Monday, December 7, 2015

Ben Carson on the National Sunday Law

I probably should have written this post when Ben Carson was higher up in the polls, but this is a topic of interest to me, so I will post it.

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who is running for the Republican nomination for U.S. President, is a Seventh-Day Adventist.  Carson has been gaining support from conservative evangelicals.

The reason that this has interested me is that Seventh-Day Adventism fears (or, at least, negatively anticipates) a National Sunday Law, which will require people to honor Sunday religiously and will supposedly persecute people who observe the Sabbath on other days, as the Seventh-Day Adventists observe the Sabbath on Saturday (or, more accurately, from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset).  Many Seventh-Day Adventists, due to their opposition to a National Sunday Law, tend to be critical of the religious right, fearing that it will erode the wall between church and state and lead to a National Sunday Law.  Carson, however, is supported by people who could be characterized as part of the religious right.  Is this an inconsistency?  How does Carson himself navigate this tension?

I found a YouTube video in which Carson talked about the National Sunday Law before a Seventh-Day Adventist church.  Carson said that he is opposed to political-correctness and the new world order, and their attempts to undermine the Judeo-Christian ethic in America.  Carson states that he is actively fighting political correctness.  Carson also predicted that, in accordance with Bible prophecy, there will be a religious awakening in America, and that things will get better as a result of that.  But, Carson continues, some will take that awakening in overly zealous directions, and that will lead to a National Sunday Law and the persecution of seventh-day sabbathkeepers.  According to Carson, persecution over the seventh-day Sabbath will come from the right rather than the left.  Finally, Carson jokingly remarked that he hopes he is not around by that time!

Carson seems to support a religious awakening, thinking that will result in good things for the country; this may explain why he supports a lot of what the religious right supports, notwithstanding his Seventh-Day Adventism.  But he still maintains his Seventh-Day Adventist belief that there will come a National Sunday Law, and he hopes that he will not be around to see it.

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