{"id":8155,"date":"2004-01-16T07:44:43","date_gmt":"2004-01-16T07:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/open_doors.html"},"modified":"2004-01-16T07:44:43","modified_gmt":"2004-01-16T07:44:43","slug":"open_doors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/open_doors.html","title":{"rendered":"Open Doors"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the WSJ: When Christian stores open on Sunday, as the Family Christian Store chain decided to do last fall<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps feeling a bit defensive, Mr. Browne overplayed his hand last fall when, referring to Chik-Fil-A, he told the Dallas Morning News: “No one is going to hell if they don’t eat a chicken sandwich on a Sunday.” The implication was that his wares are more important to salvation and thus exempt from concerns about selling on the Sabbath, but Mr. Browne was hardly speaking ex cathedra.<\/p>\n

In any event, the decision by Family Christian Stores puts pressure on the rest of the Christian bookstore industry. Bev Channell, for example, opened Wellspring, her independent store in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sundays just for the Christmas season, in part because Family Christian had just opened a store in nearby Ankeny.<\/p>\n

“It’s important to take a day of rest, yes,” explains Ms. Channell. “But what does keeping the Sabbath day holy really mean? When we go out to eat on Sundays, we go to a business that’s open–how is that right or wrong? Besides, we were very concerned with paying the bills. This is a business, and it’s a ministry.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Are there blue laws in effect anywhere anymore? When I lived in Virginia about fifteen years ago, there were – I think only grocery stores could be open on Sundays in the area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the WSJ: When Christian stores open on Sunday, as the Family Christian Store chain decided to do last fall Perhaps feeling a bit defensive, Mr. Browne overplayed his hand last fall when, referring to Chik-Fil-A, he told the Dallas Morning News: “No one is going to hell if they don’t eat a chicken sandwich…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOpen Doors - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/open_doors.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Open Doors - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}