The Washington Post Pushes Laudato Si’, Green Sabbaths, Blues Laws, Sunday, and a Universal Period of Rest and Reset in order to Combat Climate Change

The Washington Post is a major newspaper based in the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C., making it a key source of information for political figures, policymakers, and government institutions. This news organization is now pushing for a revival of the Sabbath in connection with climate change in an effort to sway American politics on the Sunday law issue. They also cite Pope Francis’s reference to “Sunday” in Laudato Si’ as part of the justification for their action.

On January 23, 2024, The Washington Post published an article called “Why Reviving a 2,600-year-old Spiritual Practice Made My Life Better.” Below, we have published a large portion of the original article. Make no mistake, Sunday laws are coming, whether we are ready for them or not.

• “For many, it’s virtually impossible to set aside an entire day for rest free from responsibilities to work and family.” [1]

• “For millennia, religions have regarded this ritual rest as a spiritual necessity. Yet clergy are now arguing this practice, whether in a secular or religious context, can help redirect the world’s societies away from catastrophic climate change. In their view, it’s as essential to the future as any clean-energy technology or electric vehicle.” [1]

• “A shared day of rest, at a minimum, might slow the pace of consumption, curb emissions or ease the burden of so many people working weary weekends. But slowing down, even for a day, may also be at the heart of a cultural change convincing society that a more sustainable way of life is not only good for the planet, it’s good for them.” [1]

• “Here’s how a green Sabbath may be the right idea for one’s soul, and the world.” [1]

• “The human yearning for a weekly respite dates back at least 2,600 years. The concept appears in Christianity and Islam, both of which set aside weekly days for ritual, as well as Buddhism’s uposatha days and Japan’s roku sainichi, among others.” [1]

• “Pope Francis argued much the same about Christianity’s Sunday in his 2015 Laudato Si‘, an encyclical about caring for the natural world. Not resting is not just bad for the soul, he says, it’s bad for the Earth. The constant drive to produce and consume more is not only squandering natural resources, it prevents us from treating the living world, and one another, with dignity and respect. The Sabbath forces us to consider how we spend all our days.” [1]

• “Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath, is meant to be a day which heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others and with the world.” (Laudato Si’ #237) [1]

• “This kind of rest from work was once the law.” [1]

• “Sunday restrictions were once common across the United States. Sometimes known as Blue Laws, these prohibited everything from liquor sales to hunting to opening shops. Intended in part to encourage Sunday church attendance, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1884 these also served a vital social mission to “protect all persons from the physical and moral debasement which comes from uninterrupted labor” [1]

• “The decision was reaffirmed by the court in decisions during the 1960s: ‘Sunday is a day apart from all others,’ wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren in one.” [1]

• “Over time, however, this rationale has fallen out of favor.” [1]

• “That’s not just because of the decline of religiosity in America. ‘The primary motivation has been economic,’ writes political scientist Sara Zeigler. ‘With increased competition and people on the move around the clock, many businesses cannot afford to lose a full day’s revenues by remaining closed on Sunday‘.” [1]

• “A universal period of rest and reset has reemerged again and again as a way to deliver a more just world. ‘It is a hard ask, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthy ask,’ says Schorsch, the scholar of Jewish history at Universität Potsdam, who is advocating to bring it back.” [1]

• “In 2019, Schorsch founded the Green Sabbath Project to incite a mass movement to observe a weekly day of rest’ for the secular and religious alike.” [1]

• “The immediate effect among millions of people, he calculates, could dial back emissions for at least one day a week with no new technology or spending. But the practice of doing nothing, he argues, can make people change the way they live year-round not just on the Sabbath, by appealing to an ancient human ritual, rather than reason or even religion.” [1]

• “Many are taking incremental steps toward an ancient wisdom, by observing a technology Shabbat, eschewing screens for 24 hours. Mexico City and Bogotá are handing over their streets to tens of thousands of bicyclists and pedestrians every Sunday. In Bergen County, N.J., a Zip code boasting more retail sales than any other in the United States thanks to its four massive malls, residents have reaffirmed Sunday laws banning many retail sales, on the grounds of a healthier community.” [1]

• “Schorsch is now hoping to find more communities willing to undertake this radical experiment in time together. ‘Ultimately, as a society, we’re going to need to have ecological practices,’ he says. ‘It’s not enough to impose laws. Do we solve [climate change] through technocratic solutions and policy, or do we solve it through new cultural, even spiritual approaches? One without the other is not going to be enough‘.” [1]

With the climate agenda hitting a fever pitch in society and as globalists are making their pitch to save the world from the climate apocalypse at the World Economic Forum, the Washington Post has just published an article building a religious and secular case for “reviving” a day of rest to combat the climate crisis. By linking Sunday rest to the so-called existential climate threat, this has become one of the boldest calls for reinstating the blue laws. The global climate crusade is not slowing down but actually aligning all parties together on the Sunday question.

Sources

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/23/rest-day-climate-change-green-sabbath/