Faith and religion within the public sphere has an interesting personality. A personality which has race and culture at the center fueling its character. Therefore, with the recent rise in fame of Denver Broncos’ quarterback Tim Tebow, I find it interesting how his faith and spiritual notions are being played out in the public arena. Allow me to first say that I have no problem with him “performing” his faith in a public manner. Yet, the frenzied imposition of meaning on the power of his “religious convictions” (e.g. the Broncos are winning as a result of his prayers) includes, but transcends what Wade Clark Roof refers to as civil religious rhetoric in his article American Presidential Rhetoric from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush: Another Look at Civil Religion. This type of religio-political rhetoric tends to create myths and fantasy within the public arena, which in turn create meaning, cultural mores, and social reality for the people who believe it. Myths are powerful types of vehicles for any people group and society.

By now every pop culture columnist in America has chimed in on the Tim Tebow “controversy,” of which my favorites have been Daniel Foster’s take in National Review and Kevin Craft’s in The Atlantic. Both of these articles point out, rightly, that Tebow’s critics are largely unnerved by his sincerity and unflappably earnest devotion to his beliefs. It’s not his constant talk of God that’s the problem; it’s that he so clearly believes what he’s saying and lives his life accordingly. It’s unironic. It’s no mere lip service. He takes things seriously. As Chuck Klosterman notes in his meandering Tebow treatise, he has a faith that “defies modernity” and “makes people wonder if they should try to believe things they don’t actually believe.”

Sports and Christianity have been linked since New Testament times. The apostle Paul encouraged first century believers to "run in such a way as to get the prize" (1 Corinthians 9:24). In the twenty centuries since then, countless numbers of athletes from various sports have taken Paul's advice quite literally, both on and off the field of play, and many have openly acknowledged their belief in Christ.

In fact, there are an astonishing number of professional atheletes who are publicly professing their faith in one way or another. And two of them--Tim Tebow, quarterback of the Denver Broncos, and Los Angeles Doger pitching ace Clayton Kershaw--are getting a lot of attention from the media, albeit for different reasons. These two 23-year-olds are also demonstrating that there's no "one size fits all" approach to telling the watching world that you're a Christian.

Phew! Glad we all survived that Tim and Mom Tebow commercial.

In what promised to be—if you let yourself get carried away with all the pregame hype of the political kind—the most controversial moment of the game, a lot of folks who spent a lot of bluster over the whole deal must have melted in their chairs under the sheer weight of the nothingness that the ad contained.

Of course, if you have any sense of what Focus on the Family is all about, you know that that all is a whole lot more than abortion. Not that those who were so foresightedly upset about this deal wanted to admit this. They took their stance: what good could anyone who actually includes the choice of life in the pro-choice world have to say about marriage or parenting or overcoming depression or household management or—no way!—sex?