Many Christians observe a weekly day set apart for rest and worship called a Sabbath in obedience to God's commandment to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Early Christians, at first mainly Jewish, observed the seventh-day (Saturday) Sabbath with prayer and rest [citation needed]. At the beginning of the second century the Church Father Ignatius of Antioch approved non-observance of the Sabbath.[1] The now majority practice of Christians is to observe Sunday, called the Lord's Day, rather than the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath as a day of rest and worship.[1]
In line with ideas of the 16th and 17th-century Puritans, the Presbyterian and Congregationalist, as well as Methodist and Baptist Churches, enshrined first-day (Sunday) Sabbatarian views in their confessions of faith, observing the Lord's Day as the Christian Sabbath.[2] While practices differ among Christian denominations, common First-day Sabbatarian (Sunday Sabbatarian) practices include attending morning and evening church services on Sundays, receiving catechesis in Sunday School on the Lord's Day, taking the Lord's Day off from servile labour, not eating at restaurants on Sundays, not Sunday shopping, not using public transportation on the Lord's Day, as well as not participating in sporting events that are held on Sundays; Christians who are Sunday Sabbatarians often engage in works of mercy on the Lord's Day, such as evangelism, as well as visiting prisoners at jails and the sick at hospitals and nursing homes.[3][4][5][6]
Beginning about the 17th century, a few groups of Restorationist Christians, mostly Seventh-day Sabbatarians, formed communities that practiced the keeping of the Sabbath on Saturdays.
- ^ a b Everett Ferguson, ed. (8 October 2013). Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (2nd ed.). Routledge. pp. 1007–1008. ISBN 9781136611582.
Most Christians believe that the Lord's day observances fulfill or replace sabbath day observances, although Seventh-day Adventists and other sabbatarian groups argue that God instituted the sabbath at creation for all time and all people (Gen. 2:2-3; Isa. 66:22-23). This position holds that no human person or group has authority to change God's divine and eternal command. The sabbath was replaced by Sunday as a result of three apostate influences in the second century: anti-Judaism, arising from the church's separation from the synagogue; the influence of sun cults in the Roman empire, which led the church into making Sunday the holy day; and the church of Rome's growing authority shown in changing the day. The predominant Christian position, however, holds that Lord's day (Sunday) celebrations already began to replace sabbath observances during New Testament times. Just as the sabbath celebrated Israel's deliverance from captivity to sin, Satan, and worldly passions, made possible by the resurrection on the first day of the week. On this first day, Christians gathered to celebrate the eucharist, commemorating Jesus' death, God's resurrection victory, and the promised final triumph. In the early second century, Ignatius said that Christians "who walked in ancient customs came to a new hope, no longer living for [keeping] the sabbath [mēketi sabbati-zontes]" (Magn. 9.1-3). Ignatius lauded the Christians who ceased to keep the sabbath. (cf. Barn. 15). Some Jewish Christians, in contrast, while meeting for the eucharist on Sunday, also observed the sabbath rest (Eusebius, H.e. 3.27.5).
- ^ Tucker, Karen B. Westerfield (27 April 2011). American Methodist Worship. Oxford University Press. p. 45. ISBN 9780199774159.
- ^ Hughes, James R. (2006). "The Sabbath: A Universal and Enduring Ordinance of God" (PDF). Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 October 2020. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
- ^ "Why an Evening Worship Service?". Christ United Reformed Church. 8 December 2010. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
- ^ Jones, M. (12 June 2015). "Organized Sports on Sundays?". Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
- ^ Edwards, Jonathan. "The Perpetuity and Change of the Sabbath". Retrieved 24 June 2017.