The Gospel According to Tim Tebow: Sporting Celebrity, Whiteness, and the Cultural Politics of Christian Fundamentalism in America

In this article, we explore the media and cultural politics of former National Football League (NFL) quarterback Tim Tebow. More specifically, we investigate paradoxical and contradictory media representations of Tebow as his celebrity surfaced within, and came to dominate, the Obama-era ‘American’ media landscape. In so doing, we draw lines of articulation from Tebow—as performative and representative embodiment of white identity politics and Christian fundamentalism—to broader frames of nation-based morality and racialized meritocracy. We end the article with a discussion on why mediated and mediating Tebow—as framed in contradictory yet religiously significant ways—was at once polarizing and codifying in the media’s ability to galvanize a contextually-significant set of cultural and racial politics.