I've been waiting for the latest Tim Tebow controversy to make a lick of sense. And now that it seems to have pretty much played out, there's only one part of it that does: His initial willingness to speak at First Baptist Dallas.
Much of the rest of it, from the overheated media reaction to Tebow's explanation for why he canceled, is as logical as a third down punt from midfield. What the what?
To review: Tebow, an NFL quarterback whose conservative Christian faith is as much a part of his public persona as his college triumphs, was scheduled to speak in Dallas at the church that was once considered the most important in the Southern Baptist Convention. Its star has faded, but First Dallas is still a major pulpit.
It's a church that Tebow is surely sympatico with. His home church in Florida is led by the prior pastor of First Dallas. The current pastor in Dallas, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, is a theological twin of his predecessor but is better at coming up with pithy quotes that get headlines.
Cue the outrage. A headline in the Huffington Post stuffed pretty much all the objections into one suitcase: "Tim Tebow, Jets Quarterback, To Speak At Virulently Anti-Gay, Anti-Semitic Church First Baptist Dallas."
Sigh. Anti-semitic? No more so that any other conservative Christian church. Yes, Jeffress thinks Jews are going to hell. Ditto for Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Bahai, Wiccans and, if you get him on the right day, he might share a question or two about Catholics.
That doesn't make him anti- any of those other religions any more than soccer is anti-football because it outlaws the use of hands. Every exclusivist faith asserts that it's the only right one, with dire eternal consequences for the outsiders. Unless that belief translates into mistreatment of those outsiders in this life, Jeffress' opinion of the Great Perhaps is utterly irrelevant outside his pulpit. And I've seen nothing to indicate that Jeffress discriminates against Jews.
"Anti-gay" is a stickier wicket. Gay, Jeffress has famously preached, is not OK. The basic theology that homosexuality is frowned on by the Almighty is briefly but unambiguously set in the Jewish and Christian scriptures and in the historical understanding of those scriptures. If you're the sort who believes that every word of the Bible is literally true and unchangeably understood, there's not a lot of wiggle room. (Which is also true for Christians and divorce, but that's another column...)
