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What Ever Happened to the Sabbath Here in the United States?
Paul Rahe’s lovely account of the Sabbath in Jerusalem, below, got me to wondering: What ever happened to the Sabbath here in this country?
When I was a kid — not all that long ago — we still had enough of a sense of the Christian Sabbath, Sunday, that very few stores were ever open. It would never have so much as occurred to coaches to schedule Little League games, say, for Sunday. On the one occasion I can recall on which I wanted to meet some friends to see a movie (which, in those days, required going to an actual movie theater), I had to get special permission from my father to do so.
That world is gone — all gone. Commerce is just as heavy on Sunday as on Saturday. My kids compete in sports events on Sunday as if it were, again, just a second Saturday. And it’s not just that a sense of the Sabbath has disappeared from the wider culture. I can’t recall ever hearing a priest devote a homily to keeping the Sabbath set apart for prayers and family — for that matter, I can’t recall hearing a priest so much as mention the Sabbath.
“Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day,” needless to say, remains one of the Ten Commandments, but we have forgotten the Sabbath altogether even so.
What happened?
Published in General
Blue laws went away when the women went out and found jobs.
Chores piled up until Saturday, which meant that shopping needed to slide into Sunday.
Indeed, the morning Mass on Saturday uses the daily cycle of readings, and does not count towards a Catholic’s Sunday obligation.
I think this concept of appreciation of our work, and God’s work, is very true. Your point about the extra leisure time in our modern society also rings true. Thus maybe observing the Sabbath should be considered a blessing, and a gift, to ourselves, our families and God, not an obligation?
Americans eat out at restaurants and fast food chains much more than they used to.
They are cooking much less.
People need to eat, even on Sunday.
To all those who believe it would be beautiful and holy to devote Sundays to prayer, family and rest, I have a very libertarian question: What’s stopping you? Is the temptation of those open stores just too much to resist? Are you unable to honor the Sabbath unless the government passes laws to regulate what everyone else does on Sunday? I’m mystified.
I was raised to see Sunday as a day of worship, particularly focused on remembering Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection by following the New Testament church’s example and eating the Lord’s Supper each Lord’s day. Jesus was quite challenging to the status quo when it came to the restrictions/traditions the Jewish Leaders had built around the Sabbath day (Mark 2:23-3:6, )and there are some indications that Gentile Christians of the first century did not keep the Hebrew Sabbath day.
That said, I’ve grown to appreciate, if imperfectly, the idea of the “Christian Sabbath” – a day of worship, family, and rest from labor. I greatly admire Chick-fil-a and Hobby Lobby (though I completely sympathize with the sentiment of this song) forgoing profits to provide their employees a day of rest.
I can’t help but wonder if American Christianity’s move away from the Sabbath is, in large part, because we don’t see worship as all that important combined with the fact that the typical vocation isn’t all that “laborious” physically which was a big part of God’s logic (IMO) in the establishment of the Hebrew Sabbath.
captainpower
That’s what frozen dinners and microwaves are for. If you truly believe in the Sabbath as a day of rest for you and yours, then you won’t give your business to a restaurant on Sunday.
We have about, I would guess 50% compliance here in the Land of the Righteous. Small and independent businesses are much more likely to be closed. Our blue law in this case was written and passed a few years ago so it didn’t look like an endorsement of religion: you may sell cars on Saturday or Sunday, but not both.
I thought the NFL killed it.
But Monday is Internationally Agreed to (by the UN?) as Bench Press Day. When to you work your chest, you heathen?
My dad (1914-1982) had the theory that it’s because the developed world has become considerably less physically demanding. His observation was that church attendance was better when he was a kid because it was the one chance most adults got during the week to sit down. I think working people from the expulsion from the Garden to about 1950 would find “going to the gym” a pretty funny concept.
This explains a lot, and it makes sense. Very interesting.
When I was younger my dad believe it to be wrong to buy or sell on Sunday or to compel others to work on your behalf. (Urgently needed medicine, etc., was all right.) One of the fondest memories of my childhood was going down to the all-night drugstore with him at 10pm on Saturday night during college football season to pick up the first edition of the Sunday paper so he could read about his beloved Buckeyes.
profdlp: I’m a fitness nut and among other things lift weights three days a week. Typically M-W-F…I’ve stuck to Su-Tu-Th ever since…
Metalheaddoc: But Monday is Internationally Agreed to (by the UN?) as Bench Press Day. When to you work your chest, you heathen?
Sunday (my day of rest!) is Legs. I stopped doing Chest on Monday to avoid the crowd. Tuesday is Chest, Shoulders & Triceps; Thursday is Back & Biceps. Abs get it from a different angle every workout.
I think you are on to something. My Uncle Dean was a coal miner on the night shift and worked his farm full-time as well. I’d bet an hour in a pew on Sunday morning was the only rest he got for about forty years.
We have moved from local owned to Corporations. I still see lots of local owned places closed on Sunday, even on the Marietta Square.
Of course, I live in the Atlanta area, home of an outstanding company, Chick-fil-a that is closed on Sunday.
More than likely – though Dad never talked much about politics. He never supported a Democrat. That much I do know.
Al Sparks: #24 ” I don’t think vigil masses count as a Sabbath observance, technically speaking, any more than a Tuesday morning mass does.”
When the people in charge count the Saturday afternoon or evening vigil Mass as a Sunday Mass, it counts as a Sunday Mass.
If I remember the demographics I once read, I believe that the practice (if not the depth) of religion was considerably more important in the past than it is currently. That alone might be a reason for the change. If one’s religion is the worship of money or of leisure of some sort (and the NFL/NBA/NHL and professional baseball is leisure), then one will gravitate to that idol.
If the object of one’s worship is youth sports, then one will gravitate in that direction.
When I coached city league sports, we took what time we were given and used it. For me that meant that I went to Mass first, and then coached my teams. One might speculate that the coaching was recreational, and it was for me a true enjoyment, yet one might not recognize it as a day for the Lord other than my influence on my players. I had a split commitment here and made the best of it. Love of God and love of neighbor were served on Sunday.
My wife is from Utah, though not Mormon. She loved shopping on Sundays because she hated crowds and Sunday was the one day all the stores were lightly attended.
I recall an article in Analog about a decade ago noting that the Sabbath is even scientifically a great idea. Human beings don’t do well on a 7-day work week. Taking a day off allows us time to recharge. (Sorry, iWc, don’t mean to perpetuate the “Commandants as Scientifically Healthy” meme.) I also recall Jesus’ retort to critics of him and his disciples: “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)
This is something of a straw man; the post and most of the comments are not lamenting the disappearance of blue laws, but rather that people are choosing not to keep the Sabbath holy.
-E
I really don’t care for having other people lament my lack of holiness. Attend to your own holiness, please, if you will. And if you must lament something, there are plenty of candidates in this wicked world that are more worthy of your laments than what I choose to do on my Sunday. Or is it Saturday? To each his own or her own, when it comes to religious observance. It’s in the Constitution.
More strawmen? One gets the impression that mockery rather than conversation is your intent.
Sabbath observation is one of the 10 commandments, so a decline in adherence to it represents a significant decline in religiosity. It’s not unlike lamenting a decrease in the practice of tithing, church attendance, honesty, compassion, forgiveness, service, etc.
-E
C. U. Douglas: #50 “(Sorry, iWc, don’t mean to perpetuate the “Commandants as Scientifically Healthy” meme.)”
Your point about the day off each week is quite valid. It allowed the human body to re-oxygenate, and kept the brain from starving for oxygen.
As an aside, assuming that iWc won’t mind, it turned out that a study of women’s cancers found that Jewish women married to Jewish men had 5.6 percent (or thereabouts) less ovarian cancer than their Gentile counterparts. It turned out that circumcision protected her because there was not place for extraneous matter (such as lint) to hide. Her body did not have to deal with handling such matter, which led to a lower rate of this particular kind of cancer.
One might speculate on why G_d did it this way, however He did do so and it has an unexpected benefit for the the woman. Thanks be to G_d.
My “intent” is to advocate against passing judgment on other people in religious matters. And that is hardly a “strawman,” if you measure it by the number of wars fought over the subject.
Lamenting a a decrease in the practice of tithing or church attendance is very much unlike lamenting a decrease in honesty or compassion. The first two may be “unholy” by your lights, but the second two are universal human values which are independent of any particular theology. Praying in the direction of Mecca five times a day does not make one a good person; especially if one also cheers when psychopaths fire missiles at civilians in furtherance of an agenda of genocide. Religiosity is not synonymous with goodness.
Of course it’s a straw man. Nobody here is advocating laws to enforce Sabbath observation, much less fight any wars over it. Nobody here has passed judgment on other people in religious matters.
-E
It may not be synonymous, but they certainly trend together. The closer that a religion adheres to correct moral principles, then the more likely it is that increased religiosity leads to increased goodness.
-E
Some people really want to work seven days a week. I know a guy who apparently can’t stand spending time at home with his wife and kids, and he finds it very upsetting that his place of employment is closed on Sundays in the summer. He’ll even sneak in and open the store up all by himself sometimes.
How can you even ask?
Sundays stopped being religion-centric on December 28, 1958 when most of America discovered the National Football League.
Then came the sexual revolution, and Sunday mornings became an extension of Saturday night for the boomer generation of singles in the 1970’s.
Harvey Cox published The Secular City in 1965, around the same time Tom Lehrer was satirizing folk masses with The Vatican Rag. Time ran its “Is God Dead?” cover in 1966.
Religion has been in steady decline in the major population centers of this country for almost 50 years now.
Like it or not, that’s what happened.