Arguing that we have created a “negative rat race, with limited ability or potential for good interactions with one another,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran an opinion article on Christmas day, 2015 suggesting that it’s time to protect Sunday as a day of rest from shopping, business, the Internet, etc. It even advocated paying people to rest on Sunday.
“There is no argument or question that our country was founded on Christian values that have eroded over the years.” Whereas in the not too distant past, nonessential businesses were required to be closed on Sundays, now we have Sunday shopping, the article continued.
“Our Congress should revisit and our candidates for president should consider advocating the restoration of Sunday as a day of rest, a paid day of rest, a required day of rest…
“Americans deserve a day of rest, a day to be with families, attend church and interact with people on an interpersonal level. Imagine shutting down the Internet or cellphones for a day. How peaceful that day would be!”
“We need to restore one takeaway from our past: Sunday as a day of rest, a day of worship, of prayer that was invaluable to our family values and individual well-being.”
“In the movements now in progress in the United States to secure for the institutions and usages of the church the support of the state, Protestants are following in the steps of papists. Nay, more, they are opening the door for the papacy to regain in Protestant America the supremacy which she has lost in the Old World. And that which gives greater significance to this movement is the fact that the principal object contemplated is the enforcement of Sunday observance–a custom which originated with Rome, and which she claims as the sign of her authority. It is the spirit of the papacy–the spirit of conformity to worldly customs, the veneration for human traditions above the commandments of God–that is permeating the Protestant churches and leading them on to do the same work of Sunday exaltation which the papacy has done before them.” The Great Controversy, page 573.