Before taking part in the ceremony, Deegan weighed the potential effect on his image.
“In the end I said, who’s more radical than us?” Deegan said. “Everything we do is full-on. Once we went to church, we were full-on Christians, too. And we’re going to go for it. On the mic, I’ll say it. On TV, say it. The next thing you know, I have way more people pumped on me. And that’s not why I did it.”
For many in skateboarding, proselytizing carries a stigma, though.
“There are Jews and Muslims and Buddhists,” said Jake Phelps, editor of Thrasher magazine, which covers the sport. “They all have their own special brand of what they believe in. As far as where its place is in skateboarding, it’s pretty much, don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Jereme Rogers, 24, a skateboarder who has competed in the X Games and proclaimed his faith in tattoos, is an exception. He was arrested in May after preaching naked from his apartment rooftop in Redondo Beach, California. Rogers apologized, and he retired the next month.
Chris Cole, 27, a two-time gold-medal winner in skateboard street at the X Games, said in an e-mail message: “The last thing most people want is to be preached to about someone else’s beliefs. The Christian skaters I have met will not preach to you unless you ask them to. I think that is something the community of skaters needs to know.”
Paul Rodriguez considers himself a nondenominational Christian. A two-time gold-medal winner in X Games skateboard street, Rodriguez, 24, has a tattoo of Jesus on his forearm, and a Day of the Dead skateboard graphic.
At contests, he removes his hat and says a prayer before a run, sometimes repeating the ritual several times. His agent, Circe Wallace, initially had reservations about Rodriguez’s spirituality.
“Early on I was concerned as management how his relationship with God would affect his career,” Wallace said. “In terms of certain people’s perception or judgment, and kids not as enthusiastic about buying his products.”
Rodriguez, who does not talk about his faith except to those who ask, wound up taking more grief for signing an endorsement deal with Nike. Some skaters contended the move amounted to selling out.
“When people think like, ‘How does this affect your career, sales, and this and that,’ you’ve just got to be you,” Rodriguez said. “You can’t worry about that. Whether we’re talking about spirituality, religion, or not, just as a general sense of it, you’ve just got to be yourself.”
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