SubscribeChasing Chass
While catching up on some Facebook posts, I happened across this one put up by Peter Schiller, creator/owner of Baseball Reflections.com, one of the more interesting sites on the national pastime.
Schiller refers to this chastising article published in April, 2008 on WorldMag.com (which describes itself as “World News/Christian Views”) about this article written by Murray Chass, then a columnist for The New York Times about Josh Miller, a Jewish minor league umpire, and his discomfort with Baseball Chapel, an Evangelical Christian organization that provides services every Sunday in the clubhouses of pro teams. (Since Miller was a native of New Jersey, I wrote about him as well.)
The WorldMag piece by Marvin Olasky states:
Times sportswriter Murray Chass is crusading against voluntary Baseball Chapel services in major league locker rooms on Sunday mornings. He’s equally upset with “faith nights” that typically feature a Christian music concert following a game, with players testifying to their belief in Jesus.
At least eight major league teams and at least three dozen minor league ones have such nights annually. Chass snorts, “Just what baseball needs—peanuts, popcorn and proselytizing.” His solution: Since the U.S. Constitution “provides for separation of church and state,” baseball executives should institute “separation of church and baseball.”
To which Schiller comments:
What are my thoughts, you might ask? Well I’ll answer it by asking a question of my own. Who’s it hurting and why is Mr. Chass so bothered by it? Is he an atheist? Did he get burned by the church at some time in his life?
To which I respond: Peter, are your only choices being an atheist or being a lapsed Christian? Is it out of the realm of your list of possibilities that Chass is Jewish?
Schiller later writes, “Somehow, Mr. Chass has forgotten our national foundations of religious freedom.”
To which I respond: Those religious freedoms also apply to those of other relgions as well as those who choose to follow no religion at all.
I passed along the link to Chass, who is, in fact an Orthodox Jew, to see if he might like to respond to Schiller, but you can’t really argue with some people. That’s one of the reasons I never like talking about why I became a vegetarian late in life. I don’t want to feel I need to defend my choice or hear arguments why my philosophy is inconsistent or just doesn’t make sense.
Loading ...
“Somehow, Mr. Chass has forgotten our national foundations of religious freedom.”
More like religious intolerance.