The rest of the article;
He was not the reason Denver lost 41-23 yesterday, although his inexcusable second-quarter open-field fumble
helped open the floodgates. The Broncos defense picked a bad day to stop being the 1985 Chicago Bears. Tom
Brady sliced and diced them for 27 straight points after Denver had started so well. Brady's primary weapon was
tight end Aaron Hernandez, who used to help Tebow provide Christian witness by stomping all over the rest of the
SEC. With Denver geared to stop Rob Gronkowski, the other gifted young New England tight end, Hernandez had
his best day as a pro ââ¬â nine catches for 129 yards and a touchdown. There are a dozen good reasons why Denver is
not as good a football team as New England, and the relative abilities of their respective quarterbacks is right at the
top of the list. Tom Brady can control an entire game. The available evidence indicates that Tim Tebow can control a
game just well enough to put his kicker in position to nail one from 59 yards to tie a team that yesterday lost by 24
points to the Seattle Seahawks. Compelling? Not as a player. Not yet.
But, of course, that was not what the past week was about, either. Tim Tebow became "compelling" because he
became a character in the great national dumbshow that is our culture war. And we should be very clear about one
thing ââ¬â he wasn't dragooned into this. Nobody drafted him. He walked into this role with his eyes open. Before he
ever took a snap in the NFL, he appeared in an anti-choice television ad with his mother that was sponsored by
Focus on the Family, an influential anti-choice, anti-gay-rights organization founded by the Rev. James Dobson. He
knew what he was doing.
(Added historical curiosity: Dobson was playing in the pickup basketball game during which Pistol Pete Maravich
was stricken and died. Strike two.)
Which made a lot of the chin-stroking about Tebow's religion over the past weeks pretty much beside the point. It
has been argued paradoxically that his faith is both vital to his success and off-limits to criticism. This is, of course,
nonsense. He put his business in the street that way, and he did so by allying himself with the softer side of a
movement that contains other organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which knows about this stuff,
recently designated as hate groups. There was considerable thumb-sucking about the propriety of criticizing ââ¬â or,
gloriosky, perhaps even mocking ââ¬â Tebow's conspicuous religiosity. This was an ironical moment in that it came in
the week that journalist Christopher Hitchens died, and it was Hitchens whom I first heard say, although he may
have been quoting someone else, that the only proper answer a journalist can give to the question "Is nothing
sacred?" is "Yes."
Of course, you can mock public religiosity. You can treat it with scorn and disdain. You can put a rubber nose and
clown shoes on it. That's a proud American tradition. Read Mencken. Read Mark Twain. Hell, read James Madison,
never known in his day as a comic stylist, although he was said to have been great fun in small groups, and he did
get the Gisele Bundchen of 19th-century political wives to marry him. Start him up on public religion, though, and
the little guy was on fire:
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits?
More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both,
superstition, bigotry and persecution.
Let us be quite clear ââ¬â Tim Tebow adheres to a particular form of American Protestantism. He belongs to ââ¬â and
proselytizes for ââ¬â a splinter of a splinter, no more or less than Mitt Romney once did. This particular splinter has a
long record in America of fostering anti-Enlightenment thought, retrograde social policies, and, more discreetly,
religious bigotry. To call Tim Tebow a "Christian," and to leave it at that ââ¬â as though there were one definition of
what a "Christian" is ââ¬â is to say nothing and everything at once. Roman Catholics are Christians. So are Lutherans,
Charles P. Pierce on the religion of Tim Tebow - Grantland
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7369021/fair-game?view=print
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Episcopalians, Melkites, Maronites, and members of the Greek and Russian Orthodox faiths. You can see how
insidious this is when discussion turns to the missionary work that Tebow's family has done in the Philippines. This
is from the Five Priorities of the Bob Tebow ministries, regarding its work overseas:
It is the goal of the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association to preach the gospel to every person who has never had an
opportunity to hear the good news of eternal life in Jesus Christ. Most of the world's population has never once had
the opportunity to hear the only true message of forgiveness of sins by faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.
It so happens that 95 percent of the population of the Philippines is Roman Catholic. Catholic doctrine just happens
to be in conflict with what Bob Tebow and his son preach in regard to personal salvation. (To devout Catholics, for
example, sins are not forgiven "by faith alone," but through the sacrament of reconciliation as administered by a
priest.) Bob Tebow's goal is not to convert unbelievers. It is to supplant an existing form of Christianity. So who's the
actual Christian here? This is not an idle point to be made. Down through history, millions of people have died in
conflicts over what a "Christian" really is, which is what so exercised Madison, and also what brought down a lot of
Hitchens' wrath upon religion in general. History says that as soon as you start talking about "the only true message"
in this regard, you guarantee that, eventually, people will get slaughtered in the town square.
Earlier this week, some kids were suspended at a high school on Long Island for "Tebowing" ââ¬â dropping to one knee
in prayerful contemplation ââ¬â in the hallways. Asked for his reaction, Tebow replied, "You have to respect the
position of authority and people that God has put in authority over you, so that's part of it. But I think it does show
courage from the kids, standing out and doing that, and some boldness."
First of all, God is involving Himself in how they select principals to run the high schools on Long Island? That's a
bear of an interview process right there. And you will note the obvious passive-aggressiveness in the second part of
the answer. Obey your principal because God got him the job, but, damn, these kids are brave in their faith to defy
the principal's authority and, by extension of the first point, God's. This is childish. It is silly. And it also makes my
head hurt.
If we're going to have a real discussion about the place of public religion in our public spectacles, then let's have one
instead of some mushy, Wonder Bread platitudes about how great it is that Tim Tebow talks about Jesus and doesn't
get caught doing strippers two at a time in the hot tub. If religion comes into the public square, it is as vulnerable as
any other human institution to be pelted with produce. Ignorance does not become wisdom just because you gussy
it up with the Gospels. If we keep faith with those American values, then we might just let him off the hook enough
to see if he simply can become a better quarterback than Andy Dalton.
From this website:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7369021/fair-game?view=print
