Greetings. Today is Friday, August the 25th, 2023. Welcome to the Daily Article Podcast. I'm Chris Elkins with the Denison

Forum, narrating today's article written by Dr. Ryan Dennison. When the Los Angeles Dodgers held their

first Christian Faith and Family Day since 2019 a few weeks back.

The event was noteworthy for a number of reasons.

Actor Chris Pratt threw out the first pitch, a number of prominent Dodgers,

including future Hall of Fame pitcher Clayton Kirshaw and manager Dave Roberts,

stayed after to speak, and musician Jeremy Camp

performed for the fans in attendance. Given the controversy surrounding the team's decision

earlier this season to invite, then un-invite, then re-invite the Sisters of Perpetual

Indulgence, a group of LGBTQ-plus advocates who mock Catholic rituals and nuns as part of their work,

many saw the Faith and Family Day as an olive branch to the Christian community in Los Angeles.

In fact, it was largely in response to Kirshaw's prompting that the team bumped up their

announcement of the event. But while the Dodgers Day was perhaps the most noteworthy this season,

they are far from the only team to feature an event dedicated to creating space for Christians

to come celebrate their faith at the ballpark.

As Bobby Ross Jr. notes, there are 18 Major League teams, 60% of the league,

who host similar faith and family nights.

And while the details can vary from place to place, they continue a decades-long tradition,

one that still has a lot to teach us today.

Paul Putz, the assistant director of Baylor University's Faith in Sports Institute, found that

the Baltimore Orioles started the trend with the first

interfaith night in the 1950s. From there, it expanded to other cities, but never caught on league-wide.

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