Why can’t the Dodgers just play baseball?

Most people reading this column probably have heard about the recent controversy surrounding the decision by the Los Angeles Dodgers to have a Pride Night with various groups including the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a viciously anti-Christian hate group. The Dodgers, for some reason, decided to present this group with a “Community Heroes Award.”

After pushback from outraged Christians, the Dodgers disinvited the group from Pride Night. But that provoked loud protests from the other LGBT groups, which led to the Dodgers running up the white flag of surrender and reinviting the drag queens. Albert Mohler chronicles the whole depressing event in a WORLD Opinions column article and writes: “Those who turn baseball into a burlesque now win, while those hoping to take the kids to a simple baseball game lose.”

 The question I want to ask is “Why can’t the Dodgers just play baseball?”

After all, baseball is just a game enjoyed by people from all different backgrounds. Why not just enjoy the game for its own sake? Why does it have to be turned into a divisive political statement?

Soon after the decision to reinvite the blasphemous drag queens, Christians began to call for boycotts of the Dodgers. CatholicVote announced a $1 millon campaign to promote its boycott. In the wake of the Bud Light and Target controversies, corporations are nervous about blowback to their support for the LGBT agenda, but so far, they seem to see it as a public relations problem to be massaged, not a reason to reverse course.

A few days after the boycott threats, the Dodgers decided to relaunch “Christian Faith and Family Day” on July 30 and sent pitcher Clayton Kershaw out to promote it. The idea seems to be that Christian faith is one item on the buffet table that you can choose if you like it, but if not, you have other choices, such as Pride Night.

This reduces Christianity to a consumer choice. It is one option among many. You aren’t prevented from choosing it if you want, but there are other choices for the less narrow-minded.

So, are these terms acceptable? Should we commend Kershaw for getting Christianity a booth at Vanity Fair?

Kershaw may have proposed the idea in good faith, but I would argue that Christians should not welcome the idea. Jesus does not claim to be a choice or an option for those so inclined. The Father declared the Son to be Lord.

We have already been through this with the Roman Empire. The Romans were “open-minded” and “tolerant” when it came to other religions. Every nation could worship its own gods. The only intolerable claim was that there is only one true God as Jews and Christians preached.

The very idea that the Dodgers want to have both a Pride Night and a Christian Faith and Family Night is utterly inconsistent with Christian faith. Why? Well, first of all, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are not simply celebrating an alternative lifestyle choice, they are attacking Christianity as the enemy to be mocked, insulted, and ultimately marginalized. They won’t leave the Christian Church alone. Secondly, the Church is never going to give up preaching that Jesus Christ is Lord just to avoid being persecuted. It cannot.

Christians cannot take the path of least resistance by accepting a place as one religion on the polytheistic buffet table, because that silences the Christian message. Either we deny the universal and absolute claims of the gospel, or we find ourselves excluded and hated. A “seat at the table” can only be purchased at the cost of compromising the most basic Christian confession: “Jesus is Lord.”

We do not have to deny the doctrine that the Church and state should be kept separate in order to affirm that just as nature abhors a vacuum, culture abhors a spiritual vacuum. Cultures are never religiously neutral, and neither are individuals. Neither are baseball clubs.

Everywhere you look today, corporations are under pressure from groups like the Human Rights Campaign to get a good ESG score by endorsing the LGBT agenda. If they choose to go down that path, they take sides against Christ. In that case, they allow themselves to be made into pawns of the real aggressors in the culture wars, namely, the powerful and insatiable LGBT lobby.

Sooner or later, they will have to say no to these fanatics, or else they become tools in the hands of those who desire to crush Christianity out of existence. To promote Pride Night is to reject Christ. This isn’t just about baseball.