Is Sunday a “Uniform Day of Rest” in Project 2025?

Sunday as a “Uniform Day of Rest” in Project 2025

Organizations, Agencies, and the Revival of Blue Laws in the United States

1. What Project 2025 Actually Says About Sunday

Project 2025 is a 900+ page policy blueprint coordinated by The Heritage Foundation and supported by over 100 conservative organizations, intended to guide the next conservative administration’s restructuring of the federal government .

While the main Project 2025 document addresses administrative governance, a companion policy agenda released January 8, 2026, titled “Saving America by Saving the Family,” explicitly calls for the restoration of Sunday blue laws to establish a “uniform day of rest” across states and municipalities .

The document frames Sunday observance as:

• Essential for family cohesion
• Necessary for worker protection
• A means to restore social order
• A response to declining birthrates and moral fragmentation

Critically, Sunday is not presented as a neutral rest day (e.g., “any day chosen by the worker”) but as a shared national rhythm, explicitly rooted in Christian tradition .

1. The Heritage Foundation: Central Architect
2. Institutional Role

The Heritage Foundation is the principal author and coordinating body behind Project 2025. It serves as:

• The primary policy drafter
• The vetting authority for future federal appointees
• The ideological anchor for Christian nationalist policy integration

Heritage has openly argued that government neutrality toward religion has failed and that the state must actively reinforce moral norms, including Sunday rest .

2. Sunday as Moral Infrastructure

Heritage literature characterizes Sunday laws not merely as labor protections but as:

“A shared moral structure necessary for the survival of the family and the nation.”

This marks a shift away from First-Amendment neutrality toward state-endorsed religious rhythm.

III. Coalition Organizations Promoting Sunday Rest

Project 2025 is not the work of Heritage alone. It represents a coalition effort.

1. Family-Policy Advocacy Organizations

These groups promote Sunday laws under the banner of “family protection”:

• Family Research Council (FRC)
• Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)
• Concerned Women for America (CWA)
• American Principles Project

These organizations argue that:

• Sunday closures protect children from commercial exploitation
• Sunday worship should be socially protected
• Employers should be discouraged from Sunday labor demands

While often framed in secular language, their policy papers explicitly reference Christian social teaching .

2.Christian Nationalist Networks

Several Christian nationalist organizations have endorsed Project 2025 and its Sunday provisions:

• Council for National Policy
• Intercessors for America
• Turning Point Faith
• American Family Association

These groups advocate:

• “Biblical ordering” of public life
• Reassertion of Sunday as the “Lord’s Day”
• Government recognition of Christian heritage

Americans United for Separation of Church and State has identified these networks as key promoters of theocratic public policy, including Sunday restrictions .

3. Governmental Agencies Implicated in Enforcement

Project 2025 does not require Congress to pass a federal Sunday law. Instead, it proposes administrative realignment, allowing Sunday observance to be promoted through existing regulatory agencies.

1. Department of Labor (DOL)

The DOL is envisioned as:

• Encouraging Sunday rest via labor standards
• Limiting exemptions for Sunday commerce
• Conditioning federal labor protections on Sunday compliance

This echoes early 20th-century blue-law enforcement strategies upheld in cases such as McGowan v. Maryland (1961), which allowed Sunday laws if framed as secular rest measures .

1. State and Local Governments

Blue laws historically operate at the state and municipal level, and Project 2025 explicitly encourages:

• State legislatures to re-enact Sunday closures
• Local zoning boards to restrict Sunday commerce
• Alcohol control boards to reinstate Sunday bans

Legal scholarship confirms that many blue laws remain on the books, though unevenly enforced.

1. Alcohol and Commerce Regulatory Agencies

Sunday alcohol bans are the most common surviving blue laws.

• State alcohol control boards
• Licensing agencies
• Municipal commerce departments

These agencies have historically enforced Sunday sanctity indirectly through commerce restrictions rather than worship mandates.

1. Historical Precedent: Why Sunday Laws Are Never Neutral
2. Origins in Christian Sabbath Enforcement

Sunday laws originated in colonial America to enforce Christian observance of the Lord’s Day. Activities once prohibited included:

• Buying and selling
• Travel
• Sports
• Entertainment
• Non-Christian worship

The History Channel and NEH confirm that these laws were explicitly religious in purpose, regardless of later secular rationales .

2. Supreme Court Reframing

In McGowan v. Maryland, the Supreme Court upheld Sunday laws by reclassifying them as secular rest regulations, but dissenting opinions warned that:

“The religious origin of these laws cannot be erased by rebranding.”

This legal fiction is now being actively revived by Project 2025 advocates .

1. Religious Liberty Concerns
2. Impact on Religious Minorities

Sunday laws disproportionately affect:

• Seventh-day Adventists
• Seventh Day Baptists
• Jews
• Muslims
• Secular workers

These groups already observe different holy days and are economically penalized when forced to close businesses on Sunday while resting another day.

The North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists has issued formal warnings that Project 2025’s Sunday proposals undermine freedom of conscience .

1. From Voluntary Rest to Sacred Mandate

Once Sunday is established as a “national rest day,” history shows that:

1. Economic pressure follows
2. Cultural enforcement increases
3. Legal penalties eventually return

This pattern occurred repeatedly in U.S. history and Europe .

VII. Why This Matters Now

Project 2025 differs from past Sunday-law movements in three critical ways:

1. Centralized administrative control
2. Ideological vetting of civil servants
3. Explicit rejection of church–state separation

As BJC and Interfaith Alliance warn, this represents a structural shift toward government-enforced religious norms rather than personal faith freedom .

VIII. Summary Table

Category	Key Actors
Primary Architect	The Heritage Foundation
Policy Allies	Family Research Council, ADF, CWA
Ideological Networks	Council for National Policy, Christian nationalist groups
Government Agencies	Department of Labor, state commerce agencies
Enforcement Mechanism	State & municipal blue laws
Primary Target	Sunday commerce and labor
Affected Groups	Religious minorities, workers

1. Conclusion

The Project 2025 call for Sunday as a uniform day of rest is not a benign labor policy. It is the revival of blue-law ideology, promoted by a coordinated network of religious-political organizations and designed to be implemented through administrative power rather than open congressional debate.

History demonstrates that Sunday laws always begin as “family protection” and end as conscience regulation.

For communities that remember those consequences—particularly Seventh-day Adventists—this proposal represents not merely a policy disagreement, but a fundamental threat to religious liberty.