Officials of an East Coast travel agency have apologized for a comment — which they say was made in jest — about a Cottonwood High School choir being Mormon and thus not Christians.
The Cottonwood Madrigals had booked a trip April 5-8 to New York City to perform at Carnegie Hall. After a hoped-for performance with renowned music arranger and conductor Moses Hogan had been rescheduled, the group sought a new performance venue.
A travel agent working for Field Studies International, a school tour-booking agency, asked whether the Cottonwood group might be included in a Christian music concert going on in the April time slot. The concert arrangers, a coalition of private Christian schools, declined, saying they preferred to preserve the lineup for member institutions.
A representative at the East Coast travel agency passed the word to a Utah agent working with Cottonwood, apparently adding a comment in jest about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Field Studies president Lloyd Meeker said. The Utah agent repeated it to Madrigals teacher Erin Pike.
"Once they found out we were from Utah, they (said) . . . we would not be able to participate because most people in Utah are Mormon," which they didn't consider Christian, and "your Jesus is not our Jesus," Pike said.
The comment, which follows a recent controversy over Baptists calling the LDS Church non-Christian, raised a ruckus and was repeated on TV news and a radio talk show.
"My teachers did not feel it was given to us in humor," Cottonwood principal Garrett Muse said. "It wasn't the interpretation of the joke, it was the understanding we were given."
Meeker said company representatives called the school to clear up what he called a "stupid comment."
Said Muse: "We are definitely willing to accept the apology and move on."
E-MAIL: jtcook@desnews.com