Monday, September 7, 2026

It is the 7th of September 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

We have a mailbag episode this coming weekend… and so I’ve dusted off a show I wrote only to discover I wrote the date down wrong… so, an “out of time” show…

 

Pop Quiz! What day is “the Sabbath”? Saturday? Sunday?

 

It’s a trickier question than you might think. Technically, Friday at sundown until Saturday at sundown. The early church, of course, changed the day of corporate gathering to Sunday- “the Lord’s Day” in honor of the Resurrection. Over time, the sabbath laws of the Old Testament came to overlap with the practices of Christians and the “Lord’s Day”. The explicit identification with Sunday as the Sabbath, along with its Old Testament regulations, became prominent with the Puritans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

 

I’ll let you decide what kind of continuity you want to have with the Old Testament Sabbath and the Lord’s Day…. But let me tell you the story about when the King of England decided to use a little Sunday controversy to stabilize a precarious balance in the nation between Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans.

 

The story goes that in 1617 King James I (and VI of Scotland) was traveling back home when he was stopped in Lancashire, where some of his subjects told him that they were being barred by “Some Puritans” from recreation after the service. James, with the council of the local bishop, Thomas Morton, prepared a response for Lancashire, and it was published as the “Declaration of Sports”. The king was pleased with the document such that in 1618 he nationalized it- no longer just for Lancashire, but the ruling in the Book of Sports was now for the entire Kingdom.

 

The declaration was more one of permission than prohibition. Bowling remained prohibited for common people at all times, but this was a long-standing ban, as it was seen that it took away from the time one should spend on Archery (this was considered an issue of national security). Bear and Bull baiting was prohibited on Sundays- this was the practice of chaining a bear or a bull and sending dogs into the arena to see which dogs could survive the larger beasts. It was banned because it was seen to encourage gambling and general disorder (fun fact: the British Bulldog was bred for these contests; they were so fierce when bull baiting was banned, they were selectively bred to become more docile).

 

The Declaration did permit dancing, archery, leaping (who doesn’t love a good “leap”), maypoles, and Whit-sundays (that was like Pentecost meets Oktoberfest).

 

More importantly, if you didn’t attend the local Church of England service, and that in your own parish, you were forbidden from any of the activities. The Declaration was a means to get people to go to the established Church. While that may have been the intended purpose, the document itself claims two other purposes. The concern was that the Puritanical ban on Sunday sports would push some to the Catholic fold where they had no such rules (although, according to the document, if you were Catholic you couldn’t engage in Sunday sports anyway). The second argument was that banning all activity left the “meaner sort” towards “filthy tipplings and drunkenness”.

 

James originally wanted the Declaration to be read aloud in every pulpit, but backed down as it was very unpopular. It was his son, Charles I, who pushed the envelope. He reissued the declaration in 1633 with additional text (many thought the Archbishop William Laud, a man very unpopular with the Puritans, wrote it… he probably didn’t). Charles not only reissued the law but ordered that every minister read it aloud from the pulpit. If any minister refused, they would be removed from their church and lose their salary. This was a clever way to test loyalty to the crown. And like much of what Charles I did, this exacerbated the tensions in the Kingdom. When the Puritans took over Parliament in the 1640’s they not only reversed the law, but it was amidst the early years of the Civil War in 1643 that they had the document publicly burned.

So, there you have it: sports, Sabbath, Puritans, and Civil War…

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and 1 Peter 2:

11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

13 Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. 15 For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. 16 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. 17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 7th of September 2026 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man glad there’s no emperor or that text would be difficult… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who knows that text is at the core of later resistance theory… but… Go Rams… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.