The Tebow Family:
Doing the Lord's work in a "howling wilderness"

THE WEEKS OF CONTROVERSY preceding the thirty-second Tim and Pam Tebow anti-abortion ad during the 2010 Super Bowl have drawn national attention to the “Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association,” which Tim’s father Bob established in the Philippines in 1985. According to the organization’s website, Tebow and his wife Pam founded the project “with the mission to take the gospel to those who have never heard and plant Bible believing churches where previously there were no churches.” We learn that Bob, Pam, and their five children lived in the Philippines from 1985 to 1990, “preaching the gospel, planting churches, and establishing a staff of Filipino national evangelists, which now number 52. In addition to training the BTEA staff, Bob also began holding seminars and conferences to train local Filipino pastors.” Current projects include an orphanage, a boat ministry to isolated islands, and “a plan to preach the gospel in every barangay [village] in the Philippines.” It sounds as if they have their work cut out for them. After all, Mr. Tebow tells us, “[i]n a country of 92,000,000, it is estimated that over 65,000,000 Filipinos have never once heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

These certainly are chilling statistics – until you pause to consider that the Philippines is, in fact, by far the most Christian country in Asia. Any history book will tell you that the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan landed in the area in 1521 and claimed it for the Spanish crown and the Christian faith. His priests performed 800 baptisms upon their arrival and the new religion speedily squeezed out native practices. Today, according to no less of an authority than the CIA Factbook, the Philippine population is exactly 92.5 percent Christian. A mere 5 percent is Muslim (and is largely concentrated in Mindanao) and only miniscule numbers claim membership in different religions.

 
Manila Cathedral, first established in 1581.
The current edifice was completed in 1958

 
His Eminence Gaudencio Borbon Cardinal Rosales,
Archbishop of Manila

So as far as Christianity is concerned, the Philippines is anything but the “howling wilderness” that General “Hell-Roaring Jake” Smith promised to transform that sad country into during the Philippine-American War in 1901. So how can we explain this disparity?

Easy. In the Philippines – as in the US over recent years – the word “Christian” refers exclusively to Protestants and particularly to evangelicals. Catholics – who make up 80.9 percent of the population – simply don’t count as Christians, unless they abandon their Popish ways and accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior. Protestants today make up around five percent of the population, half of them evangelicals. Looked at this way, Bob Tebow’s figures start to make some sort of sense – and I guess he really does have his work cut out for him after all.

In fact, a lot of what passes as mission work these days is more of the same. Take the various Protestant and evangelical missions in Egypt and the Palestinian territories, for example. Rather than try to convert Muslims to Christianity – which is largely a waste of time and is even tantamount to a death sentence in some contexts – they merely focus their efforts on Copts, Catholics and Orthodox Christians. In monotheistic regions like the Arab world and the Philippines, missionary work is a zero-sum game.

So what motivates the Tebows? Selling Christianity to Filipinos is like carrying coals to Newcastle. Or, in the words of human rights activist Liam Fox, whose recent story on News Junkie first drew my attention to this issue, converting them is like “trying to raise money to promote football to all the season ticket holders.” Fox goes on to point out that “[t]his ministry is not a service but simply a spreading of Christian teachings; a spiritual PR firm… Evangelizing is the Tebow family business.  This is what they do for a living. All five children, of whom Tim is the youngest, have been co-opted into this work from a very young age and remain involved to this day.”

Not knowing the family personally, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Still, their remarkable efforts to “save” a country that has already been exuberantly Christian for 489 years and counting does make me wonder what really motivates them. As Bob Tebow’s website remarks, “[s]ince 1985, there has been an increasing movement of the Holy Spirit in the Philippines. BTEA feels an intense sense of urgency to get the gospel to every Filipino before this great door of opportunity closes.”

But before it closes for whom? For the Filipinos or – God forbid – for Bob Tebow…?