Not Just Nostalgia: Some Pandemic-Weary Souls Want To Make Sunday A Day Of Rest Again
Weekend Plug-in 🔌
Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” features analysis, fact checking and top headlines from the world of faith. Subscribe now to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr. at therossnews@gmail.com.
(ANALYSIS) In a hit song two decades ago, country music group Rascal Flatts offered banjo-tinged commentary on “the world spinning faster than it did in the old days.”
“Sunday was a day of rest,” the group proclaimed in its ode to a bygone era. “Now, it’s one more day for progress.”
Some of us are old enough to remember when most businesses — not just Chick-fil-A — closed on Sundays.
It seems quaint now, but I did an Associated Press story in 2003 on Family Christian Stores — then the nation’s largest Christian retail chain — deciding to open on Sundays.
But in 2016, I was surprised during a reporting trip to North Dakota when I found an empty parking lot at a Bismarck Walmart — and then at Super Target — while looking to buy a few snacks and supplies before Sunday morning church.
I learned that for more than a century, the state had required most retailers to close from midnight to noon on Sundays. North Dakota finally became the last state to lift that ban in 2019.
I bring up this subject not just for nostalgia but because the day of rest — or the lack of it — is drawing renewed consideration nationally.
In a recent piece, Deseret News religion reporter Kelsey Dallas explains “why some political commentators and legal scholars are tweeting their support for taking a Sabbath”:
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Americans were overworked and tightly wound. In the past two years, the situation’s only gotten worse.
Pandemic-related stress and a widespread desire for more time to rest are among the factors fueling the “Great Resignation.” They also help explain why some political commentators and legal scholars spent the weekend debating the Sabbath. …
Sabbath laws, which are also known as blue laws, were once a major part of American life. Although they came in a variety of forms, the policies had a shared purpose: limiting certain commercial activities to six days per week.
In other words, blue laws forced both business owners and the people they served to take a day of rest. And under past policies, that day was almost always Sunday.
Dallas’ report points to an interesting Wall Street Journal essay by Sohrab Ahmari from last year that explores “what we’ve lost in rejecting the Sabbath.”
But the idea certainly hasn’t caught on with everybody.
Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt has a really fascinating story this week on “Sabbatarian Christians” — that’s a new term to me — finding “their observance increasingly countercultural in a 24/7 economy.”
Shellnutt writes:
Mailboxes used to go empty on Sundays.
Not anymore. America’s biggest retailer, Amazon, ships seven days a week, and as the site expands Sunday delivery across the country, more drivers are losing what would have been a steady day off.
For many, the shift just means their break will fall during the week. But for some Christians on the job, the new delivery option conflicts with Sunday church services and their conviction not to work on the Sabbath.
Amazon’s seven-days-a-week schedule has already led to two lawsuits from drivers who were fired for not working on Sundays. Both claimed religious discrimination under Title VII, alleging their employer had not provided “reasonable accommodation” for them to work other days.
On my way to church, I often pass a long line of Amazon trucks headed out to make Sunday deliveries.
I’ve never thought much about it.
But I will now.
Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads
1. Aging orders of Catholic sisters face tough decisions on what to do with property holdings. Now, they're getting help: “There are motherhouses, convents and retreat centers on prime plots of land, growing emptier,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Sophie Carson reports.
“Half of all U.S. sisters are over 80, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. About 3% are under 40. Few orders are adequately funded for retirement.”
2. Wrongly accused of genital cutting, a Muslim mom won’t accept ‘case closed’: The “linking of Islam to FGM (female genital mutilation), a practice that spans faiths and continents, touched off an inquiry that made its way to the Homeland Security office for human rights violations and war crimes, home of an anti-FGM program called Operation Limelight USA,” the Washington Post’s Hannah Allam reports from San Juan Island, Washington.
“The call also upended the child’s family and is forcing a tough conversation on the island about the far-reaching harm of anti-Muslim stereotypes.”
3. The nation’s top scorer plays for a school and a people: “Ryan Turell leads all NCAA basketball players in scoring and hopes to play in the NBA,” the New York Times’ David Waldstein reports.
“But first, he plans to prove that Yeshiva, a small Jewish university, is as good as its record.”
BONUS: “What counts as antisemitism?”
Deborah Lipstadt, the president’s nominee to serve as U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, received a hearing on that topic this week, the Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey reports.
More Top Reads
• Christian revival at school prompts student walkout in West Virginia (by Leah Willingham, Associated Press)
• A rabbi decided to sponsor an Afghan refugee family. When he needed a hand, he brought in a mosque and a church (by Sydney Page, Washington Post)
• Potential Supreme Court nominee faces questions on religious rights case (by Robert Barnes, Washington Post)
• Bishop Flores loves his dog—but he thinks Pope Francis is right about pets (by Michael J. O’Loughlin, America)
• Online pastors, form letters: The cottage industry helping workers avoid vaccine mandates (by Laura J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times)
• When worship online no longer felt like a community, a wine club became ‘wine church’ (by Bob Smietana, Religion News Service)
• Buffalo Diocese priest inherits parishioner's $467,000 estate after she changed will (by Charlie Specht, Buffalo News)
• Scandal on a wealthy island: A priest, a murder and a mystery (by Amanda M. Fairbanks, New York Times)
• How a rabbi’s shofar blast made history in Georgia (by Greg Bluestein, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• Texas church-shooting survivors, families awarded more than $230 million from U.S. government (by Dan Frosch and Elizabeth Findell, Wall Street Journal)
• Tongan Christians felt the force of the volcano. And the world’s prayers. (by Morgan Lee, Christianity Today)
• Woke war: How social justice and CRT became heresy for evangelicals (by Bob Smietana, RNS)
• Black Baptists discover lost cemetery in Virginia (by Nick Tabor, Christianity Today)
• Think piece: The dissenters trying to save evangelicalism from itself (by David Brooks, New York Times)
• Think piece: Saving evangelicalism?: A response to David Brooks (by R. Albert Mohler Jr., World)
Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines
The Associated Press is adding another veteran Godbeat pro to its global religion team.
After 16 years, Deepa Bharath is leaving the Southern California News Group, which includes the Orange County Register, to join AP.
Bharath is a vice president and conference co-chair for the Religion News Association.
Charging Station: In Case You Missed It
Here is where you can catch up on recent news and opinions from ReligionUnplugged.com.
• Israel mourns Esther Pollard, wife of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard (by Gil Zohar)
• Pope Benedict XVI: Has his legacy been tarnished forever? (by Clemente Lisi)
• We can't ignore calls for attacks against Muslims in India (by Ewelina U. Ochab)
• Indian Muslim Artist seeks to reinvent syncretic spaces (by Priyadarshini Sen)
• ‘Shut In’ is a rare R-rated faith-friendly thriller that works, backed by The Daily Wire (by Joseph Holmes)
• In post-pandemic America, will sagging church health damage public health? (by Richard Ostling)
• 90-year-old keeps watch over historic Black church and schoolhouse in Tennessee (by Erik Tryggestad)
• The Weeknd’s new album ‘Dawn FM’ takes listeners on a spiritual journey (by Connor Walter)
• Jokes and big questions: The Babylon Bee meets with Elon Musk and learns a few things (by Terry Mattingly)
• COVID-19 is causing us to lose ground in the fight to end female genital mutilation (by Ewelina U. Ochab)
• In reportage on Russia and Ukraine, don't neglect the importance of two rival churches (by Richard Ostling)
The Final Plug
Before I began covering religion, one of my beats was education.
In 1997, I did a package of stories for The Oklahoman on the history of school desegregation in Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Topeka, Kansas.
I was reminded of my trip to Topeka this week when I wrote about the youngest daughter of the Rev. Oliver Brown, the lead plaintiff in the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Nearly seven decades after the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision striking down the “separate but equal” doctrine, I learned so much.
Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.
Bobby Ross Jr. is a columnist for ReligionUnplugged.com and editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 15 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.