Forget March Madness, are you participating in American Jesus Madness?

March Madness begins today.

If you didn’t get your bracket in in time, don’t worry, you can still take part in American Jesus Madness.

American Jesus Madness is a “March Madness”-style competition on The American Jesus website that pits icons of American Christian popular culture against each other to determine the 2012 champion of American Christianity. 

Zack Hunt and Wes Anderson, The American Jesus’ webmasters came up with the idea last year as a way of combining two things they love: sports and faith.

“Last year we created the bracket ourselves entirely from scratch,” said Hunt.

“This year we decided to let our readers nominate who or what would be in the tournament. Their submissions ended up accounting for about a third of the bracket and we filled in the rest.”

“We tried to pair up people or things that we thought went together naturally because they were already the subject of debate in real life. With the remaining spots we simply tried to create pairings we thought our readers would find amusing.”

With matchups such as @FakeDriscoll vs. Rachel Held Evans, Discernment Ministries vs. Rational Christianity and Joel Osteen vs. Church Discipline, the bracket is clearly making fun of the church, but Hunt said it’s to make a point.

“As Americans, we seem to be fascinated with determining who is the best at everything,” he said.

“Even though it shouldn’t, this need for competition trickles over into the church. We see it most clearly demonstrated in our constant battles over who is right or wrong.”

“So, we decided to make that competition a little more literal, in hopes that our satirical bracket could shed some light on what is a serious, but often unnecessary, issue in the church.”

As with March Madness brackets, the person who submitted the best American Jesus Madness bracket will win a $50 iTunes gift card.

Though brackets for American Jesus Madness had to be in on March 12, you can still participate by voting on who should move on to the next round by visiting The American Jesus website.

“Voting is conducted using a polling system. It’s incredibly simple. All a person has to do is choose who they want to win a given matchup, click “vote,” and his vote is tallied.”

“Anyone can vote, regardless of whether they submitted a bracket or not, and voting is unlimited.”

So far 3,000 people have cast more than 10,000 votes.

The competition runs through next Monday.