A Sunday manifesto: what to do with that day of rest.(Sunday: A History of the First Day From Babylonia to the Super Bowl )(Book review)

Sunday: A History of the First Day From Babylonia to the Super Bowl By Craig Harline Doubleday, 450 pp.

Is it a vain, demanding, aggrandizing god who demands a whole day every week be devoted to him? Or is it a modest, self-effacing god who wants just one day's worship every seven, and lets poor mortals get off their knees and go to work the other six? Is it an abundant, generous planet that allows its inhabitants a day of leisure (because Saturday, let's face it, is for schlepping the kids to soccer practice and standing on line at the Home Depot), or is a stern, withholding planet that makes us get out of bed five days a week and alienate our labor on behalf of cold, faceless corporations? Is it a selfish, avaricious football league that conquers Sunday afternoons, and then moves resolutely to take ownership of Monday nights, Sunday nights, and Thursday nights, or is it a smart, enterprising league that knows that after reading Craig Harline's Sunday: A History of the First Day From Babylonia to the Super Bowl I'm ready for some football?

The above seem to be the only questions about Sundays left unanswered by Harline's well-written new book. The author, a historian at Brigham Young University, offers us a shrewdly selective survey of what is, after all, a vast subject--how …