PICTURE THIS: A man they call Soccer Moses is descending a set of stadium stairs, parting not the Red Sea but a crowd of Nashville soccer junkies. As he reaches the bottom of the stairs, he puts on a Gibson guitar and performs a celebratory riff, which is a tradition for the Nashville Soccer Club, a Major League Soccer team. As Soccer Moses shreds his guitar, fans surround him and wave signs, scarves, and a Pride flag. One of the many differences between the biblical Moses and Soccer Moses is evident in this scene. Biblical Moses sought to prevent revelry (Exodus 32:18-19); Soccer Moses lives to promote it.
Mason’s friend stood up on his chair in the Irish pub where he was watching the game and screamed, “Let my people goal!”
Soccer Moses is the unofficial team mascot for Nashville SC. Why, if Nashville SC is not connected to religion in any way, has a zealous fan taken it upon himself to dress up like Moses and become the team’s unofficial ambassador? Well, to understand that you first need to know the identity of the man donning the wig, fake beard, and flowing garments.
When I interviewed Stephen Mason over Zoom in May, he was wearing the full Soccer Moses regalia, and his Zoom background was a desert. “I thought, you know what, let’s lean into this even further,” Mason told me. For readers of a certain age or those with an evangelical background, the name Stephen Mason likely strikes a chord. Mason was the guitarist for the Grammy-winning Christian ’90s indie-rock group Jars of Clay, whose popular song “Flood” placed them on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, giving them success outside of the Christian contemporary music silo. Jars of Clay was actively touring and recording albums for more than 25 years. No longer touring or making albums, the four band members (vocalist Dan Haseltine, pianist and keyboardist Charlie Lowell, rhythm guitarist Matthew Odmark, and guitarist Mason) are each pursuing individual projects. Mason’s Soccer Moses project is certainly the zaniest, but there is a reason and a story behind the madness.
As Mason tells it, the idea came from a friend who told him how he celebrated when Nigerian soccer player Victor Moses scored a goal during the 2018 Men’s World Cup. When Moses converted the penalty kick for Nigeria, Mason’s friend stood up on his chair in the Irish pub where he was watching the game and screamed, “Let my people goal!” As soon as Mason heard this story, he thought that the phrase should be on a shirt. Mason, who is also a master barber, was thinking more about it one day while cutting a customer’s hair when an idea struck him: What if he showed up to a Nashville SC game as Moses with a banner that said, “Let my people goal”?
“I paused the haircut,” Mason told me. “I went on the internet, and I ordered a Moses costume that would be delivered in 24 hours.”
Since 2020, Soccer Moses has consistently attended home games and even made an appearance on the sports network ESPN. Recalling his appearance on ESPN, Mason said that “there was a lot of serendipity involved. If something falls in your lap, man, just go with it. Especially if it’s fun and brings joy.”
While sports certainly do bring joy, they also have the potential to bring people together. Human rights activist and former president of South Africa Nelson Mandela once said, “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does.” Mason would likely agree with Mandela. Reflecting on our current moment, he told me, “There are very few things these days — sports and otherwise — that bring different cultures together. In fact, I think [bringing people together is] very contrary to the moment we’re living in.”
And the moment we’re living in is a particularly polarized one, with a growing number of people divided along ideological and political lines. Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist and assistant professor in communication and journalism at Stony Brook University, argued in We Have Never Been Woke that the polarization we see today in U.S. civic life is largely due to economic stagnation, which exacerbates “many of the adverse conditions plaguing contemporary U.S. civic culture, such as calcifying inequalities and declining social mobility, growing tribalism and intolerance, heightened mistrust of institutions, rising anti-democratic impulses, and increased myopic or zero-sum thinking.”
In Soccer Moses, Mason sees an opportunity to use humor to connect people and celebrate marginalized communities. “I’m deeply passionate about celebrating everybody,” Mason said. Specifically, Mason mentioned Nashville’s Latino population and told me that he had attempted to translate “Let my people goal” into Spanish. “I tell you, it’s quite a trick to translate a pun into another language, but we managed to do it.” (¡Deja golear a mi pueblo!)
In Exodus 12:38, the text says that a “mixed crowd” — that is, both Hebrews and Egyptians — fled Egypt together. It’s appropriate then that Mason sees Soccer Moses not just as a mascot, but as a symbol to help people find joy in life and learn how to love each other. “The litmus test for me, not unlike anything else, is: Does it bring joy? Is it motivated by love for all humankind?”
Mason was asking these questions long before he accepted the call to become Soccer Moses. In 2004, Jars of Clay founded Blood:Water, an organization dedicated to addressing the water and HIV/AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. “One of the guiding principles of Blood:Water is whatever you are passionate about, whatever the things you love and are interested in, those things can be activated in your heart to bring you joy and purpose,” Mason said. “And that can radically change the lives of others.”
I can honestly say that, thanks to his performance as Soccer Moses and his contributions to Jars of Clay, Stephen Mason has brought some much-needed joy to my life during a politically fraught time. As much as I need joy in my life, I also needed to have a conversation with someone like Mason who said that his current faith journey is a “developing story” and that the dogmatic ways that the Bible is being used to exclude people is discouraging to see. For Mason, this only reiterates the necessity of finding reasons to bring people together. “I’m pretty passionate these days about keeping the table open and staying curious,” Mason told me. “Whether it’s ‘the beautiful game’ or talking about the journey with Jars of Clay or Blood:Water — it’s to celebrate opportunities, to make a difference, and bring hope and healing.” Instead of saying “amen” to that, I think it’s appropriate to say, “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!”
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