Sabbath Could Benefit Harried Families

by Deborah Kovach Caldwell

One Sunday in the late 1970's, my childhood congregation in Pennsylvania debated a state proposal to abolish traditional "blue laws", which prohibited nearly all Sunday sales. At the time, about the only thing open on Sunday in my little town was the local diner. No grocery stores. No bookstores. No gas stations. The mall, which was 12 miles away, also was closed. On a typical Sunday, nearly everyone had lunch after church at their grandparents' house, then played outside or read the paper and lay on the couch. To tell the truth, it was often boring. And so, on that Sunday in the late 1970's, there wasn't much of a debate at my church. Get rid of the blue laws, we said. The idea was outmoded. It discriminated against religious fold whose Sabbath was a different day. Church was entangled too much with state. And, we reasoned, we could get so much more done on Sunday, if only businesses were open. I still believe the blue laws had to go. But lately I've been thinking about what we lost when we got rid of the idea of the Sabbath. If your family is like mine, there is no day set aside every week for worship, leisure or even boredom, and not because we want it that way. We're too busy working and doing projects and keeping up with chores. We go to church together when we're all in town at the same time. We snatch a half-day here and there on the weekends to take our son to the park. We flop on the couch while the laundry is spinning in the next room. And we're not even Soccer Parents yet. My husband and I frequently worry about our chaotic lives. The idea of the Sabbath will soon have increasing appeal to harried Americans, according to Louisville Presbyterian Seminary president John Mulder. In a recent speech before the Lord's Day Alliance, a coalition that promotes the Sabbath, Mulder said the church has a great opportunity to educate society about the spiritual, emotional and physical benefits of a day of rest. He believes that the Sabbath will never be observed exactly as it once was - as a state-sponsored day. "We can't expect society to be on our side," Milder said. "What that means is Sabbath observance must be internalized." Others are talking about the same issues. Robert Wuthnow, a religion sociologist at Princeton University, says that "the distinguishing feature of the middle class is its obsession with work and money." What is needed, he says, is "the bold voice of moral authority" - provided by religious leaders, who should be talking about the Sabbath as a family value that draws boundaries around work. It won't be easy. Experts say Americans are working one additional month more now than in 1970. "We are so busy making a living that many of us are failing to make a life for ourselves and our children," says Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville, Tenn. The Sabbath is "a counterweight to our obsession with work and money, which result in our failure to have the time for the moral vocation of family making," he says. Observing a regular Sabbath encourages families to slip into a simpler rhythm, have time for family renewal - and, he says, "recall that God acts to free us from the enslaving obsessions of a materialistic culture." 

(Deborah Kovach Caldwell covers religion for the Dallas Morning News)