Saving America by Saving Sunday?

On July 4, 2026, America celebrates 250 years of independence. We owe a lasting debt to our Founding Fathers who, at the peril of their lives, established a system of ordered liberty based on limited government, federalism, and the rule of law. 

Lest we forget, the Founding Fathers were fathers! “Fifty-four of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence married and had a total of 337 children among them—an average of six each.”¹ Each was willing to sacrifice his life, fortune, and sacred honor to secure the blessings of liberty for his “posterity”—children, grandchildren, and ever-expanding generations of Americans. 

How is their “posterity” doing 250 years later? 

The American Family In the 21^st Century

Over the last 60-plus years, the American family has been under fierce attack. According to Saving America by Saving the Family, a January 2026 report published by the Heritage Foundation, the number of intact families is declining at an alarming rate, along with the birthrate. ² (An intact family is defined as a married father and mother with children.) 

Here is a summary of the report’s stark findings:³

• In 1960, nearly 90% of children lived with their married parents; in 2019, that number was 59%. 

• In 1960, more than 85% of adults were or had been married; by 2020, that number was 54%. 

• In 1960, the birthrate was a robust 3.8 children over a woman’s lifetime; in 2024, that number was 1.6. The replacement birthrate is 2.1.

• In 1960, less than 3% of births were to unmarried mothers; in 2023, 40% of all births were to unwed mothers.

• Cohabiting parents are nearly three times more likely (49%) to break up before their child turns 12 than are married parents (18%). 

• America leads the world with the highest rate of children living in single-parent homes (25%)! 

How do these troubling family statistics affect the health of children, their families, communities, and the nation? 

Children raised without marriage, particularly in single-parent homes, are more likely to experience poverty, drug addiction, depression, gang violence, suicide, incarceration, poor health, and physical and sexual abuse. Additionally, many young adults from fragile or failed families lack confidence to form intact families and end up repeating the cycle of family failure. Communities of single-parent households have higher rates of violent crime, homicide, gang activity, and drug abuse. 

By contrast, children from intact families are more likely to be high achievers, have better mental and physical health outcomes, avoid criminal behavior and the use of illegal drugs, find stable employment, and form their own intact families. As a bonus, communities comprised largely of two-parent families, even of lower income households, have lower crime rates and offer the best social support to other families—including single-parent families.

The authors correctly point out that the primary “default” today in American culture is that adults prioritize their lifestyles over the needs of children. No nation can sustain this inversion.

Project 2026

Saving America by Saving the Family, also known as Project 2026 for its action plan, identifies eight cultural and behavioral obstacles to the formation of intact families. Because of their specific relevance to this article’s focus, we will only discuss the first three.⁴

1. Decline in religious observance: Church attendance rates among all groups have fallen steeply in the last 50 years. Families that don’t attend church have a higher incidence of failure, and their children are less likely to form lasting marriages. Young people disconnected from church life often lack supportive social networks, contributing to an epidemic of loneliness and fewer opportunities to meet potential life partners. 

By contrast, religious people tend to marry earlier, divorce less, have more children, and positively affect their children’s social, mental, and emotional growth. 

2. Disrespect towards conscience and religious liberty: Widespread cultural and government-enforced secularism, coupled with a bias against religion and religious people, especially families, is one of the biggest impediments religious Americans face.

During the Covid pandemic, the government showed its anti-religious bias by closing churches as “nonessential” and allowing liquor stores and casinos to remain open as “essential.” “When governments consistently put commercial interests over spiritual ones or treat religious gatherings as inherently less valuable than secular activities, they signal that faith is marginal to public life.”⁵

Studies show that protecting religious freedom leads to higher religious participation. People are more likely to express and share their beliefs when they feel secure and will more readily pass them on to their children.⁶

3. A Uniform Day of Rest: The authors assert that “because religion has an outsized impact on marriage and family, it merits outsized social and cultural support.”⁷ The report’s third recommendation reveals what is meant by “support:” specifically, to legislate a national “day of rest” to assist marriage and family formation. Although the word legislate is not used, it is implied.

“A uniform day of rest that limits commercial activity can provide temporal boundaries that help communities to set aside time for religious observance, family gatherings, outdoor activities, and rest. A stable base of research shows that these practices correlate with better mental health, stronger social bonds, and more stable family structures.”⁸

There’s only one day in the week that most Americans use for religious observance—Sunday. 

The report praises 28 states that still have Sunday “blue laws.” A blue law is a state statute or ordinance that “forbids or regulates entertainment and commercial activities (e.g. the sale of liquor) on Sundays or religious holidays. Blue laws may also be referred to as Sunday closing laws, Sabbath laws, and uniform day of rest laws.”⁹

Many more states once had blue laws but have since repealed them in favor of commercial interests. 

The Heritage Foundation behind Project 2026 is advocating an action plan to address these challenges at the federal level and desires to achieve a national Sunday law, by July 4, 2026. 

Are Sunday Laws Constitutional?

But wouldn’t a Sunday law be a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution? 

The authors cite the US Supreme Court’s 1961 decision in McGowan v. Maryland in support of their recommendations. In 1961, the Supreme Court determined that Maryland’s Sunday closing laws were constitutional because they were used for secular reasons only, for example, worker health and safety.¹⁰

However, the Project 2026 authors state that their primary reason for seeking a Sunday law is to help families find time for religious observance, a notable difference.¹¹ 

The current state of the American family is deeply concerning. But what history shows is that however innocently Sunday rest laws begin, they can become coercive Sunday worship laws. 

If we trample on the religious rights of Americans while seeking a remedy for our national decline, we’ll destroy ourselves by other means.

The First Sunday Law

The Roman emperor Constantine I ruled from ad 306–337. Legend has it that in ad 312 he saw a vision of Jesus and a cross in the sky, and heard the words “In this sign you will conquer,” then ordered his troops to paint a cross on their shields and won a pivotal battle against a rival.

The Edict of Milan followed in ad 313, granting religious liberty to everyone—Christians, Jews, and pagans. Constantine favored Christianity—returning properties confiscated during persecution, granting privileges to clergy, supporting the church with public funds, and calling church councils to settle doctrinal disputes.

Though considered a Christian emperor, Constantine was actually a savvy syncretist who combined the best features of Roman paganism with a version of Christianity that held his diverse empire together. This included “Christianizing” pagan practices to help his pagan subjects accept the change. (See “When the Devil Got Baptized” in this issue.) 

Constantine also remained pontifex maximus, the chief high priest of Rome’s pagan cult, until his death. The Roman emperors honored the sun god—Sol Invictus. Constantine minted coins in the god’s honor, even while promoting Christianity.

In ad 321, he decreed that the “venerable day of the Sun” be honored as a weekly day of rest throughout the empire. Markets and public offices were to remain closed. City dwellers were forbidden to work. (Farmers were encouraged to work as necessary.)

Constantine’s Sunday edict was not a Christian worship law. In fact, Constantine continued to protect the right for Jews and Christians to worship on the seventh-day Sabbath. But it was Constantine that set in motion the political dominance of Christians in the Roman Empire as well as Sunday as a mandated weekly day of rest. And within 30 years of his death, that Sunday law had become a Christian worship law.¹²

The First Christian Sunday Law

The earliest records of Christians substituting Sunday for the seventh-day Sabbath are from the 2nd century ad. But this was isolated primarily to Alexandria and Rome—the two centers of Western Christianity.¹³ Most Christians throughout the rest of the Roman Empire, Africa, and Asia Minor still observed the seventh-day Sabbath.

Around ad 363–364, a regional council of bishops met in Laodicea to discuss unity in Christian practice. One issue they addressed was formalizing a distinctly “Christian” Sabbath. Athanasius, a prominent bishop from Alexandria, led out. After deliberating, the council chose Sunday “to commemorate Christ’s resurrection” and outlawed the keeping of the Bible Sabbath as a “Jewish” custom. 

Laodicea wasn’t an ecumenical council, so its decisions had limited authority. But at the ecumenical council of Chalcedon in ad 451, Laodicea’s decisions were adopted as binding on all Christians, even those who didn’t accept the spiritual oversight of the bishop of Rome.

Christians who remained true to the Bible Sabbath were often called “Judaizers” by their enemies and endured all manner of persecution and even death. Nonetheless, seventh-day Sabbath observance persisted for centuries, evidenced by the numerous church councils that continued to anathematize Sabbath keepers who would not submit to state church authority.^{14, 15} 

Sunday Laws, America, and Bible Prophecy

Sunday laws aren’t new in America. Sunday worship laws existed to some extent in all 13 American colonies. The first English colony, in Jamestown, Virginia, even threatened to execute persistent “Sabbath (Sunday) breakers.”¹⁶ 

After the American Revolution and the adoption of the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution, worship decisions were to be left to the conscience of individual Americans. But in 1895, Seventh-day Sabbath keepers in Tennessee were sentenced to a chain gang for working on their farms on Sunday after the state passed a law (eventually overturned) that forbade even personal work on the “Lord’s Day.”¹⁷

The Bible prophesies that the United States will one day disregard liberty of conscience and enforce a Sunday worship law that will eventually involve the whole world. (See “A Time for Choosing” in this issue.) For many years, the fulfillment of this prophecy seemed improbable. But with the muscular rise of a Christian political agenda like Project 2026, promoted by an organization with enormous influence on the 47th US president, the idea of a national Sunday rest law could easily gain traction. History warns us that a Sunday worship law could be waiting in the wings. 

Seeking remedies for the distressing decline of America and its families is necessary. But if we ever attempt to remedy the decline by trampling on the religious rights of our fellow citizens, we’ll destroy our nation by other means. Wherever we have influence, we must guard against even well-meaning efforts that restrict liberty of conscience.