I’m almost certain I’ll be getting an email or a certified letter any moment now from the NFL’s attorneys. Seems I may have just violated a copyright law. How, you say? Read the headline at the top of this post. Do you see those two words “Super Bowl”? Turns out after 41 years the NFL has decided to crack down on the use of those two words.

But only if you are a Christian or an evangelical church. Your local sports bar can use those two words to help them sell a controlled-substance to already over-intoxicated patrons, but according the NFL assistant counsel Rachel L. Margolies, if you are an evangelical church planning to use those words in conjunction with “a message,” you’ve violated their copyright.

Ms. Margolies actually sent a letter to the Fall Creek Baptist Church in Indianpolis demanding that they “cease and desist” from using the words “Super Bowl” in their advertising for a church fellowship! And, oh, by the way, you can’t ask people to contribute toward the purchase of snacks, because that is the equivalent of charging an admission fee. Oh, and one more thing: you can’t show the game on any screen larger than 55 inches!

It gets better. She also told the church that their plans to show an evangelistic video featuring Indianapolis Coach Tony Dungy and some of his players talking about their faith in Jesus was also a violation of the NFLs new found rules! Says Margolies: “While this may be a noble message, we are consistent in refusing the use of our game broadcasts in connection with events that promote a message, no matter the content.” So when the marquee on the front of every local sports bar in the Detroit area invites people to come in and watch the “Super Bowl” (copyright violation!) on “Five Big Screens” (55 inches or less!) in order to consume as much of a legally controlled-substance as their metabolism can handle (or not handle), I suppose that is a message the NFL doesn’t mind having associated with their copyright?

This is already backfiring big time on the NFL. Google the words NFL letter churches and read the outrage. The Family Research Council is involved, and I suspect that soon enough we’ll be hearing from the American Family Association and Focus on the Family. This is clearly a case of the big bad corporation harassing churches. It is religious discrimination on display for even non-churched people to clearly see. Alexandra Pelosi estimates there are 80 million of us evangelicals in America. What if we sat out next year’s Super Bowl? What if we kept our television sets – no matter what the size – tuned to any channel other than the one on which “Super Bowl XLII” was airing? Do you think 80 million evangelicals boycotting one sporting event could adversely affect ratings enough to have a negative impact on ad rates?

Don’t think the NFL Commissioner didn’t think of that before I did. Big time backtracking from the NFL from someone higher up than an overzealous attorney is on its way.

Senator John Kerry is in Davos, Switzerland participating in the World Economic Forum with other world leaders, including the former president and terror leader of Iran, Mohammad Khatami.

Kerry was asked if the United States had done enough to enage Iran prior to the election of Ahmadinejad, to which he responded:
“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy. So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East — in the world, really. I’ve never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today.”

John Kerry has never let the facts get in the way of his Anti-American rhetoric. Never mind the fact that John Kerry voted WITH a unanimous Senate on July 25, 1997 on the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (s. Res. 98) which stated that the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”. Never mind the fact that the Clinton Administration never submitted the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification.

As for being ‘irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDs in Africa,” the Los Angeles Times said this on May 2, 2003: [The Bush Administration’s] commitment of $15 billion over five years to fight AIDS and two other diseases – tuberculosis and malaria – that often afflict AIDS patients would dwarf the $1.6 billion the United States now spends annually on the international health crisis. [LA TIMES]

Senator Kerry is pictured above signing an autograph for the former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami. Khatmati spoke at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government late last year. During a Q&A session he justified Iran’s use of capital punishment for acts of homosexuality saying, “Homosexuality is a crime in Islam and crimes are punishable,” Khatami said. “And the fact that a crime could be punished by execution is debatable.” [HOTAIR]

How soon before America’s gay rights activists roundly condemn John Kerry for associating with a terrorist who advocates killing them because of their lifestyle? Don’t hold your breath.

By the way, Google the phrase ‘international pariah’ and you’ll see that it is a term used by communists and extremists around the world to characterize the United States of America and Israel.

Alexandra Pelosi’s road excursion into the evangelical subculture premiers tonight (Thursday, January 25) on HBO at 9:00 pm ET.  When I spoke with Alexandra a couple of days ago she indicated to me that her intent was never to paint evangelicals in a bad light.  Friends of God is intended first for the people in her own circle of influence who she describes as having a “coastal attitude” toward evangelcials: a preconceived characiture of evangelicals as somehow strange.  She told me that people with this coastal attitude “talk about evangelicals but you don’t know any and they’re right in your backyard.” She says that the evangelicals she highlights in her documentary are “the people she liked, that she really got along wth, that she really respected.”

Ms. Pelosi told me that her motivation for engaging evangelicals with her camcorder was to “start a conversation about this whole ‘Red vs. Blue’ America that we like to talk about on the cable news shows.”  Alexandra believes – and rightly so – that the people who move in her world on the coasts of this great country – have an inaccurate perception of evangelicals.  I’m not sure how much more accurate their perception will be after watching her documentary.

Alexandra chose to focus on the most abberant variety of evangelicalism.  Her journey begins in what one might consider mainstream evangelicalism – the megachurch, even though the vast majority of church-going evangelicals never step foot inside a megachurch.  Her road trip then descends into the evangelical underground of Christian wrestlers, Christian cruisers, Christian skateboarders, Christian comedians, Christian homeschoolers, antievolution seminars, drivethru prayer chapels, and Teen Mania stadium events where more than 2 million teenagers across the country rocked out the Battle Cry message of Ron Luce.  She told me that the purpose of focusing on such bizzarre evangelical activities was to demonstrate to people outside of evangelicalism that “these people have their own culture.”  The fact that we evangelicals do have our own culture is a problem, not a benefit.

She succeeds in painting a picture of evangelicals as “holy warriors” and anti-culture crusaders, focusing one segment on students at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University who were mobilized in a get out the vote campaign for conservative candidates and ballot initiatives in Virgina, as if students on liberal university campuses across the nation are never mobilized in similar fashion for liberal candidates and liberal ballot initiatives.

Those of us who live and move within evangelical circles understand that this evangelical underground presented in Friends of God is not the real evangelicalism.  Sadly, the HBO audience will not recognize this fact. We also understand that the vast majority of pastors in evangelical churches are not mobilizing a political effort on the scale of the megachurches Alexandra focuses on in her documentary.  The vast majority of evangelicals don’t even worship in a megachurch; they worship in churches of 100 or less in attendance led by a faithful pastor whose name we have never heard of.

That having been said, I do not believe that Ms. Pelosi has an agenda whose priority is to make evangelicals look like a conglomerate of politically powerful mega church pastors and uneducated hicks who blindly accept a literal 6 day creation over the more convential evolutionary theory.  But intentional or not, this is what she has accomplished in 56 minutes of television which, in her defense, she says is “not the encyclopedia of all evangelicals.” She never tells that to her audience, however.

For a look inside the real world of evangelicalism, a good starting place would be your local yellow pages,  under Churches – Southern Baptist. Pick the first one in the list, visit it on a Sunday morning, or even better on a Wednesday night, and you’ll have a much better understanding of the real world of evangelicals.

Those who make it their habit of studying leadership philosophy will have much to muse about for some time in the wake of President Bush’s 6th State of the Union Address. Facing for the first time in his presidency a congress controlled by the opposition party, along with many in his own party who have increasingly distanced themselves from his Iraq policy; and facing an American electorate that views him as popularly as Richard Nixon was viewed just 6 months prior to his resignation, George W. Bush proved himself a man and a genuine leader.

Mr. Bush clearly articulated for the first time why and how the situation in Iraq deterioriated into near chaos, pointing to not only the people groups responsible for the chaos, but more importantly giving clear definition to their philosophy and motives. And just as importantly, the president made the case for standing firm in Iraq on the principle of American morality. He pointed to an important fact: Al Qaeda is a group of Sunni extremists, and he cogently identified their objective as overthrowing moderate governments while establishing safe havens for their operations and terrorizing Americans to force us to retreat in fear, abandoning the cause of liberty. The president properly framed the violence and chaos in Iraq as a reaction of the enemy to the democratic processes implemented in Afghanistan and Iraq in an attempt to undo them.We become complicit with the enemy if we allow their strategy to force us into retreat and to abandon the cause of liberty in the Middle east.

Mr. Bush framed his resolve – and his call for our resolve – within the context of Scripture, which he called ‘timeless truth’:

American foreign policy is more than a matter of war and diplomacy. Our work in the world is also based on a timeless truth: To whom much is given, much is required.

Those words were originally spoken by Jesus in The Gospel of Luke 12:48 as an incentive to faithful stewardship of a master’s property. Jesus makes it clear it is not our wealth that makes us successful, but rather what we do with our wealth that will determine our success or failure in the world. America in recent years has lost sight of the source of its bounty and in doing so has abandonded any sense of responsible stewardship for that bounty. When you truly believe that all you have is yours by your own strength, you bear no sense of responsiblity for sharing it with others. Our wealth and our liberty as Americans has been loaned to us by the One who truly owns it: our Creator. How we have stewarded our Master’s property will be determined in the end at our judgment before this same Master. Accountability is the true motivator for how we engage the world community, not only when it comes to terror, but more importantly when it comes to the greater social issues of disease, hunger, and poverty. To whom much is given of him much shall be required.

The president showed genuine resolve and true grit, and most importantly he demonstrated how to lead when other voices are pointing in a different direction, especially when he said:

This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in. Every one of us wishes that this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk. Ladies and gentlemen: On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. So let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory.

Lead on, Mr. President.