Sunday Law Defenders’ Arguments

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 13, 1906

Sunday Law Defenders’ Arguments

IN an address to the grand jury of the Caddo (La.) parish, Judge Bell “impressed upon the minds of the grand jurors that along with other laws the Sunday law must be enforced.” In defending the constitutionality of such laws, Judge Bell said:—

If the object of this law were to compel the observance of Sunday as a religious institution, because it is the Christian sabbath, to be kept holy under the ordinances of the Christian religion, it would not receive the approval of our courts. Such a law would be violative of the constitutional prohibition. It would violate the religious liberty of the Christian, the Jew, and the infidel, none of whom can be compelled by law to comply with any merely religious observance. But the law in question makes no reference to Sunday as a religious holy day, and was not designed to enforce the Christian idea of the Sabbath, or to apply the rules of any religious sect to its observance.

The statute is to be judged as if it had selected Thursday or any day of the week other than Sunday, and its validity is not to be questioned because the legislature has chosen that day which the majority of our citizens, under the sanction of their religious faith, already voluntarily observe as a day of rest.

With such plausible reasoning do Sunday law defenders attempt to deceive themselves and the public. The simple fact is that those who demand these laws are avowedly opposed to the selection of any other day than Sunday as the day of rest for the working man, and are never satisfied with a law which secures to employees a cessation of labor one day in seven. This is the clearest proof that, however much it may be denied, there is after all a purpose to legislate in behalf of a religious observance. The same considerations which lead men as citizens to keep Sunday as the alleged Sabbath move them as legislators to pass laws requiring others to refrain from labor on that particular day. Such legislation is religious legislation.