This is a “News With Nicola” article.
When is the Sabbath?
That’s the question I asked in my previous video about Project 2025. As you know, Project 2025 is an ultra-conservative vision for the U.S. under a Republican presidency.
Among the project’s many controversial policy recommendations is the call for a federal labor law that would compel Americans to observe Sabbath Rest on Sundays.
Watch that video to learn the reasoning behind Project 2025’s proposed Sunday Sabbath law.
But what I want to focus on in this video is the question that I posed in the comments on that previous video, which is, when is the Sabbath? And why is it important?
It’s a question that has different answers depending on who you ask.
And I was not expecting so many responses. More than 130 viewers commented… with some very interesting replies… some serious and some not so serious.
For example, we got one from a user named martinschwartz7342, who claimed that “In the Ten Commandments, the Forth [sic] Commandment translated into English literally means, Remember the Saturday and keep it holy.”
Another user, identified as a Sihk, wrote that “every day is a gift from God” and that the U.S. Constitution says “make no laws concerning religion.”
Another viewer, addressing someone else’s comment, wrote: “Not all Christians keep Sunday as it is Pagan. SD [Seventh-Day] Adventists, SD Baptists, Grace Communion [International] to name just a few.”
So, as you can see, we’re kind of all over the place when it comes to the Sabbath.
Is it supposed to be on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, all three days, any day of the week?
Well, at its root, the Sabbath is often associated with a day of rest and worship and varies across different cultures and religions.
For many Christians, it’s traditionally observed on Sunday, commemorating the day of Jesus’ resurrection…otherwise known as the Lord’s Day. In Judaism, the Sabbath starts on Friday evening and ends on Saturday evening, a time of rest and reflection — and it has nothing to do with Jesus.
In ancient Jewish culture, the Sabbath prohibited work as a day set aside for rest and worship, rooted in the belief that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, as shown in Genesis. This is also where we get the Fourth Commandment.
The Sabbath played a very important role in ancient Jewish culture, with families gathering for prayer, feasting, and spiritual renewal.
In the New Testament, we see references to the Sabbath but also a shift in focus. And as Christianity spread, various interpretations of the Sabbath emerged.
These are just two examples, each with their own deep cultural and religious significance. But did you know that other faiths also have their own Sabbath-like traditions? For example, for Muslims, Friday is a special day for congregational prayers. And in some cultures, Saturday is already seen as a day for community and family time, minus any religious overtones.
So the idea of a sabbath, or day or rest, is pretty universal.
So Project 2025 wouldn’t be reinventing the wheel or anything when it comes to Sabbath. But the policy playbook obviously favors one religion above all others — in this case, Christianity — and that’s problematic from a constitutional aspect.
Editor’s note: This article was written with the assistance of A.I.