Christians Push Back Against Major League Baseball Attacks
Major League Baseball is warning Christian players not to write any Bible verses on their mandatory Pride-themed uniforms and ball caps. That warning has garnered significant blowback across the nation from Christians and Republican lawmakers.
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Gabriel Delaney, a history teacher at Franklin Road Christian School in Tennessee, weighed in after MLB reportedly warned San Francisco Giants pitchers who added Scripture references to special rainbow-themed caps during the team’s Pride Night at Oracle Park. Watch his full interview below:
“I think that it’s pretty interesting to see what’s happening in Major League Baseball right now,” Delaney told Starnes. “It’s interesting to me that this religion of the LGBTQ movement is being pushed and propagated over the religion that built America, and that is Christianity.”
Giants pitcher Landen Roupp wrote “Gen 9:12-16” on his Pride Night cap, a reference to the rainbow as the sign of God’s covenant with Noah. Other Giants pitchers reportedly wrote Bible verses on their caps as well, while another player wore a standard team cap.
MLB said the issue was not the content of the message, but the alteration of the uniform. “The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” MLB chief communications officer Pat Courtney told The Athletic, according to Sports Illustrated.
Roupp, however, said his message was not rooted in hate, but in faith.
“It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that he makes to us,” Roupp told reporters, according to NBC Sports Bay Area. “That’s just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that.”
Delaney told Starnes the larger concern is that professional sports leagues appear willing to celebrate one worldview while punishing Christians who express theirs.
“It’s interested that they would lean so far one way as saying, well, you have to wear this pride hat, but you can’t write any Bible verses on it,” Delaney said. “So it’s just interesting to see the dynamic there of them pushing so hard for this one religion type over Christianity, which is obviously the religion of our founding.”
Starnes asked what Pride messaging has to do with baseball, basketball or any other sport.
“It has absolutely nothing to do with actually playing baseball,” Delaney said. “They’re trying to pander to a specific crowd, build up their social credit.”
Delaney said the controversy is part of a wider cultural pattern in which Christians in professional sports are being pressured to stay quiet.
“Christians all over America and all these professional sports leagues are being penalized and punished for standing up for what is right,” he said. “And that is God’s word. That is Christian morality. That is what God has prescribed for us through scripture.”
The Christian school teacher said believers remain the majority in America, but too often act like a “silenced majority.”
“I was reading a report that said 63% of Americans still consider themselves a Christian,” Delaney said. “So that’s well over the majority, yet the loudest people are those from the other side.”
He said opponents of traditional values understand the influence of sports and entertainment.
“Because there are so many Christians they have to try to cram this down your throat at every possible opportunity through your entertainment,” Delaney said, “because that’s where people like you said go to escape and that’s the easiest place to influence somebody.”
Delaney said he teaches his students that America’s greatness is inseparable from its Christian heritage.
“We are an exceptionally unique country,” he said. “And a lot of that is due to the fact that in God we trust, right? We have this Christian heritage that we’ve built off of.”
His message to Christian athletes and fans was direct: hold the line.
“Hopefully we as Americans can hold on tighter to that,” Delaney said, “and not try to defuse and become more like every other country, but let’s stay what makes us unique as Americans.”
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