The Peculiar Life of Sundays [Hardcover]

Stephen Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0674031687 | ISBN-13: 978-0674031685

Sunday observance in the Christian West was an important religious issue from late Antiquity until at least the early twentieth century. In England the subject was debated in Parliament for six centuries. During the reign of Charles I disagreements about Sunday observance were a factor in the Puritan flight from England. In America the Sunday question loomed large in the nation’s newspapers. In the nineteenth century, it was the lengthiest of our national debates—outlasting those of temperance and slavery. In a more secular age, many writers have been haunted by the afterlife of Sunday. Wallace Stevens speaks of the “peculiar life of Sundays.” For Kris Kristofferson “there’s something in a Sunday, / Makes a body feel alone.”

From Augustine to Caesarius, through the Reformation and the Puritan flight from England, down through the ages to contemporary debates about Sunday worship, Stephen Miller explores the fascinating history of the Sabbath. He pays particular attention to the Sunday lives of a number of prominent British and American writers—and what they have had to say about Sunday. Miller examines such observant Christians as George Herbert, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Hannah More, and Jonathan Edwards. He also looks at the Sunday lives of non-practicing Christians, including Oliver Goldsmith, Joshua Reynolds, John Ruskin, and Robert Lowell, as well as a group of lapsed Christians, among them Edmund Gosse, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, and Wallace Stevens. Finally, he examines Walt Whitman’s complex relationship to Christianity. The result is a compelling study of the changing role of religion in Western culture.

(20081122)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

“The Sundays. . . . What of the Sundays?” asks a puzzled character in an Edith Wharton story set in the 1840s. To answer this question, Miller must survey a good deal of cultural history, limning the evolution of the first day of the week from the new Christian Sabbath celebrating Christ’s Resurrection to a secular day of diversion. Long after Augustine pleaded with his congregation to forsake their pagan Sunday entertainments, the monarchs of the British Isles found themselves entangled in Sabbatarian controversies pitting Anglicans against Puritans. Those persistent disputes took on distinctively new forms in America. Sometimes defined by the political debates surrounding blue laws prohibiting various commercial activities on Sunday, the deeper sabbatical divide opened between observant Christians who spend the day in communal worship and lapsed Christians who devote the day to a highly personal spirituality. By listening to a wide range of voices on both sides of this divide, readers can gauge the emotions that now cluster around Sunday. A revealing work of cultural history. --Bryce Christensen

Review

This wide-ranging study of the most singular day of the week--as it has played out over the centuries from antiquity to the present--will delight and inform readers. I found it beguiling in every way. Miller writes beautifully, drawing on a wealth of material, shaping his ideas and arguments with nothing short of amazing grace.
--Jay Parini, Middlebury College (20081227)

A fascinating cultural history of Sunday that draws on some of our best-known writers and public figures. Fluently written, vastly enjoyable, both instructive and diverting.
--David Mikics, University of Houston (20090130)

[A] lively history of a day that has exercised a peculiar hold on countless human beings for the past 2,000 years.
--Jay Tolson (Wall Street Journal 20090201)

In his book The Peculiar Life of Sundays, Stephen Miller sweeps through countries, epochs and theological debates to give a sense of the dialogue between Christianity and the wider culture over the proper place of Sunday in people's lives.
--Brian Welter (Vancouver Sun 20090131)

A revealing work of cultural history.
--Bryce Christensen (Booklist 20090202)

Miller's cultural history of Sunday observance in the Christian West becomes relevant reading because this day is now being subsumed by commercialization and secularization...The Peculiar Life of Sundays is a stained-glass window of Sunday lives...The Peculiar Life of Sundays succeeds in designing a complex and fascinating stained-glass window with each Sunday life sensitively executed to avoid unfair judgments.
--Christopher Benson (Weekly Standard 20090401)

Miller is a nimble and original cultural historian.
--Jeremy Lewis (Literary Review 20090220)

[A] polished and, at times, wistful meditation on the transformation of Sunday from late antiquity to the present.
--Fiona Capp (The Age 20091211)

A lively, absorbing history of Sunday observance in the Christian West.
--Susan Schwartz (Montreal Gazette )

Here is a cultural history of Sunday observance in the Christian West, drawn from ancient and contemporary sources, explored through the psychological dialectic of gladness and gloom. Miller acquaints the reader with the Sunday lives of observant Christians (Augustine, George Herbert, Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Edwards), nonobservant Christians (John Ruskin, Robert Lowell), and lapsed Christians (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Wallace Stevens), narrating a transformation of Sunday that began when Constantine's decree eclipsed pagan veneration for the sun god with Christian veneration for the Son of God. His focus on the Sabbatarian debates in America and Britain attests to the human need for a day of rest and reflection. Post-secular anxiety can be heard in this story, as residual blue laws fade to black--giving way to idle amusements and banal commerce. Now that Sundays are free of burdensome forms, they seem burdened by formlessness, which may be why Pope Benedict XVI exhorts, "Give the soul its Sunday, give Sunday its soul." (The Atlantic )

The Peculiar Life of Sundays is consistently informative and diverting--as suitable for the melancholy Sunday mornings of the Velvet Underground as the lazy afternoons of the Small Faces.
--Toby Lichtig (Times Literary Supplement )

The idea behind this book is so interesting that I am surprised it has not been tackled before. In an erudite but humorous fashion Miller charts the history of Sunday worship: when it began and how it has been observed, in literature as well as life.
--Charlie Hegarty (Catholic Herald )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (December 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674031687
• ISBN-13: 978-0674031685
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,257,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've been a freelance writer for fifteen years. I have also been a journalist, a college teacher, a newsletter writer, a government official, and a fellow at a Washington think tank. In addition to writing five books, I've written many essays and op-ed pieces for newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and Britain.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Useful, June 8, 2009

By 

Benjamin Shaw "otrabbi" (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Peculiar Life of Sundays (Hardcover)

The book begins with what might be called a thematic chapter titled "Sunday Gladness, Sunday Gloom" that sets the tone of the discussion for the book. The second chapter gives a summary of Sunday in antiquity, focusing on Augustine. The bulk of the book is then devoted to looking at how Sunday was observed in England from the Elizabethan through the Victorian eras (chs 3-6) and in the USA from the colonial to the current period (chs 7-8). Miller concludes with a chapter on Sunday in the current American religious context.

The novel, and most useful, aspect of Miller's approach is that he presents the practice of Sunday through the experiences of prominent writers who wrote about how they experienced and practiced Sunday. The writers from which he draws range from observant Christians such as William Law and Jonathan Edwards, to non-observant Christians (those who no longer worshiped, but had not publicly denied Christianity (such as Oliver Goldsmith and John Ruskin), to lapsed Christians such as Henry David Thoreau and Robert Lowell (those who were raised as Christians but as adults had publicly departed from the faith).

This approach enables Miller to avoid the theological discussions and disputes, and focuses on how people actually practiced their Sundays. All in all, a well-written and helpful piece of work.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A sprightly work of synthesis, May 18, 2009

By 

Anson Cassel Mills (Lake Santeetlah, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Peculiar Life of Sundays (Hardcover)

Although this sprightly work of synthesis begins with a chapter on Sunday in antiquity, it is largely a study of Sunday observance in England and America from the Reformation to the present. With only a nod here and there to the Sunday behavior of ordinary people on the Christian day of rest, Miller largely treats the views about Sunday--expansively defined--of such influential individuals as Samuel Johnson, William Law, Joseph Addison, Jonathan Edwards, Oliver Goldsmith, Joshua Reynolds, John Ruskin, Henry David Thoreau, Wallace Stevens, Robert Lowell, and Walt Whitman. Miller is especially drawn to those, like Thoreau, who dabble in thinking of Sunday as the day of the Sun.

Miller writes gracefully, defining his terms simply and usually without condescension. (Such is the current state of education that I cheerfully grant him considerable leeway along those lines in any case.)

Occasionally Miller misses a source that might have provided a different perspective on one of his characters, such as Ann Twaite's Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse (2002). And Miller is overly anxious to broaden adherence to the Christian faith unless a character explicitly and determinedly announces his anti-Christianity. Finally, it seems to me that the line between Sabbatarian and non-Sabbatarian runs roughly along the divide between evangelical and non-evangelical, a possible delineation that Miller neither acknowledges nor challenges.