The Sunday Law: Is It About to Start?
by Loren Seibold | 5 March 2024 |
When I was a child, I rarely ever got to go to stores. Of any kind.
We lived far out in the country. I went to school all week. Then on Saturday we went to church and didn’t go shopping.
You would think Sunday would be the day, then. But no. North Dakota was one of the last holdouts for “blue laws”—laws mandating that stores (apart from a few that could be classified as necessary services such pharmacies and gas stations) had to be closed on Sundays.
How did it get changed? It wasn’t for religious reasons. Church attendance wasn’t discussed at all.
The reason was malls and big box stores. Merchants and investors told the state legislature that if they wanted these engines of commerce in their cities, they had to let people shop on Sunday. In short order the laws that had been in place for decades were repealed.
Nowadays, almost all blue laws are gone across the United States. Money defeated religion.
Whether that’s good or not depends, I suppose, on how you look at it. It has obligated lots of people to work weekends, which appears to be one of the reasons for urging laws such as the one I’m about to tell you about.
The European Sunday Alliance
Recently the European Sunday Alliance again brought up the idea that there should be a legislated day of rest across the European Union (EU). Its “manifesto” begins,
The European Sunday Alliance is a network of national Sunday Alliances, trade unions, civil society organizations and religious communities committed to raising awareness of the unique value of synchronised free time for our European societies.
The given reasons aren’t overtly religious. They ask that the EU
respect and promote the protection of a common weekly day of rest for all people living and working in the EU, which shall be in principle on a Sunday, in order to protect workers’ health, promote a better work-life balance, and foster adequate time especially for families and young workers for worship and community, social & religious engagement.
as well as
finding solutions to urgent challenges of our time such as loneliness and related mental health issues.
The tizzy begins
You know where this is going, right? Yes, the Adventist rumor mill has begun to churn. Sunday laws are beginning!
Of course, churches do have an interest in such legislation. There are some sponsors to this promotion in the labor movement, such as the European Services Workers Union and the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions. But also these:
- Bishops’ Conference of the EU
- Protestant Church in Germany
- Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe
- International Young Christian Workers
- Jesuit European Social Centre
The last of this list is raising imaginary tornados across our church: the Jesuits are finally going to crack down on Sabbath-keeping!
No, they’re not.
Another false alarm
First—and this is important—there is a huge difference between asking businesses to keep Sunday work-free, and telling you what you can do on your Saturdays. Even as a child, I couldn’t figure out why our pastors kept bemoaning Sunday blue laws when no one ever bothered our Sabbath worship.
Second, it is unlikely to go anywhere. A campaign for a law is not a law. The Sunday Alliances in Europe have been making this argument for years. Europe, for the most part, still has stores open on Sunday. To the extent that some people support it, it probably won’t be because they want to go to church on Sunday. It will be because they’d like a day off.
Third, it won’t get traction mostly because Europe isn’t religious. While the Catholic countries such as Poland and Italy do better than the Protestant countries, in much of Europe church attendance is below 10%. Churches may hope that freeing up Sundays will bring people to church, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Sunday is the day many would be likely to be off work anyway, but I doubt they’re going to spend it in church more than they do now.
(Frankly, it probably would be better for all of us if they did go to church. Do you really want Christianity in Europe to fail utterly just because they have church services on Sunday? I don’t.)
Our Sabbaths are safe…
Here is one big reason our Saturdays are likely to remain free: the Jews.
There aren’t many Jews in the world. And many of them aren’t religious. But they have an outsized influence.They’re not going to let any government tell them that they can’t worship on Saturday. Even in the United States, where there is scattered anti-Semitism, there is a strong interest among conservative Christians in keeping Jewish people free to worship as they like.
…but other rights may not be
What I don’t understand is why American Adventists don’t seem to be as alarmed by other threats to their liberty.
In this year’s elections in the United States, many Adventists are likely to vote for candidates of the Republican party as the supporter of God and Christianity, and against abortion and immigration and homosexuality.
What they may not realize is how much Christianity drives certain politicians, and the laws they want to put into place to shape American society in the direction of theocracy.
You may think you want that. But I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t like it.
I really doubt anyone will take away our Sabbaths. I don’t doubt that, given the chance, Christians in politics will try to make their religion drive public policy in a massive way—to so undermine the Bill of Rights that the First Amendment Establishment Clause would be significantly weakened.
You could see preferential treatment for some religions and for some churches over others. You could see mandated prayers in schools. I’m terrified of religious fundamentalists who want to pass laws enforcing what they think the Bible says, which will be different from what you or others think the Bible says. Some Christian leaders have even openly speculated about a Christian version of sharia law. And if you’re afraid of the Roman Catholics now, just wait until they team up with evangelicals to legislate how and what you teach your children.
In the matter of reproduction, you could see see a lot more of the kind of thing we saw recently in Alabama with fertilized embryos—the state’s court decision which read more like a Bible study than a legal decision. Or the ten-year-old here in Ohio who had to go out of state to get an abortion, and whose Indiana doctor was then publicly threatened and excoriated.
You will likely see attempts to restrict birth control. Oklahoma has introduced a fetal personhood bill that would not only create a database to track women who have abortions, but would ban some birth control. Caroline Light and Marya T. Mtshali write in the Tampa Bay Times, “Women, your privacy rights are ephemeral when fetal personhood becomes law.”
I’m sure a few Adventists will say, “That’s what we want! The law will make illegal some of the things we disapprove of!” But it may also make illegal some of the things you love and value.
Christian nationalism is a huge, terrifying monster, and I’m afraid of it. William Youngblood recently said, “Christian Nationalism is looking at Jesus’ three temptations and thinking he made the wrong choices.” Waiting in the wings of the Christian nationalist movement are racists and haters of all kinds—people who claim to be Christians, but want to arm the country for civil war, or exclude, expel, or persecute those they don’t like. In short, people who don’t have any interest in what Jesus really said, only what they want him to say.
Look around you, as our pioneers did, for “present truth.” There are bigger threats than Sunday laws.
Loren Seibold is a retired pastor, and the Executive Editor of Adventist Today.
