c. 2007 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) From the church pews to the living-room Superbowl game watch, Sunday celebrations vary greatly across America _ although, for some, church services and sporting events are observed with nearly equal fervor.
Craig Harline, an author and professor at Brigham Young University, explores the origins and current state of the first day of the week in his new book, “Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Superbowl,” which will be released in March.
“The topic resonated with me right away,” Harline said in an interview. “There’s a constant debate, implicit and explicit, on whether (people are) to rest (on Sunday) or whether that rest includes play.”
And, Harline discovered, Sunday may have been influenced more by European colonizers than many Americans realize.
A more puritanical Sunday, focused on rest and worship, follows the British tradition. A Sunday marked by both worship and play is more in line with the custom in continental European countries such as France.
“I grew up in the Puritan tradition, or strain, in America,” Harline said, “and I think the other kind of Sunday, in France and Belgium, for instance, really made an impression on me. This is the favorite day of the week for these people.”
The pleasure-seeking, sports-and-events-oriented Sunday of continental Europe has attracted friends and foes since its inception. When a more active, less restful, Sunday took root soon after the Civil War, Harper’s magazine described the makeover as promoting “beer, flowers, kisses, and display of bodies,” according to Harline’s book.
American Sundays gradually became a mix of the British and continental traditions, making the U.S. start to the week the “most lively and varied of all,” Harline wrote.
In the book, Harline describes the concerns of many Americans about this new, spirited Sunday. Many pinpoint the decline of a restful Sunday to the waves of immigrants in the late 19th century, including large numbers of Catholics from Germany, Ireland and southern Europe.
But it wasn’t just Europeans who influenced Sunday as a day of worship for Christians. For example, the seven-day week likely was invented in the Middle East. Elevating one day of the week above all others began as a Jewish concept based on the Creation account in Genesis.
The Romans popularized the seven-day week, and Christians used Sunday to worship their God to counteract the pagans who honored their Sun God on the first day of the week _ “Sun Day.”
Other traditions suggest the Christian Sabbath was moved to Sunday to mark the day Jesus rose from the dead, three days after his crucifixion and burial on Good Friday. Some Protestants _ most notably Seventh-day Adventists _ continue to mark the Sabbath on Saturdays.
Harline, who worked on the book for three years, said he found the research into the ancient and modern conceptions of Sunday fascinating.
“One of the reasons I wrote the book was because I didn’t particularly have any Sunday memories,” Harline said. “It was kind of sterile.”
KRE/LF END BOYLE
Editors: To obtain photos of Harline and the cover of his book, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.
