I turned on the television just before dinner this past Saturday and lo and behold there was one of my favorite films...Cromwell...with Richard Harris as Oliver Cromwell and Alec Guinness as England's King Charles I. I have the film on DVD and had watched it a month or so ago... but it was on and I was going to watch it again.
To be very...very succinct here....Cromwell led the Puritans in the English Civil War against King Charles I and the result was the beheading of the king on charges of treason...and the ensuing Commonwealth and parliamentary government ruling as a republic. England flourished under Cromwell's rule but he died of natural causes only five years into his Protectorate. With this powerful man gone and not even a near-equal to replace him, Charles Stuart's son victoriously returned to London and in 1660 became King Charles II in what was called the Restoration. Oh, there was a parliament at this time also... it was sometimes called the Pensioner Parliament because generous pensions were handed out to those who helped Charles II become king.
The great plague of London followed in 1665 and the great fire of London the year after that. England then lost a naval battle to the Dutch. The people were divided between the strictly religious of the Cromwell era and the sporting minded Loyalists in power. Is this beginning to sound strangely familiar to you?
The following is a book review of mine from March of 2009...slightly modified.
"The Peculiar Life of Sundays"
I had already read a few books on the history of Sundays in Western culture, they were good but the information was becoming redundant. I finally got around to a Christmas present, The Peculiar Life Of Sundays (Harvard Press) by Stephen Miller, and was more than pleasantly surprised. Miller gives us the history of Sundays in England and America through the eyes of literary figures using their own writings and correspondence.
Their chief complaint against the Sabbath when 'Sabbatarians' were in power was the "gloominess" of the day. There was a correlation in that those that either rejected Christianity, doubted its legitimacy or were outright pagans desired to experience the wonders of nature and the joys of recreation rather than observe the Christian Sabbath. A second correlation was that there was a general health of the nation when that nation observed the Lord's Day, and disarray and general decline when it rejected God's commandment. In both cases, the church itself declined along with the nation.
According to Miller, William Wilberforce had two goals in life, to rid England of slavery and to see the improvement of manners which Miller said included a return to honoring the Lord's Day. Time and time again over the years the issue would come to a head in England. Miller describes the situation in 1858; "Twice in June and July 1858 more than 150,000 people demonstrated in London against a bill that would curtail Sunday trade and further restrict the hours that pubs could be open on Sunday. Karl Marx, who was present at the first demonstration, was ecstatic. The 'English Revolution' had begun, he said."
In 1932, one year before Hitler came to power in Germany, the English were finally given the right to play soccer on Sunday. In America our NFL football moved to Sunday games in 1933. The curriculums during my high schools years, as in most secondary schooling in that day, glorified accomplished American writers who discredited Christianity in their works, and who were opposed to the Christian concept of observing the Lord's Day. Ralph Waldo Emerson, speaking to Harvard divinity students, told them "On Sundays, it seems wicked to go to church" and advised them to "dare to love God without mediator or veil." Walt Whitman was a pantheist that read scripture. He admitted that he was not Christian but applied it when he thought it would sooth others. Henry David Thoreau, of Walden Pond fame, was a pantheist and a pagan. Quoting Stephen Miller on Thoreau "Christianity, he says, turns people into neurotic souls who worry that an angry God will punish them for being idle, and for not observing the Sabbath." Writing in his typical satire and flair, Mark Twain, in Extracts From Adam's Diary, has Adam write "I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give me time to rest from the weariness of Sunday."
Today the church has found the perfect agenda of worship in the morning, sports in the afternoon and a good television special in the evening. God laid out His design and we have applied our revisions to it. Unfortunately, not only are Sundays gloomy to many unbelievers, they are gloomy to many Christians also.
My personal experience has been this.... when Christ is preached on the Lord's Day in all His glory and majesty, I am rejuvenated, and consequently the day prepares me for the following week. When Christ is not preached, I also can see it as gloomy; not that the scriptural application coming from the pulpit is not good and needed, nor that meeting in worship with other believers is not what we should do, but rather that the glory and majesty of Christ was bypassed, taken for granted, and deemed not necessary to be dwelled upon every week.
To be very...very succinct here....Cromwell led the Puritans in the English Civil War against King Charles I and the result was the beheading of the king on charges of treason...and the ensuing Commonwealth and parliamentary government ruling as a republic. England flourished under Cromwell's rule but he died of natural causes only five years into his Protectorate. With this powerful man gone and not even a near-equal to replace him, Charles Stuart's son victoriously returned to London and in 1660 became King Charles II in what was called the Restoration. Oh, there was a parliament at this time also... it was sometimes called the Pensioner Parliament because generous pensions were handed out to those who helped Charles II become king.
The great plague of London followed in 1665 and the great fire of London the year after that. England then lost a naval battle to the Dutch. The people were divided between the strictly religious of the Cromwell era and the sporting minded Loyalists in power. Is this beginning to sound strangely familiar to you?
The following is a book review of mine from March of 2009...slightly modified.
"The Peculiar Life of Sundays"
I had already read a few books on the history of Sundays in Western culture, they were good but the information was becoming redundant. I finally got around to a Christmas present, The Peculiar Life Of Sundays (Harvard Press) by Stephen Miller, and was more than pleasantly surprised. Miller gives us the history of Sundays in England and America through the eyes of literary figures using their own writings and correspondence.
Their chief complaint against the Sabbath when 'Sabbatarians' were in power was the "gloominess" of the day. There was a correlation in that those that either rejected Christianity, doubted its legitimacy or were outright pagans desired to experience the wonders of nature and the joys of recreation rather than observe the Christian Sabbath. A second correlation was that there was a general health of the nation when that nation observed the Lord's Day, and disarray and general decline when it rejected God's commandment. In both cases, the church itself declined along with the nation.
According to Miller, William Wilberforce had two goals in life, to rid England of slavery and to see the improvement of manners which Miller said included a return to honoring the Lord's Day. Time and time again over the years the issue would come to a head in England. Miller describes the situation in 1858; "Twice in June and July 1858 more than 150,000 people demonstrated in London against a bill that would curtail Sunday trade and further restrict the hours that pubs could be open on Sunday. Karl Marx, who was present at the first demonstration, was ecstatic. The 'English Revolution' had begun, he said."
In 1932, one year before Hitler came to power in Germany, the English were finally given the right to play soccer on Sunday. In America our NFL football moved to Sunday games in 1933. The curriculums during my high schools years, as in most secondary schooling in that day, glorified accomplished American writers who discredited Christianity in their works, and who were opposed to the Christian concept of observing the Lord's Day. Ralph Waldo Emerson, speaking to Harvard divinity students, told them "On Sundays, it seems wicked to go to church" and advised them to "dare to love God without mediator or veil." Walt Whitman was a pantheist that read scripture. He admitted that he was not Christian but applied it when he thought it would sooth others. Henry David Thoreau, of Walden Pond fame, was a pantheist and a pagan. Quoting Stephen Miller on Thoreau "Christianity, he says, turns people into neurotic souls who worry that an angry God will punish them for being idle, and for not observing the Sabbath." Writing in his typical satire and flair, Mark Twain, in Extracts From Adam's Diary, has Adam write "I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give me time to rest from the weariness of Sunday."
Today the church has found the perfect agenda of worship in the morning, sports in the afternoon and a good television special in the evening. God laid out His design and we have applied our revisions to it. Unfortunately, not only are Sundays gloomy to many unbelievers, they are gloomy to many Christians also.
My personal experience has been this.... when Christ is preached on the Lord's Day in all His glory and majesty, I am rejuvenated, and consequently the day prepares me for the following week. When Christ is not preached, I also can see it as gloomy; not that the scriptural application coming from the pulpit is not good and needed, nor that meeting in worship with other believers is not what we should do, but rather that the glory and majesty of Christ was bypassed, taken for granted, and deemed not necessary to be dwelled upon every week.
