The World of Ellen G. White

Chapter 7—The Sunday Law Movement

Dennis Pettibone

Those who honor the Bible Sabbath will be denounced as enemies of law and order, as breaking down the moral restraints of society, causing anarchy and corruption, and calling down the judgments of God upon the earth.... Even in free America, rulers and legislators, in order to secure public favor, will yield to the popular demand for a law enforcing Sunday observance. —The Great Controversy, 592. WEGW 113.1

I wish to God we had more Methodist churches, and more Baptist churches, and more Catholic churches,” Obion County attorney general J. R. Bond told the jury, “but in the name of God, I do not want any of these Advent churches, or Mormon churches.” WEGW 113.2

Robert M. King, a new convert to Adventism, was being tried for plowing his cornfield on Sunday. Several months earlier, his Methodist neighbors—fearing that King’s example would confuse their children as to which day really was the Sabbath—had demanded that he either quit keeping Saturday or move away from the Tennessee community in which he had lived all his life. If he did not start to observe Sunday, they threatened, he would be prosecuted. WEGW 113.3

Insisting on his right to observe God’s law in accordance with his understanding of the Bible, King replied that being a poor man, he could not afford to forfeit one sixth of the time he needed to support his family. WEGW 113.4

King’s non-Adventist neighbors had violated the law by hunting, fishing, and laboring on Sunday without being prosecuted. But when King had quietly gone out to cultivate a field of corn “so tall ... as to nearly hide him from sight,” he had been promptly arrested. After paying $13 in fines and costs, he had again been indicted—this time on the grounds that his Sunday plowing had been a public nuisance. WEGW 113.5

The court had not allowed the defense to produce testimony that King had already paid a fine for working on June 23, 1889. Nor had it permitted the introduction of evidence that King was a member of an organization that observed the seventh-day Sabbath or that the prosecution had singled out Seventh-day Adventists for arrest while ignoring Sunday law violations by others—including at least one of the witnesses. WEGW 114.1

Even though his lawyer had not been allowed to use King’s church membership as a defense, the prosecuting attorney was permitted to use it to arouse prejudice against the defendant. Deliberately confounding Adventism and Mormonism, Bond declared that “all those fellows” should be hanged. “Not satisfied with working on Sunday, and keeping half a dozen women,” he raged, “they come down here and want to save us, and have us keep half a dozen women.” WEGW 114.2

Although all the witnesses had conceded that the only way King’s work had disturbed them was by offending their religious feelings, the jury found him guilty and fined him $75 and costs—a staggering amount for a man in his financial position. WEGW 114.3

Before the implementation of his sentence, King was once again arrested—this time for hoeing in a potato patch. Meanwhile, his wheat-cutting neighbors were unmolested. Refusing to pay both fines, King was jailed for 23 days before being released on a writ of habeas corpus. WEGW 114.4

From prison he wrote, “It seems strange to me that I have to lie in jail for working on Sunday, when I can look out from here on Sunday and see people at work close enough to [holler] at, and nothing [is] said about it. Last Sunday they hauled wood here to a brick kiln, four or five men working all day. But of course, they were not Adventists.” WEGW 114.5

Having unsuccessfully appealed to the state supreme court, King took his case to a federal court. He was defended by former postmaster general Don M. Dickinson, who argued that King had been deprived of property without due process of law (because no Tennessee law made Sunday plowing a public nuisance) and equal protection of the laws (by being discriminated against because of his religious beliefs). WEGW 114.6

U. S. district judge E. S. Hammond was inclined to believe that King had been wrongfully convicted under a nonexistent law, but he said the federal courts were powerless to interfere. Denying Dickinson’s contention that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U. S. Constitution limited the states in the same way as the First Amendment limited the federal government, he asserted that the Founding Fathers had left to the states the right, “if they chose, to establish a creed and a church.” WEGW 114.7

King was not the first Adventist to be jailed for Sunday labor, nor was he the last. Between 1885 and 1896, more than 100 Seventh-day Adventists in the United States were prosecuted for working on Sunday. They paid $2,269.69 in fines and court costs, spent 1,438 days in jail, and served on chain gangs 455 days. A large share of these prosecutions took place in the Southern and border states—especially Tennessee and Arkansas. WEGW 115.1

Seventh-day Adventists living in the vicinity of Springville, Tennessee, were being arrested for Sunday law violations at least as early as 1879 and as late as 1892. The 1879 arrests, instigated by D. T. Clement, a Methodist minister, had not led to convictions, as the justice considered enforcing Sunday legislation upon Saturdaykeepers to be unconstitutional. However, W. H. Parker, another Springville SDA, was less fortunate six years later. Charged in 1885 with “maintaining a nuisance by working on Sunday,” Parker was fined $20 and costs, although the maximum legal fine in Tennessee for Sunday law violations was $3. The higher fine was a result of the charge of “nuisance,” despite the lack of evidence that he had disturbed anyone. WEGW 115.2

When the case was appealed, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the conviction, declaring that a succession of offenses against the Sunday law became an indictable nuisance even without evidence “that any person was disturbed thereby.” “It is sufficient that the acts have been open to the observation of the public,” the court said. “Their tendency is to corrupt public morals.” WEGW 115.3

Parker refused to pay the fine and costs, which by then amounted to $69.81. He believed that paying the money would, in effect, be acknowledging the justice of the conviction. He chose instead to spend 280 days in jail. This decision cost him his life, because he died from malaria contracted in the filthy prison. WEGW 115.4

For digging potatoes and weeding onions, two other Springville Adventists, James Stern and William Dortch, were convicted by a justice who had “freely sold ... goods from his store on Sunday.” They also refused to pay their fines. Spurning a promise of release if they ceased observing Saturday, they each spent about 60 days in prison. WEGW 115.5

Adventists unsuccessfully attempted to secure a Saturdaykeepers’ exemption from the Tennessee Sunday law. Their opponents considered it “awful” that SDAs were asking the right to violate the Sabbath when God had commanded that it be kept holy. WEGW 116.1

Meanwhile, for the Springville Adventists, trouble was just beginning. Proceeding on the assumption that Seventh-day Adventists were automatically Sunday law violators, the Henry County attorney general asked for the names of five SDA church members. The five—all farmers—were indicted for nuisance even though, as C. P. Bollman noted, four of them lived so far off the beaten track that their work was unlikely to be observed “unless people went out of their way to note it and be annoyed by it.” WEGW 116.2

Lacking other witnesses, the attorney general compelled the Adventists to testify against each other. Convicted, they also chose to go to jail rather than pay their fines, fearing that if they paid they would be continually rearrested until they had exhausted their financial resources. The judge ordered the sheriff to sell as much of their property as legally possible. WEGW 116.3

One of the men wrote from prison, “While I am writing to you, it being Sunday, there is a trainload of workmen passing in the streets, not 30 feet from the jail, going out to work, and they have done so every Sunday since we have been here, and it apparently does not disturb anyone. But if a poor Adventist takes his hoe out in his field and labors on Sunday, it disturbs the people for miles around.” WEGW 116.4

When the sheriff told the judge he thought the men were sincere, the judge replied, “Let them educate their consciences by the laws of Tennessee.” WEGW 116.5

Someone in authority decided that jail was not good enough for these men. In what must have been, in that time and place, a calculated insult, three of the men were assigned to a chain gang with three Blacks who had been convicted of shooting, drunkenness, and fighting. Instructed to require the Adventists to work on Saturday, the sheriff refused. WEGW 116.6

The attorney general vowed that at the next court term he would have every man in the local Adventist church indicted. The prisoners had hardly returned to their homes before church members, their children, and their neighbors were summoned before the grand jury to tell about what Sunday work they had observed their fathers, mothers, sisters, and neighbors performing in their houses and fields on Sundays. As a result, 14 members of the little SDA congregation were indicted for nuisance. WEGW 116.7

The authorities planned to conduct the trial in much the same manner as the grand jury hearings. A father was called to testify against his sons. Boys—one of them only 10 years old—were summoned to testify against their fathers, and brothers were subpoenaed to testify against each other. WEGW 117.1

Baltimore University law professor James T. Ringgold volunteered to defend the Adventists, with the assistance of W. L. Carter, a local lawyer who had previously been a justice of the peace. The defense invited a former governor and a former senator to attend the trial. The presence of these distinguished visitors apparently moderated the conduct of the attorney general and the judge. Handicapped by the necessity of behaving in an acceptable manner before a judge who was trying to maintain the appearance of conducting a fair trial, the prosecuting attorney finally declared, “The state confesses a verdict of not guilty.” WEGW 117.2

In 1885 Arkansas, ostensibly attempting to close Jewish-owned saloons on Sunday, had repealed its Sunday law exemption for “members of any religious society who observe as the Sabbath any other day.” But once the exemption was repealed, law officers ignored the saloonkeepers and began arresting Adventist farmers. WEGW 117.3

After specifically asking, “Do you know of any Seventh-day Adventists who ever work on Sunday?” the Fayetteville grand jury issued a series of indictments that led to convictions. At least one Seventh Day Baptist and about 20 SDAs in several Arkansas counties paid fines, served time in jail, and had their goods placed on auction for such crimes as digging potatoes for dinner, planting potatoes two and a half miles from the nearest public road, making emergency wagon repairs (in order to be able to appear in court the next day), hoeing in a garden, hunting squirrels in the mountains, making emergency repairs on a Methodist widow’s house in the rain at no charge, clearing land, painting a church, and picking overripe peaches. WEGW 117.4

In many of the cases, the non-Adventist witnesses were themselves engaged in labor or business on the very day they saw an Adventist working, but the witnesses were not prosecuted. WEGW 118.1

State senator R. H. Crockett sponsored a bill to restore the exemption, with the stipulations that no store or saloon be operated on Sunday and that those exempted not “disturb any religious congregation.” The bill passed in 1887, despite the opposition of the Arkansas Methodist and of Senator J. P. Copeland, who declared, “The Christian Sabbath should be observed as a day of worship; losing sight of this is to impede the progress of Christianity.” WEGW 118.2

“The Christian people of Washington County” were not happy with the exemption’s restoration. Annoyed by the Adventists’ Sunday labor, they elected Senator J. N. Tillman on a pledge to have the exemption repealed. He introduced bills to that effect in 1889 and 1891, pleading that his constituents were “getting very tired” of Adventists and suggesting that if they were driven from the State “that would not be a serious loss.” “We hope the General Assembly will not allow the plea of religious tolerance to prevent needed legislation,” said the Arkansas Methodist. As both of Tillman’s bills passed only one house of legislature, the exemption was saved. WEGW 118.3

Exemptions did not always prevent the arrest and even the conviction of Saturdaykeepers. One of the Arkansas Adventist convictions was for labor done before the exemption was repealed; another Arkansas SDA was fined after the exemption was restored. WEGW 118.4

Despite Missouri’s exemption for Saturdaykeepers, two Adventists living in that state, William Fritz and Robert Gibb, were indicted and required to post bond for doing farmwork on Sunday. They were not convicted, but David Longnecker, a Saturdaykeeper in the exemption state of Illinois, was convicted of doing common labor on Sunday. Two Massachusetts Adventists were fined for working in a barn at the rear of their house on Sunday, despite the exemption in the Massachusetts Sunday law. Exemptions were also ignored when Adventists were arrested in Maine and Michigan. WEGW 118.5

When Samuel Mitchel, of Georgia, died on February 4, 1879, the Adventists blamed his death on the “unwholesome conditions” in the damp, “loathsome prison cell” to which he had been sentenced for plowing on Sunday. A decade later, Day Conklin, another Georgia Adventist, ran out of firewood on a cold March Sunday. Cutting just enough to keep his family from freezing resulted in a conviction for violating the Sunday law. WEGW 118.6

Although his lawyer paid his fine, Conklin heard that other indictments were to be made against him. Being extremely poor and not coveting the martyr’s role, he decided to leave the state “as soon as the trial was over, leaving the corn standing in the field and other crops ungathered.” The next Sunday one of the jurors that had convicted him and one of the witnesses that had testified against him both chopped wood. WEGW 119.1

A Maryland Adventist was jailed and fined for refusing to testify in court on Saturday. The judge said that according to Maryland law only Sunday should be observed as the Sabbath. A Methodist pastor who had lost several members to the SDA Church saw John Judefind, another Maryland Adventist, husking corn 250 yards from the road. The pastor swore out a warrant for Judefind’s arrest. Although the fact that it was issued on Sunday should have invalidated the warrant, Judefind was convicted, and the state’s supreme court upheld the conviction. WEGW 119.2

Seventh-day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists living in Pennsylvania, Texas, California, and Rhode Island were hauled into court for Sunday law violations. Large numbers of Jews were also arrested for “Sabbathbreaking” in several states—especially New York. WEGW 119.3

Was it simply coincidental that this wave of Saturdaykeepers’ arrests occurred simultaneously with an intensive campaign for the enactment of additional Sunday laws and the stricter enforcement of the Sunday legislation already on the books? Many opponents of Sunday legislation believed that it was no coincidence. As they perceived it, the Sunday law movement was conceived in bigotry and espoused principles that would inevitably result in the suppression of religious minorities. WEGW 119.4

On the other hand, supporters of the Sunday law movement frequently described it as a humanitarian enterprise undertaken on behalf of the overworked laborer. What was the truth? What were the real motives and tendencies of the Sunday law movement? How did the organizations that led in this movement come about? WEGW 119.5

Early in 1863, the Civil War had not been going well for the North. Distressed over the terrible disaster his troops had suffered at Fredericksburg in December, General Ambrose Burnside had just stepped down as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Interpreting the Union defeats as a manifestation of divine wrath, clergymen representing 11 Protestant denominations met at Xenia, Ohio, on February 4, 1863, seeking ways to appease an angry God. This meeting led to the formation of the National Reform Association. WEGW 120.1

Why was God angry with the United States? According to this association’s spokesmen, the reason was the failure of its government to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to enforce His moral law. Even after the war was over and the North had won, they retained their conviction that Jehovah was displeased with America. National Reformers continued to warn, for at least the next three decades, that divine judgment threatened the United States. WEGW 120.2

In 1881 Charles J. Guiteau, an unsuccessful applicant for a position of U. S. consul in France, shot President James Garfield. Association members described the assassination as “the hand of an angry God, smiting a guilty land for the dishonor done to His Son, and the despite shown to His law, in according them no authority in the government of the nation.” In 1890 James M. Foster, a National Reform Association district secretary, declared that Jesus had a controversy with this nation. He predicted that the United States would “be broken in pieces” unless it terminated its “rebellion” and “bowed to the scepter of Jesus Christ.” WEGW 120.3

National Reformers started the movement for a national Sunday law in 1879. They considered Sunday legislation to be essential because the Sabbath was a part of God’s law. Passage of a national Sunday law would be especially important, they believed, because such legislation would mean “national recognition of divine sovereignty.” WEGW 120.4

National Reform Association members were not alone, during the late nineteenth century, in fearing that divine wrath threatened this nation. To many Protestants, America seemed to be turning its back on God. Catholics, Jews, agnostics, and atheists were immigrating to the United States in record numbers. New denominations, including the Mormons and the Seventh-day Adventists, were taking members away from the mainstream churches. In addition, traditional Protestantism felt threatened by modernism and secularism. These other Protestants, like the National Reformers, believed that the passage and enforcement of strict Sunday legislation was an important method of preventing divine judgment. WEGW 120.5

Besides the National Reform Association, the two most important national groups working for Sunday legislation were the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the American Sabbath Union. The WCTU, led by Frances Willard, a vice president of the NRA, declared its intention to lead the nation to acknowledge Jesus Christ as “sovereign King” and to make the Bible the basis of its laws. WEGW 121.1

At the suggestion of the NRA spokesman, the WCTU organized a Department of Sabbath Observance. This department promoted all types of Sunday laws—not just those dealing with Sunday liquor. For a three-month period in 1888 the WCTU made petitioning for a national Sunday law its prime task. Other temperance organizations, including the Prohibition Party and the National Law and Order League, also jumped on the Sunday law bandwagon. WEGW 121.2

The American Sabbath Union was the brainchild of Wilbur F. Crafts, a Presbyterian minister whose ideas were very similar to those of the National Reform Association. At his suggestion, representatives of the leading Protestant denominations met together to form an interdenominational organization dedicated to the promotion of Sunday legislation. A number of key people held leadership positions in both the National Reform Association and the American Sabbath Union. WEGW 121.3

One reason for stricter Sunday law enforcement, according to ASU spokesmen, was that it would improve church attendance. It was the state’s duty, they said, to give “the churches ... a chance to draw people to church” by eliminating competition from the saloons, theaters, cigar stands, ice-cream stores, soda fountains, baseball games, excursions, and newspapers. WEGW 121.4

Prodded by the WCTU, the ASU, and the NRA, religious bodies began deluging Congress with petitions purporting to represent 14 million Americans who demanded passage of a national Sunday law. All but a handful of these petitions came from ministers, churches, other ecclesiastical bodies, and religiously oriented temperance organizations. The chief petitioners, aside from the WCTU, were Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational groups. Most major Protestant denominations participated in the petitioning. WEGW 121.5

In 1888, the WCTU-sponsored petitions led Senator H. W. Blair to introduce a Senate bill outlawing nearly all secular work or recreation on Sunday in areas exclusively subject to federal jurisdiction. Railroads would be required to suspend operations on Sunday, and the U. S. mail would grind to a halt for 24 hours each week. WEGW 122.1

When the Senate failed to act on his bill, Senator Blair gave it a minor face-lift and reintroduced it. The only differences were a change in title, substitution of the word “Sunday” for the expression “Lord’s day,” and a partial exemption for those who worshiped on other days. WEGW 122.2

When this bill also failed to become law, proponents of congressional Sunday legislation concentrated their attention on the District of Columbia. Even though the city of Washington already had a Sunday ordinance, the WCTU prompted Congressman Breckenridge to introduce general Sunday bills for the nation’s capital in 1890 and 1892. The point was to get Congress on record as favoring Sunday legislation so that a precedent could be set for the passage of more extensive Sunday legislation later. WEGW 122.3

These bills, also unsuccessful, were followed by a bill even narrower in focus: one to prevent in the District of Columbia the sale or delivery of ice “on Sabbath day.” This bill passed the House but not the Senate. WEGW 122.4

Anticipating the Columbian Exposition to be held in Chicago in 1893, the churches and the Sunday law organizations launched an even more extensive petition campaign than that of 1888. Determined that the gates of the fair be closed on Sunday, they circulated petitions that pledged a lifelong ballot box opposition to any member of Congress who voted for any financial aid for the exposition that was not conditional upon Sunday closing. After initially defeating the bill, congressmen, facing the prospect of having their votes publicized when a roll call was demanded on a second vote, nearly doubled the yea vote, and 12 fewer noted nay. WEGW 122.5

Both houses of Congress yielded to the churchgoers’ wishes. Sunday law proponents were ecstatic. “I have learned that we hold the United States Senate in our hands,” crowed H. H. George, a National Reform lobbyist. “That the church has weight with great political ... bodies has been demonstrated most effectively,” agreed J. O. Sands, a United Presbyterian minister. WEGW 122.6

But the fair directors turned the Sunday law movement’s victory into defeat. Congress had been willing to enact the bill, but it made no provision for its enforcement. Hence the fair directors made the agreement, took the money, and opened the fair on Sunday anyway. WEGW 123.1

The reform movement was more successful in the courts and on the state and local level. Judicial decisions frequently reflected the arguments of the Sunday law advocates. Except for a quickly overturned decision of the California Supreme Court, the courts of this period were unanimous in declaring that Sunday legislation was constitutional. In an opinion that seemed to borrow heavily from National Reform literature, Justice David J. Brewer, speaking for the U. S. Supreme Court, pointed to Sunday legislation as an evidence that the United States was a Christian nation. WEGW 123.2

On the state and local level, Sunday law agitators concentrated on three objectives—to secure the passage of new and stricter Sunday laws, to prevent the liberalization or repeal of existing Sunday legislation, and to breathe new life into these laws by draconian enforcement campaigns. They tried to eliminate all secular work and recreation on the first day of the week. WEGW 123.3

From New England to California they obtained spasmodic enforcement campaigns that would make a big splash and then fade away. They prodded officers of the law to arrest tenement-dwelling children for playing baseball on a corner lot, a New Jersey man for playing tennis on his front lawn, a wealthy New Yorker for fishing in his private pond, a Staten Island youth for skating, and a Connecticut resident for riding a bicycle on Sunday. WEGW 123.4

Ministers and religious periodicals applauded as the Pittsburgh Law and Order League attempted to destroy the Sunday newspaper by securing the arrest not only of publishers but of more than 100 newsboys, office personnel, and news agents. WEGW 123.5

The Sunday law agitators trained their most powerful artillery on the Sunday sale of alcoholic beverages. To temperance-minded Sundaykeepers, the Sunday saloon was doubly sinful: it sold the devil’s drink on the Lord’s day. The Sunday theater was another prime target of the Sunday law movement. Opposing a “secularized Sabbath with Sunday saloons, theaters, games, excursions, museums, and art galleries,“ W. W. Everts, pastor of Chicago’s First Baptist Church, said he would rather see the Sabbath abolished than to allow it to become the means of hurrying people to destruction. WEGW 123.6

The only type of Sunday legislation to receive spontaneous widespread labor support was that requiring the closing of stores and barbershops. Although most Sunday workers received a rest day on some other day of the week, some journeyman barbers and retail clerks were required to work seven days a week. For workers in these two occupational groups there was at least an element of truth in the preachers’ claim that without Sunday legislation the wage earner would be condemned to the endless toil of a seven-day workweek. WEGW 124.1

And yet even the agitation for closing the stores and barbershops on Sunday was largely impelled by religious considerations. Concerned with the exaltation of Sunday more than with the rights of the workingman, preachers having a generally negative attitude toward the labor movement professed to be labor’s friend only to secure union support for Sunday legislation. The Western Christian Advocate editor admitted, “I have not as much interest in the laboring man on the six days as I have on the Sabbath day.” WEGW 124.2

Between 1879 and 1892 stricter and more punitive laws were passed in Washington, Ohio, New Mexico, and Illinois, as well as in several local communities. Connecticut and Texas passed laws that were stricter in some respects and more lenient in others. Both New York and Arkansas passed laws that were in some respects more severe, then amended them to be more lenient. Massachusetts, Vermont, and Missouri also relaxed their law altogether in 1883, but Louisiana adopted one for the first time in 1886. Sunday law advocates were able to prevent the liberalization of the Louisiana and Pennsylvania statutes and the repeal of the Texas Sunday law. WEGW 124.3

Religious prejudice was strong in the Sunday law movement. The leading individuals, organizations, and periodicals that promoted Sunday legislation demonstrated a virulent opposition to Mormonism, Catholicism, atheism, and agnosticism. Some Sunday law advocates also betrayed a strong dislike for Seventh-day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists. WEGW 124.4

Senator Henry Blair, author of the national Sunday bill of 1888, declared, “Only a homogeneous people can be great. No nation can exist with more than one religion.” Predicting that the American people would “gradually expel from our geographical boundaries” all non-Christian religions, Blair asserted, “No other religion than Christianity ... is consistent with the existence of human liberty and republican institutions.” He said, “The people are questioning whether there be not some mistake in theories of religious liberty, which permits the inculcation of the most destructive errors in the name of toleration, and the spread of pestilence under the name of liberty.” WEGW 124.5

Prejudice translated into action frequently becomes persecution, and Sunday laws—in the words of Seventh-day Adventist W. A. Colcord—offered a “most convenient means for one religionist’s giving vent to his spite toward another with whom he does not agree.” Sometimes persecution was deliberate, while at other times the simple fact that Sunday laws were being enforced could have made those who did not consider Sunday holy to feel that they were being persecuted. WEGW 125.1

Saturdaykeepers were not the only people who thought that they were suffering religious discrimination because of Sunday laws. Liberal Christians and agnostics belonging to the American Secular Union believed that they were being “singled out” for repeated arrest, and Buddhist businessmen complained about police attempts to enforce the Sunday laws in New York’s Chinese district, asserting that they had as much right “to keep Buddhistic sacred days and do business on Sunday as other people [had] to keep Sunday and work on Buddhistic holy days.” WEGW 125.2

However, complaints of religious persecution through Sunday law enforcement came most frequently from observers of the seventh day. Although some states exempted them from the penalties of the Sunday laws, others did not. Many leaders of the Sunday law movement clearly opposed such exemptions, while those favoring them frequently contended that these exemptions should be limited. They especially denounced any provision that would permit anyone to engage in business on Sunday. WEGW 125.3

The imprisonment of Daniel C. Waldo, a Seventh Day Baptist, for Sunday labor led state senator Horatio Gates Jones to introduce a bill to partially exempt Saturdaykeepers from Pennsylvania’s Sunday legislation. Bitterly opposed by Methodist and Presbyterian ministers and by the National Reform Association and the Philadelphia Sabbath Union, the Jones Religious Liberty Bill was defeated. WEGW 125.4

Frequently, Sunday law advocates claimed that granting an exemption would nullify the effect of legislation and make it difficult to enforce. “It would not do to make fish for a Jew and fowl for a Gentile,” declared one Illinois legislator. Agreeing that the law should apply to everyone, David McAllister, a prominent Sunday law advocate, stated, “It is better that a few should suffer than that a whole nation should lose its Sabbath.” “We want but one Sabbath in this country,” said Byron Sunderland, another prominent Sunday law advocate. “We don’t want any Judaizing here.” WEGW 126.1

Referring to the Seventh-day Adventist Church as “a mildew and a blight,” National Reformer J. M. Foster declared that Saturdaykeepers should be required to cease from common labor on Sunday “on the basis of the law of God.” Fearing that an Adventist Sunday-law violator would escape conviction because he kept one day in seven, G. W. Robertson asked in the American Christian Review, “Who authorized any court to trifle with God’s word in that way?” WEGW 126.2

Even though spokesmen for some Sabbath associations and related groups—hoping to temper the rabid opposition of Saturdaykeepers to Sunday legislation and to broaden their support—found it expedient at times to back at least a partial exemption for those worshiping on other days, their real lack of concern for the rights of Saturdaykeepers is illustrated by their reaction to the prosecutions in Arkansas and Tennessee. The leaders of the national Sunday law movement responded with either silence or criticism of the Adventists. Of all the prominent supporters of Sunday legislation, only the editor of the New York Independent spoke out in behalf of the Adventists. WEGW 126.3

Sunday laws were sometimes used as an instrument of personal revenge. The man who had David Longnecker arrested was angry with him because of another matter; when his anger cooled he agreed to drop the Sunday case. Daniel C. Waldo was imprisoned for Sunday labor at the instigation of a neighbor after Waldo complained to him that the neighbor’s son had been bullying Waldo’s boy. WEGW 126.4

A Springfield, Massachusetts, resident with a grudge against one of his neighbors had him arrested for hoeing in his garden on Sunday. Two weeks later the convicted neighbor retaliated by having his accuser arrested for Sunday work. A Battle Creek resident suggested repealing the Saturdaykeepers’ exemption because he was unhappy over the way the local Adventists voted. WEGW 126.5

After a quarrel with saloonkeeper William Mace, another saloonkeeper, Michael McCarthy, reported his competitor to the authorities for violating the Sunday law. WEGW 127.1

The American Sentinel, the Seventh-day Adventist religious liberty magazine, claimed that in almost every Sunday law case, “a bad law was used as a means of venting petty spite, of getting even on some neighborhood quarrel, or of gratifying religious bigotry and intolerance.” Observed Attorney Ringgold, “Just as informations for ‘heresy’ in olden times were most frequently the outcome of private animosity, so nearly every prosecution under our Sunday laws is the result of petty spite, meanness, and malice.” WEGW 127.2

Many of the leaders of the Sunday law movement were palpably bigoted persons, and the movement’s leadership acquiesced as other bigoted persons took advantage of the Sunday laws to enforce their intolerance. To those appalled by the relaxed Sunday observance practices of both the “old” German immigrants and the “new” immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe—arriving in record-breaking numbers during the 1880s—the Sunday law presented itself as a promising means of controlling the Sabbathbreaking newcomers. To those dismayed by the proselytizing success of the constantly growing New World sects, the Sunday law appeared to be a useful weapon for restraining one of those aggressive young religious organizations and for counteracting the example set by Saturdaykeepers. To those with personal grudges against their neighbors, the Sunday law provided a handy opportunity for revenge. WEGW 127.3

But by condoning the enforcement of Sunday laws against those observing the seventh day, the Sunday law agitators created a backlash. This backlash helped to abort their own dream of a homogeneous, evangelical, Protestant America with close ties between religion and government. WEGW 127.4

Rather than retreating in the face of persecution, the Seventh Day Baptists began to more aggressively assert the claims of the seventh day and the evils of Sunday legislation, while the Seventh-day Adventists undertook the destruction of everything the National Reform Association and their Sabbath Union allies stood for. At least partially in self-defense, they organized the National Religious Liberty Association and loudly publicized the prosecutions of their brethren, obtaining a great deal of sympathy from the secular press. WEGW 127.5

Not satisfied with simply defending themselves, they declared that they would violate the golden rule if they acquiesced in religious legislation not necessarily directed at them. Proclaiming the total separation of religion and government to be an important biblical and constitutional principle, they became the most aggressive opponents of all Sunday laws, with or without Saturdaykeepers’ exemptions, and insistently opposed even religious legislation that would financially benefit their denomination. Forcing themselves to “the forefront of the struggle for strict separation of church and state,” they participated heavily in the agitation and litigation that helped shape the modern American concept of the proper relation between religion and the government. WEGW 128.1