The Jeremy Lin factor

February 19, 2012 By

Jeremy Lin’s winning streak may have ended Friday, but he picked right back up today with 28 points and 14 assists during the Knicks’ win against the Mavericks.

Headline writers are having a field day with potential puns, but that hasn’t worked out well for ESPN, which fired a staffer for writing “Chink in the armor” in a headline and suspended an anchor. Lin’s popularity certainly has something to do with ethnicity, which some outlets may struggle to cover.

On the other hand, some outlets are covering several different angles, including a profile from the Mercury News and an interesting interview with Lin’s pastor from the Washington Post‘s On Faith, among other pieces on religion and sports.

I’ve been pretty impressed by several articles from The New York Times that have captured some of the nuances of both race and religion. We’ve already looked at Michael Luo’s first-person piece and talked to him for more background. I laughed out loud at the quote the Times captured from Lin’s grandmother. “I know nothing about basketball.

I only know when Jeremy puts the ball in the basket he has done a good thing.” I also appreciated a Times piece on what Lin’s rise to prominence has done for Christians in China. American Protestant missionaries converted Lin’s great-grandfather to Christianity, the article reports.

Lin’s combination of success in the N.B.A. and strong Christian faith — he has spoken in the past of becoming a pastor someday — has fired the imagination of many Asian-American Christians. There are some early signs that he may also be catching the attention of Christians in China, who continue to face varying levels of persecution.

Only 1,500 of the initial 1.4 million microblogging messages on mainland Chinese Web sites that mentioned Lin also mentioned Christianity.

The article mentions twice the fact that Christians in China are persecuted, but it doesn’t go into too many specifics. It does, however, show how the government tries to temper the spread of Christianity.

Chinese authorities allow one Protestant seminary per province, as a way to limit the number of pastors and slow the spread of Christianity, which by some estimates may have more than 100 million adherents among China’s 1.3 billion people.

Mao ordered the merger of Protestant denominations in China in 1958; while different strands of Protestantism have informally re-emerged since Mao’s death in 1976, they must share a small supply of seminary graduates and other pastors trained at Bible schools operating informally.

Kudos to the Times for looking deeper, showing how one athlete’s popularity spotlights something larger about Christianity in China. And we hope you enjoy this week’s podcast.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Evangelicals, People, Podcasts, Race, Religion, Sports
  • sari

    Sarah,
    Don’t know if you saw this, but Time answered the question of a Lin equivalent to Tebowing. Cute but requires a partner.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82-NJj1HEW8

    Also, the phenomenon among Asian-Americans, particularly the youth, reminds me of what we observed at a Lang Lang concert. I have no idea which religion, if any, Lang Lang practices, but he has become a huge role model within the Asian community: very cool, very talented, very accomplished, very respectful, and very open to his fans.

  • michael henry

    Re ESPN: PC has gotten to the point that no one has even a chance to be indoctrinated in the old school “sensitivity training” . It seems fine to extol his Asian hyphenated American attributes, but use a term that’s been used for decades that has nothing to do with race? your outta here. It’s really disgusting that it’s OK to focus purely on race when the person isn’t euro-american. ESPN is a role model for fascism. The hypocrisy of the times is believable. When it’s a euro-american it’s a generic “faith” of some nebulous nature. When it’s a so called minority its genuine Christian faith.
    I really do like Sarah’s pieces, but the paucity you pay to the PC aspect, which infects everything it touches , is disappointing.
    Regarding even the innocuous first comment, what if I mentioned someone being a role model for white people? Why is it always OK to be one for minorities?

  • sari

    michael,
    Jeremy Lin seems to be on his way to being the same kind of role model as Hank Greenberg (Jews) and Jackie Robinson (African-Americans). Both dealt with overt racism on and off the field, often from their own teammates. Lin is no exception.

  • http://www.blog4men.com Nate

    Great article on a figure we are all fascinated by right now. As a Christian, I am particularly interested in learning more about him and didn’t know as much of his background until this post. It will be interesting to see where this new attention takes him on and off the court.

  • Julia

    I know it isn’t journalism, but Saturday Night Live had a skit this past week-end on an ESPN-type sports show dealing with Lin. There were two white men and two black men on a panel. Lots of punning and references to Lin’s race such as fortune cookies, ping pong, Chinese gong, etc.. But when one of the white men thought this meant you could now joke about blacks, too, the two black men and the white anchor would get furious. After about 5 go-arounds with comments referencing Lin’s race and the 4th guy referencing other players’ African-American race, the offending white guy lost his job.

    You can see it at USA Today’s sports blog.

    http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2012/02/video-watch-snl-spoof-racists-jeremy-lin-stereotypes-in-media-new-york-knicks-dallas-mavericks-nbc-saturday-night-live/1#.T0JSpLEgeYk

  • Julia

    Thinking over the SNL skit – it qualifies as a critique of sports journalism’s ethnic/racial remarks.

  • http://catherineguiles.com Cathy G.

    Great roundup of stories – but was it necessary to repeat the ESPN headline?

  • Sarah Pulliam Bailey

    Thanks, Cathy. I think it was worth repeating to show what exactly was the phrase in question. I wrote this just after the employee was fired, so I wasn’t sure how many people knew abou it.