The Pagan Origin of Sunday Laws

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 24, 1907

The Pagan Origin of Sunday Laws

THE Portland Oregonian not long since gave nearly a full column of its editorial space to an attempt to justify Sunday laws. It prefaced its apology for such laws with a very frank statement of the origin of the Sunday institution. Speaking of the reason advanced by certain citizens against the enforcement of Sunday laws, the editor says:—

It is only a theoretical view, springing, naturally perhaps, out of a study of the union of church and state under Constantine, and opposition to its historical consequences. That was a tyranny, to be sure. It led to the extremest despotism, continuing many centuries, ever known among men. Sunday was the day of pagan observance, in the Roman world. Constantine identified and united it with the day of Christian worship, based in its turn on the legend of the resurrection of Jesus. By a strange but perfectly intelligible process the command of the Jewish law, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” was transferred from the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) to Sunday and converted in the consciousness and practise of the Christian world into an additional sanction of Sunday as the holy day.

We wonder whether the clerical advocates of the Sunday law will welcome such support as the Oregonian is giving, if it must be coupled with so plain and unvarnished a setting forth of the origin of the institution they are seeking to protect. The introduction of that acknowledged pagan institution into the church, through the influence and direction of a half-pagan emperor, was very largely responsible for that extreme despotism which marked the Dark Ages. The introduction of that institution into the church by force of legal enactments was the beginning of that union of a pagan state with a professed Christian church which brought in the torture chambers and the autos da fé — that work against which the Reformation was a revolt. It is proper and justifiable that the people should be suspicious of the legal enforcement of an institution with such a parentage. The declaration that it is done as a police regulation merely, and not because of the religious idea in the matter, may deceive some, but it is too flimsy a proposition to bear any earnest scrutiny.

The editor of the Oregonian says:—

Sunday is named for the rest day because . . . the government can more easily secure and protect a day already popularly designated, than establish a new one; not, however, because the law undertakes to enforce a divine command. Protection of individual liberty is the real object.

But history has demonstrated that when governments have taken it upon themselves to “protect” days, customs, rites, and ceremonies, they have invariably trampled upon individual liberty rather than protected it. They have protected the rites, ceremonies, and days many times at the cost of human life. And all this was invariably done also as a mere matter of “police regulation.” The church of the Dark Ages indignantly denies responsibility for the death of the martyrs — the state did it. So now when Christian men are arrested and imprisoned for quietly laboring on Sunday, the clerical Sunday law advocate denies responsibility for the cruel result — the state does it; it is a mere matter of police regulation. Nevertheless it serves the purpose of enforcing a religious institution, and perpetuates the tyranny of a united church and state upon whomsoever may elect to worship God according to the dictates of conscience.