Girls' football and the Scottish Sabbath

They take the Sabbath seriously in the Western Isles (I was once told to hide the Sunday papers under my coat when I left the newsagent, to avoid causing scandal).  Now Sunday football has been raised in the Scottish parliament,  after a girls' football team from Back qualified for the 16-team Coca-Cola Sevens finals at Tynecastle in Edinburgh on 25 May. It's a Sunday.  A number of parents have withdrawn their children, citing religious observance . The Western Isles MSP, Alasdair Allan,  has called on the organisers "to avert a situation in which a team in the final would be disqualified simply because of the religious traditions of the families from which they come'.   Difficult one.  The Cranmer blog points out that "This could potentially halt all games played on Sundays (for the Christians), but also calls into question those held on Saturdays (for the Jews) and those on Fridays (for the Muslims). And since there is no agreed governmental definition of ‘religion’, Cranmer foresees demands to recognise the appointed Sabbath day of the Jedi Knight fraternity, whatever day that be."

Comments

[Norman]

The fact that it's girls' football is irrelevant.

People have to make choices, and I don't have a problem with them preferring to observe their sabbath than play football. If the match date can easily be moved, well and good - but any move will have winners and losers. Who should pay so that these players can have their choice at no cost to themselves?

[Andrew CJ]

But the Rev'd John Keble (he of the Oxford Movement fame) apparently had no trouble reconciling the Sabbath with sports, as he is said to have organised cricket on Sundays. But that was in England. And in the 1800s.

When smuggling the 'papers out of the newsagent, you unlikely were in Stornoway, on the isle of Lewis, for they are closed there on Sundays. Or were. There also would not have been any way for them to be 'smuggled' into Lewis, as the ferry was, and still is, not operational on the Sabbath, though aeroplanes might now. And there was the sight of the Sunday 'papers piled high in those Stornoway shops on Monday...

It's nice to have a day when the pressure to perform is not as strong. When rest is the expected norm.

A society will always have certain common standards; in ours, Sunday has been that traditional day. No offence to those of other religious traditions (need for PCness now!), but that's just the way it has been in ours.

[Stuart Hartill]

Like many perhaps, I took 'Keep Sunday Special' to be a strictly religious phenomenon, so I was interested to see Mick Hume recently quote an account by Karl Marx of Hyde Park toffs being confronted by a mob protesting the original Sunday Trading Bill in 1855.
Marx wrote:‘They ran the gauntlet. A babel of jeering, taunting and discordant noises – in which no language is so rich as the English – soon closed in upon them from all sides. As the concert was improvised there was a lack of instrumental accompaniment. The chorus, therefore, had to make use of its own organs and to confine itself to vocal music. And what a diabolical concert it was: a cacophony of grunting, hissing, whistling, squawking, snarling, growling, croaking, yelling, groaning, rattling, shrieking, gnashing sounds. Music to drive a man out of his mind, music to move a stone. Added to this came outbursts of genuine Old English humour strangely mixed with boiling and long-constrained anger.’
Not quite the way I'd imagine the 'Wee Frees' making their point!