Comments on: The Sunday Paradigm

By: Moacir

Moacir — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:32:18 +0000

I’m agreeing with Johanna, too. This was a big issue recently in France, since not only was there a desire to maintain a “day of rest” for family affairs, but the stores that did stay open on Sundays did so with special permission, and, as a result, had to pay workers overtime to work those days. Now that it’s legal here to stay open on Sundays on a wider scale, the concern is that people will be coerced by their bosses to work on Sundays even if they don’t want to.

Also, the Center here has a sign posted listing who’s in charge of the center, who the responsible physician is… all this legal stuff. Among the things listed are the “jour de repos hebdomadaire”–the weekly day of rest. In our case it’s Sunday, but I suspect that every business/office in France must have at least one day listed where they WILL BE CLOSED. I’ve learned them for all the bakeries within 500m of me.

By: Begam Samru

Begam Samru — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:17:59 +0000

Begam is kinda down with Johanna on the *effects* of Sunday as an off-day. I think politics in the service of religious special interests is as obnoxious as it is inevitable. However, I do think that the 24/7 “I shop therefore I am” culture of the USA and its toadies (see UK, US Special Relationship lubrication of) is no less a kind of religious imposition.

I like “me Sundays orf” precisely because I am free to ignore Christianity and ignore the Bushist Theology of “buy buy, buy”. I too was raised in an environment in which places closed at 6.30 and Wednesday afternoons were also a half-day.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:43:53 +0000

The constitutional protection of Sundays is not only about freedom of religious expression, though. It is also about workers’ rights to have a day off, preferably on the same day that their spouse and children get a day off, too. Obviously, this is not possible for all kinds of job (some bus drivers, doctors etc. just will have to work), but is shopping 24/7 really all that indispensable? I have to admit that, although being an atheist and all, I do enjoy having one day a week where emergency grocery shopping, taking the children to buy new shoes etc. are simply no options, so we can comfortably laze off. But maybe this is because I was socialized in times when everything closed at 6.30 pm on weekdays and 2 pm on Saturdays, so the present situation seems like a vast improvement to me. :-)

By: Rezwan

Rezwan — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:16:53 +0000

I wonder how the ‘Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg and the Archdioceses of Berlin’ could establish their members ‘rights’ upon the non-religious majority, when their members are a minority in Berlin Brandenburg. Most parts of Berlin-Brandenburg were under DDR socialist rule and people did not go to church. We shared a joke that the ubiquitous Berlin churches are for show only as only a handful of people visit them.

DDR policy isolated churches from Western influences and here are some numbers to match this information – Lutheran church membership had declined from 80 percent of DDR population (14 million) in 1945 to 30 percent (5 million) in 1978. In the same year Catholics constituted a miniscule 7% (1.2 million). Since the 1960s churches received less than 10% of state funding (up to the unification).

However those churches played another role rather than prayer services:

“In the 1980s the Gethsemane Church Congregation, like many other congregations, turned into meeting points of opponents of the GDR regime.”

By: Conrad Barwa

Conrad Barwa — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:33:46 +0000

Ian Buruma argues that the Swiss ban is less a sign of concern about Muslim religiosity and more a reflection on Europe’s own drift to socialist, atheist utopia:

He should have added, ‘Socialist, atheist and White utopia’!!! But the whole thing is silly really; as far as Socialism and social democracy goes in terms of income inequality and distribution, Europe as a whole is moving backwards not moving forwards. Long-term structural unemployment and the peicemeal dismantling of the Welfare state ensure this.

But anyway, I am amused to hear that you spend your Sundays watching the Bears, I would have thought watching the news would be depressing enough ;)