Initial thoughts on the Lord’s Day in public life
Featuring anecdotal evidence, vibes and charity
From time to time in recent months, I have been mulling over the theology and practice of the Sabbath, or the Lord’s Day. I have been interested in this at a theological level, as I am with many things, but what really animated my thought on this was Jemimah’s and my ongoing difficulty in keeping the Lord’s Day as reliably and extensively as we’d probably like to.
What follows is a sketch of a thesis on this subject, which still needs much more thought and refinement. Since writing remains undefeated as the means for me to process big ideas, I wondered if I might not just try to explore these matters in public.
One aspect of our cultural apostasy that has come to strike me as especially significant in recent months is the disappearance of the Lord’s Day from our public timekeeping.1
The public practice of Sabbath-keeping is one of those many plausibility structures that has historically made Christian faith plausible to people in our society. While there are many of these structures, the Sabbath is an especially significant one because it implies not only the mere truthfulness of Christian ideas, but it also powerfully presents the centrality and overwhelming importance of Christ, so much so that everything else in human life must centre itself around him. In a community that recognises the Lord’s Day, and honours and encourages people to gather at public worship, it is very difficult to forget or ignore that Man who claimed that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him.
With the loss of the Sabbath then, our commonwealth is less ready to accept the authority and centrality of Christ, unless his rule can be turned into an “opt-in” matter for those who might be interested in that kind of thing. Even in our increasingly aggressive secular setting, it is usually acknowledged by unbelievers that Christianity can be important to a given person’s life, or perhaps to the life of a family. What is forcefully denied, however, is that Christ is of the utmost importance to human life as such. (“Human life”, as I am using it here, is not merely concerned with the lives of individuals, but also that shared civic life which is a part of man’s nature.)
As Christians, we should soberly consider our part in this re-imagining and minimising of the scope of kingdom of God. Many ministers and evangelists rightly recognise that the gospel is necessarily concerned with transforming people’s whole lives: thus, we have nothing good to say about those who want only three dollars worth of gospel. At the same time, it is not at all uncommon (at least within Australian evangelicalism) to hear vociferous denials that the gospel is at all concerned with transforming human culture. Quite obviously, this depends upon seeing “people’s lives” as something more or less unrelated to “culture”. This is a mistake about the gospel, yes, but I think it is first and foremost a mistake about anthropology, and what human life actually is in all its dimensions. The unfortunate effect of this is to emaciate our vision of Christ’s rule, so that we no longer even hope to see his rod strike the kings of many nations over the whole wide earth; it now only touches down in hearts, homes and opt-in “faith communities”.2
In this context, Sabbath-keeping becomes something that can only be the habit of the individual, the family, and the opt-in faith community. It is still the case that most Christians regularly attend public worship on Sundays,3 and this remains a general expectation of Christian life. However, going to church is understood as simply one more private activity that does not imply much if anything for public life.
I hasten to add that I believe that there is real blessing and delight for those who keep the Sabbath to whatever extent it is possible for them to do, and I do not wish to suggest that because we are unlikely to live up our ideals any time soon that we should not try at all. I also believe that an individual who keeps the Sabbath can serve as a public testimony against the prevailing social mores, and in that way exemplify life in obedience to Christ’s rule. I am trying to emphasise, however, that the Sabbath has public dimensions that cannot be realised in their full extent merely by private individuals or private groups. A private Sabbath cannot form the habits and rhythms of life of the civic community, and in that respect, it is missing one of its key aims.
There is much more that can be said about this, and Lord willing, I’ll explore some more of these matters in the future. A complete account would seek to explore historical questions about what has actually happened in the history of our nations, practical questions about what can feasibly be done in our present moment, and policy ideas about how one might restore the Lord’s Day to a central place in our society. Last, but not at all least, it would engage in the substantial theological questions about what the Lord’s Day is—and whether this entire line of thought has any theological merit in the first place.
Some of these may be subject matter for future posts. For now, I take my rest.
I am using “Lord’s Day” and “Sabbath” interchangeably here, and I might save for another day any more precise discussion about the meanings of those terms.
Eschatology is often the culprit here. Few would absolutely deny that the kingdom of God is concerned with transforming public life in a comprehensive way, so long as this public transformation is placed securely on the “not yet” side of the Already/Not-Yet ledger.
It is a point of fascination to me that the gospel just so happens to be “already” transformative in only those domains in which the liberal democratic social vision allows religion to have significance: the life of the individual, the family, and the faith community.
My source for this is a mix of anecdotal evidence, vibes and charity.