Speaking of Christian retailing, my friend Tim Ellsworth at Union University sent along to me the latest example of Christian merchandise: college sports Bible T-shirts. On his blog, Tim tells about an Alabama company, BibleSports.net, that now markets these shirts.
University of Alabama fans can get a shirt that, quoting Ezekiel 20:29, reads on the front: “Then I said to them, what is this HIGH PLACE you go to?” On the other side, it says, “It is called BAMAh to this day.” Auburn fans can buy a shirt with a citation from the Proverbs: “The way of an EAGLE in the sky.” The Auburn shirt is, of course, orange and the Alabama shirt, red.
Now, at one level, this isn’t all that surprising to me, having grown up a stone’s throw from the Alabama line. Football there is serious business. I once had a pastor friend who, when talking to a pulpit committee in Alabama, was asked to pledge neutrality in the pulpit on the issue of Auburn vs. Alabama football. And historian Wayne Flynt in his excellent new work, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, makes the case that college football in Alabama is far more of an establishment of religion than Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments display could ever hope to be. I always thought my Alabama friends were joking when they said such things. Apparently, they’d never seen the Bible Sports shirts.
Still, one can’t help but marvel at the pitch made by the company’s spokesman:
“Our hope and our prayer is that someone will see these shirts,” he said. “It may not be the scripture. It may be the sports avenue that attracts their attention. If it is, that’s OK. But our prayer is that God will use these shirts in the sense that someone may see these verses and think, ‘I didn’t realize that was in the Bible. Where is that?’ and open the word up.”
I hope so too. I hope many read the Bible as a result of these shirts. And I hope that when the Roll Tide is called up yonder, they’ll be there.
