Maybe you weren’t aware of it, but white evangelical maleness ended last week, with the dismissal of Tim Tebow from the New York Jets and the coming out of Jason Collins. Daniel D’Addario of Salon suggests Tebow may be the last mainstream evangelical celebrity. D’Addario points to the overall waning of evangelical influence on the [...]
Conversations about or comments on other people’s public displays of faith inevitably say more about the commentator than they do about the practitioner. I recognize that Tebow (Tim), quarterback of the Denver Broncos and Fellowship of Christian Athletes idol, is about as polarizing a sports figure as you’re likely to find. At the same time, [...]
What could we possibly learn from the LeBron-athon that took place over the last two weeks other than professional sports stars are narcissistic and our popular culture couldn’t care less because we can’t get enough of sports? If we scratch the surface, I think we can learn, or be reminded of, a little more.
Lars von Trier‘s Antichrist is one of the few films that I really want to see this Fall. Film and religion scholar S. Brent Plate wrote about it over the weekend for Religion Dispatches and will write more about it in the coming weeks. You can find the link to his article after the jump. [...]
Pop Theology contributor Richard Lindsay and I saw Gus Van Sant’s new film, MILK, last week. It tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to political office in the United States. We thought we would provide another dialogue review like we did with another interesting biopic this year, [...]
Here is some more footage of the GTU panel discussion on sports, religion, and social justice. In this video, you will hear Mike Beckman talk about the Green Bay Packers, Tai-Amri Spann Wilson reflect on his personal experiences with sports, and Emily Joy McGaughy finally adds some female flavor to the panel as she discusses [...]
Below is the footage from a talk that I gave as part of a panel discussion on sports, religion, and social justice. Hope you enjoy it.
Happy Super Sunday! Super Bowl Sunday is the high holy day of American Civil Religion, bordering on holiday status. I often joke that if I were elected president, I would make the Monday following the Super Bowl a national holiday. Want to write me in? Theologians and scholars of religion have paid increasing attention to [...]
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about sports and religion lately and am working on an essay on the deification of the collegiate/professional athlete in terms of immanence and transcendence. Sean Taylor’s tragic death early this week certainly reminds us of the immanence of professional athletes and their very real vulnerability juxtaposed to the invincible [...]
Rounding out a long Saturday, I attended the Forum on Sports and Religion: Perspectives on the Pigskin, sponsored in part by Mercer University Press. The panelists included Joseph Price from Whittier College, Greg Sapp from Stetson University, Christopher Anderson from Drew University, Marc Jolley, director of Mercer University Press, Craig A. Forney from Arizona State [...]
