We Like Sundays

The visit by the Jehovah’s Witnesses this week reminded me of the time that a husband-and-wife team, or at least a man-and-woman team of Korean sectarians buttonholed us during a visit to the Woodfield Mall earlier this year. I don’t recall the name of their group, though I suspect it was a homegrown Korean Protestant church. All I wanted to do was sit one of the mall’s benches and eat the pastries we’d just bought, but they wanted to talk about a particular religious bee in their bonnet, and it wasn’t evolution.

No, they were sabbatarians, out to persuade us of the error of reserving Sunday for Christian worship. Sunday as the Lord’s Day, they said, was a grievous mistake, a day invented by (variously as the conversation continued) men, Romans or pagans, or at least borrowed from pagans. That line of disparagement doesn’t go very far with someone like me, who holds ancient Rome in such high esteem.

So I asked him: Wasn’t Sunday as the Lord’s Day well established by the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325? If it were wrong why didn’t they change it then? He went on some more about the Lord’s Day being a human, as opposed to divine creation, but I think the mention of the Council of Nicaea there in the mall threw him off a little. At one point I added, “If Sunday’s good enough for Constantine, it’s good enough for me.” He looked at me funny for a moment, but didn’t really acknowledge that idea.

Later, they left us with some sabbatarian tracts, and at his insistence I left him with my phone number. Oops, I got a few digits wrong.