Rediscovering models of Sabbath keeping: Implications for psychological well-being

There is a growing interest in Sabbath keeping in America as a counterbalance to our culture's consumerism, exhaustion, and loss of segmentation between work and other life arenas. We describe three models of Sabbath keeping, their implications for well-being, their inherent challenges and a program of research to investigate the proposed relationships. The models are (a) Life Segmentation, in which people actively segment their lives to create respite; (b) Prescribed Meaning, in which people prescribe positive and religious meaning to life segmentation; and (c) Integrated Sabbath, in which Sabbath keeping is celebrated as an integrated belief system of daily rest, reflection and relationship development.