Religion and Sport

Tim Tebow is a champion quarterback for the University of Florida football team. He's a interesting case from a sporting point of view, because many argue his skill set isn't easily transferable to the professional game, the NFL.

He's also a devout Christian. So devout, he writes Bible verses on the black stickers he wears under his eyes. And he's about to cause some controversy in the USA.

Tebow and his mother will star in an ad due to run during the Superbowl on CBS on Sunday evening US time, which will detail his personal story. Tebow's mother suffered complications with her pregnancy, was advised to abort the child that became Tim, and went contrary to that advice and carried the child to term.

The ad will advocate a strong pro-life position, but it is the placement of a major sporting star at the centre of perhaps the most contentious political and moral issue facing the USA today, during the most popular sporting and television event of the US calendar, that makes this all the more interesting.

One could argue that this sort of thing could only happen in America. Sports stars routinely thank God for intervening and helping them make a major impact on the sporting field.

The fact is this simply cannot be the case. God is not picking favourites in a mere sporting contest - if he did, the sentimental favourite would always win.

In Australia, we've always been a bit more muted in this regard. Matthew Hayden copped some flack when he crossed himself whenever he scored a century. Shaun Hart mentioned "his Lord and Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ" when he won the Norm Smith Medal, and Gary Ablett did a similar thing.

The difference between Hayden, Hart & Ablett's utterances and some of the utterances that occur on the other side of the Pacific is the Australians were merely thanking God for making their performances possible. That's not the same as making the performances happen, or altering that ethereal element we know as luck to favour one side over another.

Tebow is crossing another line again - he is proselytising. He is doing so in a time and a culture where the idea that God is intervening in the everyday lives, and in particular the politics, of people, is becoming more prevelent. That Tebow feels the impulse to make the sporting field an arena for publicising certain extracts from the Bible demonstrates how strongly he feels, but it also makes intensifies the idea that all sports people are role models.

This may lead to some thinking Tebow is some sort of expert on this matter. He's a professional athlete; a "jock" if you will. He's not a theologian, or even ordained. But many, many young people would look up to him, certainly more young people than would a famous evangelist or Archbishop.

I, for one, hope we don't ever go down this road in Australia, and this opinion comes from a church going Catholic. God, whatever God is, doesn't care about recreational pastimes such as sport, even if they are careers for many people. I don't like playing the perspective card when it comes to sport, but this blows sport's importance out of all proportion.

I have a very strong view that religious belief is something that is very personal: a covenant between a person and God. Lord knows I've looked to the heavens and implored God's intervention in a sporting contest, but those have been moments of illogical weakness, brought about by the performance of a beloved sporting team. To use the sporting field as a platform for religious conversion is something that is inappropriate and potentially dangerous, and also doesn't sit well in a pluralist, multicultural society. The less of this, the better.