ABSTRACT
This chapter exposes the double-standard applied to the religious expressions of many Black and white athletes in the National Football League. It provides several examples of African American football players who use what called as “hard providential” language to articulate their understanding of their play on the field and help clarify critical responses to such language made by white players, media members, and religious authorities. For the purposes of comparison, the chapter focuses on the way that white evangelical quarterback Tim Tebow relates God to football through a kind of “soft providentialism” that calls on God to give him strength and keep the game injury-free—a theological premise that enjoys scant notice from the typical critics and praise from fellow Protestants. Tebow’s religious stance is, in part, protected by a double standard that is nourished by long-standing ideas about race and sustained by white Protestant norms.
