FROM SABBATH TO WEEKEND: RECREATION, SABBATARIANISM, AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE WEEKEND A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Karl E. Johnson January 2011 © 2011 Karl E. Johnson FROM SABBATH TO WEEKEND: RECREATION, SABBATARIANISM, AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE WEEKEND Karl E. Johnson, Ph.D. Cornell University 2011 From the 1630s to the 1930s, the problem of leisure was that there was not much leisure, especially designated days of recreation. In this dissertation I describe reformers’ responses and contributions to the recreational landscape, primarily in the northeastern United States. Puritan attitudes toward recreation have been much misunderstood. Puritans opposed Saints Days and Sunday recreations as part of their larger project to reform or “desacralize” the calendar. Because they preferred recreation that was secular and regular, however, they were the first to advocate for designated days of recreation. In the New World, Puritan attitudes toward recreation were reinforced by republican virtues through the War for Independence. In the nineteenth century, different groups responded differently to the crises of leisure time and space. Unitarians supported uplifting public initiatives such as Central Park, while Methodists created alternative destinations such as Asbury Park and Ocean Grove. This Victorian “resacralizing” of leisure was not the initiative of conservative Calvinists, but of Arminians and religious liberals. Evangelicals in the Calvinist tradition focused on advocating for the Saturday half-holiday as a means of preserving Sunday for rest and worship. Sabbatarianism adapted to the Progressive Era in response to entertainment entrepreneurs’ exploitation of free time on Sunday. Saturday afternoons, however, were also filled with the very consumption and pleasure-seeking that Sabbatarians most abhorred. Thus, when Jewish Sabbatarians advocated for a Saturday full-holiday in the 1920s, Protestant Sabbatarians were unsupportive. They understood their advocacy for secular leisure was contributing to a new lifestyle and sensibility focused on fun, pleasure, and consumption. Sabbatarians in the Puritan tradition succeeded not only in banishing ritual festivities such as May games, but also in securing a weekly day of recreation: The weekend arrived first in 1930s England and America largely because of Sabbatarian advocacy. This success, however, was ambiguous; the singular “weekend” suggests an undifferentiated block of time that no longer distinguishes much between rest and recreation. In the end, Sabbatarians were neither as reactionary and unsuccessful as they are commonly depicted, nor as countercultural and successful as they aspired. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Karl E. Johnson was born on September 6, 1966, and graduated from Rye High School (Rye, NY) in 1984. After bicycling across the United States, he entered Cornell University in 1985. At Cornell he was an active member of the soccer team, the wind ensemble, and the Outdoor Education and Wilderness Reflections programs. While an undergraduate, he taught Physical Education classes in Day Hiking, Backpacking, Bicycle Touring, Basic Mountaineering, and started the first service- oriented Physical Education class at Cornell, Trail Maintenance. He graduated in 1990. For fifteen years, Johnson worked in outdoor education. From 1990 through 1992, he served as manager of the Ithaca Youth Bureau Outings Program, leading camping and canoeing trips for “at-risk” youth, and directing a Youth Conservation Corps project in the town of Dryden. In 1993, he began working as a consultant, trainer, and expert witness in the outdoor education field, and also began teaching a popular Cornell Adult University class entitled Outdoor Thrills and Skills. In 1996, he became the Dan Tillemans Director of the Cornell Team and Leadership Center, a division of Cornell Outdoor Education, and the following year he designed and oversaw the construction of Cornell’s Hoffman Challenge Course facility on Mt. Pleasant. He is now the proud namesake of two local facilities—a yurt on Mt Pleasant, in recognition of 20 years of service to Cornell Outdoor Education, and the Karl Johnson Privy in Danby State Forest, in recognition of service to the Cayuga Trails Club. Johnson has received multiple writing awards, including a 1995 Amy Award for writing in religion, and the Pack Natural Resources Management Essay Contest in 1996. In 1999 he was recognized as an Academy of Leisure Sciences Future Scholar. iii His publications have appeared in Journal of Experiential Education, Leisure/Loisir, and in popular publications such as Books & Culture, Taproot, and the New York State Conservationist. In 2000 he received an M.S. in Natural Resources from Cornell, where his thesis focused on the philosophy of recreation and leisure. He has since guest lectured in Cornell University’s departments of Education, Natural Resources, and Applied Economics and Management, and in Ithaca College's Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies. In 2001 Johnson enrolled in a doctoral program through Cornell’s Employee Degree Program. In 2005 he became the founding director of Chesterton House, a Center for Christian Studies at Cornell University, an affiliate organization of Cornell United Religious Work. iv To Julie v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation was completed over the course of ten years through Cornell University’s Employee Degree Program. I am very grateful to Cornell for this opportunity, and especially to Todd Miner, Cornell Outdoor Education Executive Director, for approving a leave of absence in order to allow me to fulfill the degree program requirements. I am additionally grateful to Steve Froehlich and the Chesterton House board for similar support and flexibility in recent years. Academically, my deepest debt is to my Special Committee Chair, Professor Emeritus Richard A. Baer, Jr. As a generation of students has already noted, Dick’s undergraduate lectures challenged, enlightened, and inspired. Moving fluidly from poetry to policy, they never failed to question conventional wisdom and provide a new perspective on seemingly familiar phenomena. Likewise, I owe a debt to Special Committee member Professor Emeritus R. Lawrence Moore, whose undergraduate classes were also a highlight of my undergraduate education. Though it would be cliché if it were not true, Dick and Larry’s classes literally changed the trajectory of my life by leading me to do something I had never imagined—return to graduate school. I would also like to thank the other members of my Special Committee, including Barbara Bedford, for a very close reading of the thesis and encouragement to continue publishing for a broad public audience, and Jim Lassoie, for providing some much needed assistance at the eleventh hour. To all my committee members: thank you—for your time, your guidance, and above all for your patience. Because I completed this project while working full-time, it has been a lonelier affair than I would have liked. I am therefore all the more grateful for the collegiality I have enjoyed. Jim Tantillo, never at a loss to suggest yet further reading, has been a great encouragement (and source of comic relief) throughout the process; Jamie vi Skillen has been a model of a careful, disciplined, and productive young scholar; and Greg Hitzhusen balanced our group by keeping one foot in the world of practitioners, always reminding us of the connection between theory and praxis. My thanks to all three for conversation, comments, and feedback. Although we are now scattered, I know that my work bears the mark of our time together. Alexis McCrossen provided thoughtful correspondence and comments on a publication related to this dissertation. Paul Heintzman extended several invitations to speak and publish in various venues, as well as comments on a number of papers over the years. And John DeGraaf of Take Back Your Time provided an opportunity to present some of this material at the National Vacation Matters Summit in 2009. I am grateful to all three for taking an interest in my work from a distance. On a more personal note, I am grateful to my parents, Mary B. and the late Stephen H. Johnson. The writing of this dissertation coincided with some difficult years during which my mother suffered a debilitating stroke, and my father and sister succumbed to cancer. More than once the challenges of everyday life caused me to question the value of continuing with this project. And yet the knowledge that my parents would want me to do so was a great help. Although I originally planned to study business, my father—an entrepreneur who never had the opportunity to complete a college degree—suggested that I study something that a university education is actually good for. I embarked on a liberal arts course of study with some reluctance but have never looked back. Thank you. Finally, my thanks to Julie and our children—Meg, Elizabeth, Christine, Sarah, and David. I have aspired to complete this project without great cost to either quality or quantity of time spent with my children, and I hope I have mostly succeeded. Being there to share in the joys and frustrations of your learning to read and write, add and subtract, conjugate and translate, has been and remains a great joy, and I wouldn’t vii miss it for anything. Thank you for your patience on those occasions when my mind seemed elsewhere. Hopefully, Daddy is now really home!