The Heritage Foundation is looking out for you! It cast its careful gaze over the American landscape and came to rest on the felt needs of the Public Affairs and Religious Liberty (PARL) people (and their fellow travelers) in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It noticed they were so desperate to discover a Sunday law that they were willing to imagine such laws. Fulcrum7 recently published Hobgoblins and Project 2025, my article that noted some Adventist Church leaders claimed Project 2025 was a forerunner of a national Sunday law.
It was a false claim. Project 2025 was neither a Sunday law proposal nor a harbinger of one. But, caring even about the fever dreams of the PARL people, on January 8, 2026, the Heritage Foundation published a different study that specifically promoted Sunday-closing laws. That article can be found here: https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2026-01/SR323.pdf
That proposal destroys my constant witness of half a century. This is my 50th year litigating religious liberty cases for employees who want to stand apart from labor unions. The subject of my litigation, together with my religious and political beliefs, placed me among what is often termed the “religious right.” To my knowledge, no other Seventh-day Adventist lawyer in the United States has taken my same path over those decades. In all the “religious right” meetings I attended, including a secret litigation strategy meeting, no religious right lawyer ever suggested that Sunday-closing laws were a goal to be achieved. No one ever suggested in my presence that they were even a good idea. Instead, the constant tenor of discussion was to protect individual religious liberty.
That has now changed. The Heritage Foundation is a serious voice on the political right. This new proposal ends my witness and opens a new chapter of Adventist discussion about events surrounding the Second Coming of Jesus. The good news is two-fold. The PARL people and their fellow travelers no longer have to make stuff up. The other good news is that we can now engage in precise thinking about Sunday laws.
One immediate requirement for precise thinking is to distinguish between Sunday-closing laws (Blue laws), which require businesses to close on Sunday, and Sunday-keeping laws which coerce a uniform day of worship. The two are significantly different. The Heritage Foundation article promoting Sunday-closing laws also strongly advocated for the protection of individual religious freedom.
Unintended Consequences
Other than my teasing about the felt needs of PARL folk, what would motivate the Heritage Foundation to suddenly advocate Sunday laws? Why, now, are conservative Christians discussing the merits of Sunday-closing laws? I believe this is directly connected to Charlie Kirk’s posthumously published Stop in the Name of God, a book written by an extraordinarily popular Christian political conservative about his conversion to Saturday Sabbath keeping. I’m reading Charlie’s book. He skillfully argues both the Biblical basis and the practical basis for Sabbath-keeping. Adventists historically press the Biblical basis for Sabbath-keeping. Why not? If God said it that is good enough. Charlie argues for resting on the Saturday Sabbath because the Scripture designates that specific day. He also argues the practical benefits of the Sabbath. Likely because pragmatism plays such a large role in Charlie’s argument, he seems willing to settle for resting one day a week, even if that day is Sunday. No observant Adventist would embrace that pragmatism.
Our Lord declared that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Mark 2:27. The practical side of Sabbath-keeping is a central part of God’s word. It reminds us that God gave His Ten Commandments not to cut off our heads for disobedience, but rather to make our lives better if we follow them. We have likely been remiss in not giving the blessings of the Sabbath rest experience equal billing with the Scripturally proper day for that rest. Had we done that, we might have thrust the Sabbath debate into the national conscience, rather than Charlie Kirk.
Now that Charlie has raised the practical issue of a weekly rest day, we should not be surprised to see Bible-believing Christians, and others concerned about the family, looking for practical ways to promote a weekly day of rest.
Adventists should welcome this discussion! Not only do we want attention focused on the practical aspects of the Sabbath, but careful thinkers also know that our only opposition to the embrace of a weekly day of rest is coercion.
The Coercion of Antisemitism
My entire life has been spent in the Adventist Church and my education in our schools except my law school education. If you have that same background, you know that we teach the change from Sabbath to Sunday-keeping is attributed to Roman Emperor Constantine and the head of the Roman Catholic Church. If you ask your neighbors why they attend church on Sunday, they will likely tell you it is the day Jesus rose from the grave.
All those motivational statements are true. However, my Adventist education has been deficient in what is undoubtedly the primary reason for the change in worship from Sabbath to Sunday.
How many fundamental changes in our country are led from the top down? If President Trump told you to modify your worship would you do it? What if President Biden directed the change? What if the U.S. Supreme Court mandated the change? In my observation Supreme Court rulings generally track public opinion. The Court is sometimes ahead of public opinion (as on the question of abortion), but it is never substantially ahead or behind public opinion in its rulings
Sunday-keeping laws will never be mandated unless the public is fully on board for coercion. Consider the following facts. Ellen White, the author of Adventist eschatology on Sunday worship coercion, states specifically that Satan himself mandates the change from Sabbath to Sunday. When Satan impersonates the Second Coming of Jesus (2 Thessalonians 2:1-12), he will command Sunday holiness:
[H]e claims to have changed the Sabbath to Sunday, and commands all to hallow the day which he has blessed. He declares that those who persist in keeping holy the seventh day are blaspheming his name by refusing to listen to the angels sent to them with light and truth.[1]
Having “God” mandate Sunday worship is more effective top-down influence than that wielded by either Presidents Trump or Biden
Ellen White continues with this:
As the decree issued by the various rulers of Christendom against commandment-keepers shall withdraw the protection of government, and abandon them to those who desire their destruction, the people of God will flee.[2]
This sounds like the Esther story, where the average person was ready to murder Jews and take their property.
Seventh-day Adventists should ignore the fever dreams of some Adventist leaders that “Christian Nationalism” is a threat to our religious freedom and focus instead on the real threat. That real threat is the rise of antisemitism among young people. This is not a partisan issue. It does not require us to attack our fellow Christians. Substantial numbers of young people on both the political left and right are antisemitic. And this has happened right under our noses. Young people are at least five times more likely to be antisemitic than those reading this article.
On the left side of the political spectrum, Blue Rose Research did large scale polling (~129,000 registered voters) for the Harris campaign and found that about 25% of young people were antisemitic. David Shor graphed this in a tweet.[3] While you might be tempted to dismiss this as the result of the current Israeli/Palestinian dispute, one question asked about an “unfavorable opinion” of “Jewish people.”
The Manhattan Institute, a think tank that leans right, found that 25% of current Republicans under the age of fifty openly express antisemitic views.[4] Interestingly, the Blue Rose findings concluded that right leaning young people were more antisemitic while the Manhattan Institute found that more left leaning young people were antisemitic. They agree that about 25% of young people are antisemitic while an extremely low level of old people, 4-6%, are antisemitic.
This points to a crisis that is unfolding in our presence. How can the generation that embraces the pagan philosophy of not discriminating against anyone for any reason discriminate against Jews? How can there be such a gap between parents and children on the value of Jewish people?
My answer is that it is demonic and that history is about to repeat itself. It is time to buckle-up for the end of days.
How Sabbath was Changed to Sunday Among the Common Folk
Among the writings documenting the connection between antisemitism and the original institution of Sunday worship are those of Samuele Bacchiocchi, an Adventist scholar at Andrews University. His 1975 monograph, Anti-Judaism and the Origin of Sunday, focused specifically on anti-Judaism as an explanatory factor for Sunday’s rise. [5] His later book, From Sabbath to Sunday,[6] quotes early church father Justin:
[T]he two fundamental institutions of Judaism, namely circumcision and the Sabbath, were a brand of infamy imposed by God on the Jews to single them out for punishment they so well deserved for their wickedness.[7]
Justin teaches us that Christians in late antiquity came to view Sabbath-keeping as God’s punishment for wickedness. A punishment directed towards Jews.
If antisemitism drove the original change from Sabbath to Sunday worship, do you think that history will repeat itself to drive mandatory Sunday worship and the abrogation of lawful Sabbath worship?
We need to reject the folly of Adventist leaders who feel free to demonize our fellow Christians as “Christian Nationalists,” and concentrate instead on what is documented as happening right now – the rise of antisemitism among the next generation of leaders.
Commonly attributed to Martin Luther is something like the following truth: “Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved. If you loudly affirm every truth except the one “little point” currently under attack, you are not confessing Christ at that moment.”
The one “little point” in the current battle for religious freedom is antisemitism. Recall that our Church was “all in” regarding the battle against smoking while the battle against abortion was raging? Let’s not make the same mistake by raising our voices against fellow Christians when the danger of antisemitism is rising among the youth.
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Bruce N. Cameron is the Reed Larson Professor of Labor Law at Regent University School of Law and is on staff with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. He is the co-author of a law school textbook on employment discrimination.
[1] E.G. White, Great Controversy, Chapter 39 (Time of Trouble) p. 624.
[2] Id. at 626.
[3] https://x.com/davidshor/status/1942966889740652938?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[4] https://manhattan.institute/article/the-new-gop-survey-analysis-of-americans-overall-todays-republican-coalition-and-the-minorities-of-maga
[5] https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/books/229/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[6] Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday, The Pontifical Gregorian University Press, 1977.
[7] Id. at 112.
