PROPHECY Hub

 Christian Nationalists and Project 2025 have a radical scheme to remake your weekends. A section on employment policy, written by Jonathan Berry, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, would, if implemented, subject Americans’ leisure time to government oversight by limiting what you can do on Sundays.

Let’s be clear about what is being proposed here: This proposal would restrict your ability to decide what you want to do on Sunday. That’s their sabbath Berry and his allies are talking about. Never mind that Jews, Muslims, the nonreligious and some Christians (Seventh-day Adventists, Seventh Day Baptists and others) don’t keep Sunday as the sabbath.

Sunday-closing laws, sometimes called “blue laws,” have a checkered history in America (and pre-America). The Puritans’ blue laws were so strict that they even banned people from working in their yards on Sunday. In more recent times, many states had a weird patchwork of laws that closed some retail establishments but allowed others to open depending on what was being sold. In some stores, certain items could be sold – Sunday newspapers, food, drugs – while others – toys, office supplies – could not. In Anne Arundel County, Md., a store owner was busted because he allowed a customer to buy floor wax, a stapler and a toy submarine on Sunday.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Sunday-closing laws in 1961 in one of its more poorly reasoned decisions, the laws soon died a natural death, mainly because people wanted to do things, including shop, on Sunday and states were happy to get the tax revenue.

Rob Boston | American United for Separation of Church & State

  “Project 2025’s ‘Sabbath Rest’ proposal raises a host of issues for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the most glaring being that it raises serious Establishment Clause concerns. The bottom line is that Congress shouldn’t be in the business of legislating to encourage religious observance.”

Adventists facing down the possibility of the long-feared “Sunday Law” are not only wary of Project 2025’s interference with Adventism’s doctrine but also our advocacy. Seventh-day Adventists have “a long history of advocating for a strong separation of church and state.” Reid also states that, “We believe that one of the very best ways of protecting religious freedom for all Americans — regardless of what they believe or don’t believe — is for the government to keep its thumb off the scale when it comes to any issue of faith or religious doctrine.”

Melissa Reid | NAD SDA Church