There are 4 million Muslims in America, 7.5 million Jews, and 223 million Christians.
... After decades of failing to convince Americans to honor the Jewish
Sabbath, Drachman proposed something audacious. Instead of forcing every
citizen into the same religious calendar, why not create two days of
rest? Let Jews observe Saturday and Christians Sunday and encourage
America to adopt a shorter workweek altogether.
... if each religious community could preserve its own sacred day with
dignity, while workers gained additional time for family and rest,
American society itself would benefit.
... Today, as America celebrates its milestone birthday, the weekend has
become so ordinary that almost no one asks where it came from. The
answer in part is two Orthodox rabbis who refused to move Shabbat to
Sunday. What they were doing, without quite knowing it, was the
unfinished work of American religious freedom. They did not set out to
give America the weekend. They simply would not give up Shabbat. And
precisely because they would not bend, America eventually bent around
them.
