JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Jan. 23 - David Garrett's mission walks in step with his city. With the Super Bowl coming to Jacksonville for the first time, the eyes of more than a hundred million people will turn to northeast Florida, known here as the First Coast. Mr. Garrett wants his ambitious hometown to make a good impression.
"When they look at Jacksonville, I want them to see loving people who care about their city," he said. "I want them to see Jesus."
Mr. Garrett is the head of the Jacksonville Baptist Association's Super Bowl Ministry. In a city where the daily paper, The Florida Times-Union, prints quotations from the Bible on its editorial page, Mr. Garrett is trying to infuse his faith into the week of celebrations that culminate Feb. 6 with Super Bowl XXXIX between the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles.
The more worldly side of those festivities has been seen in other host cities: the discos of South Beach in Miami, the saloons of the French Quarter in New Orleans and the nightlife of Buckhead in Atlanta, where Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis was involved in a fatal street fight after the game in 2000.
"Religion is deeply embedded in the fabric of society, particularly here in this region," the N.F.L. spokesman Brian McCarthy said. "The Super Bowl often includes events that reflect the surrounding areas. That's why you're seeing more of these type of events here."
Religious groups in Jacksonville have planned interdenominational tie-ins to the game even before the crowds arrive. [The Super March for Jesus on Saturday drew several thousand people from local churches for a one-mile prayer walk from the courthouse downtown to Alltel Stadium, site of the Super Bowl.]
Although religion is also a fundamental component of several Super Bowl week events sanctioned by the National Football League - like the Convoy of Hope, the Athletes in Action breakfast and the Super Bowl Gospel Celebration - those activities are supposed to be inclusive.
"The idea is not to have an event that would allow people to recruit or promote one religion over another," Mr. McCarthy said. "The idea is to be attractive to a wide variety of people."
I just love the juxtaposition of the Super Bowl, our national orgy of violence, sex, and corporate excess, with Christianity. Praise the Lord and pass me another Bud Lite .....
[img=right]http://www.tallguyz.com/imagelib/chmeesig.jpg[/img]My guess might be excellent or it might be crummy, but
Mrs. Spade didn't raise any children dippy enough to
make guesses in front of a district attorney,
an assistant district attorney, and a stenographer.
Sam Spade, "The Maltese Falcon" Operation Freedom Fry
This is exactly why the Superbowl belongs in a seedy whore filled booze town like New Orleans every year. Sure, they may have fundies in N'awlins, but the drunken prostitutes cancel them out.
"This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.” -Tom Clancy
The Article wrote:"The idea is not to have an event that would allow people to recruit or promote one religion over another," Mr. McCarthy said. "The idea is to be attractive to a wide variety of people."
Provided that "wide variety" doesn't include non-Christians.
Damien Sorresso
"Ever see what them computa bitchez do to numbas? It ain't natural. Numbas ain't supposed to be code, they supposed to quantify shit."
- The Onion
*Scene: a gas station someone out in the middle of nowhere. Some nerdy-looking guy with glasses drives up to the station, and out come three well-endowed and scantily clad women. They very sexually suggestively do some gas station-y activities. Then, the camera zooms in on the giant cross on a necklace bouncing off one of the womans' ample breasts.
"CHURCH - It's not what you think!"*
Lisa: "Super Bowl ads are so weird."
DPDarkPrimus is my boyfriend!
SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
Mayabird wrote:*Scene: a gas station someone out in the middle of nowhere. Some nerdy-looking guy with glasses drives up to the station, and out come three well-endowed and scantily clad women. They very sexually suggestively do some gas station-y activities. Then, the camera zooms in on the giant cross on a necklace bouncing off one of the womans' ample breasts.
"CHURCH - It's not what you think!"*
Lisa: "Super Bowl ads are so weird."
I thought that slogan was; "The Catholic Church, we've made a few changes."
That being said, I want more religion based events in this Superbowl hoopla. Things like Zeus' Great Three Day Hedonism festival. That'd get crowds.
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist
"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin
HemlockGrey wrote:Oh, please. Both teams are from the Northeast. Like us Yankees give a shit about some preacher from Florida.
Nothing says "Praise the Lord" like tens of thousands of drunken Eagles fans descending on the heart of Jesusland for a week.
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
Gandalf wrote:I thought that slogan was; "The Catholic Church, we've made a few changes."
Cut me some slack. It's been a while since I saw that episode, and it fit better than what John 3:16 means in Family Guy. ("And the LORD said, Go Sox.")
DPDarkPrimus is my boyfriend!
SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
Col. Crackpot wrote:This is exactly why the Superbowl belongs in a seedy whore filled booze town like New Orleans every year. Sure, they may have fundies in N'awlins, but the drunken prostitutes cancel them out.
Haha, you're wrong! Our fundies here are also raving alcoholics! This state is full of fun contradictions.
Formerly the artist known as Captain Lennox
"To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me." - Sir Isaac Newton
Col. Crackpot wrote:This is exactly why the Superbowl belongs in a seedy whore filled booze town like New Orleans every year. Sure, they may have fundies in N'awlins, but the drunken prostitutes cancel them out.
Haha, you're wrong! Our fundies here are also raving alcoholics! This state is full of fun contradictions.
Chmee wrote:
I just love the juxtaposition of the Super Bowl, our national orgy of violence, sex, and corporate excess, with Christianity. Praise the Lord and pass me another Bud Lite .....
Doublethink is alive and well in Jacksonville, it would seem.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
Avatar - "Praying" by Alex Grey.
It's fucking Florida; what do you expect? These people can't even count votes, for fuck's sake. This is the same state where certain municipalities passed public laws banning Satan from the city limits.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
