IT’S SUNDAY IN AMERICA
Barry R. Harker
PartridgeSingapore (248 pp.)
$30.95 hardcover, $18.95 paperback, $9.99 e-book
ISBN: 978-1-5437-4366-1; November 17, 2017

Harker (Youth Ministry in Crisis, 2004, etc.) warns of threats to the separation of church and state in this examination of America’s religious climate. Many believe that the United States’ tradition of separating government and religion is the key to its greatness. Others believe that it’s holding the country back. In this book, Harker asserts that the latter position has been gaining strength in American politics and is poised to bring about lasting damage to the republic: “the theocratic impulse is not only alive and well in America but flourishing in ways that could barely have been imagined half a century ago.” He takes as his central issue the idea of Sunday legislation, or “blue laws,” that enforce traditional notions of Sunday as a day of worship and rest, while also defending the secular, constitutional foundations of American liberty. From the first Sunday legislation passed at Jamestown to the evangelical-backed rise of Donald Trump, Harker attempts to identify those strands within American Protestantism that tend toward theocracy and to counter them with biblical quotes, church history, Catholic perspectives, and Enlightenment-influenced Protestant values. Harker writes in a scholarly, sometimes-knotty prose that moves comfortably through the realms of history, politics, theology, and philosophy: “The autonomy of reason is a Greek legacy within Roman Catholicism that gives ultimate shape to Catholic natural law.” However, his train of thought may not always be crystal clear to readers who may occasionally become confused about how particular arguments relate to his thesis; for example, at one point, it’s initially unclear how a discussion of Vatican II and Catholic “higher values” relates back to the evangelicals he’d discussed earlier. The specialized nature of the material suggests the author is writing for other religious thinkers and not a general audience. Still, the mere fact that Harker is making a theological case against theocratic laws, however, is notable in itself, and the depth of his knowledge is impressive and authoritative. Whether such a strategy will change minds remains to be seen, but the author’s ideas will hopefully help to bring the debate into new territory.

A Christian defense of the church-state divide.

It’s Sunday in America
Barry R. Harker
Partridge Singapore (Nov 7, 2017)
Softcover $18.95 (248pp) 978-1-5437-4367-8

It’s Sunday in America is a well-researched paean that forwards an interesting notion of Protestant America.

Barry Harker’s It’s Sunday in America is a well-researched plea for America to grapple with its turbulent relationship with Christianity, particularly the battle over mandatory Sunday worship. In order to fend off a “religio-political cataclysm,” Harker argues that it is in America’s best interest to return to religious liberty and to keep God in public life.

The centerpiece of this seemingly contradictory plea is the thorny issue of religious freedom. The book’s most concerted question is how Protestant Christianity can correct a monster of its own making—namely, Christian acquiescence to state secularism. In unadorned, clear language, it breaks down America’s history in terms of a spiritual contest between two different concepts of spiritual freedom: one derived from God’s law and one derived from the Constitution.

The book relies heavily on biblical texts and American history to do this, showing that Christianity was central to the lives of the people of Jamestown and New England. It argues that the Constitution and subsequent attempts to further the distance between church and state represent a different strand of American life and are not the sum total what it means to be American.

However, as much as the book celebrates the devout Protestant Christians of early America, its argues that their legal implementation of mandatory Sunday worship undermined their call to mass religiosity. In speaking about the Massachusetts Bay Puritans, Harker notes: “Puritanism undermined its own reforming instincts and weakened its influence” by passing religious laws in the spirit of “theocracy.” In today’s America, putting Christianity back into the legal system may produce the same result.

Some of the book’s arguments are more contentious than others, such as that the Catholic Church wishes to take over the US by uniting the political and the spiritual. Harker also takes on the Catholic concept of “natural law,” writing that “the … Church’s doctrines do not change,” meaning that the Vatican is more comfortable with coercion than with trying to apply philosophy to the spreading of the gospel. The book ominously argues that God’s law is supreme to secular law and that when the time comes, American Christians will have to chose the Bible over the Constitution.

The book sometimes runs on circular logic and trips on its predictions of “religio-political cataclysm.” Questions about the actual efficacy of a more open public square may arise, and the book’s doomsday rhetoric about an upcoming collapse creates feelings of unease.

It’s Sunday in America is a well-researched paean that forwards an interesting notion of Protestant America. Harker’s book may be most effective when it preaches to the choir, but it should not be overlooked by those of a more secular bent.

BENJAMIN WELTON (February 14, 2018)

It’s Sunday in America
Barry R. Harker
Partridge, 232 pages, (paperback) $18.95, 978-1-5437-4367-8
(Reviewed: January 2018)

In It’s Sunday in America, Barry R. Harker lays out what he sees as a possible danger to religious liberty in the United States.

Here, he posits that social and cultural tensions between conservatives and progressives—especially in the areas of abortion and same-sex marriage—could ultimately lead to an uneasy partnership between the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations. In turn, the author contends, this could lead to unhealthy political alliances and the enactment of something called Sunday legislation, a nationwide blue law that would make Sunday a mandatory day of worship and rest for all people.

Examining detrimental religious authoritarianism of early New World settlements like Jamestown as well as the founding fathers’ beliefs about the separation of church and state, Harker notes that America has withstood numerous attempts in its colorful history to replace democracy with theocracy. The most recent attempt, he believes, involves President Trump and his debt to evangelicals who helped him get elected.

Trump’s possible appeasement to certain Christian values and ideals, coupled with Pope Francis’s recent writing on the environment (which seem to argue for an overthrow of governments), are creating a perfect storm that will erode religious liberty. For Harker, all of this is connected to biblical prophecies that suggest, “that America will abandon its commitment to religious liberty.”

Through his use of current events, theology, and speculation, Harker engages readers with well-organized chapters that are thought-provoking and adeptly argued. Most religious scholars see the idea of Sunday legislation as an elaborate conspiracy theory that grew out of Seventh-day Adventist’s beliefs. Nonetheless, the author provides enough research and evidence to make skeptics take pause.

Many will disagree with Harker’s theories and conclusions, but sensational theories aside, he paints a telling picture of America today, one that is “dreadfully divided at a time of increasing international tensions and geo-political tectonic power shifts.” Indeed, few can argue against his observations of a country culturally at war with itself and God.