Why Jason Collins’ Faith is Ignored… And Tebow’s Isn’t

Why Jason Collins’ Faith is Ignored… And Tebow’s Isn’t May 2, 2013

On Monday, the New York Jets released quarterback Tim Tebow from their roster after only a year on a team. In ironic timing, news almost immediately followed that Jason Collins, a veteran center in the NBA, had become the first active male athlete in a major American team sport to come out as gay.
Collins and Tebow are a study in contrasts, perhaps especially when it comes to their faith. Tebow is known for game-saving theatrics and an equally performative profession of faith politicized by the culture wars. He’s positioned himself as an all-American poster child for the pro-life movement and homophobic groups like Focus on the Family. Collins, on the other hand, is a career role player who keeps his head down on the court and his devout Christian faith, rooted in family and community identity, private.
Where Tebow’s religiosity has been endlessly analyzed by the media and championed by the white religious right, the centrality of Collins’ Christianity and faith community in his decision to come out has been ignored. Collins’ faith hasn’t gotten the attention that his race has—apart from ESPN’s attention-grabbing decision to put Chris Broussard, a sports journalist with known, religiously-motivated homophobic views, on air to directly question him about his personal opinion of Collins’ Christian witness—in the process playing into popular narratives about black homophobia.
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