The Patriots, he stressed, “came out and they played well and they executed well and you’ve got to give them a lot of credit.”

Then Tebow interrupted himself to deal with a higher matter: “But before I talk about that, I just want, you know, to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and thank my teammates for the effort that they put forth, not just tonight but this whole season.”

Please note one crucial detail in this thanksgiving statement.

In a recent Poll Position survey, 43.3 percent of the respondents said they believed divine intervention played some role in Tebow’s roller-coaster season, including that stunning Broncos playoff victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Meanwhile, 42.3 percent said God was not helping Tebow out.

This schism is one reason Tebow critics enjoyed asking some obvious questions after the Patriots loss: So what happened? Did God tune out all of Tebow’s prayers?

People can laugh all they want, noted the leader of a Denver-area megachurch that has long had its share of Bronco players in the pews. The key is that Tebow — as is the norm for athletes who are believers — always offers prayers of thanksgiving after losses, as well as victories.

“If people have been listening to anything that Tim Tebow has been saying, then they know that he never prays to win. He has said that publicly many times,” said the Rev. Brad Strait, senior pastor of Cherry Creek Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Englewood.

“The key is that many people who keep commenting on this situation don’t know very much about why believers pray. It seems that they think the main reason, or even the only reason, that people pray is to ask God to give them things. … It’s that old Santa Claus equals Jesus thing. You mix all of that up with football and this is what you get.”

In this case, what you get is controversy about a hunky missionary kid who continues to confound his critics on and off the playing field. Meanwhile, choirs of Tebow fans — saith an early January ESPN poll — have made him the America’s most popular athlete.

His life began, of course, in a dangerous pregnancy and his mother’s decision to reject doctors’ advice to abort provided the hook for a Super Bowl spot in 2010. Tebow’s drive to excel in high-school football — while being home-schooled — fueled headlines long before his two national championships and Heisman Trophy win as a Florida Gator. Then there was the 2009 press conference in which he cheerfully answered a question about his sex life, pledging to remain chaste until marriage. This put Tebow on the radar of every comic with a microphone.

This recent blast by liberal talk-radio star Mike Malloy hit all the crucial notes.

“Tim Tebow, of course, is a massive irritation,” he said. “God, I hate crappy-ass displays of public religiosity, especially, especially, in a sporting event. This to me is vile, just vile, for these fundamentalist Christians to find divine intervention — in a pass for a football game, in Denver, Colorado? Oh well, it’s their religion, not mine.”

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that Tebow doesn’t believe God is pulling strings for him, said philosopher Douglas Groothuis of Denver Seminary, where the student body includes Tebow’s brother, Peter.

The fact that Tebow gives thanks after a game doesn’t imply that he prayed for victory before the kickoff, said Groothuis.

“He always says that he is giving thanks to ‘my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,’ which says, to me, that he is thanking God for his salvation. Then again, he could be thanking God that he is a professional football player and that he has a national platform. He could be thanking God that he didn’t get hurt during the game,” he said.

“If you look at this logically, it doesn’t make sense for him to thank God after a loss if he has been doing what people seem to think he has been doing — which is praying to win. … There’s one other point that’s important. Tebow isn’t cursing God after he loses, that’s for sure.”

Consider this paragraph in an MSNBC.com report about efforts by Southern Baptist researchers to shed light on the pros and cons of changing the name of America’s largest non-Catholic flock. Southern Baptist Convention leaders have been discussing this prickly issue off and on for a generation.

This new LifeWay Research survey was conducted, noted MSNBC, after SBC leaders created a task force to “consider the impact of the convention’s name on the denomination, which has been associated with such polarizing political figures as the Rev. Jerry Falwell, convicted Watergate conspirator-turned-Baptist minister Charles Colson and television evangelist Pat Robertson. Just this month, a Southern Baptist church in Kentucky voted to ban interracial couples, a controversial decision the pastor later overturned.”

Alas, this ban on interracial couples had been approved by a Baptist church that happens to be located in the South — not an actual Southern Baptist church. There is a difference. The tiny Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church quickly overturned its decision. MSNBC editors corrected their error, as well.

Nevertheless, this journalistic train wreck perfectly symbolized the cultural baggage that has become attached to that awkward and now inaccurate “Southern” label.

Truth is, it’s getting harder and harder to pin simple labels on Southern Baptists and other religious believers. This reality is especially important in an age in which Americans are increasingly hostile to labels.

“The trend you just can’t miss is the continuing rise of the non-categorized, the non-labeled forms of Protestantism,” said Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research. “You used to be able to look at religion in America and you could put most people into their appointed categories. Now we are seeing more people who just don’t want to be put into a category or they don’t want to stay put.”

It will be impossible, he said, for Southern Baptist leaders to downplay some of the negative numbers in this survey — numbers that are sure to make headlines. For example, while 53 percent of Americans reported having a favorable impression of Southern Baptists, 40 percent of those polled said their impressions were negative. The SBC’s image was especially bad in the West (44 percent) and in the Southern Bible Belt (40 percent).

One eyebrow-raising number in the survey is that, in terms of favorable impressions, Roman Catholics (59 percent) fared better in the South than Southern Baptists (52 percent). Southern Baptists, ironically, fared better in regions in which they have had a lower profile, such as the Northeast and Midwest.

The news was also sobering on a question focusing on the convention’s name and its evangelistic efforts. LifeWay researchers asked: “When I see (fill in denominational affiliation) in the name of a church, I assume it is not for me.” Nationwide, 35 percent of those polled “strongly agreed” that a Southern Baptist congregation would not be a good fit for them — higher than for Catholics (33 percent), generic “Baptists” (29 percent), Methodists (26 percent) and “community” or nondenominational churches (20 percent).

In other words, the mere presence of the word “Southern” cost SBC congregations six percentage points in head-to-head comparisons with other Baptists. In another question linked to decisions to visit or join a church, only 10 percent of those polled said that knowing a “church was Southern Baptist” would have a positive impact.

Meanwhile, the SBC fared worst among Americans who rarely attend church, Hispanics, many urbanites and young Americans. In all, only 17 percent of Protestant adults agreed that knowing a congregation was Southern Baptist would have a positive impact when it came time to decide whether to visit or join. The number among non-Protestant adults was a mere 2 percent.

The clear evidence that nondenominational churches — churches without labels — fared significantly better than Southern Baptist churches was especially significant, said Stetzer.

“People increasingly see religion in terms of silos and categories,” he said. “It seems that they look at churches and then quickly decide, ‘That one’s for me’ or they decide, ‘That one’s not for me.’ … The irony is that they will find many of the same beliefs in nondenominational evangelical churches that they find in our Southern Baptist churches — but people don’t know that.

“It seems that people will give a church a fair shot, but only if the label doesn’t scare them.”

On Oct. 21, the trustees of Shorter University in Rome, Ga., approved a covenant requiring faculty and staff to support the “mission of Shorter University as a Christ-centered institution affiliated with the Georgia Baptist Convention.” Then they asked employees to “reject as acceptable all sexual activity not in agreement with the Bible, including, but not limited to, premarital sex, adultery and homosexuality.”

A fortnight latter, Baptists learned about a “fall update” email from leaders at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., announcing a policy extending health care and other benefits to the “domestic partners” of faculty and staff, regardless of sexual orientation.

The Georgia Baptist Convention cut its historic ties to Mercer in 2005. Now, the school’s strategic shift brings it “into line with other leading private universities … including Emory, Duke, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Tulane, Furman, Rollins, Elon and Stetson,” noted Mercer President Bill Underwood, in a statement quoted at EthicsDaily.com, a progressive Baptist website. “It is also consistent with our established policy of not discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation.”

While this divide may shock outsiders, these decisions are “totally logical” in light of trends in Baptist life and higher education, stressed Lutheran scholar Robert Benne of Roanoke (Va.) College, author of “Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions.”

“These schools are headed in opposite directions because their leaders want them to become radically different kinds of institutions,” he said. Shorter wants to “become a ‘Christian’ university in terms of its approach to education and campus life. … Mercer is trying to become what its leaders see as an elite institution, the kind of place where if you tried to talk about ‘Christian education’ the faculty would raise all holy hell.”

In some ways, these Baptist conflicts resemble those among educators in other religious groups, he said. For example, many American Catholic colleges and universities have become highly secularized, while their leaders insist that they remain rooted in “Catholic” values or some specific educational tradition, such as the legacy of the Jesuits. Meanwhile, a few other Catholic schools publicly stress their loyalty to the Vatican.

With that in mind, it’s significant that Mercer’s Internet homepage states: “Founded by early 19th century Baptists, Mercer — while no longer formally affiliated with the Baptist denomination — remains committed to an educational environment that embraces intellectual and religious freedom while affirming values that arise from a Judeo-Christian understanding of the world.”

Benne noted that few well-known schools can accurately be labeled “fundamentalist,” as would be the case with the independent Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Meanwhile, most conflicts in Southern Baptist academia involve debates about accepting some explicitly “Christian” approach to education, often referred to as the “integration of faith and learning.”

Thus, it’s symbolic that Mercer leaders openly say they want to go the other direction, following in the footsteps of universities such as Vanderbilt and Duke, and historically Baptist institutions such as Furman and Wake Forest. The Mercer student handbook, for example, contains no moral code covering student conduct on premarital sex, adultery and homosexuality.

At this point, Shorter accepts non-Christian students. However, Benne said Shorter’s new doctrinal and lifestyle code for faculty and staff suggests that it will soon ask its students to sign a similar covenant of faith and moral conduct. If so, covenants of this kind are common on Christian campuses, including famous liberal arts schools such as Wheaton College, Calvin College, Biola University and numerous other members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (the global network in which I teach).

Many of these schools retain ties to the denominations that founded them, but they are reach out to recruit other evangelicals or traditional Christians as students, faculty and staff. Some of these schools now openly appeal to Catholics, as well.

The problem for many Baptist academics, stressed Benne, is that they place such a strong emphasis on “soul freedom” and the “priesthood of every believer” that they struggle to find ways to separate themselves from the “lukewarm people who are not really committed to the their school’s vision.”

The result is a perfect Baptist Catch 22.

“How do you defend specific doctrines and convictions,” he said, “without daring to list these specifics, which means you have committed the sin of having a creed?”

The same is true for the missionaries, researchers and pastors who plant churches. Thus, Ed Stetzer once heard a veteran missions professor tell the following bittersweet joke at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

It went like this: How do you start a new Southern Baptist church in a big city up north? That’s easy. You go into local grocery stores and introduce yourself to all of the people who buy grits.

“The point, of course, is that this is what you do NOT want to do,” said Stetzer, a native New Yorker who is president of LifeWay Research, linked to the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention. “If you’re starting churches in places like New York City, those churches need to look like the indigenous churches that are already growing there.

“A successful church plant in Manhattan is obviously going to look a lot different than one in Alabama. … We’ve known that for a long time, but we’ve learned a lot more since 9/11.”

Stetzer was referring to a faith-shaped trend that has quietly emerged in the Big Apple in the decade since the twin towers fell.

Here’s the statistic that insiders keep citing, drawn from a Values Research Institute (www.nycreligion.info) study: Forty percent of the evangelical Protestant churches in Manhattan were born after 2000, an increase of about 80. During one two-month stretch in 2009, at least one Manhattan church was planted every Sunday.

The impact has been big on one scale and tiny on another. According to the institute’s research, the percentage of New Yorkers in center-city Manhattan who identify themselves as evangelical Protestants has, since 1990, risen from less than 1 percent to three percent. In other words, the evangelical population has tripled.

While even 3 percent of the people living in greater New York is a significant number, this small slice means that — from an evangelical Protestant viewpoint — missionaries still consider the city’s population an “unreached people group” when compared with other regions. Thus, in 2003 the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention pinned its “Strategic Focus City” label on New York, initiating a four-year project offering additional funds, volunteers and church-planting professionals.

It’s impossible to tell this story without discussing the impact of 9/11, noted journalist Tony Carnes, who leads the Values Research Institute team. Rescue workers poured into New York City from across the nation, including volunteers from heartland churches not known for their affection for New York City.

“For the first time, to a large degree, important evangelical leaders realized that New York City was not what they thought it was,” said Carnes. “They learned that you didn’t need to walk down the street at night looking over your shoulder, worried that you were going to get shot. …

“They also learned that there were already many evangelical churches here and that they were not weak, struggling and embattled. Many were strong, vital and growing.”

The bottom line is that, while 9/11 was crucial, this story didn’t start with 9/11.

Carnes stressed that 42 percent of the evangelical churches in the city’s outer boroughs were founded between 1978 and 1999. This earlier surge was, in large part, driven by rapid growth in Pentecostal flocks led by African-Americans and Latinos. Another crucial event was the 1989 birth of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, led by the Rev. Tim Keller. Since then, teams from this Manhattan megachurch — which has attracted waves of Asian Christians — have planted 75 new churches across the city.

While it’s easy to focus on the past decade, said Carnes, those striving to see the bigger picture need to study ongoing trends of among immigrants, young adults and others who continue, as they have for generations, to rush to New York City seeking changed lives and new opportunities.

New York, he said, remains America’s great “unsettling city.”

“New York is going to change you, whether you are from Texas or Africa,” he said. “This city leaves you unsettled and that bring moments of pain and loneliness, but also moments that offer great freedom. … Church leaders have started to realize that many of the people who keep arriving in this great city are seeking spiritual freedom, as well. They truly want to start over.”

This Friday “Parents Night Out” program uses non-religious crafts and games, which is important because the Presbyterian flock’s leaders insist that it’s open to parents of any “creed, color, party or orientation.” It helps to know that this evangelical church is located in New York City’s Greenwich Village and meets in rented space in Public School 3.

“We’re New Yorkers and we know all about the incredible diversity of life in the Village,” said the Rev. Sam Andreades, a former computer professional with a New York University graduate degree. “We’re trying to be part of that diversity. We live here.”

The question, however, is whether the Village Church will get to stay where it is, pending the resolution of an old church-state clash that is probably headed back to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is one of 60 churches that rent space — outside of school hours — in New York City’s nearly 1,700 schools. About 10,000 non-religious groups take advantage of the same opportunity.

The question that vexes some educators is whether it’s acceptable for churches to worship in their buildings. This is currently allowed under equal-access laws that have become common nationwide in recent decades.

At the heart of the debate is a 2001 Supreme Court decision — Good News Club vs. Milford Central School — that instructed educators to offer religious groups the same opportunity to use public-school facilities as secular groups. School leaders can elect to close their buildings to secular and religious groups alike, thus avoiding discrimination.

Now, the Second Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals has challenged this status quo. In a 2-1 decision, it backed New York City school board attempts to ban regular worship services in its facilities, while allowing for some other forms of religious expression by religious groups.

“When worship services are performed in a place, the nature of the site changes,” wrote Judge Pierre N. Leval. “The site is no longer simply in a room in school being used temporarily for some activity. … The place has, at least for a time, become the church.”

The implication is that a “mysterious transformation” literally takes place during these worship services, noted Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund, a lawyer who has been involved in equal-access cases in New York City and elsewhere for a quarter of a century.

“There isn’t some kind of architectural alchemy at work here that suddenly turns a school facility into a dangerous place,” he said. “Allowing unions to rent space in schools doesn’t turn them into union halls. Allowing Alcoholics Anonymous to use a school doesn’t turn it into the Betty Ford Clinic.”

However, this ongoing conflict is evidence that many New Yorkers are spooked by the thought of people — especially evangelicals — worshipping in spaces created for secular education. The bottom line: What if believers dared to pray for the students and teachers who occupy those spaces on school days?

In a New York Times essay, activist Katherine Stewart explained why she fiercely opposes having a church meet behind the red door of her local school on the Upper East Side. She also attacked the Village Church by name.

“I could go on about why my daughter’s photo should not be made available for acts of worship, or why my P.T.A. donations should not be used to supply furniture for a religious group that thinks I am bound for hell,” concluded the author of the upcoming book, “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.”

“Maybe it’s just that I imagine that that big red door is about education for all, not salvation for a few. Sometimes a building is more than a building.”

The most disturbing theme in these arguments, said Andreades, is the frequent claim that his church and others like it are somehow aliens in their city. Renting space in PS3, he noted, allows his small flock to invest 10 percent of its budget into Village charities — from an AIDS research center to programs for shut-ins, from arts projects to soup kitchens.

“This church has been in the Village for 16 years,” he said. “We’ve had members attend that public school and teach at it. … We know who we are and where we are and we think we belong here.”

Nevertheless, the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco quickly went public with his views on this hot-button issue.

“As a religious leader I can only view with alarm the prospect that this misguided initiative would make it illegal for Jews and Muslims who practice their religion to live in San Francisco — for that is what the passage of such a law would mean,” stated Archbishop George Niederauer, in an letter to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Apart from the religious aspect, the citizens of San Francisco should be outraged at the prospect of city government dictating to parents in such a sensitive matter regarding the health and hygiene of their children.”

However, the letter the editors published directly beneath the archbishop’s openly stated — in bitter, satirical terms — the anger behind this effort to limit the religious freedom of parents on this highly personal question.

A reader in San Francisco suggested that readers be polled on this question: “Should government allow parents the right to remove functional tissue from their children when there is no immediate medical need?”

Citizens could then choose one of the following answers.

“A. No, it violates the rights of the individual child.

“B. Yes, the parents’ religion might demand human sacrifice.

“C. Yes, children have no rights, not even to their own body parts.”

No doubt about it, a growing number of modern Americans are convinced that it’s time for government officials to do some cutting and snipping in the pages of the holy books that define some of the world’s major religions.

“What you have here is an assault, by a popular referendum, on a central ritual in a recognized ancient religion,” noted Marc Stern, associate general counsel for legal advocacy at the American Jewish Committee. While the current initiative may seem brazen, “it’s really nothing new. It’s easy for historians to find sources showing how the Greeks and Romans mocked the Jews for practicing circumcision.”

So far, the most shocking twist in this ballot-box drama has been provided by “Foreskin Man,” a comic book produced by strategists in this campaign against “Male Genital Mutilation,” a phrase crafted to echo global efforts to ban female genital mutilation. The star of these books is a stereotypically Aryan superhero who protects children from the “Monster Mohel,” a bearded villain wearing all of the distinctive garb of an Orthodox Jew.

The introduction notes: “Nothing excites Monster Mohel more than cutting into the penile flesh of an eight-day-old infant boy.”

It is easy, noted Stern, to focus on the stark implications of this initiative for Jews and Muslims, for whom circumcision is a defining rite of faith and identity. If passed, the San Francisco measure would make circumcision on male minors a misdemeanor crime punishable by a $1,000 fine or a year in jail. A similar ballot measure was recently withdrawn in Santa Monica, Calif.

In the end, he said, the upcoming vote should be seen as part of a trend in which increasing numbers of activists are focusing attention on limiting parental rights, even when parents are making decisions that involve religious liberty.

“We live in an age in which it is common for mainstream scholars in mainstream schools to produce entire books arguing that the state should prevent parents from sending their children to parochial schools,” he noted.

“The theme that runs through all this is the conviction that parents must yield to what society thinks is best for their children, even in matters of faith. … These cases keep coming up and all kinds of religious believers are starting to realize that.”

Thus, it was not surprising that the National Association of Evangelicals released a statement joining those released by Jews, Muslims and Catholics in opposition to the ballot initiative and in defense of the broader First Amendment issues linked to it.

“Jews, Muslims and Christians all trace our spiritual heritage back to Abraham. Biblical circumcision begins with Abraham,” noted the Rev. Leith Anderson, the group’s president. “No American government should restrict this historic tradition. Essential religious liberties are at stake.”

Apparently, 140 characters is a great fit for Bible quotations. The most popular post-Osama Bible tweets, as charted by Stephen Smith at OpenBible.info, quickly divided into two theological camps.

Some quickly offered passages such as Proverbs 21:15, which proclaims: “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.” Another popular tweet was Proverbs 11:10: “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy.”

Others, however, declined to celebrate and quoted verses such as Ezekiel 18:23: “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” Some favored Romans 12:19: “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”

The No. 1 verse sounded this same sobering tone: “Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice (Proverbs 24:17).”

This was the verse Public Religion Research Institute personnel spotted and quickly wove into a survey probing the national mood after the death of the world’s most famous terrorist. To be specific, the pollsters asked: “Scripture says, ‘Do not rejoice when your enemies fall.’ Do you believe this passage applies to how Americans should react to the death of Osama bin Laden, or not?”

The result was a strong coalition that crossed religious, political and ethnic lines, with 60 percent of those polled believing this verse applied in this case. At the same time, 65 percent were sure, to one degree or another, that bin Laden was locked in hell for eternity.

However, the details of this survey — conducted in cooperation with Religion News Service — contained a surprise for those inclined to think that most conservative believers would be dancing in church aisles after hearing this news bulletin.

Instead, 66 percent of white evangelical Protestants said “do not rejoice when your enemy falls” applied to bin Laden — compared to 53 percent of those from liberal “mainline” Protestant denominations. At the same time, 70 percent of those polled from “minority” churches — mostly African-American evangelicals and charismatic Latinos — said it was improper to celebrate in these circumstances.

Believers from the biblically conservative flocks were, however, more likely to believe God played a direct role in bin Laden’s defeat, with 54 percent of white evangelicals and 51 percent of minority Christians taking that stance.

“It’s a careful line that they are drawing, but that line is quite clear” in the survey results, said Robert P. Jones, chief executive officer at the Public Religion Research Institute.

Members of the more conservative religious groups, he said, seem to be saying “what transpired was guided, in some way, by the hand of God. But at the same time they’re saying that this is not something that they, as believers, should be celebrating. … That’s not up to us, in other words.”

Many evangelical commentators offered variations on this dual message after bin Laden’s sudden demise during a U.S. raid on his secret compound in Pakistan. The response by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., the outspoken president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., was typical.

“While we should all be glad that this significant threat is now removed, death in itself is never to be celebrated. Such celebration points to the danger of revenge as a powerful human emotion. Revenge has no place among those who honor justice,” he noted. “The reason for this is simple — God is capable of vengeance, which is perfectly true to his own righteousness and perfection — but human beings are not. …

“All people of good will should be pleased that bin Laden is no longer a personal threat, and that his death may further weaken terrorist plans and aspirations. … But open patriotic celebration in the streets? That looks far more like revenge in the eyes of a watching world, and it looks far more like we are simply taking satisfaction in the death of an enemy. That kind of revenge just produces greater numbers of enemies.”

For the few who didn’t catch it online, the ad features a worried pastor — in a clerical collar — who has empty pews and too many unpaid bills. Thus, he prays for inspiration and God responds with the sound of crunching chips and fizzing soda.

Soon hungry souls — Jewish, Amish and Hare Krishna included — are lining up in church for Doritos and Pepsi MAX in a way that suggests Holy Communion.

The brands are no surprise, since Media Wave Productions of Philadelphia produced “Feed Your Flock” for PepsiCo’s annual “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, in which flocks of folks hope to win $1 million if their creation finishes No. 1 in USA Today’s Ad Meter rankings. The chips-and-soda communion entry didn’t qualify for a Super Bowl airing and has since vanished from YouTube and other sites after waves of protests by Catholics and others.

“It’s hard to imagine such an ad being created only a few decades ago,” noted Shane Rosenthal of the White Horse Inn weblog. “The trivialization of the sacred in this piece is nothing less than astounding. And that’s just it. There isn’t anything sacred anymore. Everything’s a joke.”

This offering, however, wasn’t the only attempt at a Super Bowl ad built on religion or politics or both. Controversies of this kind have increased in recent years, with video activists on the cultural right and left doing their share of poking and protesting.

If professional football has become a form of religion, then it isn’t surprising that America’s Christmas Wars over faith in the public square are now followed by Super Bowl Culture Wars in the marketplace.

This year, “Feed Your Flock” wasn’t even the only “Crash the Super Bowl” entry that used a dash of sacrilege. In “Party Crashers,” another entry now on YouTube, God and Jesus make a scene at a party by eating all the Doritos. They are asked to leave and, with a snap, Jesus miraculously refills the empty snack bag. “Let’s go, Dad,” he says.

Several other ads rejected by the Fox Sports Media Group this year featured religious and political content that was too hot to be allowed into the Super Bowl ad wars with the heavyweights like Bud Light, GoDaddy.com and Snickers.

* In one, two curious football fans turn to the Bible after spotting “John 3:16” written in the black patches under a star player’s eyes. The network said the Fixed Point Foundation video contained too much “religious doctrine.”

* Self-proclaimed “conservative comedian” Richard Belfry also failed in an attempt to air a commercial for his “Jesus Hates Obama” online store that sells T-shirts and other items with his trademark slogan. Belfry said a circle of private investors agreed to purchase a 30-second Super Bowl slot — which usually sell for about $3 million.

* Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry is attempting a novel approach, going so far as to register as a Democratic Party candidate for the White House so that he could insist that networks air his graphic video because of a campaign advertising loophole in existing FCC regulations. Few other opponents of abortion have taken his side.

This is not a new story. Before the 2009 Super Bowl, CatholicVoter.com failed in an attempt to air “Imagine,” an ad featuring a sonogram video of an unborn child matched with text offering thanks that the difficult family circumstances surrounding the young Barack Obama did not prevent his birth. Last year, Focus on the Family was successful with “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life,” an ad focused on missionary Pam Tebow and her decision to endure a risky pregnancy before giving birth to Tim, the future Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback.

These media conflicts are not connected with the tough Constitutional issues that drive the church-state conflicts that have become so common in recent decades, noted J. Brent Walker, head of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Nevertheless, these faith-based controversies about Super Bowl advertisements — whether silly, satirical or dead serious — seem to be stirring similar public emotions.

“If we lived in a culture in which no one cared much about religion,” he said, “then people wouldn’t get so passionate about these things. But that wouldn’t be America, would it?”

In fact, Obama said “Christmas” eight times, twice as often as he mentioned “holidays.” With his family at his side, the president also used an even more controversial word — “Christian.”

“Each year we’ve come together to celebrate a story that has endured for two millennia,” he said. “It’s a story that’s dear to Michelle and me as Christians, but it’s a message that’s universal: A child was born far from home to spread a simple message of love and redemption to every human being around the world.”

Politicos did the Beltway math and got this number — 2012.

God talk is back in the political equation, as the clock ticks toward another campaign. Insiders are counting how often Obama clearly mentions his Christian faith and then subtracting, to cite a key statistic, the number of times he quotes the Declaration of Independence while clipping God from the line that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

Many pastors seem to be paying attention as well, according to a recent LifeWay Research survey that asked 1,000 Protestant pastors to judge the faith of five public figures. Researchers interviewed a spectrum of clergy, with the selection of participants based on the sizes of their national denominations. Thus, conservative flocks had more votes.

The question: “Which, if any, of the following people do you believe are Christians?” It was thumbs up for former President George W. Bush (75 percent) and GOP lightning rod Sarah Palin (66 percent), but thumbs down for Obama (41 percent), as well as media superstars Glenn Beck (27 percent) and Oprah Winfrey (19 percent).

Among the pastors who said they were Republicans, 23 percent said Obama is a Christian, a stark contrast with the 80 percent of the pastors who identified themselves as Democrats. Among “independents,” 52 percent called Obama a Christian.

Bush was viewed as a Christian by 75 percent of the pastors, including 84 percent of those who identified their politics as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Meanwhile, 25 percent of the “very conservative” Protestant clergy declined to call Bush a Christian.

One thing this survey made clear is that many American clergy have clashing definitions of the word “Christian,” said Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, which is linked to the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention.

For many Americans, he said, “Christian” is “simply an identification on a form. They see a box on a survey and they say, ‘I am not Hindu or Jewish. I am from America, so I must be Christian.’ … Pastors may see this differently. For example, evangelical pastors tend to link the term ‘Christian’ with conversion experiences.”

Thus, conservative Protestants believe that people are not born into Christianity, but enter the faith by being “born again.”

This is why the Obama controversies are so hard to understand, stressed Stetzer. On several occasions — including in his memoirs — Obama has described what is “clearly a conversion experience of some kind” in which he made a public profession of Christian faith and joined the United Church of Christ.

Nevertheless, Obama supporters were stunned by last year’s much-publicized Pew Research Center poll that said 18 percent of Americans continue to believe that Obama is a Muslim, while only 34 percent identify him as a Christian. Another 43 percent did not know his religious faith.

There is no way to be sure why so many of the clergy who participated in the LifeWay survey declined to call Obama a Christian, stressed Stetzer.

A few may think he is a Muslim, while others may believe that Obama is so progressive that he is trying to affirm multiple faiths at the same time. It is likely that many conservatives believe that Obama sincerely thinks he is a Christian, but that his religious beliefs are too unorthodox to be considered doctrinally sound.

“I just don’t think that the Muslim controversy alone is enough to explain what we’re seeing here,” said Stetzer. “At the end of the day, we only know that the pastors answered this way, not why they answered this way. We have more work to do on this.”

****

It seems that we are going to see more mainstream coverage of those debates about religious liberty, military chaplains and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” So let’s back up and note a few basic fact, some of which were handled quite well in that CNN.com report that I praised the other day in the post called, “Chaplain questions older than DADT.”

As that title implied, I wanted to note that church-state questions about military chaplains are not new.

The military powers that be have been arguing for a long time about doctrinal and legal issues linked to public prayers, God talk, preaching, evangelism/proselytism and a variety of subjects. Tensions between the traditionalist camp and what the oldline-Universalist-progressive camp are not new. It’s much harder for an evangelical, charismatic of Anglo-Catholic Episcopal priest to lead a wide variety of vague rites that mesh with various other traditions than for a liberal Episcopal priest to do that same. It’s easier for a Reform rabbi to function in a state-funded religious environment than it is for a Southern Baptist, a Missouri-Synod Lutheran or an Eastern Orthodox priest (to name a few examples).

These hot-button issues almost always revolve around public expressions of doctrine, as opposed to silent, private beliefs.

When looking at DADT, however, the current state of things clearly affects the left as well as the right. As mentioned in the GetReligion comments pages, clergy in religious groups that favor DADT repeal have had their hands tied in public ministries to gays and lesbians in the military.

However, the must crucial question is not whether many doctrinal traditionalists will have to leave the military if DADT is repealed. The real question is whether many will leave rather than face punishment for public or even one-on-one expressions of their religious beliefs. Thus, it was important that the CNN.com story included this crucial slice of the Pentagon DADT report:

Despite the fact they would not pull their endorsements for chaplains, “A significant portion of the respondents did suggest that a change in policies resulting in chaplains’ free exercise of religion or free speech rights being curtailed would lead them to withdraw their endorsement,” the report said.

Or, as Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America put it in a letter to the chaplains board:

“If our chaplains were in any way … prohibited from denouncing such behavior as sinful and self-destructive, it would create an impediment to their service in the military. If such an attitude were regarded as ‘prejudice’ or the denunciation of homosexuality as ‘hate language,’ or the like, we would be forced to pull out our chaplains from military service.”

So there is much more to this story than what happens if DADT is repealed. The question is how DADT repeal (or the continuation of the policy) will affect the ministry of military chaplains — liberal and conservative — and the rights of the soldiers that they serve — liberal and conservative.

This brings us to the new story on these issues in the Washington Post, which adds some useful information on the point of view of liberal clergy, such as:

The Rev. Dennis Camp, a retired Army colonel, said it pained him when gay soldiers came to him to complain of the burden they felt from keeping their sexuality a secret. They could not display pictures of their loved ones or talk freely about their personal lives, he recalled. But he could not encourage them to be honest about their orientation, he said.

“They were forced by the situation, the system, to be dishonest, and that took its toll on them. And me,” said Camp, a United Methodist minister who retired in 1996 after 27 years of service. “It was horrible. Right from the beginning I was saying, ‘This is bad. This is wrong. It really has no place in our military community.’ “

Yet in the paragraphs immediately before these lines, the Post framed the debate in the following manner:

The authors of the report noted that only three out of the 145 chaplains who participated in focus groups suggested that they would quit or retire if the law was changed. Many chaplains expressed opposition to repeal, while many others said they would not object, according to the report.

“In the course of our review, we heard some chaplains condemn in the strongest possible terms homosexuality as a sin and an abomination, and inform us that they would refuse to in any way support, comfort, or assist someone they knew to be homosexual,” the report stated. “In equally strong terms, other chaplains, including those who also believe homosexuality is a sin, informed us that ‘we are all sinners,’ and that it is a chaplain’s duty to care for all Service members.”

Once again, repeal is not the ultimate issue for the leaders of traditional religious groups. The issue is hidden in that phrase “care for all Service members.” Does “care” equal acceptance of homosexual activity? For example, I cannot imagine many traditional clergy actually saying that they would “refuse to in any way support, comfort, or assist someone they knew to be homosexual.”

Really? Did the Pentagon offer any direct quotes from chaplains expressing those views, or is that an official bureaucratic interpretation of what women and men said in these interviews? What is the legal content of those words “support,” “comfort” and “assist”?

The Post report does offer the following information from someone who is worried about protecting the rights of clergy who advocate traditional views on sexuality issues.

Many conservatives worry that lifting the policy would muzzle chaplains whose religions require them to preach against homosexuality. The Rev. Douglas E. Lee, a retired Presbyterian Air Force chaplain and brigadier general who now counsels and credentials chaplains, said chaplains generally point out their views on homosexuality before counseling a service member on that issue. He worried that military policies may prohibit even that level of conversation if “don’t ask, don’t tell” is repealed, even though Pentagon officials have not recommended any change to the policy governing chaplains’ behavior.

“There’s a strong possibility that a chaplain wouldn’t be allowed to proclaim what their own faith believes, and not give people the information they need to be a good Christian or a good Muslim or what have you,” he said. “If there’s no protection for the chaplain to be able to speak according to his faith group, that might affect the number of chaplains we recruit or our ability to do our duty for the troops.”

Once again, note the following inserted — but valid — commentary noting that Lee made these comments, “even though Pentagon officials have not recommended any change to the policy governing chaplains’ behavior.”

That’s true, although the Pentagon would find itself involved in court cases challenging those policies. Where are the crucial decisions being made, these days, on these kinds of moral and cultural issues?

Meanwhile, the CNN.com report was much stronger in this regard, since it noted that the current policies that guide the work of military chaplains already contain the very tensions about the public and one-on-one expressions of doctrine that are now being linked to the DADT debate. Again, here is that section of the CNN.com story:

“Existing regulations state that chaplains ‘will not be required to perform a religious role … in worship services, command ceremonies, or other events, if doing so would be in variance with the tenets or practices of their faith.’ At the same time, regulations state that ‘Chaplains care for all Service members, including those who claim no religious faith, facilitate the religious requirements of personnel of all faiths, provide faith-specific ministries, and advise the command.’ “

Once again, someone will need to define the word “care.”

In other words, these doctrinal tensions are not new. The DADT debates are merely the latest chapter in a larger church-state story, once in which voices on the left and right must be reported accurately.