Historians have largely failed to recognize children as influential actors within American religious culture, an oversight that contributes to their invisibility in contemporary ecclesial life. My project explores the history of Sunday schools from 1790-1860, narrated through children’s perspectives, as a window into the origins of modern perceptions of childhood in North American churches. Early 19th-century Sunday schools empowered Black and white children to be emergent religious agents who challenged inherited patterns of social and cultural authority while popularizing the notion that childhood brimmed with spiritual possibilities that were distinct from, and perhaps even superior to those of adulthood. Sunday schools thereby catalyzed the creation of a children’s religious culture that persists into the present, while simultaneously creating a social imaginary for childhood that continues to influence contemporary life. In telling this story, I apply a child-centered approach that demonstrates how young people negotiated and transformed religious practice through their participation in Sunday schools as pupils, teachers, and at times even organizational leaders. Theological assumptions about childhood formulated in these early educational spaces continue to shape understandings of church life and authority. I intend to show the contemporary church that there are more liberating ways of conceiving childhood agency—rooted in our theological tradition—that might breathe new life into current models of spiritual formation.