Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Growing up in St. Louis as a kid, we had “blue laws.” Nothing but food could be sold on Sundays, and most businesses were closed. I can still see the cashier carefully sorting pencils and notebooks out of my mom’s grocery order, and putting them aside to go back to the shelves. No notebooks on Sunday. I remember embarrassing my slightly older self by rattling the liquor section of the fridge at a convenience store in Louisiana, trying in vain to open the locked case and get some beer on a Sunday. Louisiana may have allowed drive-through daiquiris the rest of the week, but not on Sundays. Sundays were special.

Sundays were special, but not anymore. Sundays are fair game for commerce, soccer, birthday parties, school events, and package delivery. As a result, Church competes with other interests on Sunday morning just as it would if it were held on Saturday, or Thursday. There is no string left on the collective little finger, no locked liquor cabinet sending the message, “Shouldn’t you be somewhere else right now...like, oh say, church?”

The end of cultural Sunday profoundly reshapes the experience of being Christian in the US. I’m intrigued by what this means for us in the church.

What does it mean to have to carve our Resurrection celebrations out of the ordinariness of the week, rather than filling a time slot set aside for us by the powers that be? What does it mean to claim rest in the midst of our go-go-go! world? Do Sunday mornings in our churches offer rest to body and soul? How important is it that people be in church every Sunday? Does claiming time for Resurrection on a Tuesday “count” in the same way? What does it feel like to join the other religious groups who have long carved out their own Holy time -- on Saturdays, Fridays, during particular lunar months -- while the rest of the world plows full speed ahead?