Colin Kaepernick, Tim Tebow, and the magic of comparison: muscular Christianity as white racial frame

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores how muscular Christianity operates as a media frame for athlete religiosity and how the muscular Christian frame contributes to essentialist and racialised stereotypes about Black and white athletes, which in turn reinforce ‘common-sense’ assumptions around black and white religion that perpetuate and transmit white supremacist values. We present these findings starting from a critical comparative media analysis of athlete religiosity, articulated with respect to Colin Kaepernick and Tim Tebow. Our analysis produced two primary findings. First, while both Kaepernick and Tebow were framed as ‘muscular Christians’ by news media, this framing was racialised, constituting both athletes within what Feagin termed a ‘White racial frame’ (2013, 14). Second, the comparative media sub-discourse of a Kaepernick/Tebow comparison itself functioned to extend the white racial frame by essentializing Kaepernick’s protest as ‘Black Christian progressive’ action and dichotomising this as necessary and compatible with conservative white evangelicalism. The underlying ideas about muscular Christianity in these media representations are not neutral. Presupposing whiteness, they obscure the active construction of a white, masculine, (evangelical) Protestant religiosity against which other representations are measured, sometimes explicitly, but more often implicitly. The article concludes with implications for understanding the cultural politics of Kaepernick and Tebow, adding to extant ‘cultural backlash’ explanations.