At most U.S. colleges, hearing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before sporting events is a regular feature of campus life, like getting shut out of the psychology lecture you needed or seeing pledges humiliated during fraternity rush. But at Goshen College, a Mennonite school in Indiana with a historical emphasis on pacifism, the tradition was not hearing the national anthem.

In spring 2010, that tradition changed when the anthem was played at a baseball game. Only now it has changed back. The fight over the anthem — at a school that teaches not fighting — raises the question of how to reconcile the feelings of minorities with those of the prevailing culture. At Goshen, the minorities are athletes, and the prevailing culture is pacifist. It’s like a photographic negative of the America most of us know.

Goshen was founded in 1894, but intercollegiate sports began only in 1957. From the beginning, nobody made a big deal out of skipping the anthem. It just was not sung. It is, after all, about a military battle (“bombs bursting in air,” etc.), and some Mennonites believe that any expression of patriotism, placing love of country above love of God, risks idolatry. Countries rise and fall; the message of Jesus is supposed to be eternal. Some Mennonite colleges play the anthem, but at Goshen they just played the game.

About a year and a half ago, some athletes approached the president, James Brenneman, to ask if the anthem could be played before some games. Brenneman, a former pastor who has led Goshen since 2006, said yes, “as an expression of welcome to the half of our student body who are part of other religious traditions,” he said.

At Goshen, Mennonites are as likely to play sports as other students. But while at other colleges athletes are Big Men and Women on Campus, bearers of the schools’ collective aspirations, at Goshen the athletic culture generally is somewhat more marginal. And especially on certain teams, the ethic is more typical of Indiana conservatism than of the college’s as a whole.

Brenneman stressed that even when the anthem was played, “it wasn’t like you would see at a pro football game or the World Series, with the F-16 fighters flying overhead.” The music was played, without anyone singing the lyrics over the public-address system, and the anthem was followed by the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. …”). This was Goshen’s “way of saying, if we are going to do it, we won’t do it as they do it elsewhere,” Brenneman said.

Some Maple Leafs (as Goshen athletes are called) were pleased. Tim Demant, Goshen’s athletic director, said his “personal opinion is irrelevant,” but he agreed that “there’s clearly an athletic component to this whole debate.

“This is rooted in athletics and what’s customary in athletic culture,” he said.

Other Maple Leafs were displeased. Malinda Berry, a Goshen alumna who teaches at Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond, Ind., said Goshen College was supposed to be about Mennonite culture, not athletic culture. Berry taught at Goshen from 2006 to 2009, and she believes the shift in tradition resulted from a direct conflict between Goshen’s peace culture and its sports culture.

In 2009, Goshen unveiled a marketing campaign called “Peace by Peace,” emphasizing its pacifist roots.

“Not everyone was enamored of this marketing campaign,” Berry said. “That included some folks in the athletic department, and the reason was that for sports — soccer is a bit of a different animal, but for baseball, golf and particularly basketball — Goshen College recruits students who aren’t from a Mennonite or Anabaptist background. And they reflect a little more of the stereotypical God-and-country Midwestern approach to patriotism.”

Brenneman wished to “quibble” that the request to play the anthem “came in direct response to Peace by Peace.” And Berry acknowledged there was more at stake than athletes’ gripes. There is a theological question, “which was that if we talk so much about peace, that will make it hard to attract non-Mennonite students.

“And if we can’t attract non-Mennonite students, are we being hospitable?” Berry said.

Hospitality is, like pacifism, a core Christian virtue, and some Mennonites believed that playing the anthem was justified to help students from other backgrounds feel welcome.

“I think I share the Mennonite conviction that Christian faith means no violence, means not participating in war, means becoming suspicious of empire and the way American patriotic rituals, and especially the anthem, are used,” said Joseph Liechty, who teaches peace studies at Goshen and supported the introduction of the anthem.

After working for 24 years in Ireland and Northern Ireland, Liechty said, “I thought when I came home and am in the majority, I have got to watch out for minorities. And the most difficult minority to be at Goshen is a certain kind of religious and political conservative.”

The anthem was first played in March 2010 while Goshen was in the midst of “a conversation” about the issue with alumni, faculty and students.

“We spent a year in really intense dialogue with one another, and the board said in June 2011 it would make a final decision,” Brenneman said. “In June, the board asked me to come up with an alternative that showed honor for our country and its sports traditions.”

The solution? “American the Beautiful” will be played before Goshen’s basketball, volleyball, baseball and softball games. It’s not a pacifist’s ideal song — skim the full lyrics and you will find the suspicious “liberating strife,” as well as the “patriot dream.” But no rocket’s red glare, no bombs, and nothing like Verse 3 of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” with its “havoc of war.” A workable compromise, it seems.

Play ball and praise America, Maple Leafs!