A group of citizens in Bendigo known as the Save our Sundays (SOS) group, has petitioned the city of Great Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, to proscribe Sunday trading. As a result, a referendum was conducted to determine the will of the citizens. “The Save our Sundays group hailed a decision to proceed with a Sunday trading referendum in April as a ‘victory for democracy.’ ” Bendigo Advertiser, December 26, 1997. Whether or not it was a victory for democracy, it was most certainly an alarming breach of religious and civil liberties.
Keith Allen, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Victoria, “threw his support behind the campaign against Sunday trading during a visit to Bendigo yesterday.” Ibid., May 30, 1997. “Anglican Bishop David Bowden supported the call for a referendum, and Catholic Bishop Noel Daly and Uniting Church’s Kerrie Graham spoke against Sunday trading.” Ibid., May 8, 1997. The Uniting Church of Australia is a 1977 union of Congregationalists, Methodists and two-thirds of the Presbyterians.
It would seem that these clerics possess little understanding of the principles of religious and civil liberties. They appear to have learned no lessons from history. Nor does each apparently recall the fact that, in centuries past, members of their denominations suffered severely because the majority religion forced their religion upon them and thus breached their convictions.
Curiously, the chief opposition arose, not from those religious organizations whose religious prerogatives would be breached by this Sunday Law (such as Sabbath-keepers like Seventh-day Adventists), members of non-Christian faiths (such as Moslems), nor even from free-thinkers, agnostics or atheists, but from “twelve Bendigo tourism and business organizations.” Ibid., February 23, 1998. Thus financial loss appeared to be a greater motivating force than potential loss of civil and religious liberties. Two Seventh-day Adventist laymen, Donald Wilson of Mildura and Lance Mc Neill of Bendigo were exceptions to this statement. They wrote a number of letters setting forth their objections to the city’s leading newspaper, The Bendigo Advertiser.
Alerted of this crisis of religious liberty upon his return from a speaking tour of Singapore and India, just one week prior to the commencement of the postal vote, with the issue being judged to be very finely balanced between those supporting and those opposing the matter, Russell Standish decided to take up the issue. Two advertisements were inserted in the Bendigo newspaper and one letter to the editor written. The statements in these media avenues were as follows:
Advertisement One—
March 14, 1998
Sunday Trading Referendum
March 16–April 3
Objection No. 1
This referendum has been promoted by Christians living in the Bendigo District who are convicted that Sunday is a sacred day of worship. They have organized their campaign under the slogan Save Our Sundays (SOS).
Thinking Christians, believers in other faiths and non-believers will ask themselves the crucial question before delivering their vote, Save Our Sundays From What?
Since its founding, Sunday-worshipers in Bendigo have possessed perfect liberty to:
- Worship on Sundays
- Close their businesses on Sundays
- Refrain from shopping on Sundays
- Pursue their children’s education on days other than Sunday
So from what does Sunday have to be saved?
We thank God and the Australian Constitution that all convicted Sunday observers in Bendigo possess their inalienable right to religious liberty. This is true freedom. Wise statesmen 100 years ago guaranteed this liberty in our Australian Constitution which was confirmed by the citizens of our nation in an Australia-wide referendum.
Article 116 states: “The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.”
Do the citizens of Bendigo wish to contravene our wise Constitution—
- by establishing the religious convictions of one segment of citizens?
- by imposing their religious observances on others?
- by prohibiting the free exercise of religion?
Seventh-day Adventists and Jews observe the Bible Sabbath (Saturday) as a day upon which they refrain from business. They do not seek to impose their convictions upon other citizens of Bendigo.
Moslems keep Friday holy. They too have refrained from seeking to enforce their religious practice upon those citizens of Bendigo not of their faith.
Citizens of the city who possess no religious convictions whatsoever have not sought a referendum to empower the city authorities to enforce work and business activities on those who possess sincere religious objections to such practices on their days of worship. On what moral grounds then do Sunday-keepers seek the enforcement of their beliefs?
The issue at stake in this referendum is the preservation of the religious and civil liberties of every citizen of Bendigo.
Vote NO in the Sunday trading referendum and preserve the freedoms of all dwellers in Bendigo. Let Bendigo set an example to Australia as a city which by vote of its citizens has declared its city to be one of freedom for all.
Dr. Russell Standish
Advertisement Two—
March 21, 1998
Sunday Trading Referendum
March 16–April 3
Objection No. 2
(See Bendigo Advertiser, March 14 for No. 1)
Save Our Undeniable Liberties (SOUL)
Bendigo citizens have the unique privilege to signal their defense of freedom in the present referendum. It is vital that every citizen votes in this referendum for your civil and religious liberties are at stake. This is no trivial matter.
These liberties have been bought over the centuries by men and women who suffered imprisonment, torture and death rather than yield their inalienable rights to religious and civil liberties.
- John Bunyan (author of Pilgrim’s Progress) spent seven years (1661–1668) in Bedford Prision in defense of his right to practice and proclaim his religious convictions. He was a Puritan. He followed the Calvinist theory akin to that of the Presbyterian Church today.
- In 1661 John James was hanged, drawn and quartered in London because he preached on Saturday contrary to the convictions of the majority.
- William Penn (founder of the state of Pennsylvania) was only preserved from execution in 1670 for his practice of preaching the Quaker faith in London by the resistance of four of the twelve jurors to convict him. These jurors suffered torture and imprisonment for their stand.
The 1688–89 British Bill of Rights which is part of the Victorian State Constitution emerged as a protection against such persecution and compulsion. Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians and other Sunday-keeping Christians all have a long and tragic history of persecutions for their faith.
Members of these faiths require and merit full religious and civil liberties as much as do Saturday-keepers (such as Seventh-day Adventists and Jews), Friday keepers (Moslems) as well as atheists, agnostics and free-thinkers.
A prohibition upon Sunday trading will deprive every citizen of Bendigo, irrespective of his or her religious persuasion, of religious and civil liberties.
Vote NO in the Sunday Trading Referendum.
Every breach of civil and religious liberties, however piously supported and however little it may appear to encroach upon our liberties, is a large step towards a state of coercion of conscience which, in a large measure, our nation has happily rejected. Sunday-keepers have as much at stake in this referendum as do other citizens.
The words of Winston Churchill spoken on October 5, 1938 in another setting, are full of challenge to the citizens of Bendigo as they consider their vote in the Sunday Trading Referendum.
“Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless, by supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again, and take our stand for freedom as in the olden times.” Into the Battle, 53.
Vote NO in the Sunday Trading Referendum to preserve the religious and civil liberties of
- Sunday-keeping Christians
- Sabbath (Saturday)-keeping Christians
- Believers of Non-Christian faiths
- Those without religious convictions
Dr. Russell Standish
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dear Sir,
In my separate advertisements in the Bendigo Advertiser of March 14 and 21, I have dealt with the secular aspects of the religious and civil liberty issues in the present Sunday Trading Referendum.
In this letter I address the religious issues involved. The basis of this Save our Sunday campaign is the sacred nature of Sunday observance. But is Sunday worship a fulfillment of the fourth commandment which enjoins Bible believers to keep the Sabbath holy (Exodus 20:8)? The same commandment states that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” Exodus 20:10. Emphasis supplied.
The Bible alone must decide which day is the seventh-day Sabbath. This it does unequivocally. Speaking of Good Friday, Scripture states, “And that day was the preparation day, and the Sabbath drew on.” Luke 23:54. Thus the Sabbath day was the day following Good Friday. Further, speaking of Easter Sunday, the Bible records, “In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.” Matthew 28:1. Here Easter Sunday is clearly identified as the first day of the week and the day after the Sabbath. Thus the Sabbath day is shown to be the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Only Saturday therefore can be identified as the Sabbath God declared to be holy.
Both Catholics and Protestants freely agree. The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine by Rev. Peter Geirmann, says thus:
“Question—Which day is the Sabbath day?
Answer—‘Saturday is the Sabbath day,’
Question—Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?
Answer—‘We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic church, in the Council of Laodicea (336 A.D.) transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday’ ” Second edition, 50.
Dr. Edward T. Hiscox, author of The Baptist Manual, says: “There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath Day was not Sunday. It will be said, however, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week . . . Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament—absolutely not . . . Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come in use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of paganism and christened with the name of the sun god, when adopted and sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism!” Source Book, 513, 514.
Sir William Domville of the Church of England says: “Centuries of the Christian era passed away before Sunday was observed by the Christian church as the Sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the Sabbatical edict of Constantine in 321 A.D.” The Sabbath Or An Examination of Six Texts, 291.
The Presbyterian Christian at Work said this: “So some have tried to build the observance of Sunday upon apostolic command, whereas the apostles gave no command on the matter at all . . . The truth is, as soon as we appeal to the ‘Litera scripta’ [the literal script] of the Bible, the Sabbatarians have the best of the argument.” (Edition, April 19, 1883.)
The Methodist Theological Compendium states: “It is true, there is no positive command for infant baptism . . . nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week.”
Dr. W. R. Dale (Congregational) in The Ten Commandments, 106, 107, says, “It is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath.”
The Lutheran position as revealed in The Augsburg Confession of Faith states: “The observance of the Lord’s day (Sunday) is founded not on any commandment of God, but on the authority of the church.”
Episcopalian spokesman Neander writes in The History of the Christian Religion and Church, 186: “The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect, far from them and from the early apostolic church to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday.”
Since there is no Biblical basis for Sunday-keeping, the case for the abolition of Sunday trading possesses no religious basis. In addition, there is no moral mandate to enforce one’s personal convictions upon all the citizens of the city.
Yours faithfully,
Russell Standish
BA MB BS (Sydney University) MRCP (UK), FRCP (Edinburgh) FRCP (Glasgow)