Sunday Enforcement in North Dakota by C. J. Kunkel

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 9, 1909

Sunday Enforcement in North Dakota

By C. J. Kunkel

ELDER M. N. JORGENSEN, laboring at Grand Forks, N. D., has had a very interesting experience while working in opposition to the Sunday-law enforcement movement in that place. The city attorney had been directed by the council to prepare an ordinance for the enforcement of Sunday observance. Brother Jorgensen debated the question for a time, and finally went to the office of the city attorney for a consultation. He was courteously received, and in a few moments was enabled to make some inquiries regarding the proposed law. The attorney said he had been instructed to frame a law that could be enforced, but that he did not know just how to draw up one which would not work hardship for some people.

Brother Jorgensen asked a number of questions tending to show that religious legislation would always work hardship to some one; that any law for the enforcement of Sunday would be a religious one; that God had divided the time and set apart the seventh day; that it was the preachers and church people who desired the enforcement of a Sunday law; that the making and enforcement of a Sunday law was religious legislation; that all of the present State Sunday laws had been copied from the old Puritanical “blue-laws.” To all of these inquiries the lawyer gave a ready assent. He then said: “Your religion interests me. What church do you belong to?” When told that he was a Seventh-day Adventist, the lawyer did not appear to be at all surprised.

After an extended conversation this plan was arranged: At the next meeting of the city council, representatives for and against the proposed law will be given a hearing. The attorney said: “You just let the other preachers express themselves, and when they are done, I will make an appeal with all the ability I possess against making any such law. When I am through, you step in and use all your power to show from the Bible that any Sunday law would be a religious one, and I believe we shall win in the council meeting.”

Brother Jorgensen gave the attorney a Bible study on what true Sabbath-keeping really means. He asked for Scripture texts, and marked them down. His attention was called to the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights, and he seemed to grasp the truth. He said that he had been handed one hundred fifty names to prosecute, but he did not want to do this, as many of the people were of “the best people of the city.”—C. J. Kunkel, in Northern Union Reaper.