It is interesting that since the late 1980s when there was a concerted political campaign in the UK to prevent Sunday trading and ‘Keep Sunday Special’, shopping on Sundays is much more acceptable for Christians these days. In fact, many of the arguments made by the Keep Sunday Special campaigners were prescient – Sunday has become just another day for many, and shopping is the number one leisure activity, far outstripping church attendance.

The idea that Sunday should be set apart as the ‘Lord’s Day’ really grew to prominence in the Puritan and non-Conformist tradition in Britain. Detractors often referred to it as ‘Sabbatarianism’, because of Sunday often being referred to as the Sabbath, and the strict restrictions on what could and could not be done on that day. Anecdotes abound of families having to go to church three times a day, and not being able to play games or have any fun whatsoever.

Some of this stereotyping of non-Conformist practice as legalistic and joyless is unfair. But certainly the stricter churches did outlaw many things seen as unspiritual and unworthy of the Sabbath. Shopping on Sundays would have been considered taboo.

However, despite the religiosity of churchgoers, life goes on outside the church. For the first few centuries of the Church’s existence, Sunday was a normal weekday. For Jewish believers, meeting fellow followers of Christ meant observing the Sabbath rules, then getting up early the next day to worship Jesus before going to work. Gentile converts would also have to meet before work.

In the middle ages most people worked a seven-day week and the Church carried on its rituals with little impact on the majority of people, who would turn up for the festivals and possible an ordinary service if they had the time. It was only with the passing of certain worker-friendly laws as Britain industrialised that ordinary people ever got time off. The weekend is a fairly modern innovation in human history.

But as people were given more free time, and because many mill owners (for example) were also devout men, workers were compelled to go to church. Gradually, particularly among Reformed and evangelical churches, it was felt that Sunday, the Lord’s Day, should be set apart for worship and service, much like the Jewish Sabbath. The fourth commandment[1] – of setting one day a week apart for ‘rest’ – began to be seen as a requirement.

But of course ‘rest’ is a vague term. Defining ‘rest’ as sitting in church listening to a sermon, and other things, for example buying fair trade items from a stall at the back of the church, is highly subjective. Basically, it comes down to personal preference and tradition.

However, if the ‘Lord’s day’ is really going to mean a day given over to God, then any activity that is in line with God’s agenda is perfectly acceptable. There is Biblical and theological justification for selling fair trade goods, so there should be no issue with selling them on a Sunday.

There is one more point to make here, though. The use of the story about Jesus driving traders out of the Temple to justify selling fair trade on a Sunday is interesting. Yes, Jesus was reacting to the injustice and swindling that was going on. But Jesus was also reacting to the way the outer court of the Temple had become a market place. [2]

The outer court was supposed to be the area where the Gentiles could worship God – in fact, probably one of the most important places in the Temple, in that through it Israel could fulfil their calling and be a light to the Gentiles. By trading there, Gentile worship was rendered impossible, and Gentiles were excluded. Jesus’ reaction was also about making sure the rights of worshippers on the fringes weren’t impinged upon.

Without a doubt, trading in any church can be done with a minimum of disruption and fuss. However, there may be a good rationale for not having stalls set up at the back of the church, if they would distract people from worshipping.

Related article
Read Jon the freelance theologian talk about Fair Trade as a prophetic act

Reference
[1] Exodus chapter 20, verse 8
[2] The story of Jesus clearing the Temple appears in all four gospels. John places it at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (John chapter 2, verses 12-16). The Synoptic gospels place it in the last few days of Jesus’ life (Luke chapter 19, verse 45-46; Mark chapter 11, verses 15-17; Matthew chapter 21, verses 12-13). The Synoptic accounts reference Isaiah chapter 56, verse 7 – “for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations”.

A few years ago my friend Nick, who told us why he is thankful for Fair Do’s earlier, was interviewing various people about why they were involved in fair trade. It was for some academic paper; I have to admit I don’t know the details. Having talked to Nick, I wasn’t sure he knew the details either, but I agreed to do an interview.

So we sat and we chatted about fair trade, and I explained how and why I would identify my faith as an integral reason for being passionate about fair trade. Now I realise not everyone here would identify themselves as a Christian, and if you aren’t thank you for coming and celebrating with us anyway, but for me, and many of us at Fair Do’s our faith and our commitment to fair trade are intertwined.

Fair trade meshes with the Christian story for many reasons. Nick and I talked a bit about the calls for justice in the Old Testament stories about life in the land of Israel; and about how God takes the side of the marginalised, exploited and oppressed. We talked about how Jesus valued the poor and reversed the power structures of his day by challenging the rich to do something about poverty.

But chiefly, I believe fair trade is such a powerful example of how the Christian faith should be lived because it is a ‘prophetic act’. It looks forward to how life should be and injects the values of the coming Kingdom of God into the everyday here and now.

We hold, as Christians, to a future hope of living, as perfect humans, in a world that has been similarly renewed and transformed. We’re told that, in that place, men and women will live in harmony with each other – and with God. The effects of human selfishness and error will no longer be felt. There will be no more poverty; no more war; no more sickness and no more death.

And if we hold to that future hope, then how we live now is important. The choices we make in the lives we are living in this less-than-perfect world can illustrate the world that is yet to come.

When we choose to buy fairly traded products we make a prophetic statement that one day exploitation will cease, poverty will no longer exist, and all human beings will live in just and dignified relationships.

The Apostle Paul said that we, as Christians, can be assured of the reality of our future hope because of Jesus’ resurrection. Because Jesus was raised by God from the dead, we can be assured that we will be raised from the dead, and that assurance of the future affects us now in how we relate to our fellow human beings.

In the book of Acts, which chronicles what the first followers of Jesus did immediately after Jesus left the scene, there’s a story about the coming of the Holy Spirit, which inspires Jesus’ followers to go out and tell people about Jesus’ resurrection.

One of these followers was a man called Peter, who spoke to a huge crowd who had gathered and started to outline what had happened to Jesus: his death, his resurrection, and what that meant for the people gathered there.

Peter told the crowd that Jesus’ death and resurrection had been predicted many years before, by King David. This is what Peter said:

[Acts chapter 2, verses 31-32]
“[David] spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.”

When we talk about resurrection, we think of someone coming coming back from the dead. That is what the word means, after all. The Greek word for resurrection is anastasis – it literally means ‘to stand up’. When Jesus raises a young girl from the dead, he says the Aramaic words ‘Talitha Cumi’, which literally means ‘get up’. The image that this gives is that ‘resurrection’ is raising a person to their feet.

And here in Acts Peter defines ‘resurrection’ in terms of ‘not being abandoned’; not being left for dead; not being left to rot. It’s a powerful metaphor. And, Peter says, it has happened right here and right now. It has changed everything, because in that resurrection is the promise that we too can experience new life.

So that hope, that promise of resurrection, affects us now. It changes the way we relate to people. It changes our priorities. It has to. If this promise of new life is real, then the new life has to be lived. If the resurrection has changed our future; then surely it has also changed our present.

We are, in effect, living the resurrection life already. That’s what the apostle Paul, for example, means when he writes about wanting to ‘know the power of the resurrection’ [Philippians chapter 3, verse 10] in his current circumstances.

Here and now, in our country, in this city, we live lives where we enjoy the luxury of choice. Every single day we make choices – what to wear, what to eat, how to spend our time. But the biggest choice we can make – which actually underpins every other choice we make – is whether we are going to be resurrection people, or people of death.

When we see people trapped in their circumstances; hemmed in by a grinding global cycle of poverty; we have a choice.

When we see people on the sharp end of trade injustice; crushed by international institutionalized inequality, we have a choice.

When we see people who have been oppressed, misled, betrayed and knowingly exploited, we have a choice.

When we see people who have been forgotten and abandoned in their suffering, we have a choice.

We can choose not to abandon people. We can reach out to them and raise them to their feet. We can invest them with the dignity of being human. We can recognise their value as fellow flawed creatures that still somehow carry within them the spark that is the image of God.

When we choose not to abandon our fellow humans to the grave of poverty, of injustice, of unfair trade we are performing a resurrection act.

Jesus proclaimed himself to be the resurrection and the life. What we have tried to do at Fair Do’s is copy him, to raise up those who have been crushed and broken, those who have been abandoned and forgotten. To bring life… instead of death.