesis or dissertation and abstract are my original work. Proper attribution has been given to all outside sources. I understand that I am solely responsible for obtaining any needed copyright permissions. I have obtained needed written permission statement(s) from the owner(s) of each third-party copyrighted matter to be included in my work, allowing electronic distribution (if such use is not permitted by the fair use doctrine) which will be submitted to UKnowledge as Additional File. I hereby grant to The University of Kentucky and its agents the irrevocable, non-exclusive, and royalty-free license to archive and make accessible my work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I agree that the document mentioned above may be made available immediately for worldwide access unless an embargo applies. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of my work. I understand that I am free to register the copyright to my work. REVIEW, APPROVAL AND ACCEPTANCE The document mentioned above has been reviewed and accepted by the student’s advisor, on behalf of the advisory committee, and by the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS), on behalf of the program; we verify that this is the final, approved version of the student’s thesis including all changes required by the advisory committee. The undersigned agree to abide by the statements above. Henry James Zonio, Student Dr. Edward W. Morris, Major Professor Dr. Janet Stamatel, Director of Graduate Studies IT’S NOT JUST SUNDAY SCHOOL: YOUNG CHILDREN, RACE/ETHNICITY, AND GENDER IN THREE HOMOGENEOUS PROTESTANT SUNDAY SCHOOLS ________________________________________ DISSERTATION ________________________________________ A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By Henry James Zonio Lexington, Kentucky Director: Dr. Edward W. Morris, Professor of Sociology Lexington, Kentucky 2020 Copyright © Henry James Zonio 2020 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3091-7683 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION IT’S NOT JUST SUNDAY SCHOOL: YOUNG CHILDREN, RACE/ETHNICITY, AND GENDER IN THREE HOMOGENEOUS PROTESTANT SUNDAY SHOOLS Current sociological approaches to examining the lives of children approach children as active agents and participants in their socialization. Further, children are considered experts witnesses and interpreters of their own experiences. In the cases of race and gender socialization, interpretive reproduction has been used as a framework to examine how children construct and act on meanings of race and gender. While these interpretive studies illuminate how children interpret and reproduce meanings of race and gender, they do not explicate how children appropriate meanings from their cultural milieu. Consequently, these studies do not consider ways the larger culture enables and constrains children’s constructions of race and gender within their peer cultures. This dissertation explores the sources of material and symbolic culture that children use in their interactions about race and gender. To explore this process, I conducted a 15-month ethnographic study of early elementary Sunday school classrooms at three homogeneous churches: predominantly white, predominantly Latinx, and predominantly African American. In addition to field notes, I conducted group interviews of children from the churches as well as a qualitative content analysis of the Sunday school curricula from the churches with a focus on the presence (or lack thereof) of racial and gendered themes. The primary question of this study asks the extent to which larger culture, by way of religious educational curricular materials, simultaneously enables and constrains children’s interpretive and interactional constructions of race and gender. The findings in this study lead to three conclusions regarding the influence of the material and symbolic culture embedded in Sunday school curricula on children’s negotiations of race and gender in the Sunday school spaces they inhabit. The first conclusion is that Sunday school was constructed as a place to learn about the Bible and God, to the exclusion of all else. The second conclusion is that there was a null curriculum surrounding issues of race and gender in the Sunday school materials, which created an ideological vacuum that was filled by the dominant cultural ideologies of race and gender the children and Sunday school teachers brought with them to the Sunday school spaces. The third conclusion from this study is that the combination of an uncritical emphasis on teaching only the Bible with a null curriculum on race and gender, led to the construction and reproduction of a white patriarchal Christian imagination. KEYWORDS: Childhood, Race/Ethnic Socialization, Gender Socialization, Religious Education, Christian Imagination Henry James Zonio (Name of Student) 09/14/2020 Date IT’S NOT JUST SUNDAY SCHOOL: YOUNG CHILDREN, RACE/ETHNICITY, AND GENDER IN THREE HOMOGENEOUS PROTESTANT SUNDAY SHOOLS By Henry James Zonio Edward W. Morris Director of Dissertation Janet Stamatel Director of Graduate Studies 09/14/2020 Date Dedicated to Erin, Jeremiah, Elia, Anneliese, and Maxson ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is the culmination of a ten-year journey that began with a conversation my wife and I had while I was still on the pastoral staff at Redwood Park Church in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Months later, we were packing up our family and moving to the San Francisco Bay Area marking the beginning of a whirlwind of transitions for our entire family that entailed multiple housing moves within California and Kentucky, familial role changes, job changes, tight budgets, and a lot of faith. I would not have been able to get to this point had it not been for the support of countless friends, family, colleagues, and mentors. Some of those people have been tracking this journey since the beginning, and many more have joined me along the way. While I will not be able to mention every person who has supported me along this journey, know that every word of encouragement, card, text, celebratory emoji, and social media post “like” motivated and encouraged me to keep going, especially during the low times when I questioned whether or not I would get to this point. First, I would like to thank Ed Morris for agreeing to be my dissertation chair and advisor. From the beginning of my time at the University of Kentucky, you supported my desire to pursue an ambitious research agenda drawing from the sociologies of race, gender, education, childhood, and religion. You helped encourage me to find my voice and confidence as a scholar and a researcher. I’m also thankful for the time you spent reading various iterations of my dissertation chapters, especially over the last couple of months leading to my defense date. I would also like to thank Carlos de la Torre, Robyn Brown, Joe Ferrare, and Jane Jensen for giving of their time and expertise to be a part of my dissertation committee. I iii am grateful for your encouragement and input at various stages of this dissertation project. I am also thankful for Kenneth Jones for agreeing to be an external examiner for my dissertation defense. I am also grateful for the wonderful Directors of Graduate Studies during my time at the University of Kentucky. Thank you, Shaunna Scott, for helping me navigate my first year as a Ph.D. grad student and assisting in securing a Lyman T. Johnson Fellowship, which covered half of my TA-ship responsibilities in those first couple of years allowing me to use that extra time on further scholarship. Thank you, Janet Stamatel, for going above and beyond for our well-being and for being a constant cheerleader at each step of this grad school journey. Additionally, I’d like to thank the rest of the UK Sociology faculty for creating a supportive and collegial atmosphere. Especially, thank you to Claire Renzetti for being an outstanding department chair and for fighting for the grad students; I haven’t heard of many department chairs at other schools who come close to measuring up to you. Thank you, too, Justin Conder for being an amazing department office manager and taking care of all those pesky administrative tasks like making sure we got paid and reimbursed. Graduate school is a grueling and demanding process that can quickly become isolating and soul crushing. I am fortunate that I did not have to endure it alone. I am immensely thankful for the best cohort anyone could have. We studied together, wrote together, complained together, and cried together. I don’t think I would have been able to survive graduate school without you all. I’ll never forget our summer-long study session for comps as we charted theorist after theorist on the sociology conference room walls or the “writing sessions” in our offices where we probably got more talking and eating done iv than we did writing.