Adelaide Teague Case

Adelaide Teague Case (January 1, 1887 – June 19, 1948) was an American educator who is recognized on the calendar of saints of the Episcopal Church.

Biography Case was born in Missouri but her family moved her to New York in her infancy. She attended Bryn Mawr College, worked as librarian in the Episcopal Church's national headquarters, and taught at the New York Training School for Deaconesses.

She completed her Ph.D. at Columbia University and immediately began teaching at the Teachers' College there. She taught there from 1919 to 1941, becoming a professor and head of the department of religious education.

Case traveled the country as a speaker. She lectured on educational topics and was popular with audiences of different religions.

In 1941, Case left Columbia to become Professor of Christian Education at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was the first woman to teach as a professor there full time. She taught at Episcopal Theological School until her death in Boston on June 19, 1948.

Progressive Education Case's book, Liberal Christianity and Religious Education, grew out of her dissertation at Columbia. She believed there was a disconnect between the values of Christianity and the way it was taught to children. She wrote about, studied, and advocated for progressive education, which she saw as centered on the child instead of on the teacher. She took some of the methods popularized by John Dewey and applied them to religious education.

She advocated for an approach that applied the Bible and Christian tradition to a child's particular life and the society they lived in. She wrote in Liberal Christianity, "We need to know, not simply to guess, the information and attitudes of religious workers on such matters as: the use of the Bible in modern life, facts about the life of Jesus, the importance of religious dogmas, standards of sex relationship, war and peace, the organization and control of industry, property ownership, freedom of speech."

Liberal Christianity Case was part of the liberal catholic branch of Anglicanism, which combined progressive interpretations and social activism of the Bible with traditional practice. She joined the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross in 1915, and remained a member through her life.

That calendar was never adopted. In 2018, her feast was again adopted on a trial basis. This time her feast day was June 19, the day of her death.

In 2022, Case was officially added to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar with her feast day on June 19.