Our History

Shortly after, on the 26th August 1868 in the beach-side town of Llandudno in Wales, Josiah Spiers felt that children should hear the message about Jesus and how much God loved them. He began by writing 'God is love' in the sand. As children gathered around, he encouraged them to decorate the letters with shells and seaweed and told them stories about Jesus. The first Scripture Union beach mission was born!

A few years later, a young Sunday School teacher in Keswick called Annie Marston wanted to encourage the children in her Sunday School class to read the Bible each day. Every Sunday she wrote out lists of passages for them to read. The next Sunday she discussed the passages with them, and answered their questions. As time went by, more and more children asked for the list of passages, so Annie wrote to Scripture Union (still with the name CSSM) in London suggesting that they should print the list of Bible passages for children to read. The first Scripture Union Bible reading card was published on the 1st April 1879 with 6,000 members, all children. It was an immediate success and within months there were members as far away as Belgium, Spain and Russia. By 1887 there were 328,000 members in the UK alone.

The first international conference  of Scripture Union was held in 1960 at Old Jordans. Until then, Scripture Union with a few exceptions, was run from England. Old Jordans changed all that, and forged the way for SU to become autonomous national movements. The conference also agreed to form Regional Councils, to which all national movements could belong, and an International Council to link together the various Regional Councils.

You can read a more detailed history of Scripture Union in Michael Hews' book: A Tale of Two Visions.