BY LAWRENCE LATANE III

Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

BOWLING GREEN -- A Caroline County man says the county recreation department blocked him from joining its softball league because he doesn't attend a county church and is not a member of a church-sponsored team.

Rich Lieberman is Jewish, and there are no synagogues in Caroline. The Board of Supervisors says it intends to broaden the recreation department's eligibility rules.

"I've never seen anything like this in 20 years," Lieberman said, referring to his time in the Army when his unit initially denied him leave to attend synagogue services on Friday evenings, when the Jewish Sabbath begins.

"But that got fixed immediately," he said.

Lieberman took his complaint about the softball league to the supervisors this week.

Board Chairman Floyd Thomas told Lieberman at yesterday's meeting that the county will extend the league sign-up deadline by a month to give the recreation department time to work out a solution. The deadline would have been today.

"I understand what you are saying," Thomas told Lieberman.

Lieberman, who runs an insurance business and a sports-memorabilia business in Fredericksburg, said county authorities originally told him it could take a year to rewrite eligibility criteria.

"But why would I say discriminate against me for a year?" Lieberman told the board.

Lieberman called the recreation department two weeks ago after reading about its adult softball program in a local newspaper, he said. "I was told this is a church league only, and you have to attend church in the county."

The recreation department did not deliberately set out to exclude Jews or others, said Recreation Department Director Donnell Howard. He said the county was sponsoring church-league softball when he joined the department 19 years ago. Church affiliation was viewed as a way to organize teams "and the churches fund those teams, so funding wouldn't be an issue" for the county, he said.

In some cases, he said, a church that cannot field enough players from its congregation has recruited from outside the church.

Caroline's league has attracted teams from about a dozen county churches in recent years. Play was to begin May 5 at the county's recreational field off state Route 207 but will probably be delayed until late May while the department reorganizes the program.

"We're looking at having an open league," said Supervisor Wayne Acors, who sits on the county's recreation advisory committee and represents the Madison District, where Lieberman lives.

Excluding county residents "was the furthest thing from what [the league] was intended for," he said. "I imagine it was a situation where the rec department took over a league the churches had been involved in" before the recreation department was created, Acors said.

Issues in which government appears to be sponsoring religion often make headlines because they wind up in court.

Emile Lester, who teaches political science at the University of Mary Washington, said that sometimes those issues "can be worked out through common sense," as in Caroline's case.

"One would hope there will be some sort of effective resolution where [Lieberman] can play, or organize a team," Lester said, "so that team can be allowed to play in the recreation league."

Contact Lawrence Latané III at llatane@timesdispatch.com.