The Real Danger Behind “Saving America With Sabbath”
All over my feed I’m seeing Adventists reacting to Charlie Kirk’s new book, “Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life.”
Some are excited.
“Finally, someone with a big platform talking about Sabbath!”
“Charlie was one of us!”
Others are complaining because the Kirk’s are not promoting a strict, 7-th day Sabbath per-se. It’s a more accomodational approach where Sabbath is technically 7th day, but can also be adjusted to other days.
And here’s my problem:
Every SDA critique I have seen of the Kirk’s Sabbath views always center on one issue: “Charlie got the Sabbath day wrong.”
“He had an adjustable view where Sabbath could be Saturday or Sunday. This is still breaking the commandment and leads to a ‘generic Sabbath’ that can bring us closer to a National Sunday Law…” and on and on.
And here’s why this line of thinking frustrates me so much: Because a “Generic Sabbath” is NOT the main problem here. Charlie getting the Sabbath wrong is NOT the main problem either. In fact, “the law of God is still being broken” is also NOT the main issue. And if we focus only on those things, we will miss the deeper danger completely.
Here’s what I mean:
Imagine the Kirk’s promoted a strict, no-compromise seventh-day Sabbath, with no “adjusting,” no flexibility, all on the correct day… would it suddenly be non-problematic? Would there suddenly be no issues with it?
No.
Because the real issue isn’t just day seven versus day one. The real issue is a theology of power.
The Real Problem: When the State “Saves” the Soul
At the heart of the vision the Kirk’s promote is this idea:
America is sick. To heal the nation, we must return to Sabbath rest…
In the same way that Sabbath saved Charlie, it can save the nation too…
And this is where Adventists need to wake up and remember our own theology.
As an Adventist, I am opposed to a Sunday law.
But guess what? I would also be opposed to a seventh-day Sabbath law.
Why? Because the moment the State uses its power to enforce religious practice, we have left the kingdom of Christ and entered the logic of coercion. It doesn’t matter if the doctrine being enforced is exegetically correct. Coerced religion is false religion.
We often say: “The mark of the beast has to do with the wrong day.”
But underneath that, the real issue is this: the beast uses force. It uses economic pressure and legal power to control worship and conscience.
If we imagine that a “Sabbath law” would become holy just by moving it from Sunday to Saturday, we have deeply misunderstood both prophecy and the character of God.
A seventh-day Sabbath law would be just as evil as a Sunday law.
Not because the seventh day is wrong, but because coercion is wrong.
God’s Law is Not Enforced by Threat
The law of God is not tyrannical. It is not about control. It is a description of love: love for God, love for neighbor.
Love cannot be forced. The cross, not the sword, is how God wins hearts. Jesus refused to call down legions of angels. He refused to build His kingdom through political power or violence. “My kingdom is not of this world” was not a slogan; it was a refusal to rule by fear.
Whenever we take God’s good gifts like Sabbath and move them into the machinery of State power, we change their nature. They stop being gifts and become tools of control.
That is the real danger in any project that talks about “saving America” through religious practice, especially in a Christian nationalist setting where church, flag, and law are constantly being mixed.
If we only say, “You got the day wrong,” we’re missing the bigger story.
Have Adventists Forgotten Our Own Protest?
Historically, Adventists have stood for religious liberty. We have defended the right of conscience for everyone, not just for Sabbath keepers. We have argued that the State has no right to legislate worship, period.
But somewhere along the way, especially at the popular level, we’ve often simplified the issue down to:
“The problem with Sunday laws is that they’re on the wrong day.”
That is a serious mistake.
The problem with a Sunday law is not that it’s a Sunday law instead of a Sabbath law. The problem is that it’s a federal law about worship at all.
The moment we forget this, we start sounding like we’d actually be fine with religious coercion—if only they enforced the right commandment. At that point, we’re just arguing about which flavor of theocracy we prefer.
A Protest that Actually Matters
So what should our protest sound like?
It can’t just be:
“Charlie got the day wrong.”
“The Christian nationalists aren’t keeping the true commandment.”
That’s too shallow.
The protest has to go deeper:
This whole vision gets God’s character wrong.
It presents a God who stands behind national projects of moral control. A God who becomes the mascot for political movements. A God whose law is enforced by the State instead of written on human hearts.
That is not the God revealed in Jesus. It is much closer to the Christian religious tyranny of the Middle Ages, where the church used civil power to enforce doctrine and crush dissent.
Adventists know that story. We have preached against that story for more than a century. But if we only focus on which day is printed on the calendar, and not on the deeper issue of coercion, we will end up repeating that same story in a different color.
Rest, Freedom, and the True Sabbath
To be fair, I am NOT suggesting that Charlie was promoting a “coercive” Sabbath. This is not an anti-Charlie or Erika blog. My main issue is with a mentality in the SDA church where we seem to think the only problem with some sort of Sabbath legislation is that the politicians get the day wrong.
It’s not about the day. It’s about the spirit behind using the state to enforce religious dogma.
And that spirit is evil, regardless of how theologically accurate they get the day.
Ellen White said it best when she wrote that the mark of the beast is in full effect when “Protestant churches” (not atheists or secularists)… “seek the aid of the civil power for the enforcement of their dogmas.” (italics supplied)
And here is where I think Adventism needs to stand up and fulfill its calling.
We can agree with the Kirk’s that people are exhausted, burned out, addicted to their phones, and desperate for rest. We can affirm that God built a rhythm of work and rest into creation itself, for all people.
But we can resist any theology or philosophy that attempts to employ state-power to achieve compliance to God’s law as anti-Christ, anti-love, the epitome of the beast-system.
Any call to “save the nation” by mixing Sabbath with State power—on any day—is off the rails.
The Sabbath of Scripture is a sign of freedom: freedom from slavery in Egypt, freedom from endless production, freedom to belong to a God who values people more than output. When Sabbath becomes a tool of political control, it stops pointing to that God.
If the Sabbath we preach is about rest without freedom, it is not the Sabbath of the God who hung on a cross with His arms open, forcing no one, inviting everyone.
That, I believe, is the real issue we must not lose sight of.
This, I believe, is our protest.
