homeschooling and educational neglect

TRC doesn’t have strong opinions of homeschooling. It is up to families to decide how they want to pursue education, and when (or if) I have children, I want to be able to make those decisions with my wife and not with the government. I know many very intelligent, socially adept individuals who were homeschooled.

That said, ensuring that children receive a primary education is not optional. Education is a right for all children, and in the US, primary education is compulsory. Homeschooling is of course a viable and valid option for a child’s education. As long as children are receiving an education.

With those quick thoughts, I recommend Barely Literate? How Christian Fundamentalist Homeschooling Hurts Kids, by Kristen Rawls at Alternet. I’m less interested in the Christian Fundamendalist part than I am in the difficulty of evaluating and understanding homeschooling. The piece is mostly anecdotal, and according to the author, that’s because there’s really no other way to discuss homeschooling.

Given the scarcity of numbers on this issue, the best one can hope for at this point is anecdotal information about the problem. But because homeschooling is such a highly politicized issue, it is often difficult to get a clear sense of what is happening from homeschooling parents themselves. And because many parents see themselves as advocates of homeschooling, they are not always very eager to discuss potential gaps in homeschooling education. 

If you home school your children, you obviously believe in the practice, and are unlikely to admit if you are failing. So how can we know how well parents are doing? This  problem has nothing to do with Christian fundamentalism. But it is the real problem presented here, in my opinion.

Of course, there are problems to be mentioned in the Christian Fundamentalist homeschooling movement. As one former homeschooling parent described it, “We were convinced that it would be better for our kids not to have an education than to be educated to become humanists or atheists and to reject God.” That’s hard to hear. Not because I want every to become humanists and atheists, but because parents don’t  have a right to sacrifice their child’s education on behalf of religion.

And  stories like this are deeply troubling. But hopefully the minority:

Their parents never taught the three other children about sex, and Diegel Martin remembers giving her 21-year-old sister “the talk” the week before she got married. She also had to intervene to ensure that her younger brothers learned about sex.
As for herself, when she completed her schooling, she says her parents did not allow her to obtain her GED as proof of high school graduation. Their reason? “The girls weren’t allowed to get a GED because we were told we wouldn’t need it. It would open up opportunities that were forbidden to us. We would work in the family business until we got married, and then become homemakers.”

 

Is our country losing its mind?

A major media outlet finds it necessary to write this sentence:

Obama is a Christian, but hasn’t been able to persuade many Republicans that he is, despite going to church and praising Jesus Christ publicly.

Help me understand how this is possible? We have a Christian president, who displayed during the 2008 election that he was very much at home talking about Jesus Christ and his personal faith. But our country chooses not to believe him. Why?

I’m told that it’s not racism, and I don’t want it to be racism. I don’t want it to be xenophobia, or religious intolerance, or any such nonsense. But 18% of Republicans is a lot of people. Those kind of numbers are not easily cast aside as some kind of fringe nonsense. That’s millions of people disregarding reality to support a fantasy based on…what?

And yes, Rick Santorum, it is your responsibility to correct your supporters who are telling lies.

The dangers of being an evangelical Climate Scientist

I recommend reading this interview with Kate Hayhoe, the scientist that Newt Gingrich had asked to write a chapter on climate change for his new book, which was then cancelled when Gingrich started getting fire from conservatives on acknowledging climate change.

It’s very sad, and very telling. More than anything, it shows TRC that many of the “serious people” in the Republican Party do know climate change is real, they are just unwilling to publicly say it because Rush Limbaugh and the other goons are willing to light the fire and take you down. Hopefully Limbaugh, Gingrich, and the other rabble-rousers realize the costs of their actions for individuals like Hayhoe.

An excerpt:

There’s a ton of pressure on politicians like Newt Gingrich, but Newt probably knows what’s what in terms of climate change…And he’s throwing it overboard, out of what can be fairly characterized as political necessity. What do you make of that calculation? What do you expect from politicians?

A. We all have standards we would like people to live up to. Having lived through what I’ve lived through, I’m certainly much more sympathetic to people. I understand a bit more than I used to how being relentlessly and rigorously attacked can make you ask yourself, is this worthwhile?
What I’ve gotten is nothing compared to what Phil Jones or Mike Mann has gotten…What they’ve gotten is nothing compared to what political candidates get. And what I’ve gotten is certainly enough to make me say, look, what I’m doing doesn’t help me in my academic career. It attracts all sorts of unpleasant attention, some of which, frankly, makes me feel unsafe. When you get emails mentioning your kids and guillotines in the same sentence, it makes you want to pull the blanket over your head and keep your mouth shut for about 10 years… The level of attack you get if you stick your head out is so great at this point that everybody should have the right to decide if it’s worth the price for them or not.

Q. Have you seen climate scientists who have said, screw it, I’m just going to do my research in my lab?

A. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, look at how many climate scientists there are, and look at how many you see talking about this issue.
Scientists are traditionally not outreach-minded people. They tend to be more introverted. They’re really good at writing papers; they’re not very good at looking people in the eye and talking in simple language. We need help from people who know how to do this. We need help in terms of learning how to communicate outside our ivory tower and how to respond appropriately to the kinds of attacks we’re going to receive.

Q. I’ve been hearing for years about stirrings of climate concern among the religious, particularly evangelicals. I did a whole package of stories on it. What’s your sense of how climate change is received inside the evangelical community?

A. Environmental issues and climate change carry a lot of baggage in evangelical circles. If you can dissociate the issue from Al Gore, if you can dissociate the issue from the Democratic Party, if you can dissociate it from hugging trees, from pro-choice, from evolution vs. creation, if you can strip away all of those ties and only talk about the issue of taking care of the planet God gave us and loving our neighbor as ourself, then there is hardly anyone who will not accept that message. It’s not about theology, it’s about baggage.

Jesus Candidate doesn’t want to help the Blah People

Oh Rick Santorum. I don’t want to continue blogging about you, but so badly I do. So two great notes on Rick Santorum.

1. Rick Santorum was recently quoted during a campaign stop as saying: “I don’t want to make the lives of black people better by giving them other people’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families.”  That upset some in the black community, because it essentially equates black life with life on welfare. Very nice.But now Rick Santorum has looked at the evidence, and upon further review, he has determined that is not what he said at all! According to Santorum: ““I’ve looked at that quote, in fact I looked at the video…In fact, I’m pretty confident I didn’t say black. What I think — I started to say a word and then sort of changed and it sort of — blah — mumbled it and sort of changed my thought.”So, you said “black”, which would make sense in a sentence, or you said  ”blah” which is much better. And to be fair, it doesn’t sound like “black” in the video. I heard Bligh, which of course would make sense if Santorum isn’t too eager to help Lt. Bligh, famously stern commander of the Bounty, whose actions led to a mutiny of historical fame.
2. Even better (and by better I mean much, much worse) than Mr. Blah is “Mr. Santorum: Jesus Candidate.” Presumably of course, he meant himself, rather than, I don’t know, the Joseph Smith Candidate? (Hint: That means Mitt Romney, Reminder: Mitt Romney is a Mormon, Reminder 2: Real Christians consider Mormonism cultish). Anyway. At a Q&A in New Hampshire, Santorum was told: ““We don’t need a Jesus candidate, we need an economic candidate.” Of course, that must be true, because our nation is in an economic crisis, and since the United States is not and can never be a Christian Nation, having a “Jesus Candidate” is not terribly appropriate role for the Chief Executive. Mr. Santorum of course disputes my interpretation of this, and responded: “My answer to that was we always need a Jesus candidate.We need someone who believes in something more than themselves and not just the economy. When we say, ‘God bless America,’ do we mean it or do we just say it?”This is a very peculiar response, and one that makes my spine twinge. We emphatically do NOT need a Jesus Candidate for President. Religious Candidates are fine, and in fact are probably quite necessary. Everyone should believe in something more than themselves, as trite and meaningless as such a statement is. But a Jesus Candidate is a terrible idea, runs in clear opposition to the founding of this nation (BOOM, take that originalists), and should be openly rejected even by Christians.

Best Things of 2011: Tim Tebow Time

We’ve had fun with Mr. Tebow at TRC. He’s a fun public figure to engage with, because, well, he’s so public, so evangelical, so mediocre at his job, and so beloved. From the moment he was drafted higher than anyone expected, to the moment he starred in the Focus on the Family television ad at the Super Bowl, Tebow had blood boiling.

And it hasn’t stopped now that he is a starting QB and winning (most of) his games. If TRC thinks so little of Tim Tebow the footballer and evangelical spouter of Christian cliches during post-game interviews, then why is this man among our Best Things of 2011? Good question.

Because Tim Tebow, all by his lonesome, just by being extra-smiley and kind and overly enthusiastic in his heaven pointing and highly-public prayer oriented, causes (some) people to have serious conversations about the role of religion in popular society, to discuss the standards of journalism, to argue over culpability of religious beliefs, to question the motives of the uber-evangelical cultural forces in the United States. Regardless of where one comes out on any of these discussions, there is value in our country in just digging in to a lot of the murky American Life that seems every day second nature.

So, Tim Tebow is among our best things of the year. To illustrate, Tim Tebow managed in the last 24 hours to have this written in an article called Tebow’s Religion: Fair Game: 

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 — 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. 

AND this, in an article called Tebow Sacks Socialism:

Everyone wants a piece of 24-year-old Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. Most people settle for a high-five or an autograph. Others ask him to surrender his values, like the young women who beg him for fan photos and then start stripping off their shirts—sending Tebow darting away.
Tebow has All-American character. He espouses capitalistic values that are foundational to America: Competitiveness, ownership, responsibility, hard work, optimism, faith and persistence.

That’s quite an accomplishment for 24-year old kid who is paid millions of dollars to be a professional ball-thrower.

A final example of why Tim Tebow deserves a spot in TRC’s Best Things list. In an email exchange I was involved in that began as a conversation about Tebow, I somehow eventually wrote the following, which sums up my feelings about just how dynamic a cultural place the whole damn Tebow Affair has taken:

I am interested in the idea that Christians in the US believe we are not a Christian Nation (using this loosely, of course, not in some Theocratic sense, but as a stop holder), while people outside of religion (like me) think that we are so very buried in the puritan experiment that to claim that America is not Christian is totally incorrect.

Tebow actually has an interesting role in that debate, which takes me by surprise. But if there is any place we don’t want to get into such a conversation, it is probably pro Football. And yet, here we are. Thanks a lot Tebow. 

Cleansing the White House with Newt Gingrich

Here’s something worth sharing. It get’s to the differences that exists among Christians (one could say between left and right, but I’ll leave such distinctions to those in the pews). It’s from Andrew Sullivan.

There’s been some internal debate among evangelicals over whether to forgive Newt his past – and the consensus seems to be yes. Note why:

On the same e-mail chain, which CNN obtained from a conservative activist, prominent Atlanta preacher Richard Lee said the nation’s evangelicals needed to support Gingrich. Lee called Gingrich “the only forceful Christian candidate who can at this point be elected and cleanse the White House next November.”

Don’t you love that word “cleanse”? The current president is a devoted family man, devoid of any personal scandal, and a committed Christian, as his speeches and books testify to. And this must be “cleansed”? The reason is that Obama represents a more liberal and live-and-let-live version of Christianity, and believes in the separation of church and state. That’s what needs to be cleansed (assuming we are not talking bald-faced racism here).

Blech.

Our language matters, and it should be used carefully. So, to those who want to win the Presidency by “cleansing” the White House, you might want to think twice about how you put that.

This comes back the Rick Perry advert, too, in which President Obama is  warring against the Christians who are actually Christians, not “christian” like the President.

Getting the Tebow Thing totally wrong.

I don’t want to write about Tim Tebow, because everyone is writing about Tim Tebow. But sometimes, there’s a reason everyone is doing something. It is just unavoidable.

This morning, I read an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal called Tim Tebow: God’s Quarterback. It was written by Patton Dodd, who I have never heard of, but whose bio says he is “is the managing editor of the website Patheos and a former senior editor at Beliefnet. “

In his article, Mr. Dodd claims that the fever over Tim Tebow, especially on the part of his critics, comes from the fact that we think Tebow must be a hypocrite. That no one can be that nice, that good, that kind-hearted, that sincere, etc. Asks Dodd:

In the case of Mr. Tebow, what seems to fuel many of his fans—and to drive many of his critics crazy—is not so much his evangelical faith itself but the equanimity and generosity that his faith inspires in him. Can he really mean it when he says that football isn’t that important to him, that he cares more about transcendent things?
…(a long list of the good things Tebow has done)…
What we are far less sure how to do is to take seriously a public figure’s seemingly admirable character and professions of higher purpose. We don’t know how to trust goodness.
And who can blame us? We don’t want to be fooled again.

 As one of the people that finds the Tebow Thing absolutely fascinating, tremendously infuriating, but inescapably attractive, I have to point out to Mr. Dodd: You are absolutely wrong. There are many, many reasons people like me find the Tebow Thing insane. But I don’t know anyone that thinks that Tim Tebow is not genuinely sincere, or is a hypocrite.

Tim Tebow’s actual belief and sincerity are not the point. They are, in fact, the LEAST interesting element of the whole Tebow Phenomenon. What really drives us mad? Evangelicals who write op-eds in national newspapers called “Tim Tebow: God’s Quarterback.” That’s why we are going crazy. Tim Tebow provides the most public, high-profile opportunity for proselytizing that has come along in a long time. And no one is missing the opportunity.

What drives us crazy is that national evangelical leaders like you, (and many others) take this opportunity to write about how we (Tebow doubters) cannot recognize what is good and are cynical about seeing people with good intentions. That Tebow should inspire us, like he has so many, that we are missing the point, that athlete after athlete is saved from the wreckage by their personal lord and savior. That with Tebow, there was no redemption, he was already there. That, as you say, I don’t know how to trust goodness.

These criticisms may be true. I don’t know. I tend to think that I have a good eye towards people who are making the world better, even if I don’t agree with their personal beliefs. Living well and loving others is the point, and if Tim Tebow does that through a wildly obnoxious public evangelical presence, that’s fine. I don’t share his belief, but that’s neither here nor there regarding whether he is living well.

It’s time for the Tebow Lovers to publicly recognize that the reason the Tebow Thing drives us bonkers is not Tim Tebow, it is you, and Mr. Dodd, and every other Tebow peddler in the media.

(and, maybe just a little, Tim Tebow).

**UPDATE: Now this is good coverage of Tim Tebow. And it’s even from the Wall Street Journal.

Prayer in School–clearing up the very clear law in the US

A follow up to yesterday’s rant against the evangelical Rick Perry’s evangelical commercial about President Obama’s War on Religion. You’ll remember the key quote from the political spot: ““You don’t have to be in the pews every Sunday to know that there is something wrong with our country, when gays can openly serve in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.” Besides being totally aggravating, Perry is actually wrong. TRC was in no place to highlight legal nuance yesterday, but today this is still bothering us, so here you go.

There is nothing keeping prayer out of schools in the United States. There is no law banning school prayer. At least, not in the manner that Rick Perry, and many other religious individuals in America think there is.  For some reason, it has become a de facto position of many evangelicals, and the Religious Right, and the Catholic Church, among others, that the Supreme Court banned prayer from public schools in the 1960s.

In the interest of people knowing what the hell they are talking about, here’s some clarification. Prayer is allowed in public schools. It has never been banned, and the right to pray in schools has been defended by the US Gov’t, the ACLU, the American Center for Law and Justice, etc, etc, etc. Prayer in school is legal and safe and well protected by the Constitution. Glad we cleared that up. Unfortunately, that point has been quite difficult to make to the public. Jeffrey Weiss at Real Clear Religion points out the key distinction that was made in the Supreme Court, and the sloppy coverage from the press that accompanies the infamous prayer in school decision.

No matter what one thinks of Perry’s candidacy, this one is another major “oops” for the campaign.
I admit, he’s not alone in making his error. The Associated Press’s analysis of the ad was critical, but also veered off the tracks and into the legal abyss.
Wrote AP political reporter Beth Fouhy: “The Supreme Court prohibited school prayer in two landmark decisions in 1962 and 1963, calling it an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.”
Which is sooo close to being correct. The court actually prohibited mandatory school prayer. And that one word makes all the difference. (See: Twain, Mark on lightning-bug vs. lightning.)
The truth is that kids pray in schools and on school grounds all the time. Many surely do it silently before the math midterms. But they also pray very publicly, in organized events. They do it plenty in Rick Perry’s Texas, as a matter of fact.

As an example, Weiss highlights See You at the Pole, a very public, Pray-to-Jesus-oriented event that happens once a year at schools around the country. I remember that event from my high school days. Such an activity is quite constitutional, as it should be.

And due to such events, every student who has ever gone to a public school is very much aware that prayer, quiet and self-contained or over-the-top public displays of hand-holding, is allowed. To suggest otherwise is to deceive. Is Rick Perry in favor of mandatory prayers in school? Or does he just not know that prayer is actually allowed in school? Or is he an idiot? Liar? These seem to be the options.

Again, Rick Perry’s political advert is not important. It’s a politician abusing religion and religious individuals to make hay in a primary election that Perry won’t win anyway. But sticking up for the actual legal rights of Americans is a worthy pursuit. Clarifying misrepresentations of the US Constitution matters a lot more than Perry’s forgetful campaign for President. No one may learn the difference, but that doesn’t make the difference any less important.

Crazy Political Attacks on Keith Ellison, and an Accompanying Rant on Religious Freedom

I am a fan of the Congressman from across the river. He’s not my rep, but he’s a good rep for Minneapolis, and for Minnesota.  Keith Ellison is the man I’m not-so-subtly referring to.  Ellison is a smart and questioning representative. I’ve always admired his honesty and forthrightness, and have been proud to be from the state that elected him. Ellison supports his party, state and national leaders when he agrees, and does not when he disagrees, even on major legislation. Just what you want in a public official. Of course, Ellison is also Muslim, the first of his religion elected to national office. So he must endure the trash that accompanies such distinction.

I like to think that such trash is rare. But we are coming up on election season. This is the US of A. If we laid out a two or three principles that are absolutely essential to this American Experiment, it is freedom of religious practice and belief, and that there is no litmus test, religious or otherwise, for holding office in this country.

And yet, here we are, 2011. And this is how Keith Ellison’s opponents are challenging him.

So far, it is Gary Boisclair. Mr. Boislcair is a (so-called) Tea Party Republican, who produced this ad to be run in the democratic primary (you can watch it in the link). He plans to challenge Ellison next year. Here’s what Boisclair reads, over images of the ‘terrors’ of Islam:

Congressman Ellison swore an oath to defend the Constitution — on a Quran. The Quran says Christians and Jews are infidels. The Quran says Christians are blasphemers, who should have their hands and feet cut off, and that they should be crucified, and killed. Do you really want someone representing you, who swears an oath on a Quran — a book that undermines our Constitution and says you should be killed? I’m Gary Boisclair, and I approve this message.

The release of this ad was accompanied by a press statement titled: Christian Challenges Muslim for Congressional Seat. Got to love religious intolerance. YouTube has pulled the ad.

This isn’t the first political move that plainly disparaged Ellison’s faith. His 2010 challenger, Lynne Torgerson, also sought to bring about an electoral victory from the basement of political attack. During that campaign, Torgerson wrote on her campaign website:

What do I know of Islam? Well, I know of 911. Nineteen (19) men from Saudi Arabia, all Muslim, hi-jacked planes, and flew into the two (2) World Trade Towers murdering thousands of people, and tried to fly into our Pentagon, and some believe they also tried to fly an airplane into our White House. From this, what I perceive is Islam conducting an act of war against my country. We simply went too far with Keith Ellison. Keith Ellison simply is not a proper person to have in our federal government. … Keith Ellison has no business in our federal government.

Torgerson is spreading more intolerance this year, possibly hinting at another attempt to unseat Ellison? Making Minnesota proud.

It should be noted that Keith Ellison will not lose an election to either Torgerson or Boisclair. He is very popular in his district, winning his past elections by 40+ points in Minneapolis, where all accounts are that he is respected and very well liked by his constituents. As he should be in my opinion. But that doesn’t mean that we should tolerate this kind of religious intolerance, or allow individuals like Torgerson and Boisclair a spot in the process that allows them to raise money by stoking fear and hatred against a model American.

So: here’s a rant if you are interested. It doesn’t do much to clarify the problem, but this is the stuff that makes a good non-religious American furious. Why can’t you folks get it together?

How can so many Americans (and no small number of Christians) not see the blatantly immoral nature of making political attacks on an individual for his religion? This is fundamental US Constitution material. Those Founding Fathers we all love never made anything more clear than the notion that this nation does not have and cannot establish a religion. So why does it happen?

A cynical person might say that the evangelical Christian political movement only sees itself written into the history of this country. That freedom of religion really means freedom of Protestant Christianity from the persecution of Old World Christianity.

Others might argue that this is a particularly volatile time in human history, and especially American history, for Muslim and Christian relations. That in a post-911, post-War on Terror America, there is going to be intolerance and suspicion as part of the natural human reaction to terrorism.

Or, perhaps, the problem lies within the nature of Religion itself. That knowing the Truth allows for an easy discarding of other faiths. This happens all the time, as Christians distrust Muslims, and Muslims distrust Christians, in the US. In other parts of the world, it is not distrust that is brewing but killing and war. Is this religion’s fault, the by-product of certainty in the one’s faith?

No. It’s not that either. Whatever it is, people of faith on all sides, please get your act together, so those of us on the outside of all your religions can stop having to argue for religious tolerance, as you all fight among each other, debasing our American Political Process. Which, if not for such debasement, is a pretty darned good system.

Enjoy your weekend.

I am haunted by Tebow

Sports is an unusual topic for TRC. Though I am a fan of my local sportsball teams and love soccer and watching Twins and Vikings games, I don’t generally give sports much serious thought. It doesn’t matter to me if my team wins five minutes after the match, and that’s about how it should be, I think.

But this is a sports post about that most internet-friendly athlete of the last two weeks. Tim Tebow. What is it about Tim Tebow?

Tebow is not the first outspoken evangelical Christian to make it in sports. He is not the first football player to point to the heaven’s to give thanks for God’s preference that he and not someone else should score a victory point. He is probably the first to star in a pro-life advertisement to run in the Super Bowl, but overall, no, Tebow is not actually that unique: Professional athlete, dating a womand who is perfectly beautiful in that famous person’s girlfriend way, Outspoken Christian, generally seems like a Good Enough Guy. So why does Tebow drive people (myself included) absolutely crazy? I see this picture, and it drives me up the wall. Why?

Tebow is simply fascinating.Tim Tebow fascinates me. His supporters fascinate me. His haters fascinate me. The people who write about him fascinate me. Apparently he was a superstar in college, I have heard. And he is a terrible NFL quarterback, it would seem. People love that he is terrible. People love that he was celebrated so highly in college, drafted in the first round, and might not be any good. Why?

Why does Tebow get the coverage he does? Here’s an article on Tebow as a Protestant Saint. Grantland, the website of excellent sports writing and boring “pop culture” writing, loves to write about Tebow. One thing they have written about him is this:

In broad strokes, it’s fair to say that how you feel about Tebow depends on how you feel about youth groups and Elisabeth Hasselbeck and, I don’t know, WWJD bracelets and raft retreats with a lot of bonfires and swaying. Other religious players are religious individuals; Tebow is a whole culture. It helps that, as an NFL player, he’s both nontraditional and kind of bad, which makes it easy to see his success as guided by a higher power — if a dude with that background and that throwing motion completes a touchdown pass, it almost has to be a miracle.

Tebow is that big of a deal. Tebow is synonymous with on the field prayer. Literally. The word Tebow has become a verb for bowing in prayer in random locations, like a football field. See: Tebowing.com.This has become popular enough that, after sacking Tebow in a game, the Lions’ Stephen Tulloch and Tony Scheffler partook in a bit of light-hearted Tebowing. This apparently caused such a stir that Tulloch took to twitter to clarify that he was not mocking god. For real.

One reason that helps to explan why Tebow drives me batty: It appears that Tebow’s evangelical proselytizing is the most succesful thing about Tebow. Tebow plays football, sure, but Tebow is a Man of Faith. It’s almost as though when discussing Tebow, one must continually use the proper noun Tebow rather than the pronoun shorthand. But what’s the difference with Tim Tebow? Why does enjoying Tim Tebow’s terrible performance on the field make so many people so happy?  I don’t think anyone wishes any ill-will towards Tebow. I know I don’t. I think having Tebow succeed in the NFL, and be around for years would give another interesting bit of storyline–like professional wrestling, having the obnoxious character around is great for the plot.

And that’s why I think that Tebow rubs people the wrong way; by playing the good guy Tebow set himself apart as the bad guy. He already wrote the plot before he succeeded in any marginal way as a professional athlete. His strong-man-of-faith principles and devout belief are not problems, they are (for many) the reasons Tebow it to be respected and supported. But that has the potential of becoming the only Tim Tebow. If Tebow were just another athlete who turns out to be a terrible football player in the NFL, religious or not, well, people would forget about him. But now they won’t be able to: TebowMania was already written into the hearts and minds of the faithful by Tim Tebow himself, long before he succeeded, or failed, as a professional football player. And that is something his religion will never be able to overcome. Now let us all Tebow in prayer.