HVD supports the Alliance for a Free Sunday

“In our view, promoting social and family cohesion is a deeply humanistic concern,” said Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany, yesterday in Berlin on the decision to support the Alliance for a Free Sunday. The Alliance for a Free Sunday, founded six years ago, actively campaigns for the preservation of a work-free Sunday in Germany. The Alliance’s supporters include the Catholic Workers’ Movement, the service trade union ver.di, the Federal Association of Protestant Workers’ Organizations, the Catholic Company Pastoral Care and the Church Service in the World of Work of the EKD. Supporters include the Education and Science Union, the Police Union, the Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation and the German Women’s Council. Justifying the decision, Frieder Otto Wolf said that processes motivated by specific economic interests, which amount to the erosion of the protection of Sunday as a day of “rest and spiritual upliftment” enshrined in the German Basic Law, require a strong counterweight in a socially tense present and demanding world of work, which keeps the importance of cohesion and peace in society in mind. In view of new public controversies surrounding public holidays, it is also important for humanists to show that a Sunday culture freed from the routine of working days and economic interests is also worth preserving and protecting from a non-religious and humanist perspective. The association’s support for the preservation of this work-free weekday is therefore seen as a sensible way of ensuring that “important potentials with an integrative effect on society as a whole can continue to unfold”, said Wolf. Homepage of the Alliance for a Free Sunday: http://allianz-fuer-den-freien-sonntag.de/