Anti-Mormon Discrimination In Pennsylvania: Grove City Area Church Softball League Bans LDS Team Because They Don't Consider Mormons To Be Christians

Although more and more evangelical leaders are softening their opposition to Mitt Romney over his Mormonism, overt anti-Mormon discrimination can still occasionally poke its head above the surface. According to WPXI.com and Phillyburbs, a softball team comprised of players from a local LDS ward in Slippery Rock, PA have been banned from playing in a Christian softball league because the team is Mormon.

When the LDS team sought to play in the league, three of the 11 other teams said they'd refuse to play them. Faced with that opposition, Grove City Area Church league officials took a vote and refused to allow the team into the league, then issued the following statement:

"The GCA church softball league is intended for fellowship among Christian churches. Not for members of different faiths. To call a group who proclaims a different gospel of salvation of Christian church is not only untrue, it is unloving. We cannot do this. We will not do this."

Unloving? So does that mean exclusion of a Christian group that they arbitrarily deem un-Christian is a "loving" act? That's some pretty tough "love", I'd say. The league does have a Facebook page available for those who would like to express themselves, preferably in a Christlike fashion. If it was a specific denominational league like a Catholic league or a Lutheran league, it wouldn't be an issue. But it bills itself a "Christian" league, and Mormonism is Christian.

League officials added that LDS members would be welcome to play on various teams as individuals, but not as an organized group. However, since three of the 11 teams would have refused to play the LDS team, it is likely that many of the individual teams would not accept LDS players. Phillyburbs calls it "an act of dumbassery" and sarcastically writes, "Oh, that’d be comfortable for the Mormons, I’m sure".

This story has already produced a two-page discussion thread on the CougarUte Forum. LDS teams customarily allow non-members to participate, so long as they abide by LDS behavioral standards.

These variances will continue to happen; we shouldn't overreact. What I would do if I was the local mission president is to obtain a copy of the league's schedule, and then send a pair of missionaries to every one of the league's games to "make themselves available for public enquiries" (passive proselytization). What better way is there to break down the walls of suspicion, and to share the Gospel, than to send forth the best representatives of our Church?