Sunday Laws: the Great Adventist Obsession
by Jimmy Trujillo | 20 February 2025 |
After the elections, and the first decisions of the new United States administration, I was curious to hear the reactions of my Adventist brothers and sisters around the world.
I found ADRA’s expression of regret for Trump’s decision to cut humanitarian aid. I also welcomed the statement of the North American Division regarding the actions taken against immigrants. Our colleagues renewed their support for the “rights of all people, regardless of their country of origin.”
This declaration goes some way toward balancing what happened back in February 2021 when the United States House of Representatives adopted the Equality Act, an LGBTQ anti-discrimination bill. At that time the North American Division and the General Conference joined together to represent the Seventh-day Adventist Church as requesting that this law allow exceptions for religions in the name of religious freedom.
The question, of course, is whose religious freedom? The freedom of whose conscience? I recall an old definition of religious freedom that was once used by the Roman Catholic Church: “Only truth has rights; error has none.” But of course it is a question neither of truth nor of error, but of people.
I was unable to dodge the soap opera that is Adventist celebrity Ben Carson. Since 2016 this talented neurosurgeon has affirmed a strange combination of values:
- The right to bear arms, with the argument that if the Jews in 1940 had been armed there would have been no shoah;
- Opposition to homosexuality and abortion;
- That Islam is incompatible with the United States Constitution—which advocates neutrality regarding religions—and the refusal to consider a Muslim as an American president;
- Calling Africans who were kidnapped and transported as slaves “immigrants.”
Meanwhile, what worries Adventists?
As I researched Adventist sites on the internet before and after the 2024 elections, the main thing that seemed to be of interest to Adventists was the possibility of a Sunday law.[1]
The Trump administration has declared its intention to expel thousands of immigrants, and to imprison illegal immigrants at Guantanamo Bay. Adventists should know well the message of mercy lived and taught by Christ.
But no: Adventists were worrying about the Sunday Law.
The administration has left the Paris agreements on climate change, and promised to drill and drill again. It has reaffirmed the denial of climate change, to despise the earth, nature, water, air in the name of profitability.
This earth, for Adventists, is the creation of God, of which the Sabbath is the sign. Yet in the face of this, Adventists worried about the Sunday Law.
There is constant talk of wars, economic and military, and even annexations—the Panama Canal, Greenland, and even Canada. The height of cynicism is the proposal to empty Gaza of all its Palestinians and make it “the Côte d’Azur of the Middle East.”
Adventists are, of course, called to justice, to respect for law, and to avoid violence. But as this cruelty was being proposed, Adventists worried about the Sunday Law.
We continue to hear an egocentric and proud vision of “America First,” which ends up becoming “America only.”
But don’t the Bible and Jesus teach us that humanity is one, and that sharing is the way of being a disciple? Yet among us, apparently, the subject remains the Sunday Law.
The United States government is carried, supported, and advised by evangelical churches. The White House now has a “faith office,” to be led by televangelist Paula White. Ben Carson, during his mandate as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in Trump’s first team, prayed at the start of the cabinet session, claiming that though church and state are separate, “It doesn’t mean that they cannot work together to promote godly principles.” Replied Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
“Well, no, it means exactly that. For the government to take on the task of promoting ‘godly principles,’ it would first have to determine what’s godly and what’s not. It would have to elevate one version of faith over others and never be neutral on matters of theology.”
Meanwhile, top government figures have stated their intention that every campus and public school have Bibles—but not Qurans or Bhagavad Gitas or other holy books.
To all of this Adventists said little—except to fret more about the Sunday Law.
Manifest Destiny
These Adventists, speaking from the Americas (North, Central, and South), but also Europe and Africa and Asia—on what do they base this great interest in the Sunday law? Mostly on their confidence in the prophetic interpretations of Ellen G. White.
They also share with many others a belief in two strong points of American mythology.
The first, often called the founding myth of the United States, is labeled “Manifest Destiny.” In 1845, the publicist John O’Sullivan, director of the Democratic Review, formulated it and indicated its implications:
“Our Manifest Destiny, [consists] of expanding across the entire continent that Providence has allocated to us for the free development of our millions of inhabitants who are multiplying every year.”[2]
At the time the United States was in the process of annexing Texas. Since then it has successfully carried out other annexations, some of them beyond the bounds of the American continent.
This myth is a legend in three chapters. It is protological, current, and eschatological.
Protological because it tells of an origin: America is mentioned, it is claimed, in the Bible. (Revelation 13). It would be the land providentially provided to protect the persecuted Protestant Church—the Puritans of the Mayflower, for example, who had been persecuted by the Church of England in the Old World. The Old World was old and outdated even spiritually, since there reigned the forces of evil: the Catholic Church and France, also supposedly cited in the Bible (Revelation 11). France demonstrated during its infamous Revolution the result of rejecting the Reformation—the most abominable thing Satan could do.
(Meanwhile, little is said of how the founders of the United States had been influenced by the Enlightenment and Freemasonry.)
Additionally, Manifest Destiny is current, because it is said that the United States has a divine mission to promote throughout the world true Christian values, until the return of Christ.
Finally, Manifest Destiny is eschatological because it is said that the United States, thinking itself the refuge for freedom, will eventually fall into the hands of the devil (Revelation 13). This, we say, will be done through an alliance between the Protestants (in this myth, the only true founders of the United States); the Catholics who have, alas, established themselves in the New World; and the United States government, which will have abandoned the separation of church and state.
This infernal trinity will promulgate a law obliging respect for Sunday, and will begin to persecute Adventists because of their Sabbath observance. (Interestingly, we don’t mention Seventh-day Baptists or other Sabbatarian denominations—in 2001, the directory of sabbath-observing groups listed 436 Sabbatarian groups—or Jews.)
Then, and only then, can Jesus return.
The power of the United States
The other belief of the authors of the videos and websites I’ve researched is the astonishing, almost omnipotent, power of the United States. For once the United States establishes these laws, it will have the power to impose Sunday Laws on the whole world!
Really? The United States is certainly a powerful nation. But does it have power to dictate a Sunday Law to France, Brazil, Japan, Nigeria, and China? (In fact, in France we already have a 1906 law demanding “respect for Sunday.” It hasn’t affected our freedom to worship on the Sabbath.)
Perhaps it would be wise to offer a reminder of recent history. Is it possible to confuse power with pride? Or omnipotence with arrogance?
80% of evangelicals and 56% of Roman Catholics voted for Donald Trump, and probably some Adventists, too. Christians around the world are, in fact, persecuted in many places.[3] But not in the United States, or most of the countries where people worry about the Sunday Law.
But Adventists continue talking about their own imminent persecution over Sabbath, as if only they mattered. What an aberration, what an injustice, to all those who are actually being persecuted!
More important than Sabbath
I believe many Adventists are like me: they hear in their heads and in their hearts the words of our Lord Jesus Christ:
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.… Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
In these words Jesus speaks of the judgment that will take place upon his return. At no time in this passage does he mention Sunday or the Sabbath as a criterion in his judgment.
In the meantime Mariann Budde, a female Episcopalian bishop, has spoken with a different voice: a call for mercy, humility, and respect for people.
Still others will speak, and if not “the stones will cry out.” I think Adventists should speak out, too.
- Here are some examples. In English: “Sunday law alert: 4 stages every Adventist needs to know”; “The Sunday law in Project 2025”; “Will we reach 2030 without the Sunday law?” In French: “From Cestius Gallus to Trump, from Titus to Sunday Law;” “Sunday law is in preparation”; “New World Order: The Pope imposes Sunday law on the world”; In Spanish: “Project 2025 and the law Sunday” ; “Trump and the Sunday Law”; “National Sunday law: Nobody noticed” ↑
- Quoted by Nouailhat Yves-Henri, The United States and the world, from 1898 to the present day, Ed ;Armand Colin, Paris, 2003, p 23 ↑
- World Relief and Open Doors, Index 2024: 365 million Christians persecuted and discriminated against around the world
Jimmy Trujillo has worked in the Adventist Church as a pastor, youth leader at the France South Conference and the Franco-Belgian Union, as well as secretary and then president of the same Union. He is now enjoying a busy retirement.
