Who gets to name eras and movements in history? I usually don’t blog about my dissertation, but today is an exception. You might’ve heard of the Sabbatarians as a movement of people who campaigned for Sunday “blue” laws throughout American history.[1] In the early United States, they were particularly offended by Sunday mail delivery. Since my dissertation chronicles Sunday mail delivery from 1810 through 1912, which is when mail arrived on Sundays, I’ve frequently encountered the Sabbatarians in my research. However, I’m more compelled by an alternative name for them: the Sundayists.
The 1911 publication of “American state papers bearing on Sunday legislation / Compiled and annotated by William Addison Blakely. Revised edition edited by Willard Allen Colcord. Forward by Thomas M. Cooly” was a Seventh Day Adventist publication that reflected the rise of Sunday laws and anticipated the end of Sunday mail.[2] This was a heavily annotated collection of documents relating to the history of Sunday laws in the United States. In the annotations, Blakely uses the term “Sundayists” instead of “Sabbatarians,” because from his perspective as an observer of Sabbath on Saturdays, the Sabbatarians weren’t supporting all Sabbaths. Indeed, observers of Saturday Sabbath include Seventh Day Adventists and Jewish people around the world.
A Sunday-observer is someone who observes Sabbath on Sundays. A Saturday-observer is someone who observes Sabbath on Saturdays. A Sundayist is someone who is not only a Sunday-observer, but also seeks to enforce their Sabbath on everyone else for a variety of reasons. An anti-Sundayist is someone who may observe Saturday or Sunday or nothing but opposes the Sundayists’ efforts to enforce their preferences on everyone else. For instance, William Lloyd Garrison was a practicing Christian who campaigned against Sunday laws.[3] I refer to the movement of Sundayists as Sundayism.
Outstanding historians like Richard R. John, Daniel Dreisbach, and Alexis McCrossen have contributed invaluable scholarship on Sabbatarianism. John’s 1990 article “Taking Sabbatarianism Seriously” in the Journal of the Early Republic established the Sunday mail controversy as serious and formative for American politics.[4] Dreisbach situates Sabbatarianism in church-state legal issues and debates over the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause.[5] In McCrossen’s 2000 book Holy Day, Holiday, a biography of Sunday, Sabbatarians are a central character.[6]
Who am I to revert to a 1911 annotated publication to rename them?
I don’t have an answer to that last question. However, I know that calling them the Sabbatarians was confusing to me while writing. The Sundayists forged a powerful movement throughout American history to promote Sunday laws and to quash their anti-Sundayist opponents. But the holiness of Christian Sabbath was only a premise to the Sundayist argument that the United States should protect Sunday observance through federal laws and local regulations. Sabbatarianism is a misleading term because minority religious Sabbaths matter for historical analysis, too.
As a Seventh Day Adventist, William Addison Blakely recognized this and called them something different. Just because his perspective was on the margins does not make it less important.
[1] For blue laws, see Deborah Hendry Heinbuch and David N. Laband, Blue Laws: The History, Economics, and Politics of Sunday-Closing Laws (2008).
[2] William Adison Blakely, ed., American state papers bearing on Sunday legislation (Washington, DC: The Religious Liberty Association, 1911) 88; 288; 292; 301; 310; 318; 335; 337.
[3] William Lloyd Garrison, Speech to the Anti-Sabbath Convention, Proceedings of the Anti-Sabbath Convention (Boston: Published by the Convention, 23-24 March 1848) Accessed at Massachusetts Historical Society.
[4] Richard R. John, “Taking Sabbatarianism Seriously: The Postal System, the Sabbath, and the Transformation of American Political Culture,” Journal of the Early Republic, Volume 10, Number 4 (Winter 1990)
[5] Daniel L. Dreisbach, Religion and Politics in the Early Republic: Jasper Adams and the Church-State Debate (University Press of Kentucky, 1996).
[6] Alexis McCrossen, Holy Day, Holiday: The American Sunday (Cornell University Press, 2000).
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