Tim Tebow is an example of how the public face of Christian athletes, like the public face of American Christianity in general, is overwhelmingly white—despite the fact that black Americans are the racial demographic most likely to identify as “very religious.” A recent Barna poll found that Tebow is by far the most well-known Christian professional athlete in the U.S. (with 83% awareness from the public), with retired white quarterback Kurt Warner a distant second at 59%. Robert Griffin III (RGIII), a black quarterback who’s had a far more successful season with the Redskins than Tebow’s had with the Jets, trailed at 34%.
It's a good point, but I don't think it's the whole story.
The NFL gambled on fans’ willingness to endure the replacement refs. It was wrong—a good development for whatever ethical margin a football fan might claim.
Last
weekend, ESPN fired an editor who posted
a racially offensive
headline about NBA player Jeremy Lin; the
network also suspended an anchor who used the same term. And taking the Lin
coverage as a starting point, SNL produced a parody mocking a media double standard: stereotypes about Asian
Americans are acceptable, but stereotypes about African Americans are
offensive.
The
Lin media storm exposes the myth of a colorblind society. As much as we want to
believe in meritocracy, equality and individuality, we rely on racial
assumptions to make sense of the world and those around us. In many cases, the
assumptions carry real consequences.
The goals of the Social Gospel movement, the ideas of men such as G. Stanley Hall and Theodore Roosevelt, Christians' attitudes toward World War I, the development of institutions such as the Federal Council of Churches, the Boy Scouts and the Young Men's Christian Association—these are the sorts of topics Clifford Putney covers.
How do you get admitted to one of those small, highly selective liberal arts colleges? Of course, you need excellent grades in high school and an impressive SAT score. But lots of kids bring those credentials. How can you make sure you stand out among the crowd?
The rest of the world calls it “the beautiful game,” and for a month of World Cup soccer competition Americans get to see it on TV—the moments of explosive action and the constant flow of movement from one end of the field to the other, with hardly any commercial interruptions. More Americans (19.4 million) recently watched Ghana eliminate the U.S.
The National Football League will now allow churches to air live showings of the Super Bowl on a screen of any size, reversing a previous ban on widescreen TVs.
