Breaking the Chains of Sunday Laws
Michael W. Campbell March/April 2026What began as irritation with immigrants developed into a decades-long blot on America’s commitment to religious freedom for all.
The influx of immigrants in the late nineteenth century sparked attempts to promote Sunday observance across America. Although regional laws had existed all the way back to Puritan times, during the antebellum era new attempts were made to enforce Sunday sacredness, including the banning of transportation of mail on Sunday (1829) and even travel (1840s). Such efforts reached a new peak at the 1844 National Lord’s Day Convention. By the time of the American Civil War these efforts had subsided somewhat, only to be revived once again with greater vigor. As the war ended, Sunday laws were revived to enforce greater conformity among lax immigrant groups who, it was perceived, didn’t necessarily share these earlier Puritan sensibilities. In fact, many advocated at the time that the “moral fabric of society depended on this weekly religious symbol.”1
By 1863 a new revival of Sunday laws was intended to control the Irish and German Catholic immigrants who didn’t share Puritan sensibilities, especially in their lax observance of Sunday.2 Those promoting the laws didn’t want these “foreign elements,” who tended to spend the “sacred” hours of the Sabbath at beer gardens, with the predilection toward intemperance, not to mention the abuse of Sunday sacredness. Nativist Protestant Americans refused to let a “few blatant, beer-drinking foreigners, sustained by the lower elements among the citizenry” to corrupt this “Christian” nation.3 If they could only apply American law, they could reform society.
Such efforts toward legislation took tangible form in Xenia, Ohio, on February 4, 1863, when a group met to establish the National Reform Association. One of their main speakers, John Alexander, argued that slavery and the ensuing Civil War had grown out of America’s original failure to acknowledge God’s authority in the Constitution. The fact that America had not declared itself a “Christian nation” contributed to a fundamental error and subsequent mistakes. If they could only band themselves together, they could become a better society. Delegates at another convention on January 27, 1864, accepted this analysis and resolved:
“Perceiving the subtle and persevering attempts which are made to prohibit the reading of the Bible in our Public Schools, to overthrow our Sabbath laws, to corrupt the family, to abolish the Oath, Prayer in our National and State Legislatures, Days of Fasting, and Thanksgiving, and other Christian features of our institutions and so to divorce the American government from all connection with the Christian religion; Believing that a written Constitution ought to contain explicit evidence of the Christian character and purpose of the nation which frames it, and perceiving that the silence of the Constitution of the United States in this respect is used as an argument against all that is Christian in the usage and administration of our Government;
“We citizens of the United States, do associate ourselves together under the following Articles, and pledge ourselves to God and to one another to labor through wise and all lawful means for the ends herein set forth.”4
This strategy took tangible shape as the group petitioned government officials to formalize America’s status as a Christian nation. They furthermore sought to enshrine such language into a Constitutional amendment. They believed that the Civil War was God’s punishment for the lack of references to Him in the Constitution, and even more explicitly, Christian elements in national law.5 Many NRA activists came from a Presbyterian background, with its underlying Calvinist ideology of church-state relations; but other denominations also contributed to the movement.6 The NRA’s most potent tactic, “blue laws,” pushed for Sunday sacredness and hearkened back to these same Puritan ideals. These statute books included extremely strict Sunday legislation that outlawed business transactions, labor, and even some forms of recreation (such states as Arkansas and Tennessee even threatened to punish the parents of children caught playing on Sunday!).
Apocalyptic Conflict
Seventh-dayAdventists strongly disagreed with this approach to the public role of religion and kingdom theology. They also quickly discovered that, with their commitment to the seventh-day Sabbath, they could not avoid persecution. For early Adventists, enforced Sunday observance was viewed through the lens of Revelation 12 and 14, as they expected the final persecution of God’s faithful people. Church co-founder Ellen White warned as early as 1847 that the persecution of God’s faithful Sabbathkeepers would usher in the last events of world history.7 In 1850, another co-founder, James White, warned, “The ‘remnant’ of the seed of the woman [Rev. 12:17], or last end of the church just before the second advent, is made war with, and persecuted, for keeping the ‘commandments of God,’ and for having the ‘testimony of Jesus Christ.’ ”8
Although many of these Puritan blue laws had become defunct, as Adventism spread through the American South, some Adventists were arrested for working on their farms on Sunday. Many Adventists felt that they had to labor on Sunday, often out of economic necessity, and were following the biblical admonition to labor for the other “six days” of the week (Exod. 20:9).
Historian Dennis Pettibone reports that of the 538 Adventist members in the South in 1885, during the next 11 years more than 100 of them were arrested for Sunday labor.9 What became clear is that law enforcement was working aggressively to repulse Adventist expansion. Persecution included extensive fines designed to ruin members financially, along with imprisonment and chain gang labor. In fact, it was reported: “In both Henry and Rhea counties, Tennessee, the chain-gang had fallen into disuse because it was found to be unprofitable, and it was revived specially for the punishment of Seventh-day Adventists.”10 In the most extreme situation, it resulted in the death of at least one church member. Samuel P. Mitchell died February 4, 1879, after he became sick while serving jailtime in Georgia.
In an unusual situation, early Adventist leader J. H. Waggoner, along with William C. White (the son of Ellen White), were, while operating Pacific Press, arrested in 1882 for breaking Sunday laws. It would not be the last time, either. As late as 1909, while visiting the fledgling Adventist work in the American South, Ellen White warned her son from making any rash and precipitous moves. “I am instructed to say to our people through the cities of the South: Let everything be done under the direction of the Lord. . . . Satan is doing his best to block the way to the progress of the message. He is putting forth efforts to bring about the enactment of a Sunday law, which will result in slavery in the Southern field and will close the door to the observance of the true Sabbath which God has given to men to keep holy.”11
Adventist Activism
Such persecution reified existing Sunday legislation and efforts toward a national Sunday law. The National Reform Association, the American Sabbath Union, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union were populist efforts with millions of adherents campaigning for national legislation. In 1888 U.S. senator Henry W. Blair first introduced a proposed “National Sunday Law” (Senate Bill 2983) titled “A bill to secure to the people the enjoyment of the first day of the week, commonly known as the Lord’s day, as a day of rest, and to promote its observance as a day of religious worship.” The bill was aimed to prohibit secular work, labor, and public amusements on Sunday, as well as to curb the exploitation of workers.
Adventists responded by publicizing the persecution and agitating against the proposed legislation. They circulated petitions, and some, such as A. T. Jones, testified before congressional committees. They established the American Sentinel, forerunner of Liberty magazine, along with a press committee to publicize in newspapers their concerns and to raise awareness about persecution. They articulated their views against this Sunday legislation, which most of all was centered upon their convictions about religious liberty. Adventism upheld deeply within its ethos a notion of human freedom and that God and His moral government provided freedom of choice. At times this could lead to some unlikely alliances. Adventist activism expanded from the National to the International Religious Liberty Association. Adventists opposed all Sunday laws not just for themselves, but also for others, including Jews, atheists, and the nonreligious. Government leaders tended to be insensitive to minorities requiring exemptions, and as a religious group on the margins, Adventists advocated for others who existed on the margins and were, perhaps, not as able to advocate for themselves.
Adventists also defended themselves in the courtroom. The most notable case was King v. State [Tennessee], which was on its way to the United States Supreme Court but unfortunately became moot when King passed away.12 King’s neighbors wanted him gone and demanded that he change his religious affiliation or move away. They spied on him, looking for any possibility of breaking Sunday legislation. He was arrested while hoeing his cornfield on June 23, 1889. After paying his fine, he was rearrested and charged with the same crime. This second time, King refused to pay the fine and spent the next 23 days in jail pending his unsuccessful appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court, after which he appealed to the United States district court, with the same negative verdict. Judge E. S. Hammond considered his conviction unjust but ruled that the federal courts had no right to interfere.13
Strategic Resolve
With the possibility of more Sunday laws coming, Ellen White urged Adventists to strategically work against such legislation. “It is our duty to do all in our power to avert the threatened danger,” she wrote in 1885. “We should endeavor to disarm prejudice by placing ourselves in a proper light before the people. We should bring before them the real question at issue, thus interposing the most effectual protest against measures to restrict liberty of conscience.”14 Adventists must not be silent, she said, nor should they feel that there was nothing that could be done to change their situation. She urged Adventists to vote against politicians who favored Sunday legislation. She also urged restraint and urged that members not be defiant against existing Sunday legislation lest they inflame tensions from “religious zealots” that might hinder “missionary work.”15
The history of the Adventist fight against Sunday laws has renewed significance today in view of recent proposals for a “uniform day of rest,” spearheaded by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.16 Calls for Sunday rest have a much more complex origin in American history than most people realize. When noticing such a movement, Americans should not remain passive or silent, but work to defend the constitutional principle of religious liberty for all, regardless of their beliefs or nonbelief. And for American Christians there’s an additional imperative: to advance the biblical ideals of freedom and justice that are the foundation of God’s heavenly kingdom here on earth.
1 Stefan Höschele, Adventist Interchurch Relations: A Study in Ecumenics (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2022), p. 216.
2 Eric Syme, A History of SDA Church-State Relations in the United States (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press, 1973), pp. 20, 21.
3 Syme, pp. 20, 21.
4 David McAllister, The National Reform Movement (Philadelphia: Aldine Press Co., 1890), pp. 24–26.
5 Robert T. Handy, A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).
6 See Höschele, Adventist Interchurch Relations.
7 Ellen G. White, “A Vision,” broadside, April 7, 1847.
8 James White, “The Third Angel’s Message,” The Present Truth, April 1850, p. 66.
9 Dennis L. Pettibone, “Sunday Legislation,” in The Ellen G. White Encyclopedia, ed. Jerry Moon and Denis Fortin (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 2013), p. 1202.
10 “Some Probabilities of the Southern Chain-Gang System,” American Sentinel, September 5, 1895, p. 273.
11 Ellen G. White, letter 6, 1909.
12 William Addison Blakely, American State Papers on Freedom in Religion, 3rd rev. ed. (Washington: Review and Herald, 1943) pp. 465–74.
13 Blakely, pp. 475–77.
14 Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press, 1948), vol. 5, p. 452.
15 White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 9, p. 232.
16 Roger Severino et al., “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,” The Heritage Foundation (January 8, 2026).
Article Author: Michael W. Campbell
Michael W. Campbell writes from Cavite, Philippines, where he is a professor of History and Theology.