When I was growing up in Arkansas, just about all the businesses in my neighborhood were closed on Sunday. The only stores that were open were what we now call “ESSENTIAL SERVICES” like gas stations and grocery stores. Even Walmart would close- which was saying something in Arkansas.
It was the 90s- and boy, things have changed. The first store that started opening on Sunday was BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO.
Well, that’s at least one company that got some divine justice; God sent Redbox and Netflix and blew Blockbuster out of the water. But Blockbuster was just the beginning of the trend. Just about all stores are open on Sundays and even holidays like Christmas now. Starbucks pays overtime, but they’re still open on Christmas.
Sohrab Amari rightly calls our attention to this massive change in our American culture, the end of the blue laws. In 2019 South Dakota was apparently the last state to eliminate its criminal statutes against doing business on Sunday. All that we’re left with is nostalgia for those few hours when workaholic Americans honored their religions by taking a day off. I agree with Sohrab and the Rabbi he cites on this topic (Abraham Joshua Heschel) who argue that the sabbath was a necessary thing for society. I wouldn’t even call my nostalgia for the blue laws “selective nostalgia,” because pretty much everything about losing them is bad. Am I wrong that the only thing gained is a little more convenience for the consumers, and a little more business for the stores? The things lost are much more valuable for the American soul: at least one day a week, every worker had the opportunity to enjoy peace, leisure, low traffic, church, and pro football.
Of course, there was always the question of: which day should be the sabbath? The sensible answer given in the old days was that the majority principle decides it, with predominantly Christian areas getting Sunday off and predominantly Jewish areas getting Saturday off. Our “weekend” is a combination of the two. I remember a 7th-Day Adventist church in my neighborhood (the faith the musician Prince was brought up in), and they chose to have their services on Saturday too. This situation made for some interesting supreme court cases such as Sherbert v. Verner (1963), where a 7th Day Adventist woman was fired for not showing up to work on Saturday. Can you even imagine such a case being brought today?
It is even difficult to do a personal boycott of work on Sunday these days. When I was applying for hourly jobs, I intentionally asked for shifts not on Sundays. Maybe the businesses I was applying to made that a strike against my application for a lack of flexibility, but so be it. As a professor I am lucky now, because universities never schedule classes on Saturday or Sunday. At one school I was at, they wouldn’t schedule any classes on Friday either, which I hear is a growing trend. That’s probably just to afford students a full weekend to party- but Christians and others at a university interested in maintaining a sabbath should support it for their own reasons.
This is just one more issue where it’s business vs. culture, economic vs. social concerns. Guess what wins? Unfortunately, the things involving more money have been winning for a long time now. It would be a very Postmodern Conservative thing indeed if we could get traction on bringing the blue laws back. I would love it if we could have another sacred Sunday in the South…
One more: that’s what I love about Sunday!
Well, I'm sold, Chris. Not that I was against blue laws before, but I think you're right. Glad to see Sohrab Ahmari talk about this stuff, too! I hope that lots of communities come to see sense & take Sunday off from business.
My guess is, this would mean organizing things in any given community, so people have something to do--church is of course at the top of the list, perhaps the only community idea for Sunday in America. It certainly could do better, & we all could do better by it. But one can also think of education inasmuch as it's not work, or not done for grades, &c. As well as other contemplative activities, like listening to music. But perhaps we will find in all these things, we need to encourage the young to friendship, to spend time together in a way that's less narrow-minded, so they can look at themselves, look at their lives...
A day of contemplation seems both a luxury & a necessity of civilized life.