ABSTRACT
The earliest American Bible schools that survive today are the Missionary Training School, founded by A. B. Simpson in New York City in 1882. The religious training schools had roots in the missionary training schools of Europe, but they must also be understood as arising out of American circumstances. The majority of Bible schools benefited from the fact that they had always been low-budget operations and could cut expenses without greatly altering their goals and identities. Many Bible schools that had begun primarily as evening schools and correspondence departments switched to almost exclusive concentration on regularly matriculated day students. Bible school or religious training school leaders saw their endeavors as supplementing rather than replacing the more conventional education of four-year college and three-year seminary. In the late 1920s or early 1930s, most of those schools closed, merged with an already existing college or seminary, or were upgraded into colleges or seminaries.
