4 - 1999

Shopping on Sunday

Lights Out for Store Closing?

We should not sacrifice Sunday to superficial desires

by Axel Noack

The economic pressure to open shops on Sunday, too, and thus to raise revenues and to catch up with the competition in the western German states is especially great in the eastern states. One person who resists this development is the bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Church Province of Saxony.

It is true that the law about store closing hours is "a worldly thing" and therefore no holy cow. It will not last forever and is amendable through a democratic decision-making process. Fair settlement of conflicting interests is part of the instruments belonging to a proper constitution of a state. In the case of store closing the different interests are in the open. Owners and unions, owners of small stores and shopping centers, city locations, village shops, town and country naturally represent differing views. And that is good.

The church is challenged to raise its own objections only if one of the various positions has no fair chance or only an inadequate lobby. The law on store closing, however, at one important point touches interests which go beyond the normal need for rules: the law about Sunday and holidays. Here more than the balancing of interests is involved, namely God’s clear commandment. (Variation for heathen and other friendly opponents: a cultural treasure thousands of years old is involved.) This may not be gambled with, even by momentary democratic majority decisions and poll results. All those who wish to give us freedom as "freedom to shop" are to be countered, calmly but decisively.

However, upbraiding politicians is by no means enough! Rather, the questions sleeping in the deeper layers of this decision deserve special attention.

What is actually up with all of us (Christians and non-Christians), that we like to wander through stores and gain longing (mostly) from consumption? Is there something we have to compensate in this way? What’s up with our society when we would rather give up a public holiday than to do without a private vacation day, even though the increasing individualization and growing loneliness in society is mourned on all sides?

How can one eloquently lament the threatened or already present loss of values and yet want to sacrifice a value that has essentially formed human community in the family and in the working world, namely the sacredness, meaning the unavailability, of Sunday to superficial interests and longings?

We Christians have every reason to defend a day of rest because people need it and because we need it to hear God’s Word better. And the clearer we are about the validity of the principle the more relaxed we can be when handling various exceptions.

Bishop Axel Noack in "Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt", 23 July 1999. Translated for publication in this issue.