January 2012 – For the time being, Tim Tebow is the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League. A stellar athlete on the collegiate level whose success as a professional remains in doubt, Tebow is wholesome and good-looking, polite and respectful.

He is well known for his stand for Jesus Christ on the field and in media interviews, and his signature throughout his football career has been the use of Scripture references in the eye black worn on his face during games. 

Moreover, his public witness as an evangelical Christian appears to match his private life. He has spent summers on the mission field, set up a foundation to care for orphans and unabashedly declared that he is a virgin and will remain that way until he marries.

So what’s the problem? Why did an ESPN special aired in October state that Tebow’s “outspokenness about his conservative Christian beliefs has made him a polarizing figure?”

The answer is simple: Tim Tebow is polarizing. Professionally crafted and extremely fair, the ESPN piece simply explored the reason why people either love Tebow or despise him: his Christian faith. 

George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and himself a Catholic, said, “Tebow is a target of irrational hatred, not because he’s an iffy quarterback at the NFL level, or a creep personally or an obnoxious, in-your-face, self-righteous proselytizer. He draws hatred because he is an unabashed Christian, whose calmness and decency in the face of his Christophobic detractors drive them crazy.”

Increasingly, there are segments in American culture that don’t want Christianity leaving the four walls of the church. They despise Christians who do more than cross themselves in the batter’s box or point to the heavens after scoring a touchdown.

Rev. Ryan Gold, pastor of New Covenant Community Church in Denver, Colorado, told AFA Journal he had never seen such a polarizing sports figure as Tebow. 

“Obviously – and only those who are intellectually honest in the secular society will admit this – it strictly has to do with his vocal stand for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the social implications of the gospel that he’s promulgated publicly for years,” Gold said.

Shut up … or else
Examples of this angry secularism continue to bubble to the surface all over the nation. In October, school officials in Union Township, New Jersey, launched an investigation of special education teacher Viki Knox. 

The reason? She was investigated after she posted comments critical of homosexuality on her personal Facebook page. Knox’s comments went viral and homosexual activists went ballistic.

Calling Knox a hatemonger, Steven Goldstein, chairman of the New Jersey homosexual activist group Garden State Equality, demanded that she be fired.

John Paragano, a local attorney and former councilman in Union Township, also called for Knox’s dismissal, stating, “She has a right to say [what she did]. But she does not have a right to keep her job after saying it.”

How chilling. Paragano apparently believes that the First Amendment’s rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion are nullified the moment a teacher even criticizes a politically protected class.

Exiled to the fringes
Under the Law of Moses in the Old Testament, a leper was to announce to passersby that his body was wracked with the disease in order to prevent ritual contamination. Shouting “Unclean!” was enough to drive the healthy away from the sick.

According to the politically correct class in America, the new “unclean” are Bible-believing Christians who dare speak what Scripture says.

This past summer, for example, Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS shoes, apologized for speaking at an event hosted by Focus on the Family.

TOMS utilizes a wonderful corporate concept: For every pair of its shoes sold to customers, another pair is given to a child in need. “One for one,” the company says on its Web site. 

FOTF publicized a cooperative effort with TOMS to distribute shoes to the indigent in Africa. That didn’t go over well with radicals on the sexual fringe. A blogger on the leftist Daily Kos Web site rebuked Mycoskie for having anything to do with FOTF, calling it “one of the quintessential hate groups.”

Mycoskie quickly caved. “Had I known the full extent of Focus on the Family’s beliefs, I would not have accepted the invitation to speak at their event,” he wrote on his blog. “It was an oversight on my part and the company’s part and one we regret.”

What beliefs were those? Simply believing that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that homosexual conduct is a sin in the eyes of a Holy God.

FOTF is not the only leper. This past August, Texas Govenor Rick Perry announced a stadium event in Houston – in conjunction with AFA – calling upon Christians to pray for America. Perry was viciously attacked in the media for having anything to do with AFA, which was characterized as a hate group.

Christians ‘need not apply’
Sometimes Christian beliefs come under scrutiny and are rejected because they conflict with policy changes made by companies and organizations – policies that now bestow favored status upon homosexuality.

In 2010, for example, FOTF ran a simple ad on the Web site of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The banner ad included the Web address of FOTF and the slogan, “Celebrate Family. Celebrate Life.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, however, neither the ad nor the slogan sat well with Pat Griffin, professor emeritus of the social justice education program at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. 

Griffin, a lesbian who sometimes consults with the NCAA on issues important to the homosexual community, called on the NCAA to pull the ad. “It’s not the right image or role for the NCAA to be endorsing an organization that has such an extreme right-wing, Christian, political mission,” she said.

Amazingly, the NCAA agreed and pulled the ad. Spokesman Bob Williams said the NCAA had an explicit policy of inclusion and diversity, and advertisers must be “supportive of NCAA values and attributes and/or not be in conflict with the NCAA’s mission and fundamental principles.”

He also added that the association had the right to reject ads or advertisers “that do not appear to be in the best interests of higher education and student athletes.”

AFA president Tim Wildmon blasted the NCAA decision. “Apparently the NCAA believes only in selective diversity,” he said. “They can hardly claim to believe in inclusion when they have censored an ad just because it comes from a pro-family organization. If their advertising policy is ‘Christians need not apply,’ then they should be honest enough to tell us so.”

Whatever happened to tolerance?
Maybe they are telling us with their actions rather than official statements or policies. Quiet Christians are welcome, of course, but outspoken ones are not. Invisible believers will be tolerated, but visible, public Christians are the new lepers.

Weigel said, “Tolerance, that supreme virtue of the culture of radical relativism, does not extend to evangelical Christians, it seems.”

As more and more of American culture drifts slowly – and sometimes not so slowly – away from God, Christians can expect the new intolerance to grow. Some of this antagonism will be rooted in simple bigotry, but some animosity will no doubt flow from a sense of conviction of sin.

Tebow is a perfect example of the latter, according to Gold.

“He’s as counter-cultural and as committed a Christian as they come. Pop culture doesn’t understand this because it’s supernatural in the face of such fame,” he said. “When carnal pleasure is at the fingertips of a young man like Tim and he instead chooses to live for Jesus Christ, it convicts, challenges, gently condemns and calls out for attention. It exposes the culture war in our country for what it is – spiritual battle between light and darkness.”

Christians are in that battle, whether they like it or not.    

Next month, part 2: “The Hate Police” and what Christians can do.