SUNDAY OBSERVANCE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 100, 30 April 1930, Page 11

SUNDAY OBSERVANCE

THE PICTURE SHOWS

CLERGYMAN'S SUPPORT

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 21st March. Should picture houses be opened on Sundays is a question which is being discussed in the columns of the "Daily Chronicle." Professor Perej Dearmer, D.D., the well-known writer and,divine, discusses the two traditions of Sunday observance. • . i( The present .position," he writes, "is unreasonable. Either the opening of cinemas is right, or it is wrong. Either they should be everywhere open, or they should be everywhere shut. "Behind this anomalous position lies an historical fact. There are two traditions of Sunday observance. The older was laid down by St. Paul when he said (in Colossians ii. 16, Galatians iv. 9-11, and Romans xiy. 5) that tne Sabbath is among the observances _of the Jewish law that are not binding upon Gentile Christians, who are therefore free in the matter of Sabbath observance. ; ■ ■ • ■' i a "This continued to bo the accepted principle till tho middle ages, when the Schoolmen began to teach that Sunday observance was; divinely ordered in !the Ten Commandments, although the day had been changed from Saturday to Sunday, and other details had been altered. ENGLISH PURITANS. "Now, the Reformers did not abolish mediaeval ideas so much as is commonly supposed. "In this case some'of them retained the mediaeval idpa of a Jewish Sunday' observance ordered by God in the Fourth Commandment, not most of them; not, in fact, the greatest of them; for Luther and Calvin, in common with the Continental Reformers as -a body, rejected the mediaeval idea, as did also the English Churchmen* of the Stuart period. "But it was retained by the English puritans,, spread to Scotland, and was incorporated in .that enormously influential charter of British Puritanism, the Westminster Confession. ■.-■.-■. "Hence it is that there is a double strand of tradition still in. Britain, and that municipal' authorities aro somej times swayed, by one and sometimes by j tho other. ; [ BEST FILMS TOR SUNDAY. "I, for one, would plead with the j local authorities to allow everywhere the opening of the cinema for some hours on Sunday. ' . "I should like a rule to be made that only the best kind of film should be shown on a Sunday, because the day ' should preserve its character as the loftiest'in the week, and I believe I that if all good people would unite, putting aside those less liberal views which really hinder the. cause, the cinema could be of real help in the spiritualising of the popular Sunday." It appears that all Sunday entertainments are illegal under the Act passed 150 years ago, and that Act makes it impossible for any authority lawfully to grant permission for. performances' at cinemas or Sunday concerts, or any1 • kind of amusement. This fact is pointed out by a Labour member of the London County Council. He maintains that the High Court, if it were calied on, would -affirm this. ,; Of course, there are ways of evading the law.